A rope leash wrote:
Come on, some of Franks songs are very offensive and everybody knows it. He even has a compilation record of all his offensive stuff. Hell, even I was offended back in the day!
Do the "sensitive ones" here on this forum just ignore that? Or do they play Bobby Brown for their new friends?
...hmmm?
I mean, they are big enough fans of Frank to post here regularly. Why aren't they outraged? Frank gets a pass?
Well, in the last couple years of his life, Frank agreed to sit down with the bbc...
the year after he died, the bbc produced a two hour special on his life and music.
The two parts broadcast in late 1994 had separate titles. One was '
Air Sculpture' because that's how he often described what he was getting at making music: Air Sculptures and it talks about influences and the music.
The other part was called '
Anthropology: Pure & Simple', because they quote him as explaining that's what many of his songs are.
When asked to comment on the supposed 'offensive or scatalogical, sophomoric' aspects of his music his reply was pretty simple. He had seen a lot of things. He knew audiences liked lyrics, so, why not write songs about what he saw out on the road. The second show talks about these songs thr-out his career as cultural episodes from the Mothers, the breakfast tapes, Road Ladies and Aynsley Dunbar to Dinah Mo Humm, Jewish Princesses, Valley Girls, Washington Wives and Jimmy Swaggert.
"That's what people really do. That's what they're like. It's anthropology, pure and simple."
Seen in this way, none of it is offensive to me. He's just making a song that describes or pokes fun at what he sees. If people want to be offended about that, that's their business, right?
Makes sense to me

"I'm a moron and this is my wife. She's frosting the cake with a paper knife." These lyrics may not be any more autobiographical than those of "San Ber'dino", "Disco Boy", or, "The Man From Utopia".
