2000-04-06 - The Franklin Mint live at Zootz, the peak of my indie rock career

Sometimes, you start with a vision. You plan out how the music will sound, record a nice demo, sketch some ideas for promo fliers, shop for matching suits, design a fancy band logo with lightning bolts shooting out of it...

Then other times, you just get together with some cool people, start playing music, and it turns out better than if you'd planned it. The Franklin Mint was one of those bands. Three of us--Josh on guitar/vocals, Pat on drums, and me on bass--got together around 1997. We rehearsed off and on and played a couple open mic nights but didn't accomplish much until 1999, when we expanded to a five-piece, adding Josh's high school friend Ben and Ben's roommate Casey. The general lineup was then Josh and I on guitar, Casey alternating between guitar and synth, Ben on bass, and Pat on drums, but we switched around for some tunes. Josh sang more than anyone, but Ben, Casey, and I also did a song or two at each show.

The Mint had some street cred before we even started. Josh and Casey worked at Bull Moose Music, the hip CD store in town, so they were already part of the local music cognoscente. Pat was (and is) an artist/designer of some local renown--among other things, he's done the album art for Portland's best known band, Rustic Overtones--and he was already playing in a couple more established local bands.

After a solid debut at the legendary club Geno's (Portland's answer to CBGB's) during a nasty March blizzard, we lined up a second show at Zootz. Then in its final days, Zootz was the best club in town for a while. I saw so many great alternative bands there in the early 90's--The Lemonheads, The Dead Milkmen, a then-unknown group called Smashing Pumpkins--that I always felt a bit cooler on that stage. (A feeling which, I must admit, was amplified by alcohol at this particular show. I'd had a bit to drink, and the stage was rather small, so I spent much of the set leaning against a wall at stage right...)

I don't have any recordings of the show, but we did videotape the next one on 2000-05-13, so here's an audio clip extracted from that. The song is "Spur" (more info in the set list below), and I'm playing the high guitar parts and singing backup vocals:



Back to the 2000-04-06 show, the set list was:

1. Tropic of Cancer. Most of the originals at this point were Josh's, like this one, which we referred to in rehearsals as our sleazy funk tune.
   
2. Sedan Delivery. We covered this punk-ish late 70's Neil Young song at every show, with Casey on vocals.
   
3. Free Food. A jangly number written and sung by Ben. I think it's a break-up song, not really about food.
4. Darkest Hour/Spur. These two by Josh were always played as a medley, though they don't have much in common. The first is bouncy, country-tinged swing with lyrics about Eric Clapton, and the second is a straight rocker inspired by William Carlos Williams' epic poem Paterson.
5. Kickin' Me Down. I wrote and sang this one. It's about a chance encounter between two guys, one of whom used to beat up the other one when they were little.
6. Sister, I'm a Poet. A faithful cover of a late 80's Morrissey B-side, with Josh singing.
   
7. My Own Private Idaho. Written mostly by Josh, but I added some bits in the middle and never really thought they fit. Liked the guitar lead line, though.
   
8. Good Enough. Another of my songs, actually written back in 1992. I used to play it with Jump Cat Jump, but I wanted to bring another of my tunes to The Mint, and this one seemed to fit the band. Silly lyrics, but it rocked well.
9. Satori in Paris. Josh really had a thing for borrowing song titles from other works, like this one named after a Jack Kerouac novel. The song opens with the enigmatic couplet, "I'm on a surfing safari / playing Nerf and Atari."
10. Rhumba Lynn. Josh's again. At one show, he described it as "our dance number." Some of my favorite Mint lyrics, though I don't know what it's about.
    
11. Temp. The set closer was also by Josh, though I have a vague memory that Ben may have contributed to it. It's an ode to office romance, featuring the memorable line, "You can talk to me like you're answering the phone."

We actually had some press buzz around this gig, even though it was only our second live appearance. First, the city's major daily paper, The Portland Press Herald, gave us a "Hey, check this show out" nod in their local music column. (In part because the writer was an fan of my previous band, Jump Cat Jump.) Then the alternative weekly, The Portland Phoenix , interviewed us and published a full-page article. While seeing your name in print is usually flattering, I didn't like this piece that much. I thought it was fawning, as if the writer wanted us to think he was cool. Maybe I just didn't get a good first impression of him, and I suspect it was mutual, since I think he portrayed me as a bit of a buffoon in the article. (In ironic trivia, I later did some writing for The Phoenix, and Josh eventually became the Arts Editor.)

I much preferred the concert review that appeared in the local music rag, FACE Magazine. Though it was mostly about Shawn Saindon, the guy we opened for, it had a nice blurb about us:

Franklin Mint opened, and they began by announcing that this would be their second show ever. Overall, you'd never have known. They're a five-piece with three, count 'em, three guitarists, and to their credit, they use them not as an all-out assault but as an array of textures. Their material is decidedly Beatle-esque in places, and in fact they reminded me, both visually and sonically, of early-period Sloan. I was most impressed by lanky guitarist Tom O'Donnell, he of the USM Open Mic Night. Multi-talented lad, that one. [emphasis mine - but hey, it's my blog]

I bowed out of The Franklin Mint in late 2000 (to devote more time to hiking and camping--not very rock star of me), and the rest played on until 2001. Then, we all scattered. Josh (who has actually e-mailed me twice since I started this post a couple hours ago) is a writer in NYC, working for Zagat Survey among others. He also has a blog, which is classy even though it has nothing to do with music. Ben and Casey moved to the Boston area, where they've played in various bands, including The Reports and Carlisle Sound. While Radiohead expects you to pony up a whole 45-pence handling fee (almost an entire dollar!) to download their new "free" album, The Reports give theirs away for nothing. The only one left in Portland is Patrick, who now has a band called Seekonk, which is cool enough to rate its own entries in Wikipedia and The All Music Guide. And if you look really close at the Seekonk logo, you can see that the "S" looks an awful lot like the "F" in the Franklin Mint logo. Our influence lives on.