Mother of Invention
Hoodoo
Frank Zappa, one of rock's most creative forces, left a timeless body
of work that his son Dweezil is taking on the road
JUAN RODRIGUEZ
Freelance
Saturday, September 23, 2006
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/popculture/story.html
http://a123.g.akamai.net/f/123/12465/1d/media.canada.com/idl/mtgz/20060923/192931-72484.jpg
Dweezil Zappa, seen in 2002 in London, will perform an evening of
Frank's songs in a concert next month that he is co-presenting with his
brother Ahmet.
That rock's supreme iconoclast, Frank Zappa, never made the cover of
Rolling Stone while he was alive was symptomatic of the standoffish way
the rock establishment has approached what, by any stretch of the
imagination, is one of the great musical careers (and gargantuan, with
over 60 official releases, many of them double-CDs) of the 20th
century. Rock critics had a thing, a problem, with Zappa - probably
dating back to when he uttered words that live in infamy: "Most rock
journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk
for people who can't read."
Add a few other caveats - "Most people wouldn't know good music if it
came up and bit them in the ass,"
"I dislike commercial pop because I cannot accept the intention behind
it - I don't get those vibrations from Stravinsky," "Without deviation,
progress is not possible," "I think cynicism is a positive value. The
more people I've encouraged to be cynical, the better job I've done" -
and it's easy to see why critics had great difficulty figuring out
where to slot Zappa in the Great Movements (or Trends) of Our Day.
Zappa's music has turned out to be prescient, of its time, and
timeless. That's why his son Dweezil has concocted a crack new band to
play his father's fiendish music the way it should be played. In his
dad's grandiose tradition it's a world tour, which touches down at
Metropolis on Oct. 24.
Zappa first started making critics, uh, uncomfortable with 1968's We're
Only in It for the Money, its cover outrageously lampooning the
Beatles' Sgt. Pepper, the album that sparked a tidal wave of interest
in rock as "serious" art (the album that, in effect, put rock critics
in business). Zappa zapped the self-seriousness of the counterculture
and its resulting ability to be duped by its own press clippings.
Rock critics celebrated music as generational psychic salvation ("We
can change the world"), and the industry reciprocated with road trips,
junkets, insider access, freebies, quotes in ads and solicitations of
advice - to feel "important." As the industry swelled, so did the
rock-crit establishment.
Most rock critics, almost by necessity, had a vested interest in
extolling the mediocre. The connection between the press and the music
biz, Zappa mused (Musician, November 1991), goes like this: "A guy's
writing in a magazine which some insecure record executive has been
told is hip by his secretary that he's trying to get to (fellate) him.
... They get up in the morning, look in the mirror, spray their hair,
say, 'I'm going to keep my job. ... I don't care how many Milli
Vanillis I gotta sign.' ... These f---ers come from the shoe business,
a lot of them. ... These esteemed gentlemen, based on advice received
from hip magazines that tell you what's hot, will then reshape the size
and texture of American musical culture in their own pinhead image."
The media celebrates "artistes" who make millions and "it is the
millions which make their work quality," said Zappa, who continued,
presaging the DIY ethic (another of his accomplishments): "Yet anyone
can look at what is being done and say, 'Jesus, I can do that!' You
celebrate mediocrity, you get mediocrity. ... Pure excellence terrifies
the f--- out of Americans."
Zappa fans may find his music wildly entertaining and fascinating, but
it is not "easy." So many celebrated rock critics simply pretended he
wasn't there. To wit: Robert Christgau's Record Guide graded over 3,000
albums of the 1980s, but not one by Zappa. An appendix listing those he
left out ends: "Frank Zappa: Oh shut up." Dave Marsh, the self-styled
rock conscience who's written three bios of Bruce Springsteen and a
picture book for Elvis, dismissed Zappa's penchant for "broadside
japes." Others tagged him as "a cynical, scatological joke," sarcastic,
schizophrenic, juvenile, pretentious, condescending, anti-
Semitic, anti-Arab, anti-Catholic and, of course, sexist.
"They can take that sexist business and cram it," he told The Gazette
in 1977. "I'm the only one who will write criticizing the activities of
women as well as men. I give 'em equal shots."
Zappa's fans had no problem reconciling the scatological with technical
complexity.
And some classical artists had no qualms. Pierre Boulez (who
commissioned The Perfect Stranger) sang his praises, as did Zubin
Mehta. "History will be kind to Frank," said Kent Nagano, the Montreal
Symphony Orchestra's new music director, who conducted Zappa's first
two full symphonic recordings in 1983 (with the London Symphony
Orchestra) and learned much from him. "Just because a composer is not
appreciated in his lifetime doesn't mean he won't be after he passes
away. Zappa's very serious, meticulous, with uncompromising clear
thought - just a genius, a brilliant sense of creativity that simply
does not stop."
"I'm not living my life to have a batch of No. 1 records," Zappa told
People magazine in 1989, "but I do have the desire to feel useful." The
fact is, all politics aside, there is no more joyous catalogue in rock.
Zappa's last live releases - The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life
and Make a Jazz Noise Here (both two-CD sets) - were recorded with an
11-piece band in 1988 on his last world tour, which also yielded the
brilliantly sociopolitical Broadway the Hard Way. As a whole, they
survive as a legacy to Zappa's astonishingly wide-ranging depth as
musician and social commentator.
The music galavants along in pure pastiche - heavy rock (including a
mind-blowing reggae version of Stairway to Heaven, with Jimmy Page's
solo transcribed for horn section) laced with loose-limbed L.A.
'40s-based rhythm and blues, modern classicism (Varese, Bartok, Ravel -
a reggae Bolero - Satie, Stravinsky), both big-band and free jazz (The
Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue), novelty pop and doo-wop, raunchy
psychedelia, sci-fi weirdness (of both the cheapo and apocalyptic
variety), and kitchen-sink sounds heavy on both Spike Jones and John
Cage. The pace is gleefully relentless, each tune segueing into the
next. Zappa's band attacks dizzying changes of tempos and points of
musical reference so zealously, with such sheer joy, strangely
reminiscent in spirit of the Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland "Let's put on a
show!" movies.
Zappa was naturally prone to hectoring, but he spoke the truth: "In a
world where most of the 'big groups' go on stage and pretend to sing
and play, we proudly present this quaint little audio artifact. Yes,
once upon a time, live musicians actually sang and played this."
Zappa was a profoundly engaged artist who had no difficulty pursuing
his goals as a serious composer and social satirist, while reaching out
to his audiences (literally) and remaining fiercely uncompromising.
His anti-music-censorship fight at the U.S. Senate in 1985 reflected
his love for music itself. "If the parent is afraid to let the child
read a book, perhaps the $8.98 can be spent on recordings of
instrumental music," he told senators. "Great music with NO WORDS AT
ALL is available to anyone with sense enough to look beyond this week's
platinum-selling fashion plate." To this end, Zappa suggested parents
support music appreciation in schools, which "costs very little
compared to sports expenditures."
Zappa's last decade was enormously creative, but it was an era pop
critics had such a hard time dealing with that they glommed onto
academic-styled postmodernism as a professional (and social) lifeboat.
Composers, Zappa countered, "are supposed to provide some reflection of
the environment in which they live. I am a living composer doing work
during the Reagan Administration."
Thus, Planet of the Baritone Women exposes the "junior executives" who
"carry purses wherever they go," and "talk low 'bout stuff they don't
know." Female stereotypes get called in Any Kind of Pain: "You are the
girl somebody invented in a grim little office on Madison Ave. ... She
dines with actors 'n Wall St. characters: Dull talk, nice clothes - See
her? She blows (She's so important 'cause she gets to do talk shows)."
Match this with his take on the self-importance of the MTV culture (in
Be in My Video): "Atomic light will shine / Through an old venetian
blind / Making patterns on your face / Then it cuts to outer space."
He reserved special attention for ALL major public figures, such as
Michael Jackson (in 1988's Why Don't You Like Me?): "You take the
monkey, I'll take the llama, We'll have a party: get me a Pepsi -
Michael is Janet, Janet is Michael - I'm so confused now - Who is
Diana?"
And, to think, Zappa offered almost non-stop societal comment since
1966's Trouble Every Day, an amazingly prescient tale from the Watts
riots. And you can see Don't Eat the Yellow Snow as the first great
environmental absurdist protest song (anti-baby-seal-hunt). So it goes,
dizzyingly, with ALL of Zappa's catalogue.
Musician magazine once asked Zappa whether his voracious work ethic
made him miss out on the rest of life: "I don't want to climb
mountains, I don't want to do bungee jumping. I haven't missed any of
these things. If you're absorbed by something, what's to miss?"
"Realize that you're in isolation," he told The Progressive. "Live it!
Enjoy it! Just be glad there aren't a bunch of people who want to use
your time. Because along with all the love and admiration that's going
to come from the people that would keep you from being lonely, there is
the emotional freight you have to bear from people who are wasting your
time, and you can't get that back. So when you're ... all by yourself,
guess what you have? You have all of your own time. That's a pretty
good f---ing deal. Something you couldn't buy any place else. And every
time you're out being sociable and having other people be 'nice' to you
so that you don't feel 'lonely,' they're wasting your time."
They also call Uncle Frank a misanthrope.
Zappa Plays Zappa will be staged at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 24 at
Metropolis, 59 Ste. Catherine St. E. The show is sold out.
Frank Zappa: Getting started and beyond
The Best of Frank Zappa (all Ryko label unless noted), his greatest
hits (or, in a more perfect world, those that deserved to be), may spur
you to stronger stuff: Have I Offended Someone?, compiled by Zappa
before he died of prostate cancer on Dec. 4, 1993, and released
posthumously. The naughty songs that don't sound a bit dated or
curdled; gross stereotypes as stone truth.
Best live one-shot dose: Double discs The Best Band You Never Heard in
Your Life (1991) and Make a Jazz Noise Here (1991) chronicle his
ill-fated final 1988 tour. Eleven-member big-band rock at its apex and
a summary of great repertoire.
You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vols. 1-6, are double CDs
chronicling his many road bands in countless locales around the globe.
Themes arise, situations unfold, it's all fascinating. Of note: Vol. 2
Live in Helsinki, the only volume devoted to one concert - prescient
trans-culturalism and a band (George Duke, Tom Fowler, Ruth Underwood,
Chester Thompson) in full swing.
Absolutely Free (1967), We're Only in It for the Money (1968), Lumpy
Gravy (1968): Razor-sharp, joyously malicious social commentary in the
first two, enduring as the most incisive musical portrait of the era,
while the latter is the virtual invention of modern pop sound collage.
The follow-up to Lumpy came 26 years later in Civilization Phaze III
(1994), his last mainly Synclavier work starring many of the same
real-life characters. Abounding in humour and fiendish musical textures
and patterns humans can't play (or so he claimed), a fitting and
chilling end.
The Yellow Shark (1993), where he conducts Germany's crack Ensemble
Modern through his standards, was the last record released while he was
alive. Sonically, it's a masterpiece (each orchestra section had its
own console), and the playing is devoted. The first symphonic
recordings of Zappa, conducted by Kent Nagano in 1983 before he (or
Zappa's classical works) attained fame, are remastered and remixed in
London Symphony Orchestra Vols. I and II.
The Lost Episodes is another collection Zappa worked to assemble before
passing. They are little Rosetta Stones of his career, turning points,
snatches of conversation, very early tapes (Varese meets Stravinsky),
very late work, with a superbly annotated booklet with major FZ input.
Over-Nite Sensation (1973) and Apostrophe (') (1974) were his biggest
commercial successes before Valley Girl, yielding the notorious
Dinah-Moe-Hum off Sensation and surprise Top 10 novelty hit Don't Eat
the Yellow Snow off Apostrophe ('). A huge juicy sound and his most
purely realized socio-absurdism, positioning him at the heart of
cutting-edge teen culture. Add the live Roxy and Elsewhere (1974) and
One Size Fits All (1975, maybe his best-sounding studio album) to
complete a golden period among many.
>From there you're on your own, but I particularly like The Man from
Utopia (1983) and Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention (1985),
featuring the astonishing sound collage Porn Wars, and, going way back,
Weasels Ripped My Flesh (1970).
Charles Ulrich
"Hoodoo" <hoo...@spamcop.net> wrote:
> Mother of Invention
>
> Frank Zappa, one of rock's most creative forces, left a timeless body
> of work that his son Dweezil is taking on the road
>
> JUAN RODRIGUEZ
> Freelance
> Saturday, September 23, 2006
> http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/popculture/story.html
>
> Thus, Planet of the Baritone Women exposes the "junior executives" who
> "carry purses wherever they go," and "talk low 'bout stuff they don't
> know."
Those baritone women, they worry me to death...
--Charles
Zut boF
Thank you very much!! interesting.
Martin Gregorie
> JUAN RODRIGUEZ
> Freelance
> Saturday, September 23, 2006
> http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/popculture/story.html
>
--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |
Hoodoo
Martin Gregorie wrote:
> Hoodoo wrote:
> > JUAN RODRIGUEZ
> > Freelance
> > Saturday, September 23, 2006
> > http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/popculture/story.html
> >
> An excellent review piece. Thanks for posting it.
You and Zut bof are both welcome.
wß
> Mother of Invention
>
> Frank Zappa, one of rock's most creative forces, left a timeless body
> of work that his son Dweezil is taking on the road
>
> JUAN RODRIGUEZ
> Freelance
> Saturday, September 23, 2006
> http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/popculture/story.html
>
> http://a123.g.akamai.net/f/123/12465/1d/media.canada.com/idl/mtgz/20060923/192931-72484.jpg
> Dweezil Zappa, seen in 2002 in London, will perform an evening of
> Frank's songs in a concert next month that he is co-presenting with his
> brother Ahmet.
>
>
> That rock's supreme iconoclast, Frank Zappa, never made the cover of
> Rolling Stone while he was alive was symptomatic of the standoffish way
SNIP------SNIP-----SNIP-----SNIP------SNIP-----SNIP-----SNIP------SNIP-----SNIP-----SNIP------SNIP
Frank was on the cover of RS as early as June of 1968.
http://www.rollingstone.com/photos/gallery/5392210/1968_rolling_stone_covers/photo/11/large
I question the credentials of any journalist that would make such a
glaring mistake. Especially when one could have easily gone to the
source and found the facts. Keep your day job Juan.
Tomasz Michalak
I wonder what kind of pajamas they wear once they really undress. In other
words, what's got into them.
globual
"Charles Ulrich" <ulr...@sfu.ca> wrote in message
news:ulrich-C2C0CA.13575423092006@shawnews...