STOOGE YOUR ENTHUSIASM (10)
By:
October 29, 2023
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of proto-punk records from the Sixties (1964–1973, in our periodization schema). Series edited by Josh Glenn. Also check out our proto-punk playlist (a work in progress) at Spotify.
FRANCES FAYE | “FRANCES AND HER FRIENDS” | 1959
In which a cabaret singer, who at first sounds like a Judy Garland imitator, shifts during a live Vegas backroom performance from that mode to a manic pairing of different names, largely same sex (“Abey goes with Davy”) but there’s time to fantasize particulars over the suspended jazz beat, then that erupts into a version of “Shake, Rattle and Roll.” Whoa. “I’m not mad at you. Don’t be mad at me,” Faye sings, and there are legislators in my state of Tennessee who need to receive this message more than the folks running rock and roll high school needed to receive the Ramones. To cite another line, “Rock Elvis Presley around the block” indeed.
As you may recall from his “The Scorn Papers,” printed in Psychotic Reactions, Lester Bangs figured that if he invented punk, he stole it from Greg Shaw, who stole it from Dave Marsh, who stole it from John Sinclair, and back through Brando, Bogart, a wino in Paris, and the wino’s toothless mom who once turned tricks. The grail quest allows us to free associate away from garage bands. Also, while it flipped my taste to read early rock critics on “Surfin’ Bird” and the flock as AM radio punk, queer theorist Jose Esteban Muñoz was no less a punk and the image of fanzine goddess Vaginal Davis on the cover of Muñoz’s Disidentifications was punk as that first version of “Tutti Frutti” with the anal sex grease left in.
So yes, “Frances and Her Friends” is protopunk. Faye, born Frances Cohen in 1912, still lacks a biographer: we have a great fan site and a better film, Chop Suey, by the now-canceled Bruce Weber to extend the song’s invocation of a drag party for the ages. YouTube captures Faye, a close-cropped piano pounder who navigated Tin Pan Alley helter-skelter and speakeasy jazz scatting into the Ed Sullivan 1960s, brusquely non-binary but happy to give any audience the show business, moving from “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” to whole albums of Fats Domino. “The Syncopating Cyclone,” a poster called her; “Originator of Zaz-Zu-Zaz.”
Rushing the material, letting contradictions fuse, Faye rehearses Justin Vivian Bond giving a Kiki and Herb performance, or Taylor Mac retelling the tortured history of pop. Faye was “crossing the line over and over again,” her partner of 31 years Teri Shepherd says in Weber’s queer meditation. It’s fair to wonder how Faye raced across gender lines, using Black rhythms in a safely transgressive manner given the phrase “coon shouting” to characterize May Irwin, Mae West. But that “go go go go” in her show looked forward, too. Or its synonym: “gay, gay gay gay, Frances Faye.” “She wanted everybody to be free in this world,” says Shepherd. “This is not dirty,” Faye tells us in “Frances and Her Friends.” “It’s the way I say it.”
STOOGE YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mandy Keifetz on The Trashmen’s SURFIN’ BIRD | Nicholas Rombes on Yoko Ono’s MOVE ON FAST | David Cantwell on ? and the Mysterians’ 96 TEARS | James Parker on The Modern Lovers’ SHE CRACKED | Lynn Peril on The Pleasure Seekers’ WHAT A WAY TO DIE | Lucy Sante on The Count Five’s PSYCHOTIC REACTION | Jonathan Lethem on The Monkees’ YOUR AUNTIE GRIZELDA | Adam McGovern on ELP’s BRAIN SALAD SURGERY | Mimi Lipson on The Shaggs’ MY PAL FOOT FOOT | Eric Weisbard on Frances Faye’s FRANCES AND HER FRIENDS | Annie Zaleski on Suzi Quatro’s CAN THE CAN | Carl Wilson on The Ugly Ducklings’ NOTHIN’ | Josh Glenn on Gillian Hill’s TUT, TUT, TUT, TUT… | Mike Watt on The Stooges’ SHAKE APPEAL | Peter Doyle on The Underdogs’ SITTING IN THE RAIN | Stephanie Burt on Pauline Oliveros’s III | Marc Weidenbaum on Ornette Coleman’s WE NOW INTERRUPT FOR A COMMERCIAL | Anthony Miller on Eno’s NEEDLES IN THE CAMEL’S EYE | Gordon Dahlquist on The Sonics’ STRYCHNINE | David Smay on The New York Dolls’ HUMAN BEING | Michael Grasso on the 13th Floor Elevators’ YOU’RE GONNA MISS ME | Holly Interlandi on Death’s ROCK’N’ROLL VICTIM | Elina Shatkin on Bobby Fuller’s I FOUGHT THE LAW | Brian Berger on The Mothers of Invention’s WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE? | Peggy Nelson on The Kingsmen’s LOUIE LOUIE.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!