A Fine Frenzy
A Fine Frenzy (born December 23, 1984), formerly named Alison Sudol, is a girl with great hair. Sudol's hair has allowed her to peak at #91 on the Billboard 200 chart, and she has sold over half a million copies of pictures of her hair inside plastic cases that also contain some kind of disc for no apparent reason.
A Fine Frenzy often appears on stage sitting in front of some kind of wooden table with black and white keys on it, much to the confusion of some of her hair fans. She sometimes presses her hands against those keys and sometimes jumps up from a bench and dances around, presumably so everyone can get a better look at her hair. There have also been unsubstantiated rumors that A Fine Frenzy is capable of making noise emerge from her mouth, although these rumors are generally considered irrelevant by A Fine Frenzy's fans and critics alike.
A Fine Frenzy administers a Facebook fan page with over 150,000 fans. Sporadically, she will post some patent nonsense to that page, such as "Our last show on the tour will be all-ages!" In response, hundreds of her fans will post, "I love your hair, Alison!!" Occasionally, fans will make a more general comment about A Fine Frenzy's appearance, such as "OMFG ur so pretty" or "I wanna see ya without any pants on," but these comments are generally discouraged by other fans as being off-topic.
Biography
Sudol was born in Seattle in 1984, the very same year that crack cocaine was introduced into the United States. She was a happy and bouncy baby, until suddenly, at three months of age, she sprouted a full head of gorgeous, flowing red hair. On Sudol's infant figure, it looked, as one neighbor would remark, "creepy as all shit." Sudol's parents divorced soon afterwards, and she moved with her mother to Los Angeles in 1992, the very same year of the Rodney King riots.
At age twelve, Sudol legally had her name changed to "A Fine Frenzy," because, apparently, she mistook herself for a band with a pretentious name. A Fine Frenzy graduated from high school early at age 16, and obtained a job at a local fast food restaurant, where she was fired after three days because customers would stare at her hair for so long that they'd forget to place an order.
Eventually, A Fine Frenzy was signed to a hair contract by Virgin Records, but the details on that are a little iffy, because no one seems quite certain what a hair contract is.
Hairography
One Cell in the Sea
In 2007, A Fine Frenzy released the photograph of her hair, One Cell in the Sea, to great critical acclaim. Rolling Stone remarked that "Sudol's yellow shirt really makes her hair pop! We haven't seen hair pop like that since Color Me Badd's second album, Young, Gifted, and Badd. Sudol's auburn mane, and possibly Sudol herself, have a long career ahead of them." Melody Maker concurred, writing "The second I saw Alison's hair, I found myself unable to look away. I didn't eat or sleep for three days, deeply lost in a hair trance. I felt as though I were entangled in a vast forest of crimson hair, completely bound within Sudol's follicular majesty. Note to self: that sentence sounds creepy. Revise before publication. Anyway, it wasn't until my cat got so hungry that it bit me that I was even able to get into the office to write this piece."
Public reaction to "One Cell in the Sea" was no less enthusiastic. Amazon reviews rated the photograph at over 4.5 stars, with several reviewers remarking that A Fine Frenzy was extremely considerate to have enclosed a coaster underneath her photograph so they'd have somewhere to set their ginger ale while contemplating the perfection of her tresses.
The sole dissenting voice was NME, which opined, "What the bollocks is this? This isn't Brit Pop! Why are we even covering this? I miss Blur. Someone wake us up when Oasis challenges this girl to a hair-off. Can it be 1993 again? Cor, blimey!!"
Bomb in a Birdcage
Two years later, in 2009, A Fine Frenzy released her sophomore photo, Bomb in a Birdcage, a picture that invoked the sense of someone placing explosives in their pet bird's cage and blowing it to smithereens. This photo was met with extremely mixed reviews, largely because A Fine Frenzy had taken the extremely controversial tactic of greyscaling her hair.
Rolling Stone called the move a "bold, but questionable, choice." A Fine Frenzy's harshest critic was perhaps Melody Maker, which published a terse, two-sentence review: "I do not want to be entangled in a vast forest of grey hair, completely bound within my grandmother's follicular majesty. Fuck this."
"I wanted people to actually listen to the album this time," explained A Fine Frenzy in an interview with Alla Byrne of People magazine. "I get a little tired of - hello? Um... my eyes are down here, Alla. Alla? Earth to Alla."
Despite Sudol's greyscaled locks, Bomb in a Birdcage managed to peak at #28 on the U.S. Billboard 200, an unprecedented accomplishment for a black-and-white photo. Even Eddie Adams' Picture of Vietnamese Guy Getting his Face Shot Off only managed to enter the charts at #192, falling off completely after only one week.
Other interesting facts
On August 4, 2008, online 'zine popdirt.com reported that A Fine Frenzy tripped and fell down while jogging and scraped her hands. A Fine Frenzy posted an explanation of this event on MySpace, blogging that she had been lost in thought, and that when she is not mentally "present," she finds it difficult to operate her legs at high speeds.
This blog post prompted a debate amongst A Fine Frenzy's fans over what these "legs" were that she was speaking of, as none of them had ever actually seen her legs before. The debate was essentially divided into two camps; those that argued that Sudol was most likely born without legs, and those that argued that Sudol had legs and that they were composed of beautiful locks of chestnut hair. Participants briefly argued the question of whether it is possible to support oneself, let alone jog, on legs made of hair; eventually, the thread just devolved into an endless series of posts saying "Wow, that's beautiful hair" and "RED HAIR ARE THE BEST!!" The question of whether A Fine Frenzy has hair legs remains unresolved to this day.
Since 2008, there have been no further reports of A Fine Frenzy falling down while jogging, suggesting that the original story was probably a hoax, anyway.
There are no other interesting facts about A Fine Frenzy.
See Also
