Frank Zappa: Classic or Dud?

PIPCO

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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.

... jealous is the word you're looking for.

Don't ask me how or why but years and years go I read an interview with Zappa in a guitar mag where he was sniffy about McLaughlin ("he's OK if you like that playing a million notes a second thing") while singing the praises (insofar as he would ever sing the praises of a rival guitarist) of Brian May.

"he's OK if you like that playing a million notes a second thing" (hires Steve Vai)

He doesn't mind it when the guy's working for him.

all I can say rush is don't listen to "Jumbo Go Away" it's actually somehow worse than all the songs you mentioned

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.

― frogbs

god that's the annoying thing, compositionally i do think "wild love" is... there are some fucking great melodies in there. that opening bit... he could do some _great_ fanfares. and he would just undercut them. it wasn't that he couldn't complete a tune... sometimes he would, like, actively make his stuff sound worse than it was. those archival releases of the "hot rats" sessions are really illuminating. you know "toads of the short forest" on _weasels ripped my flesh_? that one minute fanfare that cuts into three minutes of the mothers live playing polyrhythms in the most abrasive manner possible? that's actually a gorgeous seven-minute piece... i mean, not on par with "it must be a camel", but it's a great listen. and look, for me, it's easier for me to get past the ridiculous titles than the overt misogyny. i actually _like_ "weasels ripped my flesh" as a title, particularly knowing the background. there's genuine value to me in pointing out the utterly _absurd_ view of masculinity presented by men's magazines. even if it's only accidental allyship, i'll take it.

by the way, the second "hot rats" set, "funky nothingness", has a long piece called "tommy/vincent duo" that _really_ shows off zappa's ability to not just solo, but improvise with another musician. of all the zappa stuff, the hot rats sessions are what i come back to most.

Zappa's "Hot Rats" is like Springsteen's "Nebraska," the album always brought up to convince the haters.

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

― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, November 20, 2023 10:00 AM (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yea this is definitely one of the good ones, wild to think that both this and Weasels were apparently just outtakes. I don't know if I like it more than Hot Rats but it def feels more like a 'true' Zappa album - like yeah, Hot Rats is great, but it's not what Zappa does. if it's your first Frank album and you dig it you're gonna be real frustrated with the rest of his catalogue. BWS has bits that are jarring and nonsensical (even the structure of the album itself, bookending some genuinely strange music with two straight doowop covers) but I think for the most part it gets to the heart of what made the dude great.

actually what it kind of reminds me of is the work of Tim Follin, the VGM composer famous for making some pretty insane soundtracks to shitty video games. to the point where even Nintendo's hardware guys famously couldn't figure out how he was getting certain sounds out of their chips. when interviewed he talks about how a lot of his technique is just feeding crazy sequences of notes into the dev kit, stuff that makes sense mathematically but couldn't really be played organically, and lo and behold a lot of that shit sounded very cool. Zappa did a lot of stuff like that, except people really did have to play it, though he'd speed the tape up or edit it together to give it that impossible sound he was looking for. I guess there's something endearing about that, as Frank himself clearly didn't like very much, but in those moments you can figure he's at least trying to make something a guy like him *would* like, and in doing so was going quite a bit further out than any of his peers.

all I can say rush is don't listen to "Jumbo Go Away" it's actually somehow worse than all the songs you mentioned

― frogbs

heard it. for me the all-time nadir is going to be the "illinois enema bandit", in which he makes the argument that college educated women need to be sexually assaulted.

and he then went on to play this song, which unlike "wild love" is musically uninteresting, as an encore at damn near every concert of his between 1976, when he wrote it, and his death. nobody asked for that. there were no frank zappa fans out there yelling for "ILLINOIS ENEMA BANDIT!" even among his deeply misogynist fanbase, the people who _really really really_ wanted to hear "titties and beer".

as openly as he disdained his audience he didn't ever seem to understand that... he _earned_ that audience. he catered to them, and actively opposed people who challenged their misogyny. to me the key moment of this is in boston in the fall of 1976... he was making another attempt to have a woman in his band, the supremely talented lady bianca. as she started into her bravura rendition of "you didn't try to call me", an audience member shouted for her to take her clothes of. she responded, quite sensibly, that he should tell his mama to take her clothes off, and then tell her to suck a rat's dick.

zappa made a big joke out of it during the concert, but you can hear how unnerved he is in his voice. he upbraided her after the concert for being _unprofessional_. fucking excuse me? _unprofessional_? to me, this demonstrates quite well to what extent his sleazy-game-show-host act was a mask for his own uncertainty and insecurity. He pulled the same shit on SNL in '78. y'all know how _that_ went, i'm sure.

anyway. lady bianca didn't finish out the tour. he made a couple attempts, like with lisa popeil, ron popeil's daughter, but to the best of my knowledge, was never able to keep a woman in his touring band aside from ruth underwood.

actually what it kind of reminds me of is the work of Tim Follin, the VGM composer famous for making some pretty insane soundtracks to shitty video games. to the point where even Nintendo's hardware guys famously couldn't figure out how he was getting certain sounds out of their chips. when interviewed he talks about how a lot of his technique is just feeding crazy sequences of notes into the dev kit, stuff that makes sense mathematically but couldn't really be played organically, and lo and behold a lot of that shit sounded very cool. Zappa did a lot of stuff like that, except people really did have to play it, though he'd speed the tape up or edit it together to give it that impossible sound he was looking for. I guess there's something endearing about that, as Frank himself clearly didn't like very much, but in those moments you can figure he's at least trying to make something a guy like him *would* like, and in doing so was going quite a bit further out than any of his peers.

― frogbs

interesting comparison! i think it's a good one... even moreso with his earlier ZX Spectrum work than with his NES work. something like "agent x in the brain drain caper", you're dealing with something that's insanely technically sophisticated as well as highly compositionally sophisticated (yeah his stuff was pretty damn prog). follin himself said of the results: "The only drawback was that it sounded like a vacuum cleaner with nails stuck in it." if you can get past how timbrally awful it is, it's fucking great, you know?

unlike follin, though, that's what zappa _wanted_ the effect of his music to be. the thing that strikes me about zappa's synclavier work was how fundamentally _uncreative_ his use of timbre was. he was always talking about the advanced possibilities the synclavier had in those regards, but when i listen to civilization phase iii it doesn't differ significantly from analog timbres. there was _so much_ interesting stuff being done with synthesized music in this era and zappa was doing none of it. he completely failed to take advantage of the possibilities of the medium in any meaningful way.

Zappa's "Hot Rats" is like Springsteen's "Nebraska," the album always brought up to convince the haters.

― Josh in Chicago

well i'm not going to try and convince anybody zappa is good by telling them to listen to fucking _thing-fish_!

also, i think i deserve _some_ hater cred for describing zappa as "totally repellent".

for me it's pretty easy, it's cuts off after 1970 for the most part, i can do without most of the stuff after that

but then you would cut off "i'm the slime"

there was a twitter prompt going around that said something like "this artist has one (1) great album of music scattered throughout their discography" and that's how i feel about post hot rats zappa

also, i think i deserve _some_ hater cred for describing zappa as "totally repellent".

I popped real hard when you said that tbh because it's really the problem -- if at any point zappa's shit got its hooks in you, then you see its virtues, and if you're a person who wants to be on the side of non-gross thinking about the world & people, then you're especially repulsed by how he can be both a guy interested in making interesting, distinctive and good stuff and still being THAT GUY ~in the same stuff~. for me there's a real look-in-the-mirror thing with this because I was super into Zappa as a kid, thanks to his reliable presence on the Dr. Demento Top 10. I was utterly ripe for a guy whose schtick was "if you like this, then you're one of the smart ones"; at 12, I had Zappa in NY, Sleep Dirt, and Joe's Garage. My peers in 6th grade were fellow Titties n Beer fans, we could recite that shit, but by 7th grade I was a loner, listening to "Joe's Garage" on headphone, laughing my ass off at the Central Scrutinizer, loving the title track SO MUCH, fuck all the squares, right...and then as an adult to revisit these tunes, whose workings are embedded in my pleasure centers, and hear just how much contempt there is in it, how really humorless the humor is. and yet! watermelon in easter hay!

The time when I was deepest into Zappa was also the period in my life when I was most involved with Catholicism, going on youth retreats and joining the CYO and all that stuff. Perhaps the "us vs them/we know something they don't" thing was a common factor, I don't know.

Zappa paired with Dr. Demento pretty much sums it up, though I'm a "Weird" Al man myself. Which perhaps ties it all together, because as I understand it his band are a bunch of big Zappa heads.

you'd have to be a super fan to satirize zappa this effectively

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwFf9vGRqcs

Not going to link to the story of the time Weird Al’s bassist auditioned for Zappa again, or am I?