Rick Froberg (1968-2023)
On Saturday, July 1st, I was in a photo pit waiting for Ibrahim Maalouf to take the stage when I found out Rick Froberg died. I saw the post from his friend and bandmate, John Reis, in my Instagram feed and texted a few friends the link before Maalouf began his performance. Despite my immediate sadness, I had to focus on the rest of the show and editing images over the weekend while occasionally thinking about the fact that Rick Froberg was gone.
I was born too late to discover to his first bands Pitchfork and Drive Like Jehu during their run, but while on a trip in 2002, I remembered there was a band called Hot Snakes that I’ve been meaning to check out while in a record store. I picked up their newest album, at the time, Suicide Invoice, loved the album cover, and listened to my new CD on my flight back home. My love for the band, especially Rick’s vocals, was immediate and I tried my best to see them whenever they came to New York City on tour. That year, I saw them for the first time at Mercury Lounge (with some local band called The Strokes, that opened the show). Three years later, Hot Snakes played Bowery Ballroom before their break up, and I came home with photos, a t-shirt, and a setlist written on the back of a pizza box.
With no new music from Hot Snakes to listen to, outside of John Peel’s recording session, I went through Drive Like Jehu’s catalog, and became a fan of that band too. DLJ broke up while I was in high school, and were never popular enough to get played constantly on MTV or the radio, so I truly never expected to ever experience them live since I got into them years after they called it quits. The band reunited in 2015 and I eagerly awaited them to play the east coast (I used my role as Photo Editor at Impose to politely ask them to come to New York City when publishing photos from ATP Iceland). The following year, a week before my birthday, I saw them perform at Irving Plaza in Manhattan and The Bell House in Brooklyn. And then I was blessed with a Hot Snakes reunion, a re-release of their albums on Sub Pop Records*, and a new album called Jericho Sirens on that label in 2018. During the Hot Snakes tour in November 2017, I saw them both in Brooklyn and in Philadelphia. At the time, it felt on the verge of being excessive but being among other fans who lived in NYC that also made the trip to Philly for the concert confirmed that the band was that special and influential. I loved seeing Rick truly enjoy the antics of Annie-Claude Deschênes, Duchess Says’ vocalist/frontperson during their opening set that night (the openers of Montreal’s Duchess Says, and Pile were another great reason for me to head to Philadelphia). In between DLJ and Hot Snakes, Rick had another band, Obits, a NYC band that played around town a lot, but I only photographed once (which was absolutely my fault, not the band’s, of course). The gallery at the beginning of this post are images of mine that I’ve made of Rick Froberg over the years.
I don’t consider myself a writer nor did I know Rick Froberg at all, but there are people who wrote about him much better than I ever could and those pieces have been linked at the end of this post. I’m just a person who discovered his work in my early 20s, became a fan, and still processing that he’s now gone. I regret that I never had the chance to thank him for his art and music, but I’m also unbelievably grateful that I discovered Hot Snakes over twenty years ago, saw them live whenever I could, and that Rick Froberg continued to create until his death.
If you weren’t a fan of Froberg’s music work and don’t know where to start, I always loved this track, this one, this one, and this one too. Oh wait, here’s another one, and one more. And here’s the last one, I swear. It’s all great, truly.
Post-hardcore mainstay Rick Froberg brought deep feeling to ferocious noise by Huw Baines
Read tributes to Rick Froberg from Superchunk, Jenny Lewis, and more at BrooklynVegan
Rick Froberg inspired a generation of musicians like me by Benji Freeman
*despite owning all their CDs already, once Hot Snakes toured after the vinyl re-releases, I immediately went to the merch table at The Bell House before the concert began and bought a copy of all the records from their bassist, Gar Wood, plus a tote bag to put them in and then immediately went to coat check to store everything safely. After the show ended, there was a huge line for merchandise that I got to avoid completely, and I had to pat myself on the back for getting my merch early.