It’s kinda weird in a way, I never met Frank Secich in real life, cause our paths have kris krossed an awful lot of the same terra firma. I just saw a picture last night of my old Lower East side refuge, the Continental, where I fled as a runaway guttersnipe to escape the horrible fluorescent sports mom, mall culture of the loathsome and dreaded midwest, and you know, those evil motherfuckers bought up that whole block and turned it into another oppressive, uglyass Kafkaesque strip mall, a Sephora! Times keep on darkening all around me, friends, before he sold his soul to the debbil, old Bono once sang, “you glorify the past when your future dries up”, and that hour has arrived for me! Richie Manic wrote, “there’s nothing I want to see, there’s nowhere I want to go.” Of course, I see the same social media posts about book signings and punk museums and Thursday night hipster karaoke night at the gentrification bar that everyone else does, but fuckshit, man, I have less than zero desire, I want nothing to do with that culture, it all looks like yuppies and nepo babies to me. About twenty five years ago, I wrote a lyric about how the last thing the world needs right now is more rich kids in expensive hats playing Johnny Thunders covers. I’d look at them and wonder what any of them even saw in Johnny Thunders. Live fast die young, I guess. T shirt slogan. Then they moved on to Stiv and that took many decades, mercifully. Now I kinda don’t really need to hear those same six records anymore, they’re not only embedded deeply in my heart, my worldview, my whole identity, but when I talk to the music scenesters, I honestly just can’t connect to many of them in any meaningful way. They chatter on about their latest promotion and overnight success and vanity merchandise, and me, I’m still waiting to hear that song that makes me believe in something, it seldom comes, so while I’m waiting for the next one to arrive, I will retreat into a book or record that provides me with some escapist time travel back to days when folks like John Belushi and Jimmy Zero and Susan Sarandon and Divine were still hanging out in dirty nightclubs and it all seemed more Gabba Gabba Hey than it does now. If you aint hip to Club Wow, Frank’s amazing eighties, little known power pop band, do yourself a favor and dig in, they were every bit as great as the Nerves, or the Beat or the Romantics, or the Church, or Hoodoo Gurus. I love that kinda stuff, it’s such a treat to hear heartfelt bubblegum melodies played with just enough new wave edginess to make it still feel like it’s Friday night and you’re getting all trussed up to go to the rocknroll bar when drinks were a buck and a quarter and if you laid three bucks down on the bar, your bartender was happy. Now they want ten bucks for some gnarly, bitter, awful, craft beer and you have to sit through all that shite muzak the guy in crocks plays on his fucking I-Phone and act grateful and not vape, what? Yeah fuck those people, the gentrification hipsters are just not my thing at all. I’ve got two books by Frank that I can open up to any page, when I’m in pain, and start reading randomly and he takes me back in the way back machine to a sweeter time on the Detox Jukebox still blaring in my mind, blaring in my mind.”Paperback Writer”, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Blue Ash making music as good as like, Badfinger or the Raspberries, and wearing the kinda paisley flowered print trousers that got me chased outta the jock school when I was a fugly in pink, Ducky, new wave kid! Somehow, Frank was able to interact with all the evil industry assholes and get out with his soul fully intact, and it’s a real beautiful thing to see. Him and his wife, Lisa, have been together forever and they are so beautiful and wonderful and romantic and wholesome, it is a constant source of encouragement and inspiration to me. Nice people who make music? That’s almost unheard of, nowadays.
Everybody who knows me understands that Stiv’s “Disconnected” record was one of my foundation stones as a singer/performer/and songwriter. When the metalheads were telling me things like, “we dig your look, but why can’t you shriek more like Axl Rose or the guy from Cinderella?”, I’d just roll my eyes and think to myself, “cause I aint a correction’s guard in a Nazareth cover band screaming ‘you’re fired’ at a smaller animal”, there’s really only one of him, that Axl dude, maybe you should be on the lookout for somebody who has their own thing to say, and who does it their own way. I liked Stiv and Mike, Lux, and Jeffrey Lee, Texacala and Jeff Drake. Paul Westerberg, Alice, Iggy, Lou, David Jo and Jim Carroll, Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde, and not one of them shrieked in a high pitched voice or made me think og charging down the mountain top with a big sword like Iron Maiden or Queensryche or Led Zeppelin. Dungeons and dragons and swords and sorcery was all shit I left behind when I gave away my comic books to my girlfriend’s cousin from the church youth group, when I started getting laid when I was 14. I was sick of covering “Sonic Reducer” when I was 17 and actually pissedoff some yeehaw midwesterners when I’d refuse to cover it, it was 1987, and it seemed like that was the only punk rock song anybody from that part of Ohio had ever heard. It took me a lot longer to grow tired of Frank’s perfect pop gem, “Make Up Your Mind”. That song has so much pure pop panache and pizzazz and real heart invested in it, that when my fave Hollywood band, Hello Disaster, recorded a cover of it thirty years ago or whatever, it still felt fresh as a daisy; and again (!!!) when the sensational forgotten glam heroes, Sybil did it, and the tapes were lost and unearthed decades later, IT STILL ROCKS, yes, quite like a mother fucker, doesn’t it? So, my beloved brother Frank’s been having some health problems, and so have I, so I aint been able to make it out to see him play anywhere in recent years. I’ve been primary caregiver to a kid with a disability, and missed a whole lot of rock action in those years, like when he reunited with the original Bomp! records Stiv Bators band around the time that movie about Stiv came out! Or when members of my other fave band Gen X reconvened in Hollywood as Generation Sex a few years back! It is what it is, time marches on, I woke up one day with the Oldness. My back injury and disintegrating spine and CPTSD mental health problems have had me in so much perpetual pain this past year and a half, it’s causing memory gaps and shit, I can’t write with clarity like I used to, or find the precise word to describe even my most deeply felt, sense/memory imprints, you know what I mean? That’s hard for a lyricist. The Stiv Bators band’s good friend, Theresa Kereakes, was there for many of the Bators bands most memorable hijinks and adventures, and has also released an exquisitely beautiful collection of photographs from that era, that diehard fans such as myself will peruse again and again and I think all of you, my real rocknroll, brothers and sisters and friends of the revolution, oughta do yourselves a favor, and buy both of Frank’s books, and Theresa’s, too, if you have any coin left in this batshit economy. You ever hear Frank’s tune, “The Stiv Bators Ghost tour”? My main man, Frank Secich continues creating works of timeless beauty and his presence in this world is a gift to us all in my opinion. I love you, Frank!
Frank Secich Blog: The Stiv Bators Ghost Tour
Get Hip Records https://gethip.com/store/secich-frank-not-that-way-anymore/
Get Hip Records https://gethip.com/…/secich-frank-circumstantial-evidence/
Bomp!: https://www.bompstore.com/secich-frank-not-that-way-any…/
Amazon Amazon.com : Frank Secich
The Immortal Stiv Bators – by Theresa Kereakes
Veglam 
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