Frank Zappa: Classic or Dud?

Kind of an interesting and unexpected list

you could have given me 1 million guesses and I'm not sure UK Subs would have passed my lips

.

lol, Tom D.

I knew he'd namechecked the UK Subs before.

I'm most surprised by the Velvet Underground tbh.

First tune has a minor blues turnaround which harmonic cliche I guess was all right with him.

Feel like there was some end-of-the-line sitcom logic by which the Mothers/Velvets Verve/Tom Wilson feud ended up in some sort of diplomatic rapprochement if not an actual bro-hug.

There is that bit in "We're Only In It For the Money" where he gets the engineer on the album Gary Kellgren (supposedly, it sounds like Zappa himself to me) to say something about the Velvet Underground being as shitty as Frank Zappa's group - though it was apparently edited out of the original release.

The rivalry probably seemed less important once The Mothers left NYC

Gary Kellgren having just worked on "White Light/White Heat" I assume.

Reed inducted Frank into the Rock HOF. Very short speech in which he says something like “and I always heard he was a fan of mine too” at the end

LOL that's so Lou. I remember reading an interview with Jimmy Carl Black where he was singing the praises of Mo Tucker.

Wonder if Václav Havel passed the word along to Lou.

Ha, so he was more into the Beatles and VU than I was thinking.

Every once and I while I wonder how Lou was chosen for that induction job. Here’s something on a Zappa borad, but don’t know how much I trust someone who doesn’t know who Doc Pomus is. http://forum.zappa.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13616#p326852

I assume Zappa hated prog, if he was familiar with it at all. But to my knowledge he never outright parodied it, which is fine, because even the best prog bands often did a fine job doing that themselves!

If it counts, he famously did a version of "Stairway to Heaven" with a groove, horns, and sound effects: https://open.spotify.com/track/0YEsQRjRxcUvIJER7Ifob8?si=T4CgLVWMSqaGG09IzXkpGw

The Zappa band was going to tour with King Crimson this year before hell broke loose.

Jon Anderson and Steve Howe big fans of Zappa: https://wiki.killuglyradio.com/wiki/Yes

Very interesting, thanks. So he liked the B-side of “My White Bicycle”? Starting to warm up to the Cold Mother after all.

2xpost Is that the reggae Stairway to Heaven? I think I had that on a live album I once had. It also had a cover of the theme from Bonanza. Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life or something?

Yes

Yeah, that album. It starts with a quasi-reggae groove but then there's a quasi-big band note-for-note transcription of the guitar solo for brass.xp

Was curious, so I tried to find out what Fripp thought of Zappa, and this was the first forum exchange I saw:

What do you think sets these two apart? What are the main differences in the compositional and instrumental approach?

Fripp is an arrogant asshole, even though he is a good musician...

I mean ...

Just found this from 1978:

Q: Are there any major rock n' roll bands aside from yourself that you do listen to?
ZAPPA: I like Queen. I like Gentle Giant.

On the other hand, I also saw reference to iirc a later interview where he claims to have never heard anything by Fripp or Jimmy Page so who knows.

Acc to this, he apparently played "Black Dog" and "When the Levee Breaks" on the radio in 1974: https://wiki.killuglyradio.com/wiki/WSTM,_Chicago

No citation though

This thread has been vociferously trying to convince me that Zappa was too big an asshole, and his music too smug and hateful, to listen to. So out of spite I’m playing You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore Vol. 2 tonight. Except for the improvised skit “Room Service” there’s no misogyny, goofiness is kept to a minimum (for a FZ record), and there’s some seriously blazing playing from everyone in the band.

I believe they did a Beatles medley on the same tour where they did Stairway.

Keith Emerson said in his memoirs that Lumpy Gravy changed all his thinking about music.

He hadn't realized it could be quite that shitty and pointless before?

Actually the original "Lumpy Gravy", before Zappa added all the tedious spoken word stuff, was pretty good.

Interesting that Eddie VH was the first choice. I think Dweezil said once that Eddie was the first musician to call their house when Frank died.

“ Every once and I while I wonder how Lou was chosen for that induction job. Here’s something on a Zappa borad, but don’t know how much I trust someone who doesn’t know who Doc Pomus is. http://forum.zappa.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13616#p326852 “

I believe they did a Beatles medley on the same tour where they did Stairway.

I saw that tour - no Beatles songs. Here's the set list.

I guess this is where that HOF story came from

https://wiki.killuglyradio.com/wiki/Zappa_Inducted_Into_The_Hall_Of_Fame

Where can the original Lumpy Gravy be heard?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qqtmhx_btI

Wow!

The Beatles medley known as Texas Medley (Norwegian Jim/Louisiana Hooker with Herpes/Texas Motel) plus a straight cover (iirc) of "I Am the Walrus" are on the only FZ bootleg I have. Looks like they came from 3/13/88, Springfield MA.

I actually find the spoken word segments moderately interesting, in a surreal, free-association kind of way.

...segments of Lumpy gravy...

Lou's speech was good actually

Yes, was pretty good. Although it still causes me no small amount of grief that nobody who edits that FZ wiki has heard of Doc Pomus.

well presumably not a big fan of songwriting

what the fuck...just noticed that Freak Out!, We're Only In It for the Money, and the Lumpy Money Project/Object (which includes the original Capitol mono edit of Lumpy Gravy) are missing from Spotify...

well presumably not a big fan of songwriting

First two are listed under The Mothers of Invention

^^Yeah, and MOFO is under Zappa solo.

...which is to say, there is a version of Freak Out on Zappa's page.

From 1969

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz9bn24rxrI

Still wondering if Lou actually liked any of Frank's music or was just sort of expanding or at least shoring up his own brand, given the overlap in fan base (that I myself observed anecdotally). Maybe he liked Ruben and the Jets, who knows. I recall that John- who was married to one of the GTOs! - had some problems with FZ, although the real keeper of the grudge was in fact Sterling.