Our songs are pop-like in form and twisted in spirit. We write happy music about sad things, and sad music about happy things. We think that songs and arrangements should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. We think that music, particularly live music, should be fun, and that you should be able to dance to most of it.
We are The Brothers Frank, and this is our website.
I think I can explain why I’m so excited about this, but only if I tell a very short story first.
When an acquaintance of mine, a former NYU grad student, got offered a job at U.C. Berkeley, I told him he’d landed the closest thing that professional philosophy has to a major-label record deal. I wasn’t trying to explain to him the awesomeness of his situation—he knew that already. I was, rather, trying to empathize, and I seem to understand things best by analogy with the music world. This former grad student happened to play in a rock band once upon a time, so I know he got it. And he even laughed some, though maybe at me.
I bring this up because I’m currently taking an ethics course from Thomas Nagel, which, in music, would be like taking a songwriting course from Paul McCartney. Nagel is one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, and not because he writes things like “Yesterday / All my troubles seemed so far away”. No, he writes things like this:
“There is a persistent temptation to turn philosophy into something less difficult and more shallow than it is. It is an extremely difficult subject, and no exception to the general rule that creative efforts are rarely successful. I do not feel equal to the problems treated in this book. They seem to me to require an order of intelligence wholly different from mine. Others who have tried to address the central questions of philosophy will recognize the feeling.”
Thomas Nagel, humble genius.
Incidentally, the original first two lines of “Yesterday” were these: “Scrambled eggs / oh my baby how I love your legs”. I’d like very much to hear them sung.
: .
C
posted 6 February 2010
607 351 5173
