The Tragic Life & Times of Francis E. Dec

(Frankenstein’s Advocate is a mash-up track I made recently, using the infamous Frankenstein Radio Controls rant of Francis E. Dec, and an instrumental from someone named Dubzta. Listen to it as you read this, for best effect.)

I shouldn’t have to preface this by saying I don’t endorse the views of Mr. Dec, but there you go.

My little brother turned me on to one of Francis Dec’s rants about ten years ago. It’s a pretty amazing piece of audio, which I initially assumed was some sort of Subgenius project. The Subgenii, of course, are an art collective fake religion, spearheaded by Ivan Stang, and the likes of Robert Anton Wilson and Mark Mothersbaugh, among others. It’s characterized by high weirdness and usually wildly funny. But that was the edited version of Dec’s rant. Subgenius work is not really known for dropping the N-word. Much less several times in the space of five minutes.

The unedited version dispelled that notion, of course, but it still didn’t answer my questions. Thankfully, I eventually found this site that has the whole story: https://www.bentoandstarchky.com/dec/rants.htm.

The reason it works so well is because it is both the product of a deranged mind, and has a great radio voice reading it. When you learn those two things, it makes a lot more sense.

Dec was a former attorney in New York who became plagued with schizophrenia. He apparently made copies of this rant and others and plastered them all over town. They were even found in other states. Plus he mailed out a lot of them to people both random and famous. So what you’re hearing are his verbatim words, transcribed from his flyers.

It is a masterwork of racism and insanity. It otherwise has all the earmarks of a top-notch Subgenius project. Sounding very much like a very extreme Alex Jones rant turned up to eleven, Francis E. Dec was decades ahead of his time. The repetition builds on his initial theme to the point of utter absurdity. It’s like one glorious run-on sentence, reinforcing his theme more stalwartly than Ayn Rand could have ever dreamed of.

I can’t help but think of how things could have been different. Philip K. Dick experienced some of these thoughts, and instead channeled them into some amazing science fiction, rather than being consumed by it. Dec was pretty cutting edge in some of his concepts, which hint at simulation theory long before this was a commonplace idea.

“Man-made inside-out planets.”

“Stairway to the stars.”

“The threshold brainwash radio.”

“The synthetic nerve radio directional antenna loop.”

“Electric shock flashlights.”

“Remote, electronically controlled, around the corner projection of deadly touch tarantula spiders.”

“Fake, phony stars in the synthetic skies.”

You have to love a paranoid rant that includes his full name and address, asking for someone to send him a typewriter. He wasn’t quite coherent enough to gather his bizarre thoughts to the degree that he could have organized them into fiction, but it would have been great if he had.

He *was* pretty right on about a police state, of course. It’s probably better for him that he died when he did, rather than live in the world we have now.

Get the complete collection of Dec rants here: WFMU