Half-Fabulous Whales
This is a SECRET SOCIETY
(Join me if you like, on the JOY OF ZONING this afternoon at 3PM eastern)
“Half-fabulous whales” comes from the chapter I read to you today from MOBY-DICK up in the secret room.
In case you were worried that Melville isn’t funny, just remember he wrote this perfect sentence, after listing a bunch of facts about the biggest, most famous and fabulous whales…
But there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive, half-fabulous whales, which, as an American whale-man, I know by reputation, but not personally.
But we’ll get those whales later, at the top of the stairs. First let me say: Good evening, whenever you are.
It’s morning, actually, where I am. I’m writing this to you from the coffee shop where I work sometimes in the morning.
This is the same coffee shop where they were playing Jad Fair and Daniel Johnston on the stereo a few weeks ago (months? years? what is time?), and yesterday they were playing Jonathan Richman.
And today they are playing the Lemonheads, the pretty, jangly sound of the nineties, the floppy-haired boys and non-confrontational noise that vibrated along to the End of History and the supposed fixing of everything. We really thought that, some of us!
I like the Lemonheads, but it’s their cover of “Frank Mills” from HAIR that got me this morning.
This song has been in my brain since both childhood and more recently, April 5th, when I was at Stu and Sharlene’s bar MINNIE’s in Sunset Park.
I spent the afternoon there with those lovely two people I just named (who also now own COMMONWEALTH—see below) plus the other lovely two people named Dan and Audrey.
That’s right: the whole extended FLOPHOUSE fam, minus Elliott and Danielle who remain in exile in LA.
We were daylight drinking and talking about musical theater, so it was pretty much a top Saturday. The woman tending bar clued me into the necessity of seeing Orville Peck in CABARET.
I had never heard of Orville Peck, because I’m dumb. But I’m smarter now and amazed: how could I have never heard of this Johnny Cash-ish queer singing cowboy who always wears a lone ranger mask?!
If I hadn’t verified his existence using internet, I would have presumed my afternoon whiskey had caused me to fall asleep into a beautiful dream. But he’s real, and I’m grateful.
Then Dan piped up to reveal that he had played Claude in his college production of HAIR at Earlham College. Played? No. STARRED, because that’s a huge role and of course Dan is a star. Even if he didn’t get nude on stage at the end of Act 1 like everyone else. Dan didn’t have to. Dan keeps em guessing.
Anyway, I immediately started singing “Frank Mills” at the bar. At least til I forgot the words. It’s my favorite, and It was my mom’s favorite. I used to listen to it as a 10 year old over and over on her original Broadway cast recording LP. That’s your weird only child image for the day.
“Frank Mills” is a plaintive noodle of a song sung by a girl remembering a boy she met. But she can’t find him now because it’s the sixties, there is no location sharing, and all she knows is he lives “in Brooklyn… somewhere.”
That’s a very quietly funny line. And the whole song is quietly very funny and genuine, whereas much of the rest of HAIR isn’t. I mean: it’s great. “Let the Sunshine In” is wonderful, but it took the 5th Dimension to bring it to it’s biggest, most essential and cathartic blare. IMO anyway.
Maybe I’m a crank. I realize the two guys who wrote it were apparently really moved by the NYC hippie culture of the early sixties. But I find a lot of the musical to be self-serious and overly about-itself. I mean: they called it HAIR. They might as well have called it ON THE NOSE.
But “Frank Mills” is 100 percent lovely, and when it resolves to the final line, imploring the listener to look out for Frank and if you see him, tell him “Angela and I don’t want the two dollars back… just him…” I laugh and get goosebumps every time.
Maybe you saw me later that afternoon, singing it out loud, goosebumped and laughing and a little drunk on a street corner in Brooklyn waiting for my rideshare. I knew the words by then. I had looked them up.
I was singing along to the 2009 revival version as sung by Allison Case. And thinking about my mom singing it, and then about that time I got to sing it along on stage with Lucy Wainwright Roche (yeah, that’s a brag! Lucy’s the best! I’m lucky to know her!)
I’m a singer-alonger. I think there should be more singing along, as it conjures and connects us different times and lost people. And it connects us to each other, even if we’re alone on a street corner in Brooklyn, somewhere. Especially then.
My children don’t agree about singing along. At least when I do it. This came up when went to see our son and his partner in Savannah last week….
