Frank Zappa: Classic or Dud?

as a former smoker, the shot of an ailing Zappa, ravaged by the cancer that he would have avoided if he did not bizarrely carry on for decades as if cigarettes were not deleterious, or at least not as deleterious as every other drug that he excoriated in public for decades, feebly attempt to handle a lit cig as an attendant administered medication, was truly pathetic…I'l have more to say later about the doc…as per another active thread, Zappa and Albini are very very frustrating…

I'm about halfway through the doc, and, well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it's kind of exactly like the movie version of Zappa (the man). He's such an obnoxious asshole, and not even lovingly so. An important asshole, even world-changing, but an asshole nonetheless, which makes it kind of an exhausting experience. I do like the interviews with the musicians so far, and Winter's editing reflects the subject well, but man ... when he's talking about giving his wife the clap after going through groupies across Europe, not even in a free love sort of way but just out of pure my-way-or-the-highway selfishness ...

He's such an obnoxious asshole, and not even lovingly so.
Exactly! Which is why I am not a fan but I am a fan of the guy this song was written about
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbdsR5cDJlk

as a former smoker, the shot of an ailing Zappa, ravaged by the cancer that he would have avoided if he did not bizarrely carry on for decades as if cigarettes were not deleterious, or at least not as deleterious as every other drug that he excoriated in public for decades, feebly attempt to handle a lit cig as an attendant administered medication, was truly pathetic…I'l have more to say later about the doc…as per another active thread, Zappa and Albini are very very frustrating…

― veronica moser, Monday, November 30, 2020 6:55 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Didn't he die of prostate cancer?

no i think steve albini is still alive

🥁

Made it a bit more in the doc and liked the second half a lot more. In fact, had a bit of a ... revelation is too strong a word. But during the interview with David Harrington from the Kronos Quartet I thought to myself, huh, I love so much from John Zorn, why is it that I like so little Zappa? Is it ultimately just Zappa's singing/lyrics that drive me nuts? If he was *exclusively* instrumental, would I dig him? And my honest realization was ... maybe? I dunno.

I wish F had combined forces with don and Walter for an lp

Don and Walter had jazz chops that F lacked.

You've heard Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo?

None of the three are really great technical musicians. Zappa would get more points as a guitarist if he soloed over more than one or two chord backing. Of course, they appreciated and worked with superlative musicians.

There's an interview where Becker talks about opening for Zappa. "He had a sousaphone player, the drummer was reading charts... and all the kids in the audience wanted to do was boogie!"

Taking sides: the 72-74 Steely Dan band versus the 65-69 Mothers of Invention?

I'm sure at some point. I like a lot of the players on his albums, who have chops galore of every bent. I'm mostly echoing the opinion of my guitar teacher who finds Zappa the guitarist really boring and actually just the other day explained it to me (the best he could). I know I'll muddle this (because I have no chops) but Charlie Parker (and others) apparently built several songs around Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm," and the song's fast chord changes have subsequently served as the basis for a ton of jazz. The way it was related to me was that it kind of is to jazz what the pentatonic scale is to rock. I think my teacher's biggest peeve with Zappa (the guitarist) is that his noodling is pretty basic pentatonic, and he theorized that one impetus for Zappa's cynicism and disdain could be his own frustration at being unable to hold his own as a more sophisticated player.

Not that Zappa needed to be more sophisticated - certainly when it comes to polyrhythms his music is nuts, which Vai in the doc points out - but it's just another one of his contradictions. He clearly wants success, but refuses to conform to anyone's idea of success. But then when he complains about lack of success or sales or whatever, it's always someone else's fault for failing to understand *him,* for them being the unsophisticated ones. Very "I refuse to belong to any club that would have me as a member." When he's on Letterman (in the doc) deriding the London Symphony Orchestra for maybe getting to 75% of what he wanted from them? Yeah, OK, Frank. There's a 1966 Don Paulsen interview my teacher pointed out to me where Zappa comes off downright Morrissey-esque in his confrontational contrarianism:

Hopefully tho, y'know it'll make them go more for your kinda music.

Zappa: Y'know another thing that's disgusting is the R&B stations, especially the ones in LA, man. Y'know they're so saturated with plastic Motown, y'know ahh, falsetto, rocking, big band bullshit man.
It makes ya cry. It doesn't even sound colored anymore.

yeh

Zappa: They don't play ANY country-blues, y'know, you'll hear, they'll play ONE John Lee Hooker record every six weeks y'know. 'Ah, here he is, yah! The blues favorite yessir, now to get that fucker offa there and stick the Impressions back on or somethin'.

Yeah, shit on Motown and the Impressions, Frank. The squares just don't get it.

I did leave the doc more impressed by Zappa the composer, not by the music itself, per se, but by his vision. He's got a really clear-eyed specific idea of what he wants to hear, and crazy/wacky/discordant/whatever it may actually sound like, it's definitely intentional and by design.

xpost

I've tried with "Waka/Jawaka" and "The Grand Wazoo" and never got anywhere, to be honest.

Charlie Parker (and others) apparently built several songs around Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm," and the song's fast chord changes have subsequently served as the basis for a ton of jazz. The way it was related to me was that it kind of is to jazz what the pentatonic scale is to rock.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythm_changes

Comparing a form and harmonic progression to the pentatonic scale is a weird one, though. A better comparison would be the 12-bar blues form (also a standard jazz form).

I think he gave the example as something just about any jazz player can (apparently) do that Zappa likely could not.

His chorale harmonizations were also lacking imo.

I think he gave the example as something just about any jazz player can (apparently) do that Zappa likely could not.

https://wiki.killuglyradio.com/wiki/Zappa,_79/8

Musician: "America Drinks And Goes Home" (Absolutely Free) has a real jazz standard flavor. Did you write it to pay tribute to that style of music, or was it a parody of that genre?
Zappa: It's a very scientific parody of that genre. It's so subtle that you almost wouldn't see it as a parody. It's not a bad tune. The whole essence of that kind of music is that moron II-V-I syndrome, where everything modulates around the earth going II-V-I. It's an exercise in II-V-I stupidity.
Musician: You don't write many things in II-V-I.
Zappa: I've always been against dominant chords resolving to tonic chords. That, to me, is just the bottom line of white person music.

And there’s more where that came from.

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.