Frank Zappa: Classic or Dud?

That episode is considered one of the biggest disasters from the early SNL days, in a storied class alongside Louise Lasser & Milton Berle.

I remember seeing an edit of that Zappa ep on Nick At Nite a weekend or two after he died.

crosspost from the John Cale thread, I found the quote posted in there pretty interesting:

John Cale: They took the piss out of us. The guys on the trip, somebody had been very inconsiderate and painted an emblem on our door with a gravestone that said "RIP Velvet Underground" on it, and they were laying in wait. Andy [Warhol] was such an incredible generator of publicity that they all wanted...the only reason Zappa was on those gigs was that Herb Cohen knew that he'd get all this publicity from Andy and us. The thing is about Frank, that was reinforced years after I saw him, is that he had a very acerbic wit, which was kind of enjoyable, but at the same time, I really can't say there was anything about his music or him that made me love music. There was something about him, I think it was a real deep-seeded anger and fury about being forced to learn music in the first place - there was a revenge factor there - but it made me very uncomfortable watching him. There was so much putting down of himself that wasn't pleasant. I lost the gleam of innocence that you get from somebody really enjoying a melody or a solo or anything like that. And he could rip off [play, not pilfer] all these incredible solos, and you knew the guy had tremendous talent, but there was never anything there that made me love music so I'd want to do it. The reason you're doing this is to show how people how exciting and enjoyable this is. It's a shared experience. People shouldn't be punished for sharing an experience.

I'd never really thought of Zappa in that way, someone who happened to be very good at something he wasn't all that invested in. It reminds me of certain poker players who are really great at the game and make a lot of money playing but, when pressed, admit they don't really enjoy it that much, that it's just something that lines up really well with their skill set so they do it because what else are they gonna do? Waste that talent? I think maybe that explains why his records are so reluctant to ever hang on a great moment, or to feel anything deeply, or even really be all that coherent. It's like he was afraid people would think he was putting too much time into trying to appeal to an audience. A lot of the stuff he does seems like it was designed to be deliberately unappealing, particularly in terms of his album covers, many of which are ugly collages or uncomfortable close-ups of his face. He stumbles upon a lot of really great stuff but almost seems embarrassed by it, which is why many of his best songs are so short (relative to the rest of his work), and why a lot of his best moments are just suddenly clipped off by something stupid.

But I also think this is what makes him so fascinating, because a lot of times you feel like he was trying to come up with something that was interesting to him, which led to him doing a lot of real far out things most other musicians would never attempt. Like all the sped up impossible shit on those Mothers albums.

I'd never really thought of Zappa in that way, someone who happened to be very good at something he wasn't all that invested in.

Now, see, that's exactly why I've never been able to get into Zappa. He's so steeped in arrogance as a form of insecure deflection. It's why so many of his genre exercises are smug and ironic, since it's easier to play a half-assed version of something with a wink than do it in earnest and fail in public, because you don't have the chops to hang with real jazz players/composers/pop songwriters/whomever. If you create your own musical world/circus - which he did - then any success you have is on your own terms, but it also protects you from embarrassing yourself. Though he did plenty of that, too.

pitchfork review is good but doesn't make him or his music sound any more appealing to me. I wonder if a backlash to the backlash is brewing or if it just represents a sort of last gasp for zappa fandom

like other people on this thread over the years I'm interested in him as a cultural figure and fascinated by the level of visceral contempt and repulsion I feel towards him and his music - which I suspect is somewhat excessive even with the plenty of good reasons to dislike him detailed in this thread. he's much easier to avoid than other artists I dislike (e.g. drake) but somehow he pisses me off much more. I don't know what's behind it exactly but I wonder if I recognise some of my own worst instincts in his hatefulness and anality

(my anality is more in the expulsive direction but if I had a lot more discipline and compositional talent I might end up making music that sounds too much like his and that frightens me a little)

The review was interesting — both as a piece, and just the fact that it exists. JFH was one of the first two things I bought on CD, because I figured it would really demonstrate the advantages of crystal-clear digital sound over LPs and cassettes and if I was gonna pay inflated prices I wanted it to make a difference in what I heard, and it did. But I haven't actually listened to it in decades. In my memory, it was like proto-Autechre or something, and I could still see mixing "G-Spot Tornado" into "Second Bad Vilbel," but now that I'm listening to it this morning, a lot of it sounds like gross '80s fusion of the Chick Corea Elektric Band school. Also, it's a lot shorter than I remembered — only 35 minutes.

someone who happened to be very good at something he wasn't all that invested in

I'm sure he was deeply invested in (his idea of good) music, he didn't spend hours every day writing notes on paper, editing tape or programming Synclavier out of resentment. Touring, maybe he did resent sometimes. His issue was that he couldn't trust anyone's emotional response to music - even his own response, which is why he spent so much time making fun of the doo-wop which, at the same time, he said he loved (and did, in his way).

I've always assumed his misogyny was based on his high school (and post) life, where he couldn't get any traction with "the ladies" and resented them for it. And that spread to hating all the "Chads" as well, incel style. He's never really written a love song, besides the doo-wop pastiches as noted above, where I can't tell if he's embracing them or mocking them.

I think Cale is right about Zappa to some extent but he's wrong about him being "forced to learn music", he mostly taught himself I believe? Because he REALLY wanted to learn music.

... well that's what he claimed anyway.

Yeah, I think he loved music, Partly because of the opportunity it gave him to feel superior to the crowd.

He forced HIMSELF to learn music!

Feel like doo-wop was one of the few things he liked enough that it actually survived his pastiches in such a way that something like love shone through.

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've always assumed his misogyny was based on his high school (and post) life, where he couldn't get any traction with "the ladies" and resented them for it. And that spread to hating all the "Chads" as well, incel style. He's never really written a love song, besides the doo-wop pastiches as noted above, where I can't tell if he's embracing them or mocking them.

lol

Wait what is that?

it's interesting that both Lou Reed and Zappa loved doo wop so much

though Lou loved music deeply and the emotion behind it, he was the opposite of Zappa in that respect, even his worst music seemed to come from a place of deep belief

Paul Simon too. Didn’t he and Lou exchange doo wop tapes at one point?

PIPCO

?

There was so much putting down of himself that wasn't pleasant.

that's the thing of it. some people have a lot of internalized self-loathing. a lot of artists. lou reed, you know, he had a lot of that. a lot of artists externalize it - i mean, _take no prisoners_, right? zappa just had this continuous "smart mark" attitude about him. how many songs did he write? and not _one_ love song among them? man who refuses on principle to ever express love through music leaves behind corpus of throughly unloveable music, film at 11.

He also loved to complain about cliched chord changes iirc.

Watermelon in Easter Hay is the one Zappa song that registers some emotion but it's stuck in the ugliness of Joe's Garage and he hedges his bets with the dumb Grand Scrutinizer jive at the beginning, also, tellingly, an instrumental

Ha, that one always seems to get trotted out as Exhibit Z.

Zappa's purest and most emotionally exposed music is on the Guitar compilation. Even the original Shut Up 'n' Play Yer Guitar trilogy had a lot of stunt-work and gimmickry, but the solos on Guitar were sliced directly out of concert tapes and presented without overdubbing.

idk i think “village of the sun” has some kind of emotional register too

How about "Dog Breath Variations" from Uncle Meat (and the equally beautiful version on The Yellow Shark) as Exhibit ZZ?

Absolutely love that one. Nostalgia might be his truest feeling

this continuous "smart mark" attitude about him

wait whut?

my observation here is that i played abt three quarters of JFH last night and it mostly reminded me of the i claudius theme music as re-performed by a marc hollander outfit (i.e. not awful but i will not be tripping over myself to study it any time soon)

my other observation is that the guitar solos in many zappa pieces seem to be the null spot where the tension entirely evaporates: i wd kind of handwave this as "lol that's modal scales for you, pal" and let you pick the bones out of it but it's not like i'm gnna do the homework to see whether the ones i have in mind actually ARE modal, so

by "in mind" i mean "i have often noticed this in the past" -- if you ask me which i mean i will not remember so i guess "no longer in mind" also works

Trouble in Mind.

Oh wait this is a Zappa thread so it probably should be a bad pun like Treble in Mind.

I love that zappa discourse will always lure mark s - I'm the same way in my mind though I don't always actually jump in - he is a fascinating figure, in his steadfast insistence on carving emotional engagement out of music while playing in groups -- he wants to do what improvisational ensembles do but also wants to dictate the terms, it's a deeply contradictory proposition. the melodies and harmonies that define him are totally out of his doo-wop love, but that love is or wants to claim to be entirely technical (fine distinctions in style are the joy of getting into doo wop, what to the Hartford groups do that the Detroit groups don't do, why is LA technique so different from Harlem) while the genre is 100% sentimental at all times & is nostalgic even when it's new ("Those Oldies But Goodies"). "Watermelon" is for sure a solo that feels like it comes from somewhere deeper but there's playing in a lot of the live stuff that feels like it's in the same zone, it's just that the milieu suffocates the expression. If down to one sentence: Zappa is not sure how he feels about pleasure, but if pressed, he's very suspicious of it.

Zappa and the Gang of Four in anti-love song solidarity

It’s his factory.

my other observation is that the guitar solos in many zappa pieces seem to be the null spot where the tension entirely evaporates: i wd kind of handwave this as "lol that's modal scales for you, pal" and let you pick the bones out of it but it's not like i'm gnna do the homework to see whether the ones i have in mind actually ARE modal, so

― mark s, Monday, November 20, 2023 6:20 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is an astute observation, and gets to why I like Zappa's solos. For such an eclectic muso, he sure does like to patiently solo over static chord changes, the result being what you identify as the tension evaporating (I agree). I feel like his compositions are often defined by meter and key changes in that hyperactive, see-what-I-did-there Mr Bungle / Zorn-y way, but as soon as he starts soloing, he typically has the band just...vamp.

That's what I don't really like about him and some other supposedly improv minded acts: the vamping. It's like improv with training wheels, which kind of undersells the abilities of his incredible players, since they are stuck in a static, non-dynamic situation. It's not a direct comparison, but I think of something like early '70s King Crimson, especially with Jamie Muir, where there is a pretty set structure but also an element of no-net chaos. Or I guess (for better or for worse) the Dead. Or, of course, actual jazz outfits, with whom Zappa could not hang. But why would he want to, maaaaaan, they're just, like, conforming to society's notion of free, which means they're really not free at all. Here's a song about it, called "Let Go of My Leash, Stinky-Feet Keef."

Feel like doo-wop was one of the few things he liked enough that it actually survived his pastiches in such a way that something like love shone through.

― Shifty Henry’s Swing Club (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, November 19, 2023 3:50 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I'll be honest there's something charming about the two doo-wop covers on Burnt Weeny Sandwich, it's really the most straight faced I've ever heard him do anything

Ruben & the Jets has tongue in cheek & gets the dumb "we fooled radio stations!" cloak because without that, and without "Stuff Up the Cracks," it's just an earnest attempt to pastiche the music he loved

What is "Jelly Roll Gum Drop" though? It's not doo wop, more like bubblegum soul (I like it btw).

from the vantage point of late 2023, I think it can be hard to remember that for many years before the punk rock fissure of 1977, almost no one else's posture was "mainstream society/ culture is false, saccharine, anodyne, it just fuckin' sucks!!" Everyone reading this thread has encountered that attitude from literally hundreds, probly more likely thousands of artists and cultural critics— in some cases, most ILXors never knew a time when that posture was not so plentiful as to be cliched and tedious. But he was almost alone in that attitude, at least at the prominent level at which he operated, from his debut until 1977. And he was completely dismissive of most anything other than his own music going forward. Like, wouldn't you think that he could understand Metal box? Nope! Punk and post-punk shit was just trendy crap made by guys who aren't a carbuncle on the behind of Vinnie Coliauta or Mike Kenneally. Blues guitarists and 20th century post-modern composers were almost literally the only shit that the approved of other than his own work…

there are def a lot of emotional moments in Zappa's catalogue but it does seem like he's embarrassed to hang on any of them too long, like anytime you're really feeling it he switches to something that you can't form a real connection to, like some sped up percussion ensemble shit, or just a dude burping, it's almost like he's trying to make you feel silly for trying to earnestly connect to his work

it also irritates me how the great moments in his music rarely ever repeat. "Dog Breath" is one rare exception.

That's what I don't really like about him and some other supposedly improv minded acts: the vamping. It's like improv with training wheels, which kind of undersells the abilities of his incredible players, since they are stuck in a static, non-dynamic situation. It's not a direct comparison, but I think of something like early '70s King Crimson, especially with Jamie Muir, where there is a pretty set structure but also an element of no-net chaos. Or I guess (for better or for worse) the Dead. Or, of course, actual jazz outfits, with whom Zappa could not hang. But why would he want to, maaaaaan, they're just, like, conforming to society's notion of free, which means they're really not free at all. Here's a song about it, called "Let Go of My Leash, Stinky-Feet Keef."

― Josh in Chicago

i feel like you're kind of underselling zappa's jazz cred, _particularly_ within the context of the times. if you're talking about his late '70s stuff, yeah, there's a marked difference between his work and the jazz of the era. in around '73, though? he had a band with some pretty great jazz players who could improvise. in spring of '73 he was touring with the mahavishnu orchestra at their peak... zappa hated mclaughlin, well, first because he kind of low-key hated everybody, and second because he was skeptical of mclaughlin's mysticism. zappa's sort of proto-"new atheism" obnoxiousness is possibly even less to my taste these days, but over my years on the west coast i've been increasingly skeptical of "spiritual" passive-aggression, which can be just as controlling as zappa's libertarian bullshit.

it's interesting that you contrast king crimson... having seen the recent king crimson movie, fripp comes across as _just_ this sort of person, someone whose "spirituality" manifests as a constant drive to assert control... king crimson improvise, but only on _his_ terms. jamie muir appears in that film talking about his tenure with the band, saying something like that he wasn't going to last long in a band with robert fripp, who washed his hands ten times a day.

ocd doesn't foreordain one to make bad jazz! the whole thing of technically tricky riffs interspersed with long solos over vamps is pretty typical of a lot of jazz fusion. the thing is, those vamps aren't nearly as "non-dynamic" as they initially appear to be. something like mahavishnu orchestra... in spring of '73 they were absolutely at their peak as a band. the static riff playing in some odd time signature in the background might perhaps obscure the constant instrumental interplay going on in the solos.

what i'd say is... that in the late '70s, zappa's soloing was, for me, probably at its peak, and it existed in increasingly stark contrast to his _profoundly_ shitty songs. i was listening last night to a version of "wild love" from the halloween '77 box set. this is... i mean, i find zappa repulsive. absolutely repulsive. i'm just... i'm gonna limit to an aesthetic level here. the song showcases some of his worst qualities as a lyricist. like "momma stroked his dinger, daddy got a stinky finger in those days of long ago", those are the ACTUAL FUCKING LYRICS to this fucking song.

and then there's a big heaping hunk of improvisation that doesn't really involve zappa at all - he mostly only showed up for solos by this point - and then adrian belew takes a guitar solo. on stage he _didn't_ really undersell the abilities of his incredible players. they weren't just there to play his "wacky" compositions. did he "manage" the improvisations? not the way miles davis did with his band. miles was always pushing, challenging his band members. he was a controlling asshole. zappa? zappa sat off to the side smoking one of the cigarettes constantly in his guitar neck and every five minutes or so he'd wave his hand and they'd play one of his stupid wacky riffs and then get back to whatever the hell they were doing. it's a very libertarian approach to leadership... let other people do all the work and take all the credit.

what he did manage to do is get _great_ sidemen, frequently, and those sidemen would do excellent work. with belew, you don't hear that on record like you do with, say, george duke. by the late 70s zappa was increasingly a controlling asshole... he discovered this amazing wunderkind guitar player in memphis and brought him on board at... the amount of money you'd pay somebody who was playing bars in memphis. and it rapidly became clear that this guy was a fucking amazing, world-class guitar player, and zappa couldn't afford to keep this guy. and for some reason he blamed belew for this. i mean, isn't that just the "free enterprise" zappa kept saying is supposed to be the best thing ever?

anyway. then he obscured belew's contributions as much as possible. "flakes" on sheik yerbouti, for instance, all of the singing after belew's goofy dylan parody wasn't there live. it was just some beautiful belew-lead guitar stuff. belew's solos in this era are just fantastic and really underheard. his, like, second show with the band, on september 18, zappa says that he's going to do a tribute to jimi hendrix and just. fucking. kills. belew was a fantastic player and zappa fucking well knew it.

hendrix is a good comparison point, honestly... to some extent hendrix might seem like the opposite of zappa, with compositions that were undisciplined and sloppy. me, when i listen to zappa's guitar solos of that era, the reason they're as good as they are is because he's _not_ actually playing over a static vamp. i mean, if the guy could do stuff that genuinely _creative_ just playing over a static vamp in 21, he'd have to be a great guitar player, to create that out of nothing. he doesn't, though. hendrix, a lot of his great guitar playing was spurred on by the _fantastic_ drumming of mitch mitchell. mitchell didn't just accompany hendrix - his drumming pushed hendrix to go as far as he could, and sometimes farther. by like 15 minutes in the song has turned into this completely gorgeous guitar solo... like, how did this shitty awful prog-rock parody turn into _this_? and if you listen he's not playing over a static vamp... he has this crack rhythm section that didn't just support him, but in the really good solos, they _drove_ him. zappa's the soloist, but listen to o'hearn. and as much as... as easy as it is to say that once again zappa took all the credit, you have something on sheik yerbouti like "rubber shirt". because of the perverse way he did it, taking the bass and drums tracks from _separate performances_, you don't get to hear how well the rhythm section worked together, but he did mix himself out entirely. when his rhythm section were "vamping", that's what they sounded like. i wouldn't say that's "non-dynamic" playing!

yeah, with zappa there was always structure, and frequently, as in "wild love", that structure was actively terrible. the thing is, though, that his music _does_ wind up having the same sort of moments of unexpected improvisational joy that the dead do. listen to the dead playing "dancin' in the street" at MIT on may 6, 1970. i put this song on after hearing deadheads say how great it is and my god, it is just _astonishing_ how badly they manage to play that song. seriously, i have no words for how badly they make it sound. one of the greatest songs i have ever heard, being played by a professional rock band, and it's just an absolute travesty. and then they break into the solo section and christ, the contrast. it is some of the most beautiful playing i've heard. it's a "jerry solo" but the rest of the band are just locked in. everybody's at their peak. and then 13 or so minutes later it's over and they go right back to defenestrating martha and the vandellas. is it as bad as "wild love"? i can't say. what's worse, writing a song as bad as "wild love" and playing it well or playing a great song like "dancin' in the street" as badly as the dead do? i don't really care. i'm just here for the good shit.

And every time I come back to Zappa I have to admit that there _is_ good shit, so much good shit, and they came from this guy whose attitude and misogyny are just... totally repellent to me. I kind of hate the guy but I always wind up defending his music anyway.

it also is useful to remember that, while he was legit amused by overtly comedic elements of his crowd pleasing '70s shit, he was pretty open about his contempt for his audience, and that he did that stuff in an openly cynical effort to entertain the people who paid for his records and show but which that he had no respect for (which would fund his "serious" work which he cared about)… and Zappa fans in the 70s and 80s understood this, and tolerated his contempt because they a.) did think he was superior to them, which was quite easy to countenance because b.) being a Zappa fan meant that you were superior to not only other lumpen rock fans, but to everyone else in society extant.

good call, pitchfork reviewer person, about burnt weeny sandwich. listening for the first time to some nice proto-prog. even the doo wop works for me. hot rats never pushed my buttons like this for whatever reason

I actually really like "Wild Love" as a tune, obviously the lyrics are awful, as they were intended to be. But to me it's one of those Zappa tunes that has that Cardiacs thing going where a bunch of disparate parts at wildly different tempos do somehow cohere in a way you can actually remember (one of the big issues I have with Frank is I can never really remember which instrumental bit goes with which tune). idk maybe I just really like stuff that sounds like game show music.

always thought it was shitty the way Zappa was so catty towards Bowie over "stealing" Belew...of course he's gonna go with David Bowie if he's given the chance! he was probably getting paid more and treated better too! but yeah I think you're right, something cool about Zappa, especially live Zappa, is getting to hear all these amazing sidemen. and yes I always wondered how much of that was just Frank not really knowing how to complete a tune.

me: "this continuous "smart mark" attitude about him"

mark s: wait whut?

it's an old pro wrestling fandom thing... i don't really know shit about pro wrestling but my siblings were all into it. "mark" in pro-wrestling is derived from carny lingo, where a "mark" is a sucker. you had people calling themselves "smart marks" who prided themselves on knowing what was _really_ going on. they also, though, had this saying: "a smart mark is still a mark."

he treated love like it was a carny trick. he wasn't gonna fall for that bullshit. he was just going to go out and get his dick sucked by a groupie and write unflattering songs about them like "camarillo brillo", about a girl who wore a "rancid poncho" with whom he did until "it was useless anymore". my personal feelings about sex are somewhat equivocal, but i can't imagine taking a view of sex as an overall activity as nihilistic as zappa's. he did all of these songs about how he was too smart to fall in love. yeah, i know frank. big boys don't cry.

He was probably skeptical of McLaughlin's mysticism actual chops.