The Multi-faceted Frank Zappa

[larsvsnapster]

Wow.  Pleasant surprise.  Zappa got brought up and no one's going on about those goddamn guitar solos.  UMG is pushing him as this clown who sings about titties and shreds on a guitar.  And they're completely ignoring the big bands, the synclavier, and the orchestral stuff that he excelled at.

Here's some of my favourites (and this is from being a fan since Grand Wazoo came out):

Favourite big band tune: "The Purple Lagoon"
Favourite song that Frank didn't sing:  "Doreen"
Favourite song that Frank did sing:  "The Radio Is Broken."
Favourite band:  the Roxy band.
Favourite guitar solo:  "Revised Music for Guitar & Low Budget Orchestra."  "While You Were Out" is a close second, but generally I don't like them.
Favourite album: Feeding the Monkees at ma Maison
Favourite posthumous song that took forever to get released:  "Imaginary Diseases."
Favourite orchestral excursion:  "Sad Jane"
Favourite chamber excursion: "G-Spot Tornado" as played on The Yellow Shark
Worst album:  Thing-Fish
Best album: tossup between Uncle Meat, We're Only in It for the Money, and Läther.

This isn't really common knowledge but if there's such a thing as a sell-out, Frank's it.  The sell-out occurred when the Mothers ended and he started playing more songs about titties and stuff from his albums, also pushing them onstage, something he'd never done before.  The Mothers ceased to exist when he fired Herb Cohen (Herbienacht).  Before Herbienacht he approached the repertoire like a jazz band, with it changing nightly and frequently failing in some way.  After Herbienacht there were three sets and two of them would be played each night, with deviation coming at the end of the tours -- the most infamous example is Zappa playing "Stump the Band" on stage for about half an hour in Des Moines and the band just fell completely apart in the most humourous way -- that tape is really a scream.  Before Herbienacht you might hear one song that you'd heard before but it was going to be so radically different you might not recognise the tune.  That happened occasionally afterward (most notably in Omaha about three months before Tinseltown Rebellion got released).

The early 80's were a hard time to be a Zappa fan in some respects.  Nothing was available except the most recent album and used prices shot to the sky.       Nobody remotely in the jam band format was cool except for Television, and i don't know how they got away with it. 

[Guybrush]

I love that song and album. I really like Zappa's compositional style in general, but it's frustrating because I'm not a fan of his vocals or lyrics. So the instrumental stuff is where it's at for me.

You ever listen to Jazz from Hell? Very interesting synth, sampler and early digital sequencing experiments and it's a fun album.

I've listened to Jazz from Hell, but I'm a little sad to say his Synclavier stuff doesn't quite do it for me.

Some of the later orchestral stuff is nice, especially Yellow Shark ❤️

Wow.  Pleasant surprise.  Zappa got brought up and no one's going on about those goddamn guitar solos.  UMG is pushing him as this clown who sings about titties and shreds on a guitar.  And they're completely ignoring the big bands, the synclavier, and the orchestral stuff that he excelled at.

Here's some of my favourites (and this is from being a fan since Grand Wazoo came out):

Favourite big band tune: "The Purple Lagoon"
Favourite song that Frank didn't sing:  "Doreen"
Favourite song that Frank did sing:  "The Radio Is Broken."
Favourite band:  the Roxy band.
Favourite guitar solo:  "Revised Music for Guitar & Low Budget Orchestra."  "While You Were Out" is a close second, but generally I don't like them.
Favourite album: Feeding the Monkees at ma Maison
Favourite posthumous song that took forever to get released:  "Imaginary Diseases."
Favourite orchestral excursion:  "Sad Jane"
Favourite chamber excursion: "G-Spot Tornado" as played on The Yellow Shark
Worst album:  Thing-Fish
Best album: tossup between Uncle Meat, We're Only in It for the Money, and Läther.

This isn't really common knowledge but if there's such a thing as a sell-out, Frank's it.  The sell-out occurred when the Mothers ended and he started playing more songs about titties and stuff from his albums, also pushing them onstage, something he'd never done before.  The Mothers ceased to exist when he fired Herb Cohen (Herbienacht).  Before Herbienacht he approached the repertoire like a jazz band, with it changing nightly and frequently failing in some way.  After Herbienacht there were three sets and two of them would be played each night, with deviation coming at the end of the tours -- the most infamous example is Zappa playing "Stump the Band" on stage for about half an hour in Des Moines and the band just fell completely apart in the most humourous way -- that tape is really a scream.  Before Herbienacht you might hear one song that you'd heard before but it was going to be so radically different you might not recognise the tune.  That happened occasionally afterward (most notably in Omaha about three months before Tinseltown Rebellion got released).

The early 80's were a hard time to be a Zappa fan in some respects.  Nothing was available except the most recent album and used prices shot to the sky.      Nobody remotely in the jam band format was cool except for Television, and i don't know how they got away with it. 

Thanks, Lars! I'll go through some of those favorites for sure 🙂 we also have a Zappa thread buried here somewhere.

I think we also favor slightly different ends of his discography, but that's of course one of the great things about him. He was so productive and covered so much musical ground.

My favorites in general are his 70s albums with The Mothers, so Grand Wazoo is a good example. I also love their final album, One Size Fits All. I'm not a huge fan of, say, Lumpy Gravy (at least not yet). Still, Uncle Meat is great and I think we agree on Thing-fish.

About him selling out, my knee-jerk reaction would be that can't be accurate. Doesn't selling out mean going against your principles for monetary gain? Generally speaking, it seems to me like he took his artistry in the direction he wanted to go.

[larsvsnapster]

About him selling out, my knee-jerk reaction would be that can't be accurate. Doesn't selling out mean going against your principles for monetary gain? Generally speaking, it seems to me like he took his artistry in the direction he wanted to go.

ooh don't turn into a Zappa fan on me!  LOL 

Bongo Fury was the final Mothers album, but there was a tour in early 76 under the Mothers name.  "Black Napkins" from Zoot Allures is the final new Mothers track.  For most of 1976 the "band" was just him and Terry. 

The sellout was actually well hidden.  It didn't dawn on me that's what happened in that time period until I got all the live tapes (and I must have 1000 or more).  I saw him on the early 77 Zoot Allures tour. Yes, he did the "tour the album" bit twice -- Zoot Allures and Them Or Us were the honorees,  I was amazed that he was referencing it onstage -- I thought that was so un-Zappa-like, playing songs from the records.  But I understand why it was that way -- when he fired Herbie his assets got frozen and he needed to make money really quickly.  Them Or Us got the push because in the few months before it came out, the only album available was the Shut Up 'n' Play Yer Guitar box, and despite what the Time/Life version of Zappa would have you believe, it didn't sell.  It was supposed to be limited edition but it stayed available for about 5 years.  Drowning Witch despite having The Hit on it, was out of print in something ridiculous like 8 months. 

Basically if you go back to the Mothers with the live tapes, those are interesting in the jam band sense because the set was never ever the same twice and it wasn't available on records yet.  Starting with Zoot Allures they played a fixed setlist nightly.  And all of them had to include "Dinah Moe Humm" as the encore which might be my least favourite Zappa song.  As you get into the era where the band was just called Zappa, the live tapes get super boring because the deviation and the "You Call That Music?" stuff vanished by the 2nd SNL appearance.  I was wrong but I distinctly remember seeing the 84 band and thinking, wow, I never thought Zappa would become a nostalgia act, but that was the feel at that show.  All the weird editing for the live archival things obscured this.  With Mothers live tapes, I can pretty much date it to the month, sometimes the week.  With the live tapes after Herbienacht, they're a total bore until the end of the tours, when Frank would bring the weirdness back for say, the last 5 or 6 shows.  I can date the wacky shows, but aside from a few lyric mutations, they played the majority of the tours straight with little deviation.   

[Guybrush]

Yes, well.. there certainly is a shift in the way he's working that might go well with your observations. My impression is that after Mothers, the creativity in his music does seem to shift more into the studio and particularly into the mixing part of music production. Increasingly, he was splicing parts and making music that hadn't actually been played like that by his band.

So to me, it seems like there's a gradual shift into a more introverted artist. We know that ends up with him increasingly making music on his own with the Synclavier and also focusing more on his orchestral music with London Symphony Orchestra and Ensemble Modern.

I remember from his autobiography that he doesn't have all that much to say about his band mates then. He was an employer and they were employees. For example, I remember very little (if anything) about Adrian Belew or Steve Vai. He complains a bit about the unionized musicians in the LSO and writes that it's good to be up at nights and sleep during days because it lets you avoid people. The Synclavier removes human mistakes and the need for interactions and directions. It seems to me he tired of people and turned more and more into a misanthrope.

It also does seem like he also grew tired of being a rock star in the early half of the 80s. Maybe he couldn't get the chemistry quite where he wanted it with his band or just grew tired of working that way?

Everybody needs money and I'm sure he made business decisions, but some of the decisions he'll make in the 80s are definitely artistic decisions.

[Lexi Darling]

I think Zappa always just kind of did whatever he wanted at that particular moment. Like when he randomly discovered some old classical composer with a similar name as him and decided to make an album of Synclavier covers of that composer's pieces. I also think it's quite lovely music.

[larsvsnapster]

it seems like there's a gradual shift into a more introverted artist.

He was always a bit of an introvert in terms of being the guy in charge, but I didn't see it the times I met him.  I have this weird knack of being in the right place at the right time -- so .... whenever Frank would come to NYC to play, the day of the show (if it weren't a run), I'd go to Bleecker Bob's (where it was easy to meet your favourite musicians -- who didn't I meet there? LOL) and shop for a couple of hours and sure enough Frank would walk in the door.  By 1978 he recognised me by name.  Since I know when you meet your favourite musicians you stay off their work until they mention it, I never really got to ask many questions about stuff, but I did ask him just before the Halloween run at the Palladium, the season where Adrian was in the band, what was going to be the monster song this time around.  He grimaced slightly and said "Wild Love" (which hadn't come out yet).  I asked "not Pound? Not Dupree? not King Kong?"  He said that the band has better replicating chops than they did jazz chops, but that they were going to play the Teenage Werewolf version (his words) of Pound, and they did (it's in Baby Snakes).

I appeared in Baby Snakes as well for about a second.  I'm just simply saying "He rocks" when asked what I thought of him.  It's in the audience sequence just before the Poodle Lecture. 

[Guybrush]

He was always a bit of an introvert in terms of being the guy in charge, but I didn't see it the times I met him.  I have this weird knack of being in the right place at the right time -- so .... whenever Frank would come to NYC to play, the day of the show (if it weren't a run), I'd go to Bleecker Bob's (where it was easy to meet your favourite musicians -- who didn't I meet there? LOL) and shop for a couple of hours and sure enough Frank would walk in the door.  By 1978 he recognised me by name.  Since I know when you meet your favourite musicians you stay off their work until they mention it, I never really got to ask many questions about stuff, but I did ask him just before the Halloween run at the Palladium, the season where Adrian was in the band, what was going to be the monster song this time around.  He grimaced slightly and said "Wild Love" (which hadn't come out yet).  I asked "not Pound? Not Dupree? not King Kong?"  He said that the band has better replicating chops than they did jazz chops, but that they were going to play the Teenage Werewolf version (his words) of Pound, and they did (it's in Baby Snakes).

I appeared in Baby Snakes as well for about a second.  I'm just simply saying "He rocks" when asked what I thought of him.  It's in the audience sequence just before the Poodle Lecture. 

Wow, Lars.. so cool 🙂 I do feel like meeting Zappa might've been a little intimidating.

I do have Baby Snakes, so I'll take a gander and see if I can spot you!

Also, it would be sad if someone read the Zappa thread and this lovely bit of conversation wasn't there, so I'll move and merge some of these posts.

[larsvsnapster]

Zappa's great but the entire Rock In Opposition subgenre puts him in the shade.  I think you have to hear many live tapes to reach that point. 

Even with all the complexity I can hear where a lot of his stuff came from (e.g. all the melodies from sea shanties), but I find Henry Cow to be far more interesting and their offshoot band Art Bears just sounds like it beamed down from outer space to me.  Where could that possibly have come from?  How can it be so harmonically out and still be tertian? I learned so many more musical tricks with Art Bears' three albums than I have with Zappa's entire discography. 

I still like him but there are three things preventing me from actively listening to him any more.  The first one is not particularly liking the guitar solos -- Frank would play 30,000 notes where David Gilmour plays one with finely controlled nuance.  The second one is "Dinah Moe Humm" 30,000 times -- I can live without that one.  You can throw "Camarillo Brillo", "Mud Shark", and "Muffin Man" in there as well too.  The third one is, well he's been dead 30 bloody years, and the world he references doesn't exist anymore.  I mean you can still buy some white but you're not getting it at a gas station.

And in case anyone thinks I'm slagging him, I want to point out that if you truly love something you can be critical about it. 

[Guybrush]

And in case anyone thinks I'm slagging him, I want to point out that if you truly love something you can be critical about it. 

Sure thing! No artist is perfect and it makes for more interesting discussions if we accept that. Like his view on women/gay people doesn't always seem great (though more of its time) and Broken Hearts are for Assholes is just gross.

Also, we should have a RIO thread at some point!

[Lexi Darling]

Sure thing! No artist is perfect and it makes for more interesting discussions if we accept that. Like his view on women/gay people doesn't always seem great (though more of its time) and Broken Hearts are for Assholes is just gross.

Also, we should have a RIO thread at some point!

Yeah, I definitely agree there, I find a lot of his lyrics to be very juvenile, and not in the fun bratty punk way.

[Guybrush]

Yeah, I definitely agree there, I find a lot of his lyrics to be very juvenile, and not in the fun bratty punk way.

I'm generally very tolerant of things of a transgressive nature, but I would agree some of his lyrics are unfortunate (with a very good example mentioned above). I've often wondered why he leaned so heavily into it. Obviously he thought it was funny and for the most part, I also think so. But I've wondered how big a part of it was, say, a middle finger to the people who'd rather censor him. I assume that must factor in a little bit.

I much prefer his lyrics when they're about landing strips for aliens, his neighbors, sofas, talking dogs (not necessarily poodles) or about growing dental ("dennil"?) floss on the prairie.

Edit:

Here's one of his rarer autobiographical songs 🙂

And it showcases a quality that I greatly admire; to be able to make music outside the pop format, but still make it really catchy ❤️

[Lexi Darling]

I'm generally very tolerant of things of a transgressive nature, but I would agree some of his lyrics are unfortunate (with a very good example mentioned above). I've often wondered why he leaned so heavily into it. Obviously he thought it was funny and for the most part, I also think so. But I've wondered how big a part of it was, say, a middle finger to the people who'd rather censor him. I assume that must factor in a little bit.

I much prefer his lyrics when they're about landing strips for aliens, his neighbors, sofas, talking dogs (not necessarily poodles) or about growing dental ("dennil"?) floss on the prairie.

I'm fine with being transgressive if it's done with some sense of purpose, but I think a lot of his humor is made through cheap jokes and crassness for crassness's sake. I'm not shocked or challenged by something like "Jewish Princess", I just groan.

[Guybrush]

I'm fine with being transgressive if it's done with some sense of purpose, but I think a lot of his humor is made through cheap jokes and crassness for crassness's sake. I'm not shocked or challenged by something like "Jewish Princess", I just groan.

It's a little sad and unfortunate to his reputation that Sheik Yerbouti is his most popular record (I believe) because it does not deserve that distinction.

Though the songs Baby Snakes and Flakes are fun 🙂

[Psy-Fi]

When I was in my teens and even into my 20's, I thought a lot of Zappa's sexual themed lyrics were as funny as they seemed outrageous to me at that time. I started to tire of that type of humor from my 30's onward and couldn't care less about that type of lyricism now. I like to think I outgrew that phase of life and have matured but maybe I'm just gettin' old. 

[Lisnaholic]

No, you've moved in the right direction, Psy-Fi! Like Mrs. Waffles, I never liked the juvenile humour that turns up so often in his lyrics. Surely FZ was smart enough to realize that something that's funny/shocking first time you hear it is going to wear real thin after (thank you for the statistic,Lars!) 30,000 listenings ?

Thanks for The Village Of The Sun clip, Guybrush: that's a new one for me. It's a pity he didn't do a few more sincere autobiographical songs - but then of course he wouldn't be Zappa. I might as well wish that Van Morrison did more albums like The Grand Wazoo.