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From The Desk Of The Black Watch: On Losing Friends

John Andrew Fredrick has spent the last three decades as the sole constant in one of music’s most perfect and unheralded rock outfits, the black watch. Using the Beatles as a tracing template, Fredrick has applied a kitchen-sink approach to the album at hand since his 1988 debut, St. Valentine, the opening volley in a catalog that would ultimately encompass 15 albums and five EPs, all of which inspired varying levels of critical halleleujahs and a deafening chorus of crickets at the nation’s cash registers. Fredrick will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our band new feature with him.

I have lost five or so close friends the past few years—to spats unresolved, envy and animosity (it’s impossible to be friends, sometimes, to people—let’s not mince words: dilettantes, really, many of them—who do the same art form you do—especially when you enjoy, after years and years and years, mind you, a bit of success/get some more recognition for all your hard work and dedication), outgrowing them and their predictable interests, misunderstandings, puerile behavior and the nature of the thing, as it were, running its course, running out of gas/steam/momentum/what-have-you. So to the great friends who remain (Brad, Liz, Liz G., Nicky, Chris, Ricky, Tyson, John, Darryl, Nora, Michael, Amy, Julia, Chip, Mark, Jim M., Jack, Laura, Nita Lu, Rob, Scott C., Craig and everyone I’ve forgotten momentarily)—thanks for hanging in there with me. As St. Thomas Aquinas said, “There is nothing more on earth to be prized than true friendship.” That’s in part why it’s one of my main themes in my book on Wes Anderson. I think it’s such a sorely neglected theme in all art, not just film. Bless Wes Anderson and his first three and best films for exploring it. And as W.H. Auden noted, works of art beget works of art. And thusly inspired I simply had to write something about that, to me, all-important theme (in my life especially) of Friendship. Fucking Innocent: The Early Films Of Wes Anderson comes out this summer. Sorry to shill, shill, shill for my stuff, you know, but I gotta keep myself in tennis balls and get my rackets re-strung once in a while and buy a book or two or a record by Idaho when it comes out.