Road To Hell (Remix)

Series
The Other Side
Original Broadcast Date
12/16/2001
Cast
Joe Frank
Format
Absurd Monologue, 58 minutes
Preceded by:	In The Dark (Remix)
Followed by:	Plerophory Of Pain
Purchase /  Stream

Oh Midnight Special, I ride the rods a hobo, not homeless...

Road To Hell (Remix) is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series The Other Side. It was originally broadcast in 2001.

Synopsis

This show is all re-used material, the first 20 minutes from 'The road to hell', the next 11:30 from 'A landing strip in the jungle', a segment from 'Journal', the rest from 'Words' (in a different order), with a segment from 'Emerald isle'.

Train sounds.

0:50: A paean to the hobo, the first few seconds of Country Joe McDonald's 'Hold On It's Coming' repeating in the background - 'Oh midnight special, I ride the rods a hobo…'

6:20: Joe describes a scene in a ski lodge. He inscribes an attractive woman's cast, 'Regret not the momentary impulse.'

12:00: Christmas in New York, 'Carolers standing beneath the street lamp', the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, midnight mass at St Pat's…

14:30: Joe describes a New Year's Eve party, which gets wild. Miracles happen. Someone smothers to death underneath the jackets thrown on the bed.

20:00: Joe describes living in the Lower East Side, getting mugged regularly, meeting the same mugger 10 years later.

23:50: Joe describes working for Rosemont (Rosamond?) Electric. The boss tells them to drink scotch, not vodka, at lunch so the customers will know they're drunk, not stupid.

24:30: Joe describes the building he lives in, 'a partially burned out shell of a turn-of-the-century industrial building', the prostitute he could see in an adjacent building, the broken glass and bottle caps on the street, the street scene in general, the broken piano in the alley, the art project it inspired that got Joe the money to move out.

28:40, Joe claims to do and be all sorts of remarkable things for 2 minutes, 'I am a statue carried in a cart…'

31:30: Joe ruminates on how one is the star of one's own life but a bit player in the lives of others, 'When you're walking in a city during evening rush hour…'

33:40 A distorted voice (lowered pitch) tells of a family arriving on an oil platform in a flotilla of paper bags. After years they move to the mainland, take menial jobs, their descendants eventually succeeding by becoming lawyers who snare innocents in Kafkaesque lawsuits.

37:30 An explanation of 'balance of payments' as the emperor getting paid his weight in gold every year. Eventually an emperor gets so fat he splits, the exudate digesting everyone in the kingdom, the largest incident of external digestion in the history of nutrition.

43:50: A woman (French-accented?) talks about falling in love with a beautiful man, 'The first time, first time I remember I fell in love…'

45:00: The distorted voice recounts how his defective garage door remote control launches nearby ICBMs.

47:30: Joe's normal voice delivers a paean to women of all kinds, 'O woman, possessor of the mysterious womb…'

54:00: Distorted voice is tired, 'I'm tired of putting pants on my legs…'

55:10: Distorted voice, 'In the mailroom brown shoes square in the middle of the night…' and other random things.

55:50: Distorted voice recounts 2 dreams from last night, followed by other surreal events.

Legacy Synopsis

Train sounds.

A poetic celebration of the hobo.

A ski lodge, writing "regret not the momentary impulse" on a cast.

Founding fathers, the Articles of Confabulation and the bill of human bondage.

General Deities Incorporated. Christmas in New York.

Throwing a New Year's Eve party - a guest suffocated beneath coats.

Getting mugged weekly in the stairway of Joe's apartment, then meeting the same guy years later.

Rapid monologue amidst glass-style minimalist orchestral music: I am a statue in the park... walking into the river and filling a bowl on one's head, using a third eye to cheat at cards.

Individualism amidst mobs, perception of a radio program.

Deepened monologue: immigrants mistaking an oil rig for America, getting menial jobs, raising middle class children.

The balance of payments: taxation by weighing noblemen.

A woman with a french accent talks about falling in love.

A malfunctioning garage door opener.

Describing a fantasy woman.

Odes: Oh woman, high school cheerleader, businesswoman, nurse, homemaker, secretary, stewardess.

Deepened monologue: being tired of life, the legions of the dead. Dreams: discovering one is still married to an ex wife, being a cartoon character spun off as a plastic doll.

A being oiled by women in a room full of video games with a glass floor while a man reads holy books, wanting to go away, watching an old man dance with a beautiful young girl.

Music

This is an incomplete record of the music in this program. If you can add more information, please do.

• "Hold On, It's Coming No.1" - Country Joe McDonald (from Hold On It's Coming, 1971) | YouTube [0:30]
• "New York/Brazil" - Lee Ritenour (from Festival, 1988) | YouTube [11:49]
• "Midday" - Michael Brook (from Hybrid, 1985) | YouTube [19:32]
• "Fratres" - The 12 Cellists Of The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Arvo Pärt (from Tabula Rasa, 1984) | YouTube [38:11]

• "The Kiss" - Harold Budd (from The White Arcades, 1988) | YouTube [47:07]

Shared material

• Road To Hell
• Words
• A Landing Strip In The Jungle
• Emerald Isle
• Journal