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The best kept secret in music
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Another NYC outfit, this time a trio, with Scott Porter on guitar, Billy Ziff on bass, and Ray Crespo on drums. The music is powerful, yet clean, always seeming to push ahead but never getting out of control. And throughout listening, I kept thinking how much Porter's vocals reminded me of Bill Nelson (Be Bop Deluxe, many moons ago). While Porter may not be as jazzy or blazing on guitar as Nelson was, he certainly holds his own, whether in solos or interjecting bits and pieces that bolster the songs. The numbers, by the way, are quite interesting, straying from the standard 1-4-5 rock standards. Porter often uses chord movements not in the way you'd expect, resulting in an interesting song. A number like "Fool," for example, weaves in and out during the verse, switching chords, setting up the chorus with a wonderful hook, before an ascending break beefs up the song. The band can get funky, as on "Sit Down," or heavy, as with "Let It Go." In the end, Frank has produced a powerful disc that deserves your attention. www.frankband.com - NY Rock
Discography
"life by the hour" - LP (2003)
internet radio and other streaming airplay
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
After years of relative dormancy on the rock scene (at least if you ask people on the outside), the world is again looking to New York City for the "rock". The techno drenched club fandango of the past half decade has deflated and when the post millennium ecstasy hangover became a mass plague, there was a need for real instruments played by real musicians... what a concept. Corporate-spawned acts have dominated your eyes and ears, dancing on every magazine edifice and every radio station on the dial, appealing to the lowest common denominator. Mantra, Hypnosis? Perhaps! Although rock is again being heard, the sounds are hackneyed rip offs of your uncle's record collection! Echoing well worn out tunes of the 60's and 70's repackaged with prettier faces and less imaginative names.
Since their inception, frank has tirelessly focused on writing and performing songs that are diverse in texture, but share passion, intensity and intelligence and frank likes to rock.
Scott Porter has been playing in bands in NYC since the 7th grade. Starting in New York's famed music buildings in the west 30's and at open mic nights in New York's East Village, he hasn't stopped since. In past bands he's shared the stage with the Goo Goo Dolls, Live, and God Street Wine, although he likes to think they shared the stage with him.
In January 2001, the determined Porter got the tingle to turn over a new musical leaf - all new stuff - nothing old allowed. Teaming up with longtime friend and drummer Ray Crespo, himself a veteran NYC musician, the moniker-less band began rehearsing "Life By the Hour", Scott's first frank song, which was the first of many to feature Scott and Ray's ever-present, oft haunting, and always powerful harmonizing.
Enter Billy Ziff, fresh from playing in the jam band scene, who added a fresh progressive breath to Scott's Replacements/Clash and Ray's Elvis Costello/Camper Van influences. Billy and Ray immediately locked into the rhythm engine that fuels the bands booming grooves, heard in songs like "Let It Go", "Sit Down" and "Need Some Help".
frank was born, and with fervor the group began an intense creative process that continues to this day, constantly writing, reconsidering and refining their music. The band's inaugural show was at NYC's humble stepping stone, Desmond's Tavern, which was a big crowded sweaty success and pioneered the path to avid performances at some of NYC's premier clubs like Wetlands (RIP) and the Mercury Lounge, as well as mainstays such as Lion's Den and Elbow Room (RIP).
The ball was rolling at a frantic pace for the band, but there was one thing missing - the recording. frank had been using self-produced demos to secure gigs, but the homespun efforts fell short of capturing both the depth of their compositions and the immediacy and "x factor" of their live performance. That is, until April 2003 when the band hooked up with veteran producer Adam Lasus (Clem Snide, Helium, Madder Rose, Juliana Hatfield, Versus, Gigilo Aunts) at his Fireproof Recordings studio in Brooklyn to toil relentlessly and surface with "Life By The Hour" - the full-length record.
frank's music fuses informed, insightful lyrics with musical textures which compared to everyone from Paul Westerberg to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to the REM to the Velvet Underground to Rush. Confused? So are we... so we just say eclectic. Victor Hugo stated "Music expresses what words can never say" and Joey Ramone screamed "let's get nuts".
frank falls somewhere between that musical juxtaposition.
And here we are.
A great band, a great record, a great time for rock in NYC.
And here we come.
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