About

Frank Coleman

2 weeks ago

2019 was actually my 2020, if you will. That year was an unbroken string of personal and professional disasters. I lost my job, lost my car, turned 60, it was the worst birthday of my life, and so forth. I was consumed by a crippling depression.2020 didn't start out so hot, either. The first three months were all about preparations for a new Bentmen show scheduled for late March, which, of course, was scuttled at the last minute when everyone went into lockdown.Living in NYC for the next few months was terrifying. We lost friends, and even more friends-of-friends. It wasn't until May that I landed a new job, ironically enough while everybody else the country was losing theirs, and the rest of the year was topsy-turvy like that. But having all that as prologue made me even more determined to finish old business. And so I find myself in the uncomfortable position of having to say - yes, it was a year that killed more than a quarter million of our citizens, devastated us and many of my friends and family, and nearly tore the country apart, but speaking strictly for myself, and specifically artistically, it made me want to bust my ass, and ended up one of the best years of my life in that narrow respect, and I refuse to feel bad about that. It kept me relatively sane.- I finally released the debut album from my pet project that I've been working on for the better part of 20 years, Secret Agent. It's now available on Amazon, YouTube, Apple Music/iTunes, Spotify, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Pandora and Deezer. I've played on other people's records, but this is the first one that is truly my own.- I made a feature-length video, spanning the 30+ year career of my other band, the Bentmen. In addition to remastering tons of archival video and making a bunch of new ones, I built our own version of something like Rod Serling's Night Gallery in VR, and did a video fly-through of that, using it as a framing device. Also built an enormous demented sideshow in VR for our song 'Carnival of the Damned."- Just yesterday, I finished mixing a live EP for John Ashton's Satellite Paradiso, my other other band, and sent it off to John for final mastering. It's an enormously important record for me, personally. The lineup is Fred Schreck on vocals, John on lead, Jonathan Donahue, Grasshopper and Anthony Molina from Mercury Rev on guitars and keys, the legendary Sara Lee on bass, and me on drums. This project has been on the stove since it was recorded in 2014. It'll be coming out early in the new year. One of my favorite reviews of our first album called it "a monstrous, swaggering wall of sound," and this definitely lives up to that description. Everybody's going straight for the jugular. - Each night for about a week, I sat down and tried to write, record and mix something new from scratch in one sitting. I came up with a pile of new music, some of which is likely to end up in the next Secret Agent album. It's on Soundcloud.- My friend, Eric Vitale, asked me to put together a virtual choir video for the 92nd birthday party for Broadway legend Charles Strouse. He wrote the music for Bye Bye Birdie, Annie, and many more. Those videos you see of people playing and singing together on Zoom do not happen in real time. That's a physical impossibility. All the parts have to be recorded separately and synched by a video editor. This project involved synchronizing thirty individual singers in Final Cut. Did it in about three days. He loved it. Got written up in Variety.- Also had fun making a wildass sci-fi music video for my pals The Surfer Novas, and two delirious psychedelic/VR videos for M'Lumbo ("World music from another world").And a whole bunch of other little things. There's links to all of it in the article below.If anything, that's my way of saying FU to 2020! If any of it helped lighten your burden, that's all I can ask. ....#MadeIn2020 #Quarantunes #album #video #music #musicvideo #rock #VR #covidCreativity #artDuringCovid19 ... See MoreSee Less

2020 In Review

frank-coleman.com

I actually got A LOT done this year. So, now I feel really guilty!