Frank Zappa: Classic or Dud?

Zappa: I've always been against dominant chords resolving to tonic chords. That, to me, is just the bottom line of white person music.

Haha, I didn't know he said this. He may have had a point if "white person music" = the Western/European tradition as opposed to art or folk musics from African, Asian, aboriginal North American, etc cultures. It's obv insane if he meant it in the context of white American music vs African-American music, though.

Which is ironic, because I consider a lot of Zappa the epitome of "white person music." That exchange is a great example of something I hate about Zappa. "We did this song or type of music just to prove how stupid it is." OK, Frank, but if you're going to do it anyway, why not write in that mode and show how good it could be in the right hands?

Anyway, we're talking about a guy that would pay to hire the London Symphony Orchestra to perform his next level shit, presumably because they were the best, and then complain they didn't quite get it, because they're not good enough for his next level shit. And, yeah, dismiss the Impressions as falsetto bullshit or whatever that doesn't sound black enough for Zappa.

Left the doc even more impressed by his stance as a free speech evangelist. There's a great bit on Arsenio, of all places, where Arsenio notes that Zappa's music itself was not then the target of censorship, yet it's him fighting for free speech and not Prince, and Zappa somewhat graciously (for him) concedes that it is Prince's or Bruce's right to say something or not. Iirc, not long after Zappa became the first, or perhaps only, person to get a Parental Advisory sticker stuck on an *instrumental* album.

xpost

Anyway, we're talking about a guy that would pay to hire the London Symphony Orchestra to perform his next level shit, presumably because they were the best, and then complain they didn't quite get it, because they're not good enough for his next level shit.

iirc, in his autobiography he essentially wished there had never been a labor movement because the union musicians in the LSO wanted to be paid double scale.

He should have been more into the Beatles and VU. At least they sometimes wrote over drones to get away from white-person reliance on harmonic progression.

My friend and I improvised a Zappa song the other day. It was this big, heavy pentatonic scale riff, then after a few runs through the riff he leaned over to his keyboard and dooped out a crazy cartoon-random mallet percussion part while I intoned in some ironic narrator voice. "Meanwhile, back stage, the group was engaged in sexual proclivities of a sort that would make you blush..." And then back to the riff. It was called, iirc, "Dwarf Athlete."

This was classic btw.

xp His anti-union beliefs predated the LSO collaboration, didn't they? "Flakes" was 79.

xpost to Sund4r’s previous post

Musician: Isn't that ever present in black person's music?
Zappa: Mmm ... not always the same way – your old stock V-I. You get a lot of IV-Is in black music, and you get a lot of II-Vs, and other stuff. But that goddam V-I, and those goddamn jazz guys with II-V-I, and modulating the fucking thing around the Circle of Fifths. Why they have their nerve!
Musician: In your use of different chord structures, you come up with some really complex things. Is that a result of an overt attempt to do something more original, or is that just what you hear in your head?
Zappa: Since I don't like the sound of II-V-I, theoretically I must also like the sound of something else. And there are of course progressions that I like a lot, and I use them all the time. I go for what I like, rather than just a conscious attempt to wage a war against II-V-I. I just don't like II-V-I, unless you want to use it as a joke

"Flakes"

A song packed with I-IV-V changes and V-I resolutions btw. And didn't he love doo-wop??

I never realized he was this full of shit!

I mean, everyone's entitled to their libertarian wingnut beliefs but taking on authentic cadences, that's a bridge too far.

Here's the infamous Ian Penman Wire screed, if you're interested:

http://e-limbo.org/articulo.php/Art/1259

you can fit more shit in if you use complex time signatures and play very fast

in one of the wire's invisible jukeboxes a latin percussionist whose name now escapes me (this is from more than 25 years ago) is played a complex zappa piece and basically says "lol what's this weedy white guy garbage"

when I first read that it was so satisfying, I’d never seen anyone really lay into him like that. now it seems to be the standard hip opinion on the guy

Yeah, the Penman thing actually gets at a lot of what was classic about Zappa between the ad hominems.xp

It's a bit 'Sincerity' in Music tbh

you can fit more shit in if you use complex time signatures and play very fast

in one of the wire's invisible jukeboxes a latin percussionist whose name now escapes me (this is from more than 25 years ago) is played a complex zappa piece and basically says "lol what's this weedy white guy garbage"

Zappa always had the excuse when he used corny chord changes or melodies that it was satire on the lame folks who would "actually" record that kind of music.

when I first read that it was so satisfying, I’d never seen anyone really lay into him like that. now it seems to be the standard hip opinion on the guy

Oh I don't know about that, I think that was the standard hip opinion on Zappa for a long time before Penman wrote that particular article, if anything opinion has softened on him as the years have passed.

maybe. I’d only heard good things about him, but mostly from old interviews by faust, can, etc

so how did frank ever get boulez to take his music seriously? at least more so than large chunks of the classical canon? similar personalities?

anthony braxton complains about it in the context of boulez rebuffing him- this famous purist would work with some white rock dude but refuse to even consider a black composer. despite zappa’s problems with the classical establishment it’s still galling the resources he was provided with for his not-bad-for-a-rock-star “classical” works while braxton, leo smith, bill dixon, cecil taylor, ornette and others were more or less completely shut out of that world for obvious reasons

There was a big difference in hipness between the Zappa of the 60s and the Zappa of the 70s.

That's why I've always defended the idea of Zappa while finding the man and his music pretty much totally not my thing.

I can't really remember what Boulez thought of Zappa's music, I think he said it had a good energy or something.

Of course, Boulez, like most of these guys, would never admit to liking a composer he considered a rival, like a Xenakis or Stockhausen.

In anything I could find, he mostly just said he liked the idea of blending musical worlds, that he wanted to program Zappa alongside other 20th c American composers, and that people would have to listen to the concert to hear the musical qualities he appreciated instead of having him describe them.

I don't think Boulez ever had much interest in improvised music?

Boulez in 2003:

Well, I brought something by Frank Zappa, because thats the only person, individualité, I knew in this world. And because, you know, he came to get in touch with me. And I remember, he proposed to me a score for orchestra, and I was just leaving New York and living in London, so I said, I have the Ensemble InterContemporain, if you want a piece performed, please write for this Ensemble, because I will perform it surely. And I was interested by him, because he was trying very hard to transcend the kind of borders. You know there is a border between serious music and pop music. And I think, generally, the people of classical music, generally are extremely condescendent with their colleagues, and you know, oh, yes. But I find there is a way of expressing themselves which interests me, and I liked this way by Zappa, who was trying to get out of the routine of pop music, and was really trying extremely hard to get a new world from himself, even, and that I found really, not only interesting, but remarkable.

This was on WNYC's airwaves. He was asked to pick a rock and/or jazz record, so that's what he meant by 'in this world'.

anthony braxton complains about it in the context of boulez rebuffing him- this famous purist would work with some white rock dude but refuse to even consider a black composer. despite zappa’s problems with the classical establishment it’s still galling the resources he was provided with for his not-bad-for-a-rock-star “classical” works while braxton, leo smith, bill dixon, cecil taylor, ornette and others were more or less completely shut out of that world for obvious reasons

― Left, Sunday, December 20, 2020 1:19 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm. And it's sadly not surprising that someone who would reject Braxton also uses the term "serious music." As Cecil Taylor said to a white composer who used that term, "You mean Ornette isn’t serious in what he’s doing?"

Where is there more information on what happened between Braxton and Boulez?

the AACM and others who he refused to work with in the late 60s & 70s were also trying to transcend the boundaries that were placed around them (partly by people like him!) and most would have been happy to write specifically for the ensemble intercontemporain if that’s what it would take. Zappa’s orchestral stuff isn’t bad but it’s not exceptional, this is just racism

the lack of (well rehearsed, well performed) documentation of ornette’s notated work is a real tragedy imo. I was pissed off with the obituaries portaying him as some savant bluesman who accidentally stumbled into the avant garde (his role in literally keeping younger musicians alive was also barely acknowledged). I can’t blame Zappa for the classical world’s racism but I can blame him for taking up space and being a dick about it

xp

idk. it gets a brief mention in the book by graham lock:

Braxton: To this day, IRCAM has never tried to help me do anything. I wanted to study electronic music there, but they wouldn’t let me in. I think Boulez himself probably doesn’t have any respect for me. He would later bring in people like - who’s that rock performer? Frank Zappa? - and give him the opportunity to have a symphonic work performed which Boulez himself conducted; but they wouldn’t even let me walk in the place. That’s the nature of the political dynamics at IRCAM.

Richard Barrett's brief Boulez obituary remains otm:

He created around himself a mythology of radical avant-gardism without ever really putting it into practice in his own work, at least after his early years. His prescriptive view of what was acceptable in new music, and what wasn't, was in my opinion a dead hand on French musical culture for many years. His dismissal of so many things from free improvisation to Xenakis wasn't just a matter of personal opinion but a statement with systematically accrued political clout behind it. This isn't to detract from the many impressive and memorable things he did as a composer and conductor, even if I don't feel personally very involved in most of his compositional work when I hear it. Let's celebrate his passing and that of his generation by looking forward not backward.

I guess I see what he saw in zappa

Also Boulez: jazz is ultimately 'bar music' and improvisation 'a kind of public onanism'.

wanker. sounds like adorno

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjy3rr7J_yQ
#onethread

there's a bit more of the story from inside IRCAM in georgie born's 1995 "rationalizing culture" -- if you can bear to wrestle with her decision (to ensure it's sociology and not gossip lol) to anonymise all the IRCAM staffers behind alphabetical cryptonyms: we're told there was a faction on the staff who were interested in expanding the facilities to composers and musicians who didn't fit the boulez straitjacket

born also cites an interview braxton gave to the guardian (24 june 1988), much the same time as graham lock's book, tho she doesn't name the interviewer

Who is the person that's frequently cited for describing composition as just very slow improvisation? Was that Braxton?

the doc includes clips of the SNL episode he hosted… in the sketches we see, a coneheads bit and then one riffing on his avant rock rep, he over enunciates every sentence, over emphasizes every line and overacts… instead of saying "I don't like 70s SNL (because only MY satire is worthwhile," having confirmed shortly after in the doc his dismissive attitude towards SNL) "and I'm not going to host your show," he does it but doesn't cooperate, doesn't commit to it, only sneers at the prospect of participating like any host or guest on that show has ever done, collects the nominal sum hosts receive, and does his music with his band during the music segments. He could never commit to anyone else's thing, because he had no respect for anyone in his cultural wake… or here, if he agreed to ostensibly commit to participate to another thing, he had to petulantly shit on it, as if he was 13.

It is only HIS shit that's any good. He was hostile to every single other cultural/musical development past, like, the blues and post Stravinsky 20th century western composed music. Didn't he dismiss jazz? Did he dismiss minimalism? His response to the entire post-punk milieu is that "they can't play."

B-b-but what about the tunes?

There's that one, "Watermelon in Easter Hay," supposed to be a corker.

The 'Sincerity' thread is indeed relevant, because cleary that is one of the genres or modalities that FZ does a Pisztake on to show his superiority. Or presumably does, he seems to be doing the exact opposite of 'Sincerity'. Nothing more original than simply putting a NOT sign in front of something else.

Heard that he was the most hated SNL host ever, had all those Zappa-esque requests about pumpkins, pumpkins eating peoples faces off, pumpkins everywhere!

He was quite amiable on What's My Line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTj-xNcvfzI

... if very nerdy.

https://societyofrock.com/frank-zappas-awkward-snl-episode/
Featuring a clip in which he makes fun of cue cards and disco dancers, who have “no natural rhythm.”

That was painful for me to watch, an unfunny Groucho Marx.

Putting everything in ‘Insincere’ quote marks.

I liked the piece he conducted.

I was gonna say an unfunny Weird Al

That exchange is a great example of something I hate about Zappa. "We did this song or type of music just to prove how stupid it is." OK, Frank, but if you're going to do it anyway, why not write in that mode and show how good it could be in the right hands?

maybe he's not the right hands? people talk about him the same way they talk about Aphex Twin, as though he could have pumped out a hundred tracks like "Peaches en Regalia" or "Oh No" or "Watermelon in Easter Hay" if he wanted to, but saw "giving the people what they want" as a character flaw. when I hear something like "Dancin' Fool" it's like...too interesting to be a pisstake, but he can't figure out how to reconcile the dumb parts with the cool musical bits, and he can't make the tune likeable because he's so incredibly unfunny. he was shooting for *something* great but the tune itself just hints at what it is.

And I mean going rogue on a satirical live comedy show and satirizing its scripted nature is classic. What, we're supposed to revere Lorne Michaels and disco now? xp

Sund4r please.