Richard Franecki - "She Just Goes a Little Mad Sometimes" 7"

Richard Franecki – “She Just Goes a Little Mad Sometimes” 7”

Stomach Ache Records, ~1994-1995 

Acquired: Love Garden Shotgun Room, Used, 2008

Price: $.25

 

Though released on a Mexican record label, Richard Franecki’s contact information is for a PO Box in Milwaukee. The little Love Garden-affixed sticker on the sleeve reads “Founder of Vocokesh (ref: one of the best tracks on the DRAG CITY comp).” I’m positive the Drag City compilation referenced is the Hey Drag City comp which I swear to God I found a copy of when I was cleaning out the record room at Half Price Books St. Paul the other day. I know I saw it, and I hope I attached my name to the sleeve because now I wanna take it home. It feels like fate. Plus it has tracks from Silver Jews, Smog, Pavement, Red Red Meat, and Palace Brothers. And of course Vocokesh. I can’t find any information that has a release date for this 7”, but Hey Drag City came out in 1994 and the single released directly after this one on Stomach Ache came out in 1995 so I think one of those years is probably accurate. And now I can’t stop thinking “Shit, I better go find that Hey Drag City comp tomorrow because I WANT IT.” All of that nonsense aside, Richard Franecki’s 7” is weird. It’s funny, as I was typing that Jenny said, “This is weird.” It is! It’s really weird, almost sound collage-y despite clearly being constructed of guitars and unsettling synthesizers. The b-side “Its Not as Though Shes Some Sort of Raving Thing” (great song title by the way) is like mid-tempo industrial music for a horror movie. Actually, so does “She Just Goes a Little Mad Sometimes,” but with a weird space-age synthesizer dropped in here and there. The percussion sounds like it’s coming up from the bottom of the well in that movie The Ring. I really can’t think of something else that sounds like this. Apparently Franecki’s former band F/I split up because they wanted to move in a more “song-oriented direction” and that is how Vocokesh came about (apparently the band’s sound is a blend of industrial and space rock). On these two songs you can clearly tell this is a guy who’s main musical interest is to dabble in the haunting and the abstract, and while this isn’t the sort of stuff I will put on every day, I’ve listened to this 7” 3 times in a row and can see something beautiful lurking beneath the discord.

Here's a Vocokesh track in lieu of a Franecki number.

Note: I’m a sucker for great band names, and the catalog insert for Stomach Ache Records is chock full of them! In addition to notables such as Palace Brothers, Sun City Girls, Gastr Del Sol, and Thurston Moore, we’ve got releases from Bong Trauma, The Bring Downzz, Steeplesnakes, Kill Everyone Now, Masonic Youth, Pork Queen, Pee 69, and really the list just goes on and on.