Goddamn, New York: Where on the Dial is Joe Franklin?

I know, I know, Big Joe retired several years back and can still be found doing short “flashback” segments on a local AM station. But the Joe that diehard New Yorkers remember was a man that kept us company in the early morning and late evening hours, a man whose guest roster was surreal in its eclecticism — literally every profession was covered on his panel at some point. The low-budget genius of Joe’s program has been brilliantly summed up elsewhere — please treat yourself to Nick Tosches’ wonderful “Memories of Joe” which originally appeared in the Village Voice, can now be found in The Nick Tosches Reader, and can be read here.

But of course to know Joe was to watch him. There are some samples of Franklin at his finest on YouTube, and I have a whole raft of short little moments of wonder on tape that I desperately need to transfer, but here are three good slices. First, Joe’s amazing intro, circa the ’80s-’90s when he had a Joe-poses-around-NYC montage to start things off.



Then this bizarre interview with mighty Joe by the late club promoter/gossip maven Baird Jones. Here we get into the area of Joe-legend, one of the many celebrity-studded (and utterly undocumented) tales that he has unleashed upon us in recent years. I still recall his description of what seemed to be a makeout session with Marilyn in his last autobio (he also sampled Jayne Mansfield’s charms, according to the book): they were writing a Marilyn autobio (not the one that did circulate called My Story, some other one), and I believe the way it is put in the book is that both MM and Joe were in an amorous mood, and it quickly descended into a haze “of Chinese food and Garry Moore.” (Gar was on TV at the time.) His story here concerns JFK and Nixon helping him tend to a dead man. No shit.



And how could I not succumb to the charms of this short promo for Joe’s show, back from the era where he was using “Axel’s Theme” from Beverly Hills Cop as his theme (I, being a hardliner, really missed the “Twelfth Street Rag”). Please dig.

Powers That Be: New album and videos on YT from Tony Powers

A few weeks back I wrote a blog entry about my decades-long fascination with Tony Powers’ great song and video ”Don’t’ Nobody Move (This is a Heist).” I should note that Tony’s latest album is a welcome return for this “mystery” figure whom I had thought of as a “character actor who occasionally makes music,” but is really a one-time million-selling pop tunesmith who has been doubling as both an actor and a singer-songwriter who’s equal parts bright and literate, and streetsmart wiseass.

The album, called Who Could Imagine, finds Powers working in a number of pop genres, from old-fashioned ballad (“Lorraine”) to proto-Calypso (“Goin’ into Space”). As such, the album functions almost like an actor’s “demo reel,” showing how Tony the songwriter can channel his talent to fit a number of different moods. In reading about Tony online, I found that some of the songs were in fact written a few years back (and, yes, the classic “Don’t Nobody Move” gets an ever-so-slight update here), but they fit right in with these ever-so-fucked-up times. In line with the current era, Powers aims for the jugular with a few socially-conscious songs, including “Sadly.” (lyrics here)

Powers is working in the same vein as Carole King, Leonard Cohen and (especially) Tom Waits throughout, but I have to aim my focus squarely one more time on his ability as an urban sketch artist. His “Cartoon” offers a very nice and quite accurate review of livin’ in this very burg (although I hear that now TP inhabits the car-choked climes of L.A.): “The train is late 'n the/air-conditioning’s broke./And I’m wedged between/these two fat fucks whose/clothes are soaked./Is this the life?/All the people in Commercials/have so much fun,/a bunch of happy baboons/Is this the life?/Or are we just in rehearsal?/Excuse me — is this the feature/or is this the cartoon?”

Powers is a cult figure and, from what I’ve been reading, a “musician’s musician.” As such, I guess Who Could Imagine confirms that he is indeed a very cool tree falling in a very hip forest. Yez all should give a listen — the lyrics are on Tony’s site, and you can hear the first 2 minutes or so of each song on via the CD Baby site.

And just because this is a visually-oriented blog, I’m happy to report that the other two music-vids that Powers made back in the Eighties are up on YouTube. The first is a whole ’nother slice of NYC location shooting: Tony in a romantic mood with actress Lois Chiles on the Staten Island Ferry for the song “Odyssey” — which was later covered by KISS!



“Midnite Trampoline” is a two-part gem (at least on YouTube) that finds Powers playing a gigolo who isn’t quite… up to the demands of his profession (check out his ginzo buds, one of whom is played by a very young and svelte John Goodman). The video may not be as much of a shock to the system as “Don’t Nobody Move,” but it’s a nice piece’a lightly comic filmmaking that harkens back to the time when videos could be unpredictable in wonderful ways: