Radiolab - The Voice in Your Head - A Tribute to Joe Frank

Episode Date: January 23, 2018

How do you pay proper tribute to a legend that many people haven’t heard of? We began asking ourselves this question last week when the visionary radio producer Joe Frank passed away, after a long struggle with colon cancer.  Joe Frank was the radio producer’s radio producer.  He told stories that were thrillingly weird, deeply mischievous (and sometimes head-spinningly confusing!). He had a big impact on us at Radiolab.  For Jad, his Joe Frank moment happened in 2002, while sitting at a mixing console in an AM radio studio waiting to read the weather.  Joe Frank's Peabody Award-winning series "Rent-A-Family” came on the air. Time stood still. We’ve since learned that many of our peers have had similar Joe Frank moments. In this episode, we commemorate one of the greats with Brooke Gladstone from On the Media and Ira Glass from This American Life.  This episode was produced by Jad Abumrad with help from Kelly Prime and Sarah Qari.  A very special thanks to Michal Story. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W-N-Y-C-C. See? This is Radio Lab.

I'm Chad. A bumrod. A couple days ago, Joe Frank passed away. One of the greats in our business. Huge inspiration for me. But a guy whose work you may not know, he was one of the originals. nobody told stories like Joe Frank nobody told stories like Joe Frank

no one he is still anyhow you know what I'm going to do I want to take this podcast to play for you a little bit of his work because it's so good it's so good and also play for you a few conversations I've had recently about

Joe Frank and the impact of that work starting with a conversation I had with Brooke Gladstone from On the Media she recently interviewed me about the impact that Joe had on Radio Lab, which is significant. So let's start there. This is an excerpt of a conversation that I had with Brooke Gladstone

that they used for on the media, and I believe it starts with a clip. Let me play a clip, or maybe a couple of them, get your reaction. When you hug people goodbye after a social event, perhaps a dinner party or a gallery opening, there was always that moment when they squeeze you more forcefully than before. a polite way of letting you know they are about to withdraw. Usually, the one who disengages first is the one who cares less. When this used to happen to me, I felt rejected and humiliated.

I'd come home with a lonely, sick feeling. And that's why, in order to assume the power position and gain the psychological advantage, I now hug people very briefly, perhaps one or two seconds before freeing my life. Sometimes, if I detect any resistance, I'll push the person away. In one instance, I caused a woman to fall backwards over a chair, injuring her back, which led to her hospitalization. But I had no choice. It was a matter of self-preservation.

Oh, man. That is classic, Joe Frey. It's really good writing, you know? He writes these like scenarios. They're like demented talk of the towns in the way. Like they're just these little fragments of dark experience, which are beautifully realized, very vivid, kind of funny, but kind of also troubling. How do you think he influenced you?

Because you are always a great producer, always technically adept. You had tons of musical composition training. You understood the rhythmic possibilities of race. What did he do that you don't think you could have done without him? A lot of different things. This was way at the beginning for me when Radio Lab was just a three-hour thing on the AM station. We're going back how far? We're going back to the Stone Age.

So January, February 2002, somewhere around there. Really at the beginning. And everybody here who knows the beginning of Radio Lab knows that I didn't deserve that show. It was just too soon and I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have a style. I had the unfortunate thing that we all had back in 2002 was that I just wanted to be Ira Glass. Everybody wanted to be Ira Glass, right?

And I was still trying to figure out like, okay, so who am I? What do I want my stuff to sound like? And so I would, every Sunday night, I'd have to put it three hours, and it was an anthology show at that point, and it was literally take the best documentaries from the BBC, the CBC, in Canada,

the ABC and Australia, Radio Netherlands, all the stuff, and package them, into three continuous hours. And I would sort of narrate in and out of different segments. And so from 8 to 11, I'd be playing my show. And I was board hopping at the time, which means I wasn't just making the thing, but I had to sit at the board, hit play on the CD.

And then between hour one and hour two and hour two and hour three, I'd have to say the weather. Right? So I was doing the whole thing. And after me, Joe Frank would come on. And he was part of my shift. And every time I'd just be like, What the F is this stuff?

I would just be sitting there listening to him and just like amazed and like mentally taking notes being like, oh, this guy has a feel and a there's a serality and a disorientingness to his stuff that I just just really fascinated by. And I was like, oh, I want to do that. Can we play that one that we said that we can't play? There was a time when I danced on a street corner dressed as a chicken. My job was to draw attention to a furniture store. on the block. One evening, when my shift was over, still wearing my chicken outfit, I walked into a bar across the street. I ordered a Bombay martini, straight up, olives on the side. A prostitute sat down next to me. She was young, Willowie, had a faraway look in her eyes. Her name was Meredith. We talked about our careers,

the importance of networking, setting goals, focus. Then I excused myself, walked into the men's room, entered a stall, and sat down on the toilet, and had a bowel movement that broke in two, and half of it was still hanging out of me, so I had to wipe myself 50 times, repeatedly checking to see if there was more left on the toilet paper. And written on the wall with the words,

know that someone is suffering anonymously and unknown and that by the time you read this I'll be dead Oh my God Oh that's good That's really good Wow

There's nothing wrong with playing that clip Actually he's not using any bad words It's true I mean there's no FCC violations there And it's simply gross And yes And yet you tell me that there is this person on the planet to whom that hasn't happened. Joe Frank always had the quality of like he's coming from inside your head out and then back in again. He has that kind of quality where it sounds like he's somehow like the voice in your head but broadcast back into your head.

There's something about that quality which I, that's what I want from the radio. It's what I want from podcast. I want someone to be speaking from inside me in a way. Have you ever talked about Joe Frank to... Oh, yeah. I give this talk 30, 40 times a year where I have like an extended Joe Frank excerpt. I have an image of Joe Frank that I show. Yeah, I talk about Joe Frank all the time.

The vast majority of our listeners, of the people listening to this, I'm going to have to assume they never heard of Joe Frank. And he was always available on podcast, but he was like this mystery. to people who weren't willing to sort of follow the breadcrumbs to him. You know, I'll tell you, I mean, when I give this talk that I often give, and I go through this series of people who've influenced me, I'll always ask any Joe Frank fans in the house, these will be like audiences about 2,000, 2,500 people, and like one time someone clapped, one time.

I remember like there was a clap in the far right, and I was like, oh my God, a Joe Frank fan. It always broke my heart a little bit. Because no one ever knew his stuff. Like amongst us, our little sort of posse of radio people, he's a legend. But nobody on the outside ever knew him, you know? This is going to be their chance. Yeah.

Last night I dreamt I was lost on an elevator. All the floors were the same. Then I realized the elevator was moving horizontally. So I tried another elevator, the Express. But it just got me more lost. faster. People kept getting on and getting off. They were all wearing green gauze over their heads and were smoking ice cream cones. I said, please let me off at 39th Street. And the conductor said, this is 35th Street. You'll have to walk three blocks and take the escalator. But when I got to the

escalator, it was just a phone booth. So I made a call. I called my father. I said, hello, I'm lost on 39th Street looking for an escalator and I can't find it anywhere. And he said, I'll be right there. And there he was. And the phone booth started moving forward very slowly with my father and I in it, and I didn't know where it was going or why. And he said, don't be afraid. This phone booth will take us home.

And I said, but we have no home. And he said, We live on the eighth floor, apartment why? And I said, and he said, yes. That was a condensed version of a conversation I had with Brooke Gladstone for On the Media. You can find the full conversation at OnThemedia.org. We'll return with one more Joe Frank recollection in just a moment. This is Michael Burles from Portland, Oregon.

Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the mind. modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. I'm Chad Ibumrod. This is Radio Lab. We're paying tribute to Joe Frank in this podcast. Joe unfortunately lost a battle with colon cancer just a few days ago. After my conversation with Brooke Gladstone from on the media, I ended up having later that same day another conversation about Joe Frank, this time with Ira Glass from This American Life. Hello. Hey, how's it gone, man?

Hey, it's going okay. It's going okay. I can do better wine reading. They were two entirely different okays just then. For the purposes of this conversation, I'm doing just... All right. Hey, did you know Joe Frank? No, I had one interaction with Joe Frank, which was...

It was almost perfectly Joe Frank in that I met him once at Third Coast, and I asked him something, and he looked at me for a long time and then just walked away. without speaking. That was my one Joe Frank interaction. Do you remember what you asked him? I think I might have said something utterly like not my place because I had just started the show and I was like, hey, if you have any work that you want to like, you know,

get on the show, let me know. And he just looked at me like, you have the gall and just walked away. And so that was it. Yeah, yeah, that showed you. So what do you remember? about him. I'm curious, like, what you saw, because you worked with him, right? Yeah. Basically, when I was 20, I had my first paid job at NPR, and I was the production assistant to this guy whose job it was to

invent new ways to do radio for NPR. And he had a regular show, and he would do different things in different weeks, and he brought Joe Frank down from New York. And that was the thing we were doing for a while. And I was Joe's production assistant as my very first paid job at MPR. And he was a And I had never heard him on the radio. I mean, he wasn't like, you know, on national radio. So I have like a few very specific memories for sure. Yeah. And the best way I can explain it is like I've had the experience a number of times over the years where people try to tell me like, oh, the first time I heard your show was this.

And generally the thing they're trying to say to me is like, I didn't know that the radio could do that. You know what I mean? Like I didn't realize that like, oh, radio could like tell a story. that and it would feel like this. And I myself had that exact experience. And the person who I had it with was Joe Frank. And I remember there was a day early on, and I was standing in the old control room at NPR's original studios, like the original two studios they had. There was a studio one and studio two on the first floor of 2020 M Street. And we were in studio two. And I was standing by the reel-to-reel tape machine, you know, the bank of them. And I remember Joe was

telling one of his stories. And I remember feeling like, oh, I've never heard this before. I just remember feeling like this thing. And it just sort of like to feel like totally caught up in a story. And you don't exactly know why you're so cut up with it and you don't know where it's going. And you just want to stay with it. And the sound of his voice, he's such like an incredible radio performer.

much better than you or me. You know what I mean? Do you remember what the story was that you were listening to? I don't remember which specific story it was. I do remember I have gone back because there was one story in particular called The Elevator. And in fact, I've gone and dug up. That I remember at the time,

I thought, like, this is it. This sums up the whole thing. And literally what it is. I'm riding up the elevator of my building. He gets on an elevator. I'm standing there, sharing the small space. with a terrific looking girl. He totally gets a crush on this woman.

But I feel shy, uncomfortable. I scratch my head. I sigh. I gaze up at the numbers of the floors lighting up one after another. And he starts to imagine their life together and everything that they will be. She seems like the kind of person I'd really like. And he cannot bring himself to... We stand there silently, not looking at each other.

Say a word to her. And so he pulled... out something from his pocket. I reach into my pocket and draw out a scrap of paper, which I unfold. It turns out to be a cash register tape from the A&P. But I scrutinize it, as if it's very important before putting it back in my pocket. That's a detail of the story. I remember it's seeming so real.

It has like a very magnetic forward motion, and it's like four or five minutes long, and the entire thing happens in the elevator. He literally is just describing the floor is going up and all the feelings he has. You go through your life looking and looking. Sometimes you see her, the woman you might have loved, who might have loved you at a bus stop, in a museum, across a smoky room at a party, in the lobby of a theater online at the supermarket,

in an elevator. When she leaves, in a panic, you want to run after her calling out, stop, stop! It's me, the person you were meant for. Don't you recognize me? Don't I look familiar? I may seem like a stranger. but I'm the person you've been waiting for.

The one in your dreams. But you just stand there and watch her leave. This happens to me with a different woman about once each day. And I remember when I was 20, hearing that and being like, this is it. This guy is doing a thing. Like, I want to know how you do this. Yes, for me, the equivalent thing was, have you heard his Rent-A-family trilogy? No.

I'd be hard-pressed to summarize the story, but it's essentially this whole world. in which families can be rented for occasions. Well, I saw this ad, and it said, rent a family. We have certain package programs where an individual can experience over the course of a 12-month period, a pretty considerable range of families. Hi. Hi, Krista. It's your father from the agency.

Come here. And it's all like in this very documentary format and it's done really well. So you actually sometimes aren't totally sure that what you're hearing is a drama. It sounds super real. We kind of deny that the society seems to be speeding up before our very eyes. The whole idea of renting things has to do with people's desire to not have a permanent commitment to them. I think it's important to recognize the depth of loan. that must be addressed here.

And in the end, it, like, doesn't resolve at all. You're just left with, like, 12 different feelings that you don't even know what to do with. I mean, I think in a way, like, that's what he represents. You're, like, thrown in the middle of the action, and it's gritty, and you don't understand. It's kind of dark. And it's not all going to get resolved. All the answers aren't going to be given to you. And you're going to have, like, weird feelings you don't know what to do with.

And often it's going to overreach, and it's not even going to work. But it was still kind of cool. You know, like, all of that is, like, all of that is. completely content. It's completely 70s film turned into radio. So what is it that you think you took with you from Joe Frank and put into this American life? I mean, there are a couple of things. Honestly, the first thing is just what he gave me the most important thing, which was desire to do it. Do you know what I mean? Like hearing him made me want to make stories. And then I spent over a decade trying to figure out how to do it with facts and with reporting. The thing that started me with that ambition was him. So that's one thing. A second

thing is just the way he would use music and the way that the music would pull the story forward and create a mood, but also kind of like push you into the dream of it, the notion that you'd use music as a kind of cinematic scoring, which is not the way, you know, music would be used in old-time radio dramas and certainly not the way music was being used on anything, on NPR. And the way he used music is so built into me that a couple of years after this American life was on the air, Joe was already living out in California, had been for years and still doing his show. And like mutual friends, I mean, you know, like, Joe is so angry with you. And I was like, why is Joe so angry with me? You know what I mean? Because he was my, like,

why is he so angry? And then it turned out that Joe thought that I was listening to his show and stealing the music. Oh, yeah. And I got in touch with him. And he's just like, it's so petty. He said, this is so petty. You can be choosing any music and you're listening to my show. He's like, It takes me so long to find decent music and I edit it so carefully. You know, it's such a part of the identity of the show. And you just listen to my show and rip me off. Like, do a little work, brother. And I was like, Joe, it's so much worse than that.

Like, the fact is, like, I haven't heard your show in years. I haven't heard it. I'm so sorry. And what happened is I just learned how to use music from you. And so when Pat Mathini comes out with a new record, I hear the same track you do and hear the same possibility in it. And I just do the same thing because, like, it's so. built into who I am.

So in a way, like, I am totally stealing from you. But I swear, I didn't know it. Oh, no. Did you ever, like, land that in a good place with him? He was fine at the end of it. I think it was just something about that. It was just, it seems so, like, it seems so small to him. You know what I mean?

Like, what you're listening to my show and you're stealing my music? Like, what's the matter with you? You know what I mean? It just seemed cheap. Yeah, so there was that. And what else carries forward from him? I mean, I mean, it's, it's, honestly, there's a thing or two that he does that I have never figured out how to imitate that in the back of my mind, I still feel like I'm going to steal that. And one of them is this thing that came up last week.

I was talking to Parker, one of like the younger producers here. And she was talking about a thing she wanted to do in kind of a moment that she really loves. And she used to be a film professor and is like a super cinematic thing she was shooting for us. Like, you know what, you should really listen to this guy, Geoff Frank, and she'd never heard of him. And I downloaded last week I bought and downloaded the 80-yard run, which have you heard that one? No, no one I haven't heard. Oh, my God. It's a super early one.

In fact, I think it's just an air check of one of his WBIA broadcast before he was national. I think it's an actual live radio show done late at night. And it's just him in a microphone with music. And he's telling the story of what he keeps referring to as, as I like to call it, my infamous 80-yard run is a rather twisted, convoluted tale. Now, before I get to the full story of my ADR run, I hope that you will bear with me. There's a few things you need to know first, and the first thing you need to know is about this fight.

Between Luis Rodriguez and Ruben Hurricane Carter. You know, there's a lot of that. And then he tells you, like, a series of professional fights that happened over the years and tells them so well. He absorbed an awesome, terrible beating, standing propped up unconscious. And then there comes a point where he's like, you're like six or eight minutes into the thing.

And he says, but before I can tell you that part of the story, you need some next thing. And I will tell you that. After a brief interlude, during which I will drink some tea. And literally like the music comes up, and then he just leaves.

And I was like, oh my God. And like I've spent 30 years trying to figure out how to steal that. You want to have a tea moment? I don't even know how to do it. I honestly, I honestly, I don't know, man. I mean, I mean, like, I'm going to figure it out.

But first, I'm going to go make myself some tea. That's Ira Glass from This American Life. Thanks to him. Thanks also to Brooke Glasston from On the Media. And to Sarah Kari and Kelly Prime of the more perfect crew who produced this tribute. Also, a very special thanks to Michael's story. If you want to hear excerpts of Joe Frank's work, which I would highly recommend, go to joe frank.com. His entire archive is there.

We'll also link you to it from RadioLab.org. One of the things that you will hear, I think, if you listen, and Ira and I talked about this, is that even though he's a guy who has inspired so many of us to get into the business of telling stories, nobody sounds like him still. Because it's completely impossible to imitate. You know, the hundreds of thousands of podcasts that are happening now, there's nobody doing anything as daring and competent at the same time. Yeah. Like, literally, like, it's so singular. You can't really imitate it very well. And I'm personally not one who believes it matters, like, if your work goes on past you.

You know what I mean? Like, I feel like fuck the people of the future. You know what I mean? Like, these are radio shows. You know, like, they're meant to be enjoyed, like, you know, like, right now. And then, like, if no one ever listens to them again after we're gone, like, well, fuck them anyway, like walking around and being alive while we're dead. First of all, fuck all those people. Being alive and having sandwiches and meeting for lunch while we're dead and not existing. Like, I hate them already. They can fuck themselves. But it seems sad that other people, like, won't know this weird thing that I know is so special. You know, like he's so outpacing everybody even now. Even now there's like this army of people making podcasts and trying to invent something that's like nobody else is doing.

He still has outpaced every single one of them from the grave. That's a perfect place to end. Okay. All right. Bye. Bye. This is Sunny from South Africa. Radio Love was created by Chad Aberynrad and is produced by Soren Wheeler.

Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Maria Matisse, our Padilla, is our managing director. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Becca Bressler, Rachel Cusick, David Gabble, Beth Hapty, Tracy Hunt, Matt Keelty, Robert Crulwich. Annie McEwan, Latte of Massler, Melissa O.GELT. rule Ariane Wack Pad Walters

and Molly Webster with help from Amanda Orange Chick Shima Olii Nia Hughes Jake Arlo Igor Fotoli

and Phoebe Wang Arfeth Chikas Michelle Harris