Jeff Rice writes about Joe for the SF Weekly

Joe Frank - Voice of Darkness : Jeff Rice's article about Joe for SF Weekly, late 1998 - early 1999

Joe Frank's brand of radio isn't meant to comfort.

It is evening. Darkness has fallen. The radio is on. Perhaps you are washing the dishes after a late dinner. Maybe you are driving your car on a lonely road, lost or simply aimless. It doesn't really matter what you're doing, because suddenly something on the radio makes you stop… You leave the dishes soaking, pull the car over to the side of the road. You listen, riveted.

Out of the speakers comes a drone like the final chord from “A Day in the Life” sustained, endlessly looped. A hypnotic voice, dark as smoldering charcoal, begins to speak. It's the voice of public radio's prince of darkness, Joe Frank. Garrison Keillor he is not. He is not here to comfort you. “People are comforted enough,” he has said.

He begins to tell a story. In this episode, he is approached while walking down Broadway in New York. A nice, middle-class woman offers him her service as a prostitute and freelance typist. With a mixture of pathos and loneliness, they make love. Later, with her help, he dictates a letter to a dying relative. Sub-plots give way to stream of consciousness and back again. A priest wrestles with his loss of faith. A woman types her dreams into her journal. Throughout are the obsessed and lyrical musings of Frank. “Is God everywhere?” he asks. “Or is God only in certain places? Is God in the part of the pencil sharpener that collects the shavings? Or is God in the hinges of dark glasses worn by jazz musicians?” Frank offers little solace.

The story ends with the sound of an automobile inside a garage, a garden hose hooked from the exhaust pipe into a slightly cracked window. This week's episode of “Joe Frank: In the Dark”, is over. You sit, stunned, staring blankly into the shadowy night.

After a two year absence from radio, Frank's new series began airing across the country on National Public Radio in January. The David Lynch of the airwaves was back with a vengeance, confronting the dark self with liberal doses of twisted humor.

“I remember a phrase that I read somewhere that really struck me, that said ‘Blasphemy is a prayer in reverse’, “ Frank said in a phone interview. “And I think my programs, at least some of them — in fact the darkest ones — are prayers.”

Sacrilege? Converts only pray that Frank continues to murmur in the dark.

Joe Frank's “In the Dark” runs on KALW every Sunday at 7:30 pm, and on KQED at 11:30 pm on Saturdays. Pacifica's KPFA is planning to air reruns of Frank's old series, Work in Progress, Thursdays at 10 pm; call (510) 848-6767. His new book of short stories, “The Queen of Puerto Rico and Other Stories”, is published by Morrow.