My favorite artist in the Universe is a guy named Jim Woodring.

So, my mom gave me this comic book called Frank.  This was like, five years ago.  Paperface was hopeful and ready for Imminent Rockstardom (read: naive little bastards) and piled in a van leaving for California when she handed it to me.  She had happened upon it at a used book store (my mom is very big on used book stores) and apparently she thought it looked weird enough to be something I would like.  And I read it, and I was very confused and annoyed.  But then I read it again, and again, and probably fifteen more times by the time the van rolled into Los Angeles.  Ever since, I’ve been clinically addicted to Frank.  I’ve had to re-buy Frank collections many times because I’m constantly peddling the drug.  Check out this sample.

Anyway, Mr. Woodring is from Seattle and I wrote him a letter.  I wanted to get his mailing address, so my friend and I looked him up in a Seattle phone book.  I didn’t think it would actually be him…I’m not sure exactly what we expected to happen, actually.  But anyway, it was him.  I called Jim Woodring’s home phone, and here’s how the conversation went to the best of my memory (I’m not making this up):

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Mr. Woodring?”

“You….you fucking, little retard.  FUCK YOU.”

“Oh, sorry to bother you, I was trying to find your mailing-…”

“OH.  Oh!  I’m sorry, I thought you were my son.”

“…”

“He and I enjoy being rude to one other!”

Anyway, I mailed my letter, and he sent me a really nice letter back (needlessly apologizing for calling me a fucking retard), and included a pencil drawing of my soul!

Recently I played a gig in Seattle, and it was right near Woodring‘s comic shop!  I went in, and asked if they had any Woodring stuff, and the guy behind the counter got excited and said, “You know Jim comes in here all the time, don’t you?” And then he proceeded to re-enact Woodring‘s apparently consistent pathway through the store, narrating as he went.  Then he showed me his extensive Frank collection and I spent my last sixty dollars in cash.

Wodring.  Frank.  Jim.  This is pure truth, folks, but nicely wrapped in an knee-slapping, mind-massaging, pretty package.  It’s like peering at the fabric of reality through the disembodied eyes of Bugs Bunny.  Highly, highly recommended.

So I often tell people this: the first time I heard some of my favorite bands/artists, I hated them.  I hated OK Computer by Radiohead when I first heard it.  I only listened for a second and third time because my friend Wes swore by it and I felt stupid that I didn’t get it.  Well, that, and I could hear something there.  But it didn’t make much sense.  Now when I hear that album, it’s hard for me to understand that there was ever a time when I didn’t just enjoy it.  It seems obvious, now.  It seems like just a collection of fun, melodic rock songs.

The same goes for every Frank Black record ever made.  I excitedly rip open a new Frank Black CD and jam it in the player, and feel confused and annoyed within five minutes.  Every time, without exception, I think, “Oh boy.  Frankie’s really gone and bit the shark now.  Poor Frank.”  But two weeks later, it feels like the only record that even matters, or has ever mattered.

The first time I heard Weezer.  In The Garage.  Hated it.  Hated Bush for a week.  I remember where I was standing and who was in the room the first time I hated Ben Folds Five.  I honestly remember feeling sorry and embarrassed for Kent the first time I heard Isola.  Pedro The Lion.  Rufus Wainwright.  Pinback.  Wilco.

Anyway, I tell people this from time to time, and they always think I’m crazy, or they say something like, “Well, I always know right away if I’m going to like a band or not.”  Yeah, but you also paid four dollars for a fucking Killers ringtone, so go to hell.  Anyway, I felt an affirmation when I read this excerpt from the brilliant and hilarious Douglas Adams on The Beatles:

The next exciting thing was that they kept on losing me.  They would bring out a new album and for a few listenings it would leave me cold and confused.  Then gradually it would begin to unravel itself in my mind.  I would realize that the reason I was confused was that I was listening to Something that was simply unlike anything that anybody had done before.  “Another Girl,” “Good Day Sunshine,” and the extraordinary “Drive My Car.”  These tracks are so familiar now that it takes a special effort of will to remember how alien they seemed at first to me.  The Beatles were now not just writing songs, they were inventing the very medium in which they were working.

-Douglas Adams, The [London] Sunday Times, 1992