Could a better eulogy have been written for Rick Froberg?

Well yeah, of course.

But the reason that he actually died, the reason he wasn’t appreciated during his lifetime (not even enough to be able to afford healthcare), and the endless metaphors one could spin for the society at large that produced and destroyed him…

If you don’t know who he was, he was in a band called Pitchfork before the world altering indie ROCK destroying online rag came out, then a fucking INCREDIBLE band called Drive Like Jehu which was followed by another incredible yet more studied mature and subdued Hot Snakes with a similar lineup not to mention a series of other great indie/punk/underground rock bands… Give anyone of them a listen if you want to know. And if you like good punk rock or just hard driving rock or metal you DO. Personally I recommend starting with Hot Snakes’ Suicide Invoice then moving on to Drive Like Jehu’s Yank Crime…

But I digress.

Rick Froberg was one of the great kings (along with frequent bandmate John Reis) of the great Sand Diego underground punk rock (call it post-hardcore if you wish I don’t give a shit) scene from the late eighties until his death in 2023. He was constantly at work on his songwriting, furious performances, touring, and fighting with an industry that had ceased to give a shit about the music he made after Nevermind came out (the same year the first phenomenal self titled Drive Like Jehu record came out) but that he and millions like him hadn’t. When he started out we called it punk rock. We started to call it ‘indie’ rock for ‘independent’ i.e. on an independent record label at the time but that got applied to too much crap, and I’m sure during the nineties they got that degenerate ‘alternative’ label but they were never fucking Garbage or Hole.

Shit I’m digressing again.

Over the next 30+ years he never gave up, never let down, never said ‘meh, I should get a real job and some money etc.’ He kept honing his songwriting, nervous wreck guitar wrangling, and signature legitimately equal parts anger and terror screaming vocals. If his band broke up, he formed another. When other underground San Diego luminaries formed up like Crash Worship and Thingy (one of the initial Rob Crow projects, an ubiquitous San Diego scenester after Froberg and one half of the very popular Pinback), he gladly joined or collaborated. And while I hasten to call him a musician (after Eno’s successful denigration thereof that seriously everyone other than virtuoso thugs should have embraced by this point), I can’t think of another term that would suit his ceaseless creativity, passion, and ultimate lines like “I’d drink piss for kreative kontrol!” that are the only words that can really describe how integral and stalwart this individual was.

And that’s what killed him.

For my international readers, in the US we don’t have free healthcare. In fact, even if you have health insurance it’s not any good unless you’re filthy rich. And if you’re middle class and run into even a common issue it’ll bankrupt you faster than owning a series of fly by night casinos that you count on Russian mobsters to build and run.

Rick Froberg died of an undiagnosed heart condition in 2023 at the age of 55. Details are scant, but if he had seen the doctor he so desperately sang about needing on the first track of what was to become his last recorded album, I’m quite certain he’d be on a couple of pills a day today and told to ‘take it easy and don’t drink too much’. And when I say details are scant; I mean it. It was reported on plenty of places including Rolling Stone and the New York Times, but of the few details they got right were that we were all informed by bandmate John Reis’ instagram post about how unexpected and random it was.

If you listen to his music half the time it sounds like he’s having a heart attack. The man knew anxiety and terror, elation and fury, and he expressed it like no one else on the planet before or since. When you write about and/or experience that much for that long knowing that your ‘obit’ will get most of the details wrong about you anyway, how much of that could your heart take? The amount he took was far too much, in a profession, and country that gave him so little despite the fact that the art he gave to it is immeasurable.