Meet The Frantiks! (a work in progress)

This is the tentative beginning of a work of fiction that's been in my head for a few years. I don't know where I'll go with this, or what form it will take--if it takes form at all. But I want to put this much out, just to see what people may think of it.

MEET THE FRANTIKS!

by Carl Cafarelli

CHAPTER 1

I was dreaming. In the dream, I was still a little girl, five years old.

I knew it was a dream. I'm a grown woman, a widow, an occasional writer, and a frequent insomniac. When I did sleep, I didn't dream. But I was dreaming now.

I was dreaming that it was 1965. The year my parents divorced. The year my Aunt Ellis died. The dream wasn't about any of that.

The dream was about television.

Bobby's Angel was my favorite TV show when I was five. I know you've never heard of it. It ran just one season, its IMDB listing is perfunctory, and none of its cast members went on to subsequent fame or fortune. It doesn't turn up in reruns, and it's not on YouTube. It's...gone, man.

The show was about a teenaged boy named Bobby, who was head-over-heels for Angel, the pretty girl next door. Angel just happened to be a literal Angel, sent down from Heaven to learn more about these silly, fascinating mortals, and to do good with her heavenly powers. Hijinks ensued.

It was 1965. Anything was possible in 1965.

My favorite episode of Bobby's Angel was the show's only two-parter. "Meet The Frantiks!" and "Beat The Frantiks!" A lot of TV shows did mock British Invasion episodes, where the regular characters interacted with a twangin', moptopped combo inspired by...yeah, those guys. The Beatles. The Standells, a real-life American group, turned up on The Munsters, and actual English pop stars Chad and Jeremy played the fictional Redcoats on The Dick Van Dyke Show. But it was usually a fake group, created in a Hollywood writers' room for a one-off sitcom appearance. Sometimes the "group" spoke in an exaggerated Cockney tongue. The actors were almost always Yanks.

I presume the Frantiks were also made in America, and I presume they didn't exist outside of the two consecutive weeks they shook their puddin' cuts in glorious black and white on an obscure TV show no one else remembers. If there were ever any such thing as Frantiks 45s or (even less likely) LPs, they were too obscure for a listing on an authoritative site like Discogs or 45Cat. The Frantiks barely rated a quick mention in the book It's A Shindig And A Hullabaloo!, Marshall Crenshaw's definitive study of rock 'n' roll on TV. They probably weren't real. To the world at large, they didn't matter at all.

But I loved the Frantiks. I was five. I never missed Bobby's Angel, and my eyes were wide and my ears open to the sights and sounds of these faux British Invaders cavorting on screen. They were cute, and they were funny. The music was vibrant, closer in style to the authentic American folk rock of the Beau Brummels (who, of course, appeared in animated form as the Beau Brummelstones on The Flintstones) than your Bedbugs or Mosquitos or whatever cathode-ray caricature of rock 'n' roll that show biz could concoct at the time. It was genuinely...good, radio-ready. I wish it existed in some legit form.

No actors were credited in the roles of the Frantiks (Simon, Wally, Tristan, and--of course--Moishe); the Frantiks were played by the Frantiks. Duh. Five-year-old me wouldn't have noticed the credits, but my late husband Dennis somehow tracked down bootleg DVDs of the show's entire brief run. I've never seen any other evidence of such a product anywhere. Dennis could find the impossible-to-find. The DVDs were his final gift to me before he...you know. Just over a year ago. But anyway, I don't have to rely solely on a six-decade-old memory of the Frantiks on Bobby's Angel.

I would remember it anyway. "Meet The Frantiks!" and "Beat The Frantiks!" were the last-ever episodes of Bobby's Angel, as Angel and her hapless mortal suitor Bobby tried to become rock 'n' roll movers and shakers. Yes, hijinks ensued. Hijinks always ensued, didn't they?

Until they didn't anymore.

I watched these on first run at my Aunt Ellis' apartment. When "Beat The Frantiks!" ended, Aunt Ellis scooped me up and carried me to bed. The next morning, my parents picked me up, and Aunt Ellis kissed me goodbye.

I never saw her again. Except in my dreams. 

I stopped dreaming when Dennis died.

Until that night, a night in the present day, when I dreamed it was still 1965. I was with my Aunt Ellis, watching a new--new!--episode of Bobby's Angel, with the Frantiks returning for their third appearance with Angel and Bobby. There were more great songs by the Frantiks, songs that felt so vivid and immediate in my dream but which I knew weren't real. 

Aunt Ellis' doorbell rang. She answered, and welcomed the Frantiks--THE FRANTIKS!!!--into her apartment. Simon, Wally, Tristan, and (of course) Moishe smiled, joked, laughed, schticked, and grabbed instruments that were magically present in Aunt Ellis' little living room. The Frantiks played yet another new song, dedicated to me. Come on and dance, just take this chance, I know you're looooooooonely, because I'm loooooooonnely too, lonely just like you. The music kept playing, Moishe somehow dancing with Aunt Ellis while simultaneously being seen at his drum kit, the others taking turns dancing with me as they also remained on their impromptu bandstand. You know how dreams are. You know how TV fantasies work. It was a montage. 

It felt genuine. 

As we danced, I was five. Then I was twelve. Sixteen. Twenty-one, and Simon kissed me. Forty-four. Fifty-seven. Sixty-four. The Frantiks stayed the same. Aunt Ellis stayed the same.

And then I woke up.

3:30 in the morning. Damn it. I didn't have to look at my clock. I woke up with a start every morning at exactly 3:30. I looked at the clock anyway. 3:30. Damn it again. I'd gone to bed at two. It never mattered what time I went to bed. I was up at 3:30, no matter what.

It's the time that Dennis used to come home.

TO BE CONTINUED...?

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Carl's new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is now available, courtesy of the good folks at Rare Bird Books. Gabba Gabba YAY!! https://rarebirdlit.com/gabba-gabba-hey-a-conversation-with-the-ramones-by-carl-cafarelli/

If it's true that one book leads to another, my next book will be The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). Stay tuned. Your turn is coming.

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl