Featured Essay: Welcome to Frank Black Friday 

by Rich Wilhelm and Chris Ingalls

Happy Frank Black Friday to those who celebrate! 

Oh, you don’t know about Frank Black Friday? Read on to learn all about Frank Black Friday and more as PopMatters pals Rich Wilhelm and Chris Ingalls present an oral history of how their separate 30-year relationships with Teenager of the Year, the second solo album released by Pixies singer/guitarist/songwriter Frank Black, eventually merged into a joint relationship.

Grab some coffee, settle in and read all about it in a joint memoir that is as epic and sprawling as Teenager of the Year itself.

Discovering Pixies/Black Francis/Frank Black

[Rich] Any discussion of Frank Black ought to start with Pixies. In the late 1980s, I was working at Record Bar at Granite Run Mall in the suburbs of Philadelphia. One of our managers, Barb, was clued into some great music. Barb was responsible for what became my instant fixations with both They Might Be Giants and Pixies (and, for that matter, Camper Van Beethoven and Midnight Oil, among others). After exposure to Pixies and TMBG in the shop, I had snapped up their slim catalogs, committed them to blank cassette tapes and was driving all over Delaware County (aka “Delco”), and sometimes even Philadelphia, listening to TMBG and Pixies on endless loops. 

Sadly, Barb passed on a few years ago. I still appreciate the music she shared with me.

Within a few years, my friends Rick and Greg and I were seeing They Might Be Giants every chance we could. It was as if we’d turn any random corner and John & John of TMBG would be there, ready to rock our faces with their electric guitar and accordion.

We longed to have a live experience with Pixies as well, but that was not to be, at least not until 2004 when an unexpected reunion tour happened and we finally scratched our live Pixies itch.

[Chris] I first heard of Frank Black the way most people did – when he was Black Francis, lead singer and primary songwriter for the Pixies. I was in the Navy in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when the Pixies were conquering the world and enjoying lavish, well-deserved critical acclaim, and I was stationed on remote military bases and discovering the band while working for the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. Black Francis unceremoniously broke up the Pixies in 1993 (via fax, legend has it) but not before changing his name to Frank Black (to complicate the narrative, he was actually born Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV, but whatever) and releasing his self-titled solo debut in 1993.  

I didn’t buy that first album, but I heard the two singles that were released from it – an ebullient, enthusiastic take on Brian Wilson’s “Hang on to Your Ego” and the somewhat unhinged “Los Angeles.” The music video for the latter single featured Black tooling around a desolate wasteland in a hovercraft and was directed by John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants. It was all good fun and sounded great, but for some reason I never bought the album.

[Rich] Black Francis abruptly broke up Pixies, changed his already-fake name to Frank Black and released his self-titled solo album on March 8, 1993. I bought the CD and listened to it a few times, but my wife Donna and I were newlyweds at the time. We were cocooning a bit in our Northeast Philadelphia apartment and Frank Black probably didn’t get the attention I otherwise might have given it. 

This antipathy lasted into 1994. Donna and I had tickets to see the Ramones at the Tower Theater on her birthday in April. Frank Black was opening, but at the last minute we decided to ditch the show and wound up getting dinner at Chi-Chi’s instead. It was just one of those nights. 

[Chris] In 1992 or 1993 I signed up for a CD club started by Flansburgh called the Hello Recording Club. As part of the membership, I received a new EP-length CD every month from a different obscure or semi-obscure cult artist: Eugene Chadbourne, Brian Dewan, the Nelories, and Kurt Hoffman’s Band of Weeds were just a few of the artists. One month the club mailed out a Frank Black edition. It included three as-yet-unreleased songs and a lovely, earnest cover of Gene Chandler’s 1961 smash hit “Duke of Earl.” All four tracks sounded like demos, pretty bare-bones recordings that could have been created in a home studio or bedroom. The three original songs were “Sir Rockaby,” Space is Gonna Do Me Good” and “Calistan.” 

Little did I know that those three songs would end up (in different versions) on an upcoming Black record, which would be Teenager of the Year, released about a year later. 

Besides those early versions, the first time I heard anything from Teenager of the Year was in the spring of 1994, when the video for “Headache” was beamed across European MTV (I was in the closing months of my Navy enlistment, stationed in Keflavik, Iceland). It was more of a full-band effort than those demo-quality songs I heard the previous year, but Black wasn’t revisiting the sound of the Pixies – this was power-pop, deeply melodic with catchy hooks and instrumental support from Nick Vincent on drums and Eric Drew Feldman (best known for stints with Pere Ubu and Captain Beefheart) on bass and keyboards. I really liked this new direction Black was taking.  

Teenager of the Year was released shortly afterwards and soon after that, I bought the CD, probably at Volume CD in Virginia Beach, where I was living at the time. The truth is, besides “Headache” and the newer, fresher versions of the three songs I already knew, I didn’t really explore that album all that much at the time. It was definitely a “grower” for me. It wasn’t until around 1997 – at this point, I was divorced and living in Naples, Italy (long story), when I really dove into the record. It was a symbolic thing for me. No longer married, I began embracing a lot of new music and Teenager of the Year fit the bill and (finally) entered heavy rotation. 

[Rich] The release of Teenager of the Year on May 20, 1994, with its brilliant pop single “Headache” grabbed my attention enough that I reviewed it for Volcano, the zine that Donna and I were producing at the time: 

Volcano, Volume 1, Issue 3, End o’ 1994/Happy 1995!:

Teenager of the Year – Frank Black. Speaking of the Man in Black, the man named Frank Black is back and absolutely ragin’ on his second solo album. Here Frank spins out a tapestry o’ tunes dealing with such timeless topics as the ancient video game Pong, the Three Stooges, space aliens, sasquatches and migraines. “Headache,” an instant pop classic, is probably the best song Black has ever written, which is quite impressive considering all the rumors that FB doesn’t care about music anymore and just wants to get back into anthropology. 

(It was 1994. Of course, Donna and I produced a zine.)

[Chris] Clocking in at a little over an hour, Teenager of the Year was stuffed to the gills with 22 tracks. This was 1994 and everyone was releasing music on CD, but while 62 minutes and 51 seconds was well within the limits of compact disc run times (and plenty of people were testing those limits with albums that hit the 80-minute mark), Teenager of the Year had the feel and pacing of a double album. Vinyl “sides” were not really a consideration at that time – the vinyl resurgence was at least a decade or so in the future – but the breadth of that album and its musical variety really lends itself to “double album” territory. 

Vincent and Feldman were part of the core band, which also included guitar whiz Lyle Workman and additional guitar work was provided here and there from Moris Tepper (another Beefheart alum) and Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago (possibly the only member of his former band that Black was still on speaking terms with at the time). The album feels like one of those sprawling concept albums from the 60s or 70s, like the Beatles’ White Album or Todd Rundgren’s Something/Anything. A present-day comparison could also be made with Jeff Tweedy’s Twilight Override, another solo album from a guy who fronted a very popular band but stretched out with new ideas when left to his own devices.  

One of the things that I love about the album is that Black doesn’t abandon his Pixies sound entirely. There’s plenty of fiery punk energy in songs like “Whatever Happened to Pong,” “Thalassocracy,” (the album’s first two songs, which open up the record like a twin-barrel explosion) “Pure Denizen of the Citizens Band,” and “Bad, Wicked World.” They just happen to be imbued with welcome keyboard textures, and live comfortably along the wide-open, sophisticated air of “Speedy Marie,” “Superabound” and “White Noise Maker,” songs that see Black and his band hitting the gas pedal with the abandon of his former band but exploring plenty of other avenues along the way. I love the obvious musical nod to The Who on the frenetic “Freedom Rock,” with lyrics that skewer genre conventions (“My name is Chip / And I’m different / I don’t conform / I wear a different uniform”) and anthemic, tuneful lead guitar work from Workman on songs like “The Vanishing Spies.” But I don’t just love the songs individually; I love the absolute sprawl of the record.

[Rich] Later in 1994, Donna and I did see Frank Black, opening for They Might Be Giants. Black played solo, wielding different guitars and then letting each guitar dangle from his body until he exited the stage with at least five guitars hanging from him. It was fun seeing him live, but obviously a Frank Black solo performance wasn’t going to convey the cinematic sound and feel of the album.

As the ‘90s progressed, I fell deeper under the spell of Teenager of the Year, though I wasn’t keeping up closely with Frank Black’s other releases. It took a while, but I did gradually acquaint myself with his growing catalog enough to note that great tunes can be found throughout Black’s discography.

Frank Black Friday: An Origin Story 

[Rich] This brings me to Frank Black Friday. The origin story of Frank Black Friday is murky, but I think I’ve been celebrating this holiday for at least 15 years, maybe 20. For the sake of clarity, let’s say it all started at Thanksgiving 2005. 

Frank Black Friday was my reaction to the inanity of the retail Black Friday experience circa 2003 through 2012 (approximately), the last gasp of big retail stores as the likes of Amazon and other online shopping opportunities made physical stores obsolete. During those years, monolithic chain department stores were staging ever more hyped and ridiculous Black Friday sales, leading to mobs converging at midnight, or sometimes even earlier on Thanksgiving evening. Crazed shoppers were getting injured; in some extreme cases, people were killed. It was holiday-fueled capitalism gone haywire, and I was done with it, even if I was only witnessing it through breathless television news coverage. 

My solution? I boldly stated that I would be taking no part in Black Friday madness and that I’d be staying home listening to records/CDs instead. In fact, I’d be listening to Frank Black CDs!

At which point – and history is not clear on this – either Donna or I said, “It’ll be a Frank Black Friday!” Ever since then, that’s exactly what the Friday after Thanksgiving has been for me: Frank Black Friday. I have been spreading this gospel ever since: Don’t go shopping! Observe Frank Black Friday instead!

Some people asked if they could observe Clint Black Friday or Rebecca Black Friday or Jack Black Friday. I grudgingly said “sure, whatever floats your boat,” but on the inside I was secretly thinking, “No, you ought to stick to the Frank Black Friday program.”

Rich and Chris Make a Plan

[Rich] As I faithfully observed Frank Black Friday through the years, I made playlists of tunes from across his discography (but no Pixies! FBF is a Frank Black thing). Still, Teenager of the Year continued to be my go-to Frank Black album to listen to straight through. Even though the album was released when compact discs ruled, I secretly pined for a vinyl Teenager of the Year. Earlier this year, 2025, that dream came true. Frank Black reissued his masterpiece as a beautiful double album and was planning a tour in which he was going to play the whole thing, with all the band members from the original recordings! Huzzah!

I wasn’t initially thinking too hard about seeing the Teenager tour. I figured I’d find out eventually when the tour would hit Philadelphia and go to the show. 

The problem was, Philly, a rock’n’roll town if ever there was one, wasn’t on the tour itinerary. I noticed that Boston, also a rock’n’roll town, was on the tour. That’s when I hatched my plan.

I had known Chris, a Boston-area resident, since I started writing for PopMatters in 2019, though we’d yet to meet in person. We had gotten to know each other, mostly through the music we jointly loved, and we started collaborating on PopMatters pieces together. I knew from one of our conversations that Chris also enjoyed Teenager of the Year, so while texting back and forth about Frank Zappa, I asked Chris how he’d feel about going to see Frank Black together, if I headed up to Boston. Chris was in.

[Chris] Rich and I worked on a number of collaborative pieces for PopMatters over the years. We had a very easy rapport and liked a lot of the same music. Most of my best friends are fellow music obsessives. Not just fans, but people who live and breathe the stuff. Rich and I are kindred spirits in that way. Our mutual love of Teenager of the Year became apparent when a 30th anniversary vinyl reissue was announced – finally, the album is being released on its proper format! – followed by a brief tour. Rich lives outside of Philadelphia, and the tour wasn’t stopping there. But it was coming to Boston. Plans were made. 

(Rich’s Parenthetical Chester A. Arthur/Martin Van Buren Side Quest) 

[Rich] This is what led me to climb out of bed at 5:00 a.m. on January 31, and hit the road in a rental car, headed for…Albany, New York. 

Here’s a thing about me: I have side quests. My friends at work say that my side quests have side quests. This is why I decided a trip to Boston would be the perfect time for me to return to my long-dormant hobby of visiting the gravesites of U.S. presidents. I had visited 14 such sites but had been stuck at 14 for more than ten years. With several presidential possibilities between Philadelphia and Boston, it was time to act.

Picking up John and John Quincy Adams, both near Boston, would have been the logical choice, but their crypt is closed to the public in the wintertime. No problem: I’d visit Chester A. Arthur and Martin Van Buren instead. The Arthur/Van Buren connection (other than proximity to each other): outrageous 19th century presidential facial hair. 

This is what I did, spending a grayish wintry morning driving through New York and arriving at the snowy Albany Rural Cemetery around lunchtime. I paid my respects to Arthur while wearing a tie-dyed Chester A. Arthur t-shirt (such things are available on the Internet). As I drove away, another car pulled up to visit Arthur. I was consumed with curiosity and almost drove back to find out who else was visiting our 21st president, and even show them my t-shirt, but I had to move on. 

Then I drove approximately 25 miles to the village of Kinderhook, New York, where I removed the Arthur t-shirt to reveal a Van Buren pop art shirt as I said hello to our eighth president. At least, I would have revealed it, had there been another human being anywhere in sight to reveal it to. There was not, so I simply bid farewell to the Notorious MVB and headed out to the highway once again.

I spent the rest of the dreary winter afternoon crossing Massachusetts, but I was a happy guy. I had two more presidential gravesite notches, and I was on my way to meet Chris for the first time. We were going to have our faces rocked by Frank Black. Life was good. 

Chris and Rich’s Excellent Frank Black Friday

[Rich] If either Chris or I were nervous about meeting each other “IRL,” I think those nerves dissipated the moment he opened his door and welcomed me into his home. We started talking music and records, a conversation that took us from my car to the train (where the announcer’s Boston accent provided my traveling self with the perfect geographical reference point). We talked through dinner at the Bleacher Bar (in Fenway Park! How cool is that?) and even as we waited for Frank to hit the stage at the House of Blues, just across the street from Fenway.

[Chris] Rich drove up from Philly and we picked up the train near my house, taking it into the city. Here’s the thing about music nerds – you put two or more of us together, and we can blather on interminably. And we did! On the train, over dinner at the Bleacher Bar, and at the House of Blues before the show started. Seated up in the balcony area, I felt like I was about to witness the soundtrack of my 20s come to life. Also, the original band from the album was reconvening for this tour. I couldn’t help thinking that Frank was doing this exactly the way it should be done. It was all clicking.

[Rich] Before the show started, I hit the men’s room, where a guy looked at my t-shirt and exclaimed “Chester A. Arthur!” “Damn right!”, I replied and regaled him with a brief recap of my foray just a few hours before at Albany Rural. A perfect random moment that tied a bunch of odd threads together and set the stage for several similar encounters I’ve had while wearing the shirt since then.

[Chris] What can I say about the show? It was incredible. Frank and the band sounded great. Everyone was greying (except for the bald Frank) and the vocals were just a tad strained, but 30 years is 30 years. The entire album was played, but bookended by a couple of songs from other albums. It’s also worth noting that various people from my present and past made appearances that night. I found out the next day that Steve and Brooks, two of my friends from middle school who I’ve been in touch with intermittently since social media was invented, were there as well, in the general admission floor area, and my current friends Stefan and Skye, who live in the next town over from me and whose sons are friends with my own son, were there as well and we bumped into them in the lobby after the show (before they graciously gave us a ride out of the city). I couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t a coincidence how this album and this show were bridging together different eras of my life.

[Rich] Frank Black and the band were fantastic, faithfully recreating the album, without seeming like they were just going through the motions. Frank told some funny stories that shed light on the songs, which subsequently revealed more about the album as whole. But don’t take my word for: the entire Teenager performance from that night was filmed and is on YouTube.

[Chris] Rich and I didn’t think to get a picture of us together at the show, so the next morning, on his way back to Philadelphia, he stopped by my house and we took a selfie. And while I realize that this is a site dedicated to the love of vinyl, I still don’t have my vinyl copy of Teenager of the Year. It’s a massive oversight, I know. It’s on my list! But I know that Rich has his copy, and I’m sure he’ll post a photo of it here.

Teenager of the Year: What Does This All Mean? 

[Rich] When I think back on my overnight trip to Boston last winter – and I have thought about it often – I think about how great it felt to take the long way to Boston to resume my presidential side quest after a long hiatus. I think about how much I enjoyed getting out on the road for a solo journey. I think about how great the show was and obviously how much I still love Teenager of the Year.

Mostly though, I think about how, throughout my life, I have bonded with people over shared music that we love. I attach at least one vivid music-related memory to nearly every family member and close friend I have. Chris and I could have gone the rest of our lives talking online and even writing more articles and lists together without ever meeting, and that might have been fine. 

This is better though: we met and we saw Frank Black and his band perform the entirety of Teenager of the Year, an album that has been following Chris and me through our lives for the last three decades. We became closer friends in the process, and I hope at some point we get together again, even if it’s just to talk about music and life and whatever somewhere in or around Melrose, Massachusetts or Royersford, Pennsylvania. 

[Chris] Teenager of the Year really is, to me, not only perhaps the greatest album of the 90s – it’s one of the greatest albums of all time, from a guy who could have easily coasted on his Pixies cachet but chose instead to experiment with all of his musical influences.  

I think that one of the things that makes Teenager of the Year so appealing and such a successful creative endeavor is that, while it was created in the middle of an indie-rock era dominated by digital discs, it takes broad stylistic cues from the decades that preceded it, and can easily be retrofitted for the current era where vinyl has made a solid comeback. Yet it sounds utterly timeless. It’s nostalgia, sure, but nostalgia you can feel good about since it doesn’t seem to age. Thank you, Rich, for diving with me into our shared obsessions. And thank you too, Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV.

[Rich] Finally, I often think about a surprise that emerged during our dinnertime conversation before the show. As often happens with music-loving men in the 55-60 age bracket, our conversation had drifted to R.E.M. and Chris mentioned seeing them live at the Hampton Coliseum in 1995. To which I replied, “Are you kidding me? I was there!”

Chris was living in Virginia Beach in October of ‘95. I was not but I was in nearby Norfolk for a business trip. I was eating dinner with a colleague named Eric, having the same kind of friendship-in-the-making conversation that Chris and I were having. Eric and I discovered our shared love for R.E.M. and I mentioned that the band happened to be playing nearby the next evening. Eric and I grabbed tickets and took a surreal cab ride to see R.E.M. play the same show Chris was attending, 30 years before he and I would meet. 

Music connects people, sometimes decades before they realize they’ve been connected.  

Chris Ingalls is a Massachusetts native and lifelong music fan who learned how to write while stationed in the U.S. Navy for seven years as a broadcast journalist. Since 2016, he has contributed more than 500 reviews and features for PopMatters and is a former contributor to the now-defunct experimental music website Tome to the Weather Machine. He’s also an occasional guest on the music podcast Losing My Opinion. He currently lives in the leafy suburbs of Melrose, Massachusetts with his wife, son, dog, two cats, and lots of records. He’s on Bluesky and Instagram @ingalls1969.

Rich Wilhelm is a writer and record collector who lives with his wife Donna in Royersford, Pennsylvania. Rich and Donna have two sons, Jimmy and Chris, a future daughter-in-law, Lizzy, and a grand-dog named Tango who reviews records on Instagram @tangonumber5. Rich has written for Cool and Strange Music Magazine, PopMatters, and his own website, The Dichotomy of the Dog. Rich is also a certified volunteer tour guide at Laurel Hill Cemetery, a United States National Historic Landmark in Philadelphia. Rich can be found on Bluesky @rfwilhelm.bsky.social and Instagram @valentine_headphone_kid.