The Mr. T Experience: From punk to published.

I bought my first Mr. T Experience CD in the used bin of a long-defunct music store called One Music in Muncie, Indiana. The place was run and owned by an incredibly nice hippie dude with Allman Brothers hair and a soothingly soft voice, which at the time I chalked up to what I assumed was his access to high-quality mellowing dope. I ran into the fellow — his name was Jim, I think — when I was a college student at Ball State University student working as a “waiter” at the Sirloin Stockade steakhouse in Muncie. He told me he was going into the ministry, and I was forced to re-examine why he had such an admirably kind disposition.

Anyway, his record store was incredible, and Muncie hasn’t seen the likes of it since One Music closed it doors well over a decade ago. And it was thanks to him that I was introduced to the surprisingly agile mind of Dr. Frank, the lead singer of the Mr. T Experience, whose CD I bought solely on the strength of the band’s funny-as-hell (to my 19-year-old brain) name. That started the beginning of a love affair that would continue for a good five years, until I outgrew snotty Berkeley slacker-punk.

The Mr. T Experience were contemporaries of Green Day, and in my mind, better than them. But Dr. Frank lacked the vocals for a hit single, and his band — clever, rollicking, often hilarious — floundered in obscurity until, I assume, they broke up. To be honest, I stopped thinking about them years ago until recently a wild hair drove me to do a Google search on “Dr. Frank.”

To my surprise, although it’s really not that surprising at all, Dr. Frank — Frank Portman, it turns out — has become a pretty-good-selling author of juvenile literature. I haven’t read “King Dork” yet, but I plan to. And if you have a teenage kid battling awkward self-consciousness and insecurity, you should probably buy it, too.