Crossing my fingers for this…
Joe Frank (born August 19, 1938) is an American radio artist known best for his often philosophical, humorous, surrealist, and sometimes absurd monologues and radio dramas.
Frank's radio programs are often dark and ironic and employ a dry sense of humor and the sincere delivery of ideas or stories that are patently absurd. Subject matter often includes religion, life's meaning, death, and Frank's relationships with women.
Adding to the atmosphere of Frank's monologues are edited loops of instrumental music from sources as diverse as Miles Davis, Steve Reich, Tangerine Dream, Can, Air, and Antonio Carlos Jobim. The repetitive cadence of the music and Frank's dry, announcer-like delivery are sometimes mixed with recorded phone calls with actor/friends such as Larry Block, Debi Mae West and Arthur Miller (not the playwright), broken into segments over the course of each hour-long program.
Joe Frank, radio and performing artist, has been compared by the reviewing press to Orson Welles, Frederico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, and Raymond Chandler...
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The Dark Progress of Joe Frank by Ralph Rugoff-
Joe Frank’s programs on KCRW (free to download)
-All of Joe Frank’s past work is available streaming on
JoeFrank.com (subscription)
Joe Frank’s 4-part radio play
“Rent-A-Family” (1987) from
Work in Progress is one of the most incredible things I’ve ever heard. Think the bold ingenuity and relentless pathos of
Horace and Pete in audio form. I wish I could find an audio clip.
This Peabody Award-winning series tells the story of Eleanor, a lonely divorced woman, who joins an agency that rents her and her children to bachelors. The children disappear and Eleanor repeatedly calls her ex-husband, Arthur, begging him to return to her. Remarried, he rejects her entreaties and denies they ever had children. The story is interspersed with mock-serious panel discussions concerning the viability and morality of renting women and their children to bachelors.
