Live At Market Street

"Live at Market Street" is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series Unknown.

Synopsis

A recording of an early live performance at the 72 Market Street restaurant in Venice, CA on October 22, 1990.

A presidential candidate makes a speech: promising a vague but great future, (the flaccid currencies of the world and communism, I am just like you), immigrants mistaking an oil rig for America, middle class success for third generation immigrants. The "something is missing from my life" dialog. Nonsense monologue: roller-skates in a revolving door, organizing books by color, a church in honor of evolution, the meaning of life hosting parasites. The life of a condom. Singing in rhyme about office politics, cut with nonsense syllables, against a sparse piano background. More nonsense monologue: father killed in a screw works, driving backwards with busted headlights, a car with only two tires. A dream: lost on an elevator, calling father from a phone booth, 39th street in the wrong city. Brief answering machine clip from "Thank You, You're beautiful." More nonsense monologue: being tired of things. Joe is asked to guess at the solution to resolving the tension between the physical and the spiritual. "Questions never lead to answers," dissolving into sleep. Odes: Ode to woman, high school cheerleader, business woman, nurse, homemaker, secretary, stewardess, prostitute. A prayer, "Oh Lord" set against a woman's voice describing an infatuation in the second person. ("Try to imagine me as a piece of conceptual art.") A president defends his totalitarian methods. Joe imagines a life, getting married in Florida, becoming ill; his wife falls for Jesus; retired animals; the empty.

Miscellanea

shared text with Words, Black Hole / A Tour of the City, and At The Border.

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