Jason Franks's Blog, page 30

Radio Blues

I discovered music when I discovered alternative radio.

When I was a kid, the main attraction of listening to the radio was the gadget itself: a portable AM/FM device with a telescopic aerial that I could use to pick up boring talkback and shitty pop music from all over South Africa. Once we moved to Australia I grew to like a couple of 80s pop acts (for about one album each), but it wasn’t until Triple J went national that I really found music that set my head on fire.

This was during rise of grunge music, which bootstrapped the alternative music scene. Prior to that, ‘alternative music’ was what my brother’s friend’s weird older brother listened to. I knew it existed, but I’d never actually had a chance to listen to it. I didn’t know anything about metal, either, beyond what I had read in article in Eye Spy magazine (not the secret intelligence mag; Eye Spy was a children’s magazine distributed to primary schools). From Eye Spy I had learned that listening to metal would turn me into a Satanist and drive me to suicide. Even if I had known where to find it, I would have avoided it.

So Triple J in the 90s was a revelation for me. I learned to really love music in those years. I’d always wanted to play electric guitar, but now I was finally motivated me to go out and buy one–years after I’d given up the classical guitar lessons, as well as the trumpet.

I don’t much listen to the Js any more–they’ve insufferably smug and hip in their attitudes and their playlists–but in those days they were the only station with a playlist that included the music I liked and that would introduce me to music I would come to like.

I’ve been listening to a bit of commercial radio again recently. I still prefer the local independent stations–the community stations PBS and RRR–but a couple of the commercial stations are once again semi-listenable and it’s been interesting to hear what they’re playing and saying.

In the US most regions offer a number of rock stations–most of them controlled by Clear Channel. Usually there’s a classic rock station, a Modern Rock station that I guess in 2012 equates to Hipster Music, and probably a third station that plays the more belligerent strains of contemporary rock–the bands that grew out of neo grunge, SoCal Pseudopunk  and Nu Metal. Here in Australia we have less to choose from. In Melbourne we had a classic rock station for about six months this year, but already it’s been reformatted into Adult Contemporary. We are now back to the two traditional two rock stations: Gold 104 and MMM.

Gold used to be an oldies station; nowadays it basically a 70s and 80s rock and pop and it’s quite clearly targeted at middle-aged parents. Sometimes  hear some good music there. I cannot bear to listen to any of the presenters.

For the last couple of decades I think sportscasting has been the bigger part of MMM’s business, but aside from the sports, they’re  now basically somewhere a classic rock station who play a few of the best-selling and least-offensive modern rock songs. Foo Fighters, Linkin Park, Nickleback (I know it’s unfair of me to lump all of those bands in together). They do have a couple of off-primetime programs that make some effort to expose new music, notably former Screaming Jets frontman Dave Gleeson’s show. They even have a metal program these days. But if you’re looking for new music, MMM is not really the place for you.

What I find interesting about Triple M is that a lot of the 90s era classic rock they’re playing now is music that they never played when it was current.  Triple M hosted the Alternative Nation live music festival in the early nineties, back when grunge was at its height, but they never used to play any of the bands that they brought out for the show. In  ’95, when grunge was in its death throes, I remember hearing an ad boasting that MMM played the newest music first. The Cracker song ‘Low’ was the example they cited. ‘Low’ was released in 1993 on the Kerosene Hat album.

I know these bands and this music was huge in the US, but here in Australia you couldn’t hear much of it on commercial radio. When Kurt Cobain had his various episodes of art-vs-commerce insecurity I used to wonder where the hell he was coming from.  And I think that scene is in a very large part responsible for Triple J’s rise to prominence.

Commercial radio abandoned new rock music decades ago–right about when MTV did. Much as I love it, community radio is never going to be the place for new bands to break. They’re not designed to do this. They’re designed to program for the niches missed by commercial radio–new rock is now just one of those niches.

Now it’s more and more difficult for me to discover new music. There are fewer and fewer independent record stores to troll, now. I used to have an emusic account, but I cancelled my subscription when I found that I had to cross reference it with issues of Mojo magazine to find anything interesting. Now I use a combination of Mojo and youtube. With these tools you’d think it was easier than ever, but the amount of new music I buy is greatly diminished now. But as a general rule I find music journalism to horrifying–I want to know about the music, not about how cool the musicians are and I certainly don’t care how cool the writer thinks him or herself to be.  Mojo is the only magazine I can stand to read that’s not a guitar magazine.

I have instead been buying up a lot of old stuff. Classic rock. Jazz, big band, blues. Led Zeppelin. Jimi Hendrix. Duke Ellington. Black Sabbath. Thelonious Monk. Muddy Waters. Tom Waits. Kermit Ruffins. Dizzy Gillespie. I like rock, I like metal, I like blues, I like jazz. I’m no big on hiphop or country. I generally don’t like motown, soul, R&B, or   synthpop. I like some newer bands, but not enough. The Black Angels. The Black Hearts Procession. High on Fire. Band of Skulls. The Haunted. Sons and Daughters.

Perhaps I’m getting old. Perhaps I just need to make a bit more effort. Recommend me some music–I want to hear it.

 

Momus Report on Bloody Waters

The stellar Emmet O’Cuana reviews Bloody Waters over at the Momus Report.

http://themomusreport.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/bloody-waters-by-jason-franks.html

“This is confident and very entertaining writing, at times reminiscent of Harlan Ellison’s Spider Kiss meets Pratchett and Gaiman’s classic Good Omens. Franks’ enthusiasm for rock shines through on every page, but there’s also a satirical wryness here which catapults this above other supernatural thrillers clogging up the market.”

Couldn’t ask for a better review than that. Now if you will excuse me, I’ll be over here dancing with these surfing penguins.

– JF

Prolific

So, Bloody Waters is out. In the immediate future I have The Sixsmiths vol.02 underway and also McBlack vol.02, and I am now actively trying to sell my second novel, Faerie Apocalypse, which I completed in 2012. My third novel, tentatively entitled XDA Zai, is presently a second draft, with several more to go before it’s submission-ready. Does this make me prolific?

It sounds like a lot, but it’s really not. In the two years since The Sixsmiths came out I’ve produced two one shots, I’ve edited two anthologies, and I’ve sold a couple of short stories. Bloody Waters was a done deal before Sixsmiths, and all up it took thirteen years–that’s hardly a prolific rate of production. For a professional writer that’s not much at all. For a semipro who works a day job full time, I guess it’s a reasonable volume.

I do also have three new comics projects I’m currently pitching around. It seems like a lot, but i’s taken a lot of years to build up this pipeline. Perhaps I’d be better of if I worked on fewer projects at a time, but it’s not the way I’m wired. I’m most productive when I can switch my efforts around–it keeps me fresh, but it does blow out my timelines a lot. But make no mistake–I work hard at this.

So. Prolific? No. Hard-working? Yeah, I’ll cop to that one.

 

Devil Takes Care of His Own

You all know the story. A sad-sack who can’t play the guitar goes to the crossroads and makes a deal with the Devil for skill, prestige, and success. Which he receives before things go horribly wrong. Sometimes it’s a violinist or a horn player, of course, and very occasionally it’s a singer, but the folk tales are older than the legend of the ill-fated blues guitarist Robert Johnson and the stories almost are almost always about a man who plays guitar.

Which of course is fucking lame. Every guitarist worth spitting on put hundreds of hours into learning his instrument–to go and ask some supernatural power to save you the effort is the action of a man who is weak; a man who wants fame and prestige without paying his dues. For this type of man it’s not about the music at all–it’s about the rewards. This, to me, is the very definition of selling out. Lame.

Why would the Devil even want these people, anyway? Chances are he’s going to get their pathetic souls without having to dicker for them in the first place.

In 2012 it feels like the crossroads are closer than ever. How do you become a star today? You frock up for a TV talent show and sing other people’s songs for a jury of half-wits. Perhaps a few million people who like reality TV more than music will vote you into stardom, if you’re pretty enough. Show me an American Idol winner who’s going to leave a lasting musical legacy and I’ll show you a pig who can fly by farting rainbows.

Bloody Waters is about a guitarist who makes a pact with the Devil, in which I have tried to invert all of the cliches. For starters, this guitarist is a woman. For the soup course, Clarice can already play as well as any man when she makes her pact. Clarice’s deal allows her to keep her integrity; to overcome obstacles set before her int he music industry because she is a woman, and because she insists on doing things her own way. In Bloody Waters the Devil won’t come to the table for a band who can’t already play. No lame ducks need apply.

Bloody Waters is a fantasy about a rock band that’s never takes the lame option. They never record a Christmas Album; they collaborate with a dancing model pop diva; they never write that power ballad the record company knows will sell a billion copies. It’ s a fantasy about a band who plays the kind of music I want to hear, but which few bands do. Powerful, challenging, original music. Bloody Waters are rewarded for their hard work… eventually… but integrity has its own price and the stakes for Clarice and Bloody Waters are not what they appear to be.

I hope you dig the book. In the meantime, here’s A Band of Skulls with the theme song for 2012.

Humerus

So Bloody Waters is out and by all indications it’s doing pretty well. I have been receiving a steady stream of feedback about it, and so far all of it positive. At least one reader smashed through the book in the first 24 hours of its release–that makes me feel good. Even my old man seems to like it.

One of the most common things I am hearing is that the humour of the book takes people by surprise. I’ve heard this quite often before, usually in relation to McBlack. Despite the fact that my best-known book, The Sixsmiths is a comedy a lot of people who haven’t read me expect my work will be grim and serious.

Certainly my writing tends to be dark–but usually it’s funny, as well. Perhaps the problem is my reluctance to say ‘this book is humorous’: telling people that a joke is funny is a surefire way that make sure that it isn’t. So is sniggering through it as you tell it and then slapping your thigh and guffawing after delivering the punchline.

But I don’t think that is the whole story. While I pride myself as being someone who likes and who writes in all genres, it seems that the horror genre is my home turf. The Sixsmiths, which is a sitcom, is very clearly labelled ‘horror’ on the back even though it has no monsters, no disembowelments, no supernatural elements, no scares.

I have written about this elsewhere, but comedy and horror are not so different in the end. A good joke an a good horror story are structured the same way. Both of them derive their effect from a kind of cognitive dissonance. Horror stories are often tempered with jokes and humour; jokes often revolve around the terrifying or appalling consequences of some misunderstanding. If you’ve ever listened to Marc Maron’s excellent WTF podcast–hell, if you’ve even listened to a lot of good comedy–you’ll have noticed that comedians tend not to be jovial, fun-loving teddybears… they’re neurotic, insecure, lonely, angry people who want to make you laugh… but oftentimes they’re laughing at you. Because it would be illegal to open up on the audience with an automatic weapon.

Not all of them, of course, but my favourite ones are, at least. Or perhaps I’m just projecting.

Anyway, McBlack and Bloody Waters and of course The Sixsmiths are all supposed to be humorous in way way or another–so if you’re put off because the synopses sound grim, or my profile picture on facebook scared you (you can laugh, but I’ve heard that one too), or the cover art doesn’t have clowns and puppies on it, I would appreciate it if you’d give the books a second thought.

Now if you need me I will be here int he corner, sorting out this pile of shells by caliber and jacket composition.

Volume 2 Art Lineup: Bruce Mutard

Ladies and gentlemen, madamss and monsieurs, it is my great pleasure to introduce the next artist on Sixsmiths vol.02: Baleful Bruce Mutard.

Bruce is the author of the graphic novels  The Sacrifice, The Silence, The Bunker and A Mind of Love. He’s been published in many of Australia’s most prestigious journals and is one of the premier practitioners of the sequential arts in Australia’s literary firmament.  We are honoured and privileged to have him aboard as we explore the other side, as it were: Australia’s literary fundament.

Welcome, Bruce!

Aggressive

The angry folks at Aggressive Comix have profiled me up on their website. Click through for hilarity and hijinx.

You might need to wear a helmet.

http://aggressivecomix.com/?p=6022

 

Blood in the Water

Well, boys and girls, its here.

My first novel, Bloody Waters, is now available in the Kindle store from Amazon.com.

Bloody Waters is an occult rock’n'roll novel about guns, magic and the devil… but mostly its about music. Please do me a huge favour and buy it, review it, talk about it, link it. I will love you forever, in a non-creepy or metaphysically-threatening way.

I will be a guest at Oz Horror Con 12 on Saturday, where I will be promoting the book and perhaps even reading from it. Since it’s an eBook I will not be selling copies of the novel directly, but I will be happy to sign postcards of Rhys James’ gorgeous cover painting for you. If you’ve managed to buy and read a copy of it before then I will reward you with free comics and undying good wishes.

Get thee behind me,

 

– JF

Volume 2 Art Lineup: Sacha Bryning

Welcome, Snakeophiles,

It is time once more to introduce another new Sixsmiths artist:

Sacha Bryning’s very name is vested with some heavy occult significance, so it seems only natural that he lends some of his insidious powers to The Sixsmiths.

Sacha is an animator, a storyboard artist and an illustrator. His work has appeared in Gaining Velocity, Fireside Tales and the brilliant metafictional newspaper strip comic Sam and Laz. He’s a super-talented new force in Australian comics and it gives us great pleasure to welcome him into the Sixsmiths family.

Follow Sacha’s  work at sachascrawl.blogspot.com and explorationink.tumblr.com.

Bloody Waters

This is the big one, folks: my first novel, Bloody Waters, is about to drop from the good folks at Possible Press.

Bloody Waters is a book that I have been working on for about thirteen years. In that time a lot of things have changed. The book has gone from being near-future science fiction to being set int he recent past. I have gone from being younger that the protagonists to being older. What hasn’t changed is what the book is about: rock and roll, the devil, and the relevance of these forces on modern society. Go read the official blurb; I’ll still be here when you get back.

The story is about a Clarice Marnier, a talented guitarist who makes a deal with the devil rather than compromise with her enemies.

I know that sounds like something you’ve read before, but what I’m going for is the converse of those other stories. In the folk tales, the protagonist trades his soul for improved ability to play the guitar. In Bloody Waters, Clarice can already play as well as anybody–her deal is to help her overcome an enemy that a male protagonist would not have to face. The devil won’t play the game with you if you haven’t earned your place at the chessboard.

The stories you know are about the price of selling out. Bloody Waters is about the price of keeping your integrity. Also, pop stars, demons, sorcerers, and mafia priests. Mostly, though, it’s about music.

I wrote this book because I love music, but I hate the way that the music industry is run–if you’re an American Idol fan it’s probably not going to be your gallon of vodka. If you like Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Faith No More, Robert Johnson, Slayer, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Tool, Radiohead, John Coltrane, the Tea Party, High on Fire, Muddy Waters, Rolling Stones, Tom Waits? This one’s for you.

Bloody Waters will shortly be available as an eBook from all of the usual outlets. If it does well it will be available in paperback in 2013.