<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><HTML><FONT SIZE=2 PTSIZE=10 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">I've heard reports from a few people who came to see Joe Frank report that they were treated rudely by Johanna Zorn (director of Third Coast festival). I suggest you email her- she's jzorn@thirdcoastfestival.org<BR>
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I should think this to be inappropriate and bureaucratic behavior. I think she owes apologies to all those she felt moved to treat with something less than ordinary respect and dignity.<BR>
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I don't know her, but in her defense, she's running a week-long series of events and was no doubt really very frazzled. She probably had a million things going on, a million things going WRONG and a million people wanting things from her, whether or not she's in a position to provide them. It's no excuse and she should apologize graciously if she's big enough, but I do see how this sort of thing can happen.<BR>
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I've also learned that a million things went wrong in preparation and so on for Joe's performance and that any time he & his staff had planned for meet & greet were consumed by headaches beyond number. (You could have fooled me, I thought it all went quite smoothly and hung together well, but I suppose that behind the curtain there could have been an angry mob of rustic villagers with burning torches, pitchforks and cudgels, only being held at bay by the superior firepower of Joe and his staff..... but thanks to the professionalism of the performers involved we never knew it....)<BR>
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FROM: <A HREF="mailto:lee13@uillinois.edu">lee13@uillinois.edu</A> <BR>
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I was also at the Chicago performance. I was not attending the Third<BR>
Coast Audio conference. I drove up to the city from downstate Illinois<BR>
just to see Joe Frank. It was an extremely entertaining show, but yes,<BR>
a bit on the quick side. I had met Joe Frank years ago at his KCRW<BR>
studio so his unadulterated voice was not so distracting to me. His<BR>
signature background music was there. Without that, it would have been<BR>
a very un-Joe like performance. Some of us stayed afterwards to try and<BR>
greet Joe and get an autograph, but we were quickly shooed out of the<BR>
theater by the woman who introduced Joe before the show and I guess was<BR>
the main coordinator for the Third Coast Audio conference. She was a<BR>
bit rude to us, in fact. I wasn't surprised Joe wanted to retain his<BR>
privacy. Other than that minor letdown, it was a grand evening.<BR>
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--shawn <BR>
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