Ed Palermo: We're Only In It For The Music
Hoodoo
- - -
Ed Palermo: We're Only In It For The Music
Published: November 16, 2009
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=34551
By Ian Patterson
Ian is dedicated to the promotion of jazz all over the world and to
catching just a little piece of it for himself.
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/media/large/7/0/b/1e8476125d96225a2100b85438d5f.jpg
Ed Palermo (center, on alto) with Ed Palermo Big Band
It's got to be love, hasn't it? Why else would someone bother to
transcribe 200 of Frank Zappa's tunes? For what other reason would
someone dedicate himself for over 15 years to presenting his
arrangements of Zappa's music in the setting of a 17-piece jazz big
band, and at a loss to boot?
Yes, it's safe to say that saxophonist, composer and arranger Ed Palermo
really, really loves Frank.
Palermo's love affair with the music of Zappa began in 1969, when as a
receptive 14-year-old, he saw Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in
concert, an experience which would forever change the way Palermo saw
music. Forty years on, the flames of love are undiminished, and Palermo
and his wonderfully talented big band have released their third CD of
Palermo's adventurous arrangements of Zappa's music, Eddy Loves Frank
(Cuneiform, 2009). This latest recording in Palermo's ongoing Zappa
project shows Zappa's challenging compositions in a whole new light. At
the same time, loudly making the case for Palermo's big band as being
one of the very best on the contemporary jazz scene.
Sadly, Eddy's love is unrequited, as Zappa passed away in '93, and never
heard Palermo's heartfelt tribute to his vast musical legacy. Listening
to Palermo's bold, swinging reinventions of Zappa's music one cannot
help but feel that Zappa would have approved mightily.
All About Jazz: Firstly, congratulations on Eddy Loves Frank, I'm sure
you must be pretty pleased with the way it turned out.
Ed Palermo: : Yes, it's the best thing I've ever done in my life.
AAJ: Your previous Zappa-inspired CD, Take Your Clothes off When You
Dance (Cuneiform, 2006) was most impressive, but I think this latest CD
is even stronger.
EP: Thank you so much; I loved that one too, but what I like about Eddy
Loves Frank is that I was more creative with the structures of the
songs. I decided to take more chances and to get further away from Frank
Zappa's versions of them.
AAJ: It must have taken a long time to transcribe these songs in the
first place, any of them, but particularly "Echidna's Arf (of You)" and
"Night School."
EP: Well, that's an interesting thing. For both of those songs, as far
as the transcription goes, I had help. I mention in the liner notes that
99 percent of the music that my band does I did the transcriptions
myself, but the "Night School" transcription was done by a friend of
mine named Tom Trapp, and "Echidna's Arf..." was transcribed by Robbie
Mangano. I took their transcriptions and made my arrangements of them.
After the transcription is done then I have the fun part of making the
arrangement out of it. For example, "Don't you ever wash that thing" was
not an easy one to transcribe; I would say that it probably took me five
hours. Once all the notes are down the way Frank Zappa's band played
them, then I think to myself: "Right, what do I want to do with this?" I
wanted to use all the parts that Frank wrote but to juggle them around,
to make it more interesting for me but mainly so that the hardcore Zappa
fans can listen to it and be surprised.
One of my main goals in this whole project is to give a big musical rush
to the hardcore Zappa fans, because my philosophy is that whether you
ever heard Zappa's music, or liked it or not, I think anyone can get
into what I'm doing here but I want to focus on the hardcore Zappa fans.
I want the hardcore fans to be really surprised, and there's no way I
can surprise them if I structure everything the way Frank does it. But
it's much more rewarding for me and the audience, I believe, if they are
familiar with the song but they don't know what part's coming next. For
example, on "Don't You Ever Wash That Thing," I took Zappa's coda and
used it as my intro. Then I did a lot of slicing and dicing, just
juggling stuff around because it's very important to me to put the
surprise element in this music.
AAJ: You make it sound a lot simpler than it probably was. How much
rehearsal time was needed to nail this material before you could record
it to your satisfaction?
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=34434
Ed Palermo Big Band: Eddy Loves Frank
EP: A lot, a lot. It's interesting, because with "Don't You Ever Wash
That Thing?" and "Echidna's Arf...," we'd been playing those songs live
for about seven or eight years but playing them in a way much closer to
the way Zappa recorded them. So by the time it came to record Eddy Loves
Frank all the guys knew those parts real well, but I had to confuse
matters by writing completely new arrangements. So yeah, we had to
rehearse quite a bit for the CD.
When we used to play at The Bottom Line, New York, and we played there
from '94 to 2003, we used to rehearse once a week, and each rehearsal
was only two hours. Compare that to Zappa's band�he used to rehearse six
hours a day, six days a week.
AAJ: That's maybe why so many musicians came and went in his bands.
EP: Exactly, although Frank was able to pay his guys real well and I
definitely cannot. The guys in my band are doing this strictly out of
love, and the fact that they can play material this difficult and nail
it so incredibly well, and make next to nothing, I am forever in their debt.
[1] 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | Next Page
Ed Palermo at All About Jazz
<http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=10073>
Visit Ed Palermo on the web
<http://www.palermobigband.com/>
Related Video
ED PALERMO BIG BAND ~ KING KONG / 21st CENTURY SCHIZOID MAN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHffJ-UPUbw
--
"Think with your dipstick, Jimmy."