Zappa - C/D

I like The Velvet Underground but yeah I don't know if I'd get along with Lou Reed as a person. It really doesn't matter to me. He's putting on a persona in a song and when I listen I'm indulging it just like he is, and that's just how the musician-audience listening experience. We're both connecting to something that transcends personal differences. Maybe it's stupid and gross but the world can be stupid and gross at times just like it can be at beautiful other times.

"just how the musician-audience listening experience works"

Uh sorry for that grammar. I'm kind of out of it.

Your Dedalus to Lou's Bloom was such a perfect wit.

Getting back to the "Zappa Hates Music" thing: I can't claim to be an expert on Zappa or anything, but one of the things I took away from reading the autobio a couple years ago was that during the latter half of his career he became more entrenched in his dislike of "Rock Music" and it's audience. He'd always held contempt, but as in private he was moving more towards Contempory Composition and attempting to write for orchestras, he began to churn out more low-brow rock stuff and perform concerts of that material so he could raise money to have scores drafted in hopes for getting major ensembles to perform his "Serious Music". He doesn't say in so many words, but he basically considered his commercial stuff from the late '70s-early '80s pandering to the rock crowd (with of course a bunch of caustic social commentry and jaw-dropping explorations of musical chops integrated in).

Do you really think this about Zappa as a person or is this your critique on his work?

in every interview and in his work it seems this way to me - it's not just me, we went into this upthread. it's like, the targets of his attacks aren't always necessarily hypocrites or Bad Dudes - they're just people living their lives and getting called big dummies for it by (the narrator of) Frank Zappa ('s entire ouvre pretty much without exception). He is a case - I think there are more of these than people generally allow - where the work and the person are expressions of the same character, which in Zappa's case is a pretty nasty bit of work. Sometimes that can be pretty hilarious, sometimes it's a moot point because he's just telling little stories without heroes or villains but a bunch of schmoes the he (or his persona, if we insist, but I don't) really thinks are clued-out dickheads.

this gets us into lots of general propositions about writing & performance & big long late night coffee discussions but yeah. I think persona as shield from evaluation of person is a vastly, vastly overstated proposition. if your entire career you sing songs through the voice of a guy who looks down on everybody & that guy is pretty much never skewered by your satire, you're telling me something about yourself whether you like it or not.

I say this, mind you, as a guy who is listening to loads of Zappa and loving it right now. But I do think, no, it's not that this guy's persona is unpleasant. It's that this guy is a dick.

and would have been less so if he had maybe experimented with drugs

lol

OTM. I've been a dedicated FZ listener since I bought Sheik Yerbouti in mid-1979 -- bought everything, sold half of it in the late 80s, repented and rebought it all, read most of the bios and a lot of the interviews, and he was just a deeply hate-driven person at his core. The "why" will never really be known -- he had a few really awful experiences, but couldn't process them emotionally so they kept coming back up as gouts of bile.

I think the main aspect of his compositional genius is that as an autodidact, he really did see all music as flowing from the same headwaters, and refused to accept the genre differences that separated Johnny "Guitar" Watson from Edgard Varèse. But that put him in opposition with everybody -- he hated the pop industry for its shallowness but worked in it to pay the bills. He hated the classical field for grinding away at the same old canon of classical literature and not supporting new composers. He had a lot of contempt for classical players who had loads of talent but lax work ethics (cf the 200 Motels sessions and the tipsy out-of-tune trumpets at the LSO sessions).

The only time he could tamp all that shit down was when he was hiding behind a big stack of staff paper, imo.

xpost

Could you elaborate? I thought his main point was (paraphrased) "There is no magic word that, once sung, can make somebody kill or otherwise act like an idiot"

I went through it once more: I do not see that idea in Zappa's statement concerning the PMRC, even though it is an idea he has expressed elsewhere. The main points seem to be:

i) The spouses of some of the PMRC founders were also involved with a proposed blank tape tax, which was under discussion at the same time and which affects the same industry (and which Zappa opposed, although if it's what I think it is, I do not oppose it myself), suggesting a potential conflict of interest. As such, the PMRC's proposals and tactics were a sensationalist distraction. (This argument seems pretty dubious to me but it comes up throughout his statement).

ii) The PMRC's proposals raise First Amendment concerns since a) they would lead to de facto censorship when large chains had already said they would not stock albums with certain labels and b) their system for labelling rock albums was implicitly based on Christian fundamentalist values.

iii) Parents should in fact be able to control what their children are exposed to but the PMRC's proposed system was not a good way of helping them do this for a number of reasons. Zappa did in fact support the idea of simply printing the complete lyrics of every album and making them available to consumers before they purchase any album. It would also be more effective to promote Music Appreciation programmes in schools so that children could make more informed decisions and might actually sometimes want to hear classical or jazz albums instead of pop. (Zappa also promoted the idea of parents buying classical and jazz for their kids instead of buying Prince records and then getting worked up over them. Btw, the language he used when talking about this seems to support C. Grisso/McCain's contention.)

iv) Many of the things that were sung about on 'offending' records, such as masturbation or female arousal, were not illegal anyway.

v) The PMRC unfairly focused on rock albums, as opposed to, say, country or comedy records. This system would amount to a de facto subsidy of the country industry. Again, he suspected a conflict of interest, considering the Gores' home state.

He argued that labelling albums was not the same as rating films because actors in films are 'pretending' whereas labelling a recording is passing a judgment on the musicians who made the album, which I'm not sure I buy.

He argued that labelling albums was not the same as rating films because actors in films are 'pretending' whereas labelling a recording is passing a judgment on the musicians who made the album, which I'm not sure I buy.

also a counterargument to the contention that Zappa's using persona as a governing conceit, weirdly

at least we know where zappa stood on the burning question of ccr's authenticity

Where?

WmC's post was awesome, btw.

does this awesome, ahead of it's time song means i should check out the whole album?, cause i don't like Zappa in general

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=girnJH7tvpM

Lol, possibly not. Legend has it that that's the song they were playing at the Whisky when Tom Wilson saw them and signed them to Verve. He kinda lived to regret it when they went into the studio to record the album, and a lot of the material veered off in a wildly different direction. On the other hand --

Frank Zappa paid this tribute: "Tom Wilson was a great guy. He had vision, you know? And he really stood by us ... I remember the first thing that we recorded was 'Any Way the Wind Blows,' and that was okay. Then we did 'Who Are the Brain Police?' and I saw him through the glass and he was on the phone immediately to New York going, 'I don't know!' Trying to break it to 'em easy, I guess." "Wilson was sticking his neck out. He laid his job on the line by producing the album."[7]

I mean, if it's the avant-garde stuff you don't like, then Freak Out could definitely fool you into getting something you're not. This was not the form that most of his protest music took.

Get "Absolutely Free" then "We're Only In It for the Money"

Hey, lots of Zappa up on Spotify - don't know if it's been mentioned yet.

"Trouble Every Day" is generally one of the few Zappa tunes that even the non-fans can agree on. Other one is "Peaches en Regalia". Freak Out! is an excellent album but believe it Zappa does not usually sound like that!

shame..thanks though

"Anyway the Wind Blows" is a favourite of mine too. Sometimes I think it's the best thing he ever did.

as a pastiche maybe

It's a nice song

maybe. i give up on him. again..

Believe me I'm no big fan either

it's a shame, cause obviously Zappa is talented, but imo he totaly wasted it.

I instinctively hated Zappa for years until like you Trouble Every Day caught my ear. I agree with people here that's it not representative at all, even of that period of the Mothers - and yet it became for me a gateway into Zappa's music.
I would still recommend to anyone to check out 'Hot Rats' and 'We're only in it for the Money'

did taht yesterday (again after several years) and was not convinced..

i dunno if you can say he "totally wasted" his talent. he released like 70 LPs of material while he was alive. there's gotta be something you like among them.

Yeah, "totally wasted" is a ridiculous assertion. His music's not for you, obviously, but he has an important body of work as a composer.

a needle in the haystack?

of course it's all IMO. i appreciate his work, but yeah, it's not for me. the elements that doen't work for me are propably the satire/parody one's.

Con-cen-traaaa-tion-moooooooo-ooooon

What's the ugliest part of your body?
Some say your nose
Some say your toes
But I think it's your mind
I think it's your mind....

ALL YOUR CHILDREN ARE POOR
UNFORTUNATE VICTIMS OF
SYSTEMS BEYOND THEIR CONTROL
A PLAGUE UPON YOUR IGNORANCE & THE GRAY
DESPAIR OF YOUR UGLY LIFE

First time I ever heard "Absolutely Free" it was wonderful. There was that sneering attitude (perfect as i was 16yo), that 60's sound that i loved, needlessly complicated orchestration that rewarded you with every successive listen, etc. Everyone makes a big deal of Brian Wilson's modular arrangement style from this period but in any given early Mothers album there is usually a "Smiley Smile" contained in every 2 or 3 songs.

are you talking about the album or the song? because I had an entire summer where "Absolutely Free" was the only song I could think of. such a brilliant tune.

First time I ever heard "Absolutely Free" it was wonderful.

Had the opposite effect on me, I was like, "Oh just fucking shut up, why don't you". Kinda like it now, in bits.

Not the song, the album.

Every time I want to get into Zappa I just wind up getting massively put off by something (the "shut up" reaction that Tom is referring to) - last time it was the Ahead of Their Time album which included a bunch of dialogue about how "we won't get laid if we play this WEIRD and WACKY music! We should be playing in 4/4! Not this AWFUL 6/13 garbage!!"

Still, he gets points for naming an album Shut Up n' Play Your Guitar!

I don't think I've posted this on any of the other FZ threads, but it's definitely worth a watch, albeit probably more fun the more you know the original.

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

Not the song, the album.

Yeah, that what I was talking about

Well if you are going to hate Zappa you are going to hate him, and that's totally fine. I think more than any other musician I enjoy Zappa is the one that I can understand other people not liking the most. On that tip I feel like if you are going to love Zappa you may as well dive into the most zany classic Mothers sound collage/social commentary/freakout music you can. The trilogy of "Absolutely Free", "We're Only In It For the Money", and "Lumpy Gravy" is like the ultimate litmus test. I couldn't really see someone being in love w, say, "Sheik Yerbouti" while at the same time hating those earlier records.

I couldn't really see someone being in love w, say, "Sheik Yerbouti" while at the same time hating those earlier records.

Really? I could totally see that.

But total fanatical Zappa fans seem to like everything he did no matter what

Nooo.....

I've been buying and loving his work since 1979, but some of it I just can't stand. The Flo & Eddie period is terrible, much of the Synclavier stuff leaves me cold. So much of the misanthropic "comedy" music is horrible.

Now that his catalog is on Spotify, I might make some playlists that accentuate different aspects of his work.

I dislike most of the original Mothers stuff. I like Ruben, Rats & Weasels, but otherwise I'm not on board until Grand Wazoo. But from there through Zappa In New York I'm a bit gonzo over his work even if I cringe at the lyrics as time goes on. The music and musicians he was working with were top notch. It's more hit or miss afterwords, though the Guitar records are straight killer.

Huh, it appears I'm wrong. Tbh i haven't met many Zappa fans irl unless i was listening to "WOIIFTM" and they came up to me and said "Duuuuude! Yessss!"

I like Zappa's instrumental music - my iPod contains The Grand Wazoo, Waka/Jawaka, Hot Rats, Shut Up 'n' Play Yer Guitar, and the recent compilation Finer Moments, and that's it. In high school I liked the late '70s/early '80s albums - Them Or Us, You Are What You Is, the Joe's Garage trilogy - but I don't listen to those anymore. I feel really glad to have seen him on his final US tour - Make A Jazz Noise Here, the mostly instrumental live album from that run, is pretty good, too.

Your original statement was a bit like saying about a Pink Foyd fan, "I couldn't really see someone being in love w, say, "Dark Side of the Moon" while at the same time hating "Piper at the Gates of dawn".

Well "Sheik Yerbouti" always seemed like on the zanier goofy-voices side of his stuff, so i thought it was a more direct comparison.

Can't remember if this was linked up thread : http://www.furious.com/perfect/zappainstrumentals.html