Episode 101: Drones, Vocalalia and Narcocorridos

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• Joe Frank Could Well Be The Most Interesting Man In Public Radio

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  If you’ve listened to a lot of public radio over the years, there’s a very good chance you’ve heard of Joe Frank. But there’s also a very good chance you’ve never heard of him.

  Frank is a legendary radio artist who transformed audio storytelling with his richly textured, mind-bending radio shows. These shows combined script drama, improv comedy and intimate conversations to create his own decidedly “Joe Frankesque” version of public radio.

  “Joe Frank is what radio in its wildest dreams wishes it could be — ballsy, intelligent, thoughtful, dangerous,” writer and comedian Harry Shearer said in Dave Carlson’s new documentary, “Joe Frank – Somewhere Out There.”

  “This is not standard NPR stuff,” Shearer said. “And I think what he explores a lot in his work is the way that words are used to obfuscate, as well as clarify.”

  Carlson’s documentary will screen at the 20th annual Wisconsin Film Festival at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 11. It’s sold out but rush seating is available. Carlson is scheduled to attend.

  During a recent conversation, Carlson told “BETA” host Doug Gordon how he describes Frank and his unique radio work to people who aren’t familiar with him:

  “Are you familiar with Dos Equis’ ‘The Most Interesting Man in the World?’ And they all go, ‘Yeah.’ I go, ‘OK. You know the sound design on that where a guy’s listing great achievements and there’s looped music, and it’s hypnotic, and it’s funny, and it’s surreal, and it’s trippy? That’s (like) Joe Frank.’”

  Gordon asked Carlson if maybe part of the reason Frank isn’t better known is because his work was so original, so groundbreaking and so dark and existential, that maybe it was just too intense for some people to handle.

  “I think you’re on the right track with that,” Carlson said. “So the 50 percent who know him, usually there’s one percent that know him and they go, ‘No, thank you,’ … Sometimes, he brings up things about the human condition that maybe people would rather keep to themselves and not have to have somebody tell them it. Because it can be a little bit alarming, disarming, intense sometimes when he gets going.

  Carlson likened Frank’s radio style to a “good art film.”

  “I can go to see lots of great art films and everybody wants to go to the multiplex though and see the junk. So it’s a safe zone I think for people to maybe not open themselves up to his work,” he said.

  In the film, comedian David Cross reminisces about one of Frank’s shows that may indeed have been too intense for some people.

  “I remember one of the shows, my favorite one — from the helicopter, the traffic report, over L.A., and it’s just these horrific accidents — And you don’t know what is the angle. It takes 15 minutes to figure out. ‘Oh, I see, he’s talking about the Apocalypse and Jesus coming back and Armageddon,’ Cross said. “It’s like lobster dipped in butter, it’s just delicious and good for you. It’s not good for you but you know.”

  Carlson was able to interview Frank a few times for his documentary before Frank died on Jan. 15 at the age of 79.

  Gordon asked Carlson what he wanted people to take away from his documentary.

  “I think he was a guy who never compromised. And I think when anybody does their art, he’s a role model for that. He’s one of the guys who didn’t compromise in anything he did,” Carlson said. “Like (actress) Grace (Zabriskie) said, he forged his own genre. And I think that that’s a tough thing to do in any art form. He’s sort of the gold standard, I think, for somebody who pursued something creative that he wanted to do and blew most of the people out of the water while doing it.”

• Musician Amy Denio's Improvisation Led To Her Own Language

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  Seattle-based musician and composer Amy Denio could best be described as a musical improviser.

  “I’m influenced by everything that enters my ears whether I like it or not,” she said.

  As a musician, Denio sets herself apart through her ability to find inspiration in nearly everything.

  In 1990, while working with a group of Russian jazz musicians on music for the Goodwill Games, Denio stumbled upon the idea for her seminal album, “Tongues.”

  “I thought, ‘The best way to learn language is through song.’ So, I thought, ‘I’ll just write a song in Russian,’” Denio said. “So I did, and the song’s called, ‘Da (Gdye Damskaya Parikhmakirskaya?)’”

  Denio pieced together the lyrics from a Russian phrase book, choosing the phrases that made sense to her as lyrics.

  But the joy and inspiration didn’t stop there.

  While traveling with her band — Tone Dogs — in the Czech Republic shortly thereafter, she repeated the process. By picking up a “Czech book” of phrases she pieced together another song for the album, “Czechered Pyjamas.”

  “And people were just weeping when we played it,” Denio recalled. “They said, ‘You’re actually attempting to speak our language, that’s amazing.’”

  After writing songs in various languages, Denio took her process one step further and invented her own language — something she’s dubbed “Vocalalia.”

  “I just always loved the concept of improvising with my voice and so it came naturally,” Denio said.

  Inspired by the musical and vocal boundaries pushed by the likes of David Moss and Meredith Monk, Denio created an almost Rorschach listening experience for her fans as they were able to supply their own interpretation to her compositions.

  “And I just found that almost more interesting and certainly less literal than working with language,” she said. “I feel like, in a way, you can make more sense without words that’ll reach more people.”

  Her sonic experimentation continues with her latest LP, “The Big Embrace.”

  In the opener, “L’Abbraccione” (Italian for “The Big Embrace”), Denio incorporated field recordings of wailing neighborhood dogs.

  “They were doing their thing and I thought ‘Oh, I have to record them,’ it’s the most mournful sound. And then it turned out they were singing in tune with my brach, so I said, ‘Oh, I have to use it in the song, that’s great.”

  In her song “Rx for the Afterlife,” Denio explains how her ideal afterlife would be one large encompassing sonic experience.

  “I think that when we cease suffering in our current mortal coils (chuckles), that we’re going to be immersed in the most grand sound vibration possible. Who knows what that’s going to be. So, I can’t really imagine a physical place or something like that,” she said.

  For now though, Denio plans to continue to find inspiration and hone her improvisational style to explore even more new musical spaces.

  “Really, when I improvise, I’m the happiest,” she said.

• 'Breaking Bad' Never Had Trouble Hooking Viewers

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  Ten years ago, Vince Gilligan and his creative team introduced “Breaking Bad” into the prestige television universe. The AMC hit series about a cancer-stricken chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin quickly found a large and devoted audience. Through award-winning acting, visionary storytelling and deft plotting, Gilligan provided a critically acclaimed narrative that was as addictive as its subject matter.

  What made the show so gripping was that its creators also mastered the art of effective cold opens to each episode. Often disorienting, these intros never failed to pique the viewer’s interest and likely led to one less hour of sleep during binge-watching.

  The opens also served as a narrative shortcut to exposition. Some of the more original takes included: a fake fast-food TV ad, ominous flash forwards, connective flashbacks and even a faithful recreation of a narcocorrido — or drug ballad — video.

  Cordelia Barrera, a Texas Tech assistant professor of Latino literature, argued in her essay, “Negro Y Azul: The Narcocorrido Goes Gothic,” that this particular cold open from the show’s second season summarized “Breaking Bad’s” unique spin on the classic American gothic.

  “If we encapsulate the setting, the landscape of this song within the broader context of a series — that I believe outlines and details the disintegration of white male authority in the American west — we see how this song becomes an ironic farewell that foreshadows the continuing disintegration of the white male patriarch and speaks to the fragility of white masculine authority on the 21st century borderlands,” Barrera said.

  So, 10 years later, “BETA” highlights some of the series’ best and most memorable cold opens (Warning: Spoilers below).

  “Negro Y Azul” (Season 2, Episode 7)

  The aforementioned production of the titular narcocorrido “Negro Y Azul” is one of the most unforgettable show opens. This painstaking recreation of the popular genre not only paid homage to the style and music, but Pepe Garza — who wrote the narcocorrido for the production — called its inclusion in the show “historic.”

  The Los Angeles Times wrote “it’s believed to be the first time a narcocorrido video has been prominently featured on a major American television show.”

  Because “Breaking Bad” only spans two years in its five seasons, this technique was an extremely efficient way to mark Walter White’s (aka Heisenberg’s) transition from local cook to regional supplier and his inadvertent stepping into the cartel’s territory and onto their radar — ratcheting up the series conflict.

  “Kafkaesque” (Season 3, Episode 9)

  While most people ended up binge-watching the show on some form of on-demand service, it’s key to remember that the show first aired on AMC and featured plenty of commercials. That’s what made this particular cold open so disorienting to viewers during the original airing.

  The production team opened with a recreated commercial for Gus’ Los Pollos Hermanos business and pulled it off so successfully that television critic Alan Sepinwall wrote in his review of the episode: “Kudos to whoever made the fake Los Pollos Hermanos commercial, because they made me pretty ravenous for some good fried chicken.”

  The open also outlined — in less than three minutes — Gus’ intricate and meticulous distribution network via his fast-food franchise, and how this quiet and deliberate man became New Mexico’s most powerful meth dealer and White’s nemesis.

  “Seven Thirty-Seven” (Season 2, Episode 1)

  After the first season of “Breaking Bad” was shortened by the 2007 Writers Guild of America’s writers strike, the creative team took full advantage of their full allotment of episodes in the show’s second season. They were very deliberate with their plotting and went so far as to begin leaving clues for observant fans.

  The season opened with an episode titled “Seven Thirty-Seven.”

  It featured a mystifying collage of black and white images from the White household with ominous sirens in the distance. Periodic episodes in Season 2 would begin similarly, each expounding on the imagery a little bit further until the intro of the season’s final episode featured two body bags. Perceptive fans who pieced the episodes that featured these haunting flash forwards together needed only to link their titles to unlock the explosive climax of the season.

  “Crazy Handful Of Nothin’” (Season 1, Episode 6)

  One favorite past time of “Breaking Bad” fans is to debate at what exact point White breaks bad. The greatest delusion White grapples with throughout the show’s run is that he is still a good person toiling in the drug trade only to provide for his family after his death. Where he crosses over from justified or necessary violence to the point where he knowingly inflicts damages is at the heart of that debate. Some argue it’s in the pilot. Others argue it’s near the end of Season 2 where he makes a deliberate and costly decision. Still, others argue it’s near the end of the show’s run, or that he instead earns redemption.

  The opening to this episode may provide another argument.

  It intercuts between two drastically different versions of Walt. We are presented with the didactic milquetoast chemistry teacher we’ve known, but then the show offers the first glimpse of the now iconic, villainous shaven head of Heisenberg walking from a scene of mayhem. White is informing Jesse Pinkman that he’s above the “street” side of things. He outlines how he will never witness the harm or chaos that their industry brings. All the while, the foreshadowing shows otherwise.

  This episode links these two disparate versions of the character by the end of its runtime displaying one of White’s biggest leaps toward evil.

  “Ozymandias” (Season 5, Episode 14)

  Widely considered by most fans and critics to be the best episode in the entire series, it’s unarguably one of the most intense hours of television.

  The episode’s open features one of the creators’ favorite flashback techniques. Gilligan often employed the use of flashback to re-contextualize a scene to offer a different or deeper perspective on a canonical event. But, he also utilized them to offer a breather as the intensity of the show was ramping up. And nowhere throughout the show’s sequencing was it needed more.

  The previous installment had literally faded out to black in a hail of bullets. Anxious fans who had waited a week to see what happened would have to wait a touch longer. Gilligan took a step back, and in a beautiful sequence recreated a flashback to an unseen moment from the pilot episode. Only at the end of the cold open where the flashback transitions back to the present do fans realize that Gilligan had tethered this scene from the pilot to the exact same spot of the climatic gunfight.

  “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)

  We’d be remiss if we didn’t head back to where it all began. (You can watch it here).

  Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that “Breaking Bad” was so good at hooking viewers early when you take into account the show’s very first set piece. It’s a flash forward with a hook that you wouldn’t be mistaken for thinking the entirety of that first season would build up to. However, in the first boast of confidence from the show’s creators, we arrive to that thrilling climax by the end of the first hour and the show never loses steam from there.

  Be careful watching (or re-watching) this one. You might just binge watch the whole series.

  Let us know your favorite cold open at beta@wpr.org.