Zappa - C/D

Forgot Weasels, only got the older cd version of that one.
& not sure about date now, Amazon had it down as 30th of July. Read elsewhere that new cds come out on tuesdays in USA. & where that would leave Ireland I don't know, wondering if these will appear locally.

i'm not a zappa expert --- what are the Bitches Brew-alikes? sounds intriguing.

Grand Wazoo has some shades.

I just can't see or hear Bitches Brew as a point of comparison.

I get this low-boiling anxiety and helplessness when I learn that someone who I respect likes Frank Zappa; it's weird. It's this sense that what the person considers "music" is something totally different than what I do--that what they engage with when they listen to things that come out of speakers is just this totally different, alien thing. I find Zappa completely and utterly impenetrable and unrelatable--not musically, but emotionally/intellectually. I understand exactly what Cale meant when he said he doesn't think Zappa actually likes music. Zappa makes me feel empty inside.

So you would say the answer is...dud?

Haha, there was some undercaffeinated oversensitivity happening there, but yeah, one of my all-time duds!

I would say that music is the only thing he liked, and that he hated every other thing in the universe, including himself. I try not to evangelize for his music as much as I used to, though.

Even though I don't like most of Zappa's albums, dislike his comp style as a whole and am constantly frustrated by his ah "zaniness" as was mentioned in that other thread, I would never go so far as to call him a dud. At least Freak Out!, the juicy parts of Joe's Garage and Sheik Yerbouti (Watermelon in Easter Hay, Bobby Brown, Dancin' Fool), and jeez I really like The Yellow Shark, beautiful performances and interesting writing. "Zappa hates music" sounds like an asset in a musician afaic.

"Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is THE BEST."

I would say that music is the only thing he liked, and that he hated every other thing in the universe, including himself. I try not to evangelize for his music as much as I used to, though.

― Your sweet bippy is going to hell (WmC), Saturday, August 11, 2012 1:17 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Interesting point, to which I would reply: that sure is a funny way to treat something you love... That angle is interesting, though; is his misanthropy pretty well documented?

I don't understand the concept of a musician who hates music, much less one with dozens of albums many of which are self-released. Could you explain this a little more clearly?

I figure if you 'hate music' then you just wouldn't make any music. I can understand subjectively saying what he does is not music, but you can't deny that what he does it involves chord progressions, melodies, and the use of multiple musical instruments.

One possible scenario: you hate the music of your contemporaries, and in listening to it, there's a strong creative response to make something that exists in opposition to that which you hate.

Ha, that's not really hating music as much as hating a specific type of music though.

Working seriously and intensively at music in a professional way can definitely make it both less fun and less mysterious/thrilling, which is where I originally thought you may have been coming from when you said hating music is a good quality in a musician.

Another: you hate music now but loved it as a child. a) Your creative process borne out of the frustration of loss. b) You create music compulsively in the hopes that the love you once felt appears again, and it does, in glimpses, when a new chord progression appears, or when you succeed in finishing a verse. c) Your love for music as a child meant you sought training, now it's all you can do to pay the bills. Your only alternative career is in the service industry.

I suppose I just cannot identify with an approach to music that involves writing lyrics about toilet humor, or being so self-consciously zany, or (like in that anecdote upthread) writing stuff with seventh-notes 11 ledger lines above the staff and being such a Nazi about someone sight-reading it promptly. I like plenty of music that could be described as non-emotional, but Zappa's stuff seems so purposefully non-emotional and non-expressive. I cannot sink my teeth into it at all.

is his misanthropy pretty well documented?

― Clarke B., Saturday, August 11, 2012 12:04 PM (1 hour ago)

his misanthropy is very well documented in his music, imo.

fwiw, there was some discussion of similar criticisms in the rush/yes/zappa thread. i more or less agree with you, but accept that sound-minded others get something out of his stuff that i don't and perhaps just can't.

wow, so zany and non-emotional

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq7QL8fYBkc

Yeah, but that was earnestness very much out of character.

man the Ruben & the Jets album is really, really something else. Formally it's a total masterpiece. Content-wise there are some heavy "wait...fuck you, maybe?" moments: weird racial stuff, complicated somewhat by the ethnic makeup of the band I think -- some of these guys putting on SoCal Chicano accents & playin' 'em for laffs are Chicano. But the last song on the proper album, "Stuff Up the Cracks," caught me unawares this morning and I laughed the sort of open, genuine laugh Zappa almost never elicits, it completely cracked me up.

Totally fascinating record, really similar to what Greg Cartwright does: mining a single genre for formal tropes that're sort of known but uncatalogued. The disc I got is Greasy Love Songs & the tacked on interviews are fascinating in that Zappa's meanness, his general dislike of people, is clear, but then he talks about the actual musical motivation for R&TJ -- "I wanted to play this style of music I really like," not an exact quote but very close -- and the thing that makes him really frustrating comes through: this is a guy who, if he'd, like, spent some time in therapy, or maybe dropped some acid, might have shed some of his insecurities and been an artist who didn't have to cloak his work in nasty insecurities. And in his pretty intense focus on doo-wop musical structures, approaching this style as a compositional challenge...it's a hell of an album imo

such a shame he gave up writing songs like this and went for the easy sex "jokes" instead. love that little arpeggio-like run at the end of some verses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBpG-KI2sEA

For me "We're Only in it For the Money" was the one that resonated with me the most. The song "Mom & Dad" is so incredible, especially the line "ever take a minute just to show a real emotion?", which made me feel (in the context of everything else) that Zappa was really some kind of genius; also the line "Ever tell your kids you're glad that they can think? Ever say you love them, ever let them watch you drink?"...little did I know that Zappa himself would soon go entire albums without showing any emotion at all!

I laughed the sort of open, genuine laugh Zappa almost never elicits

I still do this on "Flakes" during the Dylan impression (especially that quiet one note *honk* that randomly crops up in the background), but that's Adrian Belew isn't it? Still it's weird that I'm shocked when I laugh at something of his, considering he interjects 'humor' into like 75% of the songs he ever wrote.

yeah, he's a weirdo. there are some songs on that particular record that are obv. genius

but i don't get him/find him severely off-putting

-most aggressively repulsive facial hair ever
-even when i was 11 years old i thought titties and beer, bobby brown and most of the scatalogical-themed stuff on joe's garage was more corny than funny
-the stuff that people are repping for, like watermelon doesn't do much for me
-his famous speech to pmrc i actually disagreed with his main point-- people are in fact hugely influenced by popular culture, lyrics they hear in pop songs. his thing of "if people were really that influenced then people would be loving each other all over the world b/c most songs on the radio are love songs" is bullshit and strangely naive coming from him. most "love" songs on the radio are about infatuation or variations on jealousy, which yeah is pretty reliably a global phenomenon. there are not many songs about agape tho. (crew sluts was not big-enough hit to count as such)

eh his point stands. people don't experience infatuation because they heard a song about it and got ~influenced.~ people write songs about infatuation because it's a thing that people experience, and pop songwriters work under the theory that if you sing about stuff people relate to, they'll like it.

yeah, that's more than valid

but i'm pretty sure the point he was making to the pmrc commission was conflating the concept of eros and agape

like as i recall, and i'm too lazy to look up his speech so forgive me, but what i got from it at the time was that he was saying "oh there's all these 'love songs' so by that logic there should be peace on earth by now"

which is bullshit in more than one way by my reckoning

but anyway, i think that people are definitely influenced by songs and lyrical content. elsewise none of us would be here on a board called "i love music"

yes, one-shooter videogames do not immediately translate into some guy doing a killing spree

but people obv take cues from popular music to some extent. it's not exclusively songwriters trying to make a buck from giving ppl things they imagine a hypothetical audience will immediately relate to

You know what's fucked? That compilation "Strictly Commercial". I'd say DUD but how else could you cull Zappa's material down to 18-22 tracks?

On one hand it frustrates that there's only four 60s tracks ("Guitar... Mama", "Peaches", "...Water turn black", "Trouble every day", and all sorts of imo lousy 70s Apostrophe-era crap, nothing from Joe's Garage. But could anybody do any better?

Anyway I only brought it up b/c I bought it on CD at 15 and it's, well, it's not a good compilation.

@ del I think there was an element of modernist affectation in Zappa's lyrical approach, tbh. That is, he was deliberately pushing the envelope of "what you could say on a record" because he thought it brought him closer to Xenakis or w/e

yeah I think that's otm. Zappa also has severe music-school envy. Which is so hilarious because I don't know one person who went to music school who isn't pretty down on music school

I may have made that point the other day btw. See also "worst part about getting old" thread.

Didn't it have the title cut from Joe's? xxxp

The song "Joe's Garage" is on Strictly Commercial. And though I don't entirely love Apostrophe, it was one of his commercial peaks.

Xposts

@ del I think there was an element of modernist affectation in Zappa's lyrical approach, tbh. That is, he was deliberately pushing the envelope of "what you could say on a record" because he thought it brought him closer to Xenakis or w/e

yeah, i can get that. i guess there weren't so many people back then just coming out with that sort of lyrical content

but, he did it so persistently and in such a juvenile way for the most part that i find it more off-putting on the whole than revolutionary or whatever

my mistake re Joe's Garage

That quote about love songs is dumb but I do not think it was part of his PMRC testimony, which I just read in its entirety. I think he may have said it on CNN Crossfire?

PMRC hearings: http://www.joesapt.net/superlink/shrg99-529/toc.html

("People are not influenced by song lyrics" was not his main point.)

Yeah, but that was earnestness very much out of character.

I don't get the tendency on ILM to judge an artist by their entire career. Zappa is similar to the Dead in that sense. They each made about 5 or 6 great albums at the start of their career before a long and prolific downhill slide and tons of live dreck. But people always want to focus on the later stuff and their bad perceptions of all of the fans who like the later crap. I knew that somebody would claim that WOIIFTM was an outlier. But to me it makes sense to start from what are widely considered to be the artist's best albums.

I love the sound of the Ruben and the Jets album - the arrangements and Ray Collins' singing in particular.

do love ruth underwood, good showcase, and a pretty sweet jam once they get away from being all "crazy":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PS_AVFIGEk

A couple of years ago, when I heard that Frank was ill, I called him up. For 14 years we had no contact at all. He invited me to the house and we enjoyed some really nice visits with each other. Last June ('93) he called and asked if he could sample some of my stuff. I was shocked because I hadn't touched a pair of mallets since March of '77. I ended up practicing for 14 hours, which was all the time I could get together in the context of my life now. I spent four days at Frank's house sampling. This was really a miracle for me - that I could be reunited with him and still have something to offer.

i'm not a fan, so i don't know whether or not that's the best display of ruth, but it always impressed me

if he'd, like, spent some time in therapy, or maybe dropped some acid, might have shed some of his insecurities and been an artist who didn't have to cloak his work in nasty insecurities

LOL.

No doubt he heard this all the time! And it's been brought up a few times on these Zappa thread. If only he wasn't an asshole and liked people....well maybe he just wouldn't have a reason to make music. Frank Zappa the well-adjusted encyclopedia salesman or something.

What do you recommend, Primal Therapy? Healing crystal? Maybe Xanax, or put him on some other anti-depressants? The world was trying to change FZ and he in turn was like 'Who are you to tell me what to be?' Thus horrible songs about the worst scum on the planet.

It's funny dyspeptic 'cos it's true.

("People are not influenced by song lyrics" was not his main point.)

ok, thanks. huh. maybe i am confusing his testimony with someone else's, or an incidental soundbite of his delivered to me

billy joel's of course, got really heated

anyway i still think zappa was a creep and would have been less so if he had maybe experimented with drugs (@ adam bruneau)

What was Billy Joel's testimony? I can't find any record of it

sorry that was a "joke"