Frank Zappa: Classic or Dud?

Thinking now of how supposedly Elvis said his favorite of his imitators was Andy Kaufman.

Weird Al's has some love in it -- he was a new Dr. Demento guy at the exact time when "Titties and Beer" was winning the top 10 what seemed like every week. "Frankie's in Town" is incredibly vicious, and beautiful. "To hear him sing about the stuff that he hates"

Somehow with FZ it's like there is in fact not a thin line between love and hate.

indeed as I get older its harder to see much outside of the contempt, it reminds me of a part of myself that I don't really like. the part of me that at age 12 was mocking the Backstreet Boys by singing their songs off key and remarking about how phony they were. the part of me that took pride in not falling for pop music or advertisements or romantic comedies and would look down upon those who did, which at the end of the day just came from an inability to drop my guard for even a second.

yes, this. the me who loved Zappa's records as a kid is an insecure guy who sees, in Zappa, a possible blueprint for an effective lifelong defense mechanism. and who holds himself in pretty deep contempt, and wants to be sure he can say, when he's grown up, "It's you who are the assholes, actually." I was in junior high at the time, I should be gentle with my junior high self, but it's still embarrassing.

Any Zappa albums I ever bought I bought for the drummers. That was a very short-lived phase, because whether you're buying it for the drummer, the bassist, the percussionist, the guitarist, you're still mostly getting a whole lot of Zappa.

Shit, I'm still working to hate myself less. I'm not ashamed of myself for hating myself as much as I did. It was what I was taught. Building your life around Frank Zappa or being an incel or whatever is one possible way of dealing with that. It's not how I do things now, and I'm glad that's not how I do things now.

To me the Zappa-like figures I got over shortly after starting high school were guys like Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein.

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

― The First Time Ever I Saw Gervais (Tom D.), Monday, November 20, 2023 6:46 AM (five hours ago)

I've never known what it is either. Probably recorded in 1967, so that's pretty early for "bubblegum" proper. It's also very fast. Idk, somehow it sounds more '60s than '50s to me.

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, Monday, November 20, 2023 10:21 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

jesus what a terrible fucking song

I guess the commonality between Zappa and the other two guys I mentioned is crepeyness combined with I-know-better arrogance topped off with superhuman Vielschreiber Sitzfleisch.

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!!" (...) he was almost alone in that attitude, at least at the prominent level at which he operated, from his debut until 1977.

Sorry to back up so far (this is a busy thread!) – but isn't this just, like, the "counterculture"? I mean punks didn't invent that attitude, you can find it on Jefferson Airplane albums or whatever (and I know Zappa hated hippies, but...)

norman mailer was using "plastic" as an insult back in the 50s

Yeah I was gonna say, how is Zappa different from any random beatnik who thought that he and his friends were on The Real Shit...

there is also a kind of double ratchet tho: on one hand ppl kept coming along to declare that earlier critics (or just other critics) weren't the actual real thing, on the other hand there just being more and more and more ppl making this declaration

there wasn't many beatniks, there were lots of punks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biW3llPf8Mw

I mean punks didn't invent that attitude, you can find it on Jefferson Airplane albums or whatever (and I know Zappa hated hippies, but...)

― This field is required (morrisp)

he actually collaborated with at least grace slick! on "would you like a snack?" (no relation to the _200 motels_ song of the same name). it's good! very feminist. that bit is slick, not zappa :)

anyway best i can tell the real reason he hated hippies is because he was from LA and he hated the SF scene. simple crosstown rivalry.

"punk" is an interesting one... there's that song "flower punk"... it's about hippies, but in the song he refers to them as "punks". i think it's in the "punk kid" sense and not in the "homosexual bottom" sense.

very feminist. that bit is slick, not zappa :)

― Kate (rushomancy)

actually that's an assumption on my part. for all i know the lyrics, a surreal joycean riff on menstruation, sex, and eating disorders, were in fact contributed by zappa and slick did the music, emulating zappa's compositional style flawlessly :)

norman mailer was using "plastic" as an insult back in the 50s

I think plenty of the beatnik criticisms of the straight world are fair enough and come from a place of wanting a gentler world, but of course there's a lot of it that comes from a place of condescension / insecurity / hatred too. Zappa hated hippies but was similar to them in his blanket "all you normies are morons" position; but landing on Mailer or whoever and saddling the 60s counterculture with that seems pretty selective. the Black Panthers didn't think much of mainstream culture either, and for better reasons.

xp also he didn't do drugs and hippies were very into drugs. Zappa thought they were for dumbs shits.

Also worth noting that Mailer's anger at society could well be filed under "embittered WWII veteran" (see also: the Hell's Angels) rather than beatnik or proto-hippie.

yeah, Paul Kantner, CSN and other hideously insufferable hippies position was "the straight milieu is false, and our version of society will be the perfected one, drugs and free love are what await you in the new world"; whereas Zappa had no great vision along those lines, other than "my composition oriented music is the heir to the post-modern tradition, my more popular rock shit is better for you than conventional pop music because it shows that conventional music for the tripe it is (and is played with hotter licks), and as an unusually articulate cultural figure, I'm going to tell you the truth that no one else will, that everything (other than my shit) sucks." again, I can easily see that this would be bracing in a post 1967 landscape in which that viewpoint was nowhere near as widespread as it would be from 1977 on. It's the sneer, I guess, that he had that was not commonplace.

This reminds that as a NYC-based VU fan I felt I was honor and duty-bound to hate both Zappa and The Jefferson Airplane only now I really dig the latter but still don't really care about the former DO U SEE?

Sorry, feel a bit like Sam I Am trying to think of new ways to turn down green eggs and ham

xxp The Airplane's "politics" weren't that simplistic I don't think, and Kantner didn't take that particular line too often (tho I guess he did allude to "Free minds, free bodies, free dope, free music" in "Hijak," which is post-JA). Anyway, I guess it's true they had a "vision" of sorts, of a better society (even if a sci-fi–based one).

I don't know how that's more "insufferable" than whatever Zappa represents, though

Open Airplane infighting over the decades gives the idea that at least some of them had a sense of humor about the situation. So in the end not insufferable after all.

Is there anything Zappa did that is a patch on the pants of, say, Sweeping Up the Spotlight?

(I don't think any of JA were too committed to the revolutionary schtick, and there was always a poker-faced / tongue-in-cheek element to it... maybe in everyone's case but Kantner's. But even he didn't literally think he was gonna hijack a starship.)

(I don't think any of JA were too committed to the revolutionary schtick, and there was always a poker-faced / tongue-in-cheek element to it... maybe in everyone's case but Kantner's. But even he didn't literally think he was gonna hijack a starship.)

― This field is required (morrisp)

i don't think having a sense of humor about revolution means it's a "schtick". a lot of the stuff they said... i think they meant it, and i agree with a lot of what they said, frankly. in terms of insufferability, what got me the most was when they started with the posadist fantasies.

it's a relevant, personal question that i'm facing today... what happens when you have these ideals, you believe in a better world, you believe in making a better world, and you see, in your community, the most fucked up shit, over and over and over again? you see people suffer and die and can't do anything about it? you play altamont and the fucking hell's angels smack you in the face and what the hell, man, jerry said these guys would be cool, not like the fucking pigs, and jerry's being a total two-faced coward about the whole thing saying oh sure _he_ had nothing to do with it and...

i mean it's easy to get involved in scene drama like this. but i mean... scene drama? a man is dead! killed on camera by the people who were supposed to keep us _safe_! what the fuck do you do when you see shit like that go down, over and over again?

i don't know, man, maybe we can... hijack a starship or something. shit, i could do an album about that. gonna need a lotta coke to be able to get something that big together, though.

Well it was supposed to be "ready by 1990," I'd say it's sadly behind schedule...

jerry's being a total two-faced coward about the whole thing saying oh sure _he_ had nothing to do with it

i hate him in gimme shelter so much

Is there anything Zappa did that is a patch on the pants of, say, Sweeping Up the Spotlight?

― Shifty Henry’s Swing Club (James Redd and the Blecchs)

matter of personal taste, i guess. they're really different bands but yeah, there's some zappa live stuff that i personally would say i like roughly as much as i like that record. the thing about the '69 band in particular is that it had a fair bit of range. there's a tape from miami in may where he's mostly doing old doo-wop numbers like "bacon fat" and "lonely lonely nights", and i think that one's a great listen. then there's one from wisconsin a few months later where he's doing a lot of pretty abstract instrumental stuff like "the eric dolphy memorial barbecue" and even the don preston composition "eye of agamotto" and i like that too. so as much as zappa had a "schtick", having a band that's able to play two completely different sets in two completely different _styles_ and pull of each style pretty well, to be able to go back and forth between those styles at will... i like that. when he starts doing it three or four times a minute... that can get tiresome, i'd say.

norman mailer was using "plastic" as an insult back in the 50s

Zappa was totally a product of the 50s. Of course he hated hippies, they were younger than him.

Zappa is the thinking man’s Maynard G. Krebs.

With the opposite facial hair maneuver.

Exactly!

It’s like those matter/antimatter black/white check-faced guys on Star Trek:TOS.

he really is the guy who dug an entirely different tunnel out of the 50s -- via stan freberg lol -- that paid no fair mind to just about anything that came afterwards (except maybe some TV themetunes and cokerock production techniques)

(i even feel like he got to "fusion" via his own route tbh)

― mark s, Friday, 25 December 2020 20:24 (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

For years I was convinced that the only time I saw FZ was 1974 with the Roxy and Elsewhere band, and wished I could remember it more clearly (or really at all.) There is even a soundboard bootleg available, which did nothing to jog my memory. The setlist is much the same as You Can't Do That On Stage Vol. 2, which I love, and the show is actually quite good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi0SXwX-BAQ

Over the weekend I came to the realization that the show I attended was actually 1975. Ruth Underwood and George Duke were gone, and with them the complicated cartoon music of Roxy and Apostrophe. The band is stripped down from two drummers to one (Terry Bozzio) and features the short-lived lineup including Norma Bell and Andre Lewis. The setlist for this new band revived oldies from Freak Out, introduces a couple from Bongo Fury, and includes early arrangements of the justly maligned "Honey/Illinois" medley.

Still and all an interesting listen, captured on Zappa '75: Zagreb/Ljubljana, recorded mere days before I saw them in St. Paul, the night before Thanksgiving 1975.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgs_Z6z1yLs

Naval Aviation In Art (through PA), Stinkfoot (incl. The Poodle Lecture), Dirty Love, How Could I Be Such A Fool?, I Ain't Got No Heart, I'm Not Satisfied, Black Napkins, Advance Romance, Honey Don't You Want A Man Like Me?, The Illinois Enema Bandit, Carolina Hard-Core Ecstasy, Lonely Little Girl, Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance, What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?, Chunga's Revenge (incl. Five-Five-Five riff, Sy Borg riff, q: Follow Your Heart), I'm The Slime, San Ber'dino

Finally got around to checking out the original mixes of 'Freak Out' this week. Lots of 60s plate echo on the mix sets it in it's time and while the drums are not necessarily as clear as least in this modern master the low end is way better and the guitars got a bit more bite.

It was not as stark a difference at least to my memory, as I have not compared side by side as I was expecting. I'd compare it more to say hearing the mono mixes of classic Stones sides after only knowing the stereo mixes and realizing the mono was much better and was how it originally came out.

Eventually I will get around to checking out 'Uncle Meat' as all that movie dialog and how it was put together I thought was a slog. It's willfully ugly music and the guy's big style is using the tape edit like a samurai sword but I never could get into that one - although I think King Kong is a good tune. I got a feeling the original probably flows a lot better.

I'm at peace with my dislike of Zappa, but some time ago - months? years? - some deep cut station our car radio sometimes picks up played "Montana." I was by myself, and thought, OK, I'll give this an honest shot. But I only made it a few minutes before giving it the gong. Fast forward some time (months, years, etc) and we're driving around yesterday, my wife in the passenger seat this time, listening to the radio, when that same song comes on the same station. I think, OK, I know what this is, and know I don't like it, but I'll just leave it on and see what happens. And a couple of minutes go by without comment before my wife asks "what is this shit?" and changes the station.

yr wife otm

(also sidebar: i know this proposes dud discussion in the title, but i kind of want a dedicated zappa hate thread. some folks really get something out of his music and want discourse about it. i just want to make endless jokes about how he looks like like old salami and cabbage farts and how when he hired george duke, he couldn't understand half the shit george duke was playing. sorry earl, dan, and others who are genuine fans. i promise i won't shit up this thread anymore with such flippant unsophistication. i do appreciate frank's resolute and justified hatred of "THE MAN", discrepancies duly noted.)

(I kind of agree, except I honestly don't really see the point of such a thread so I will continue to post here and, not temper my hatred, but just spoon it out judiciously upon occasion)

(I kind of agree, except I honestly don't really see the point of such a thread so I will continue to post here and, not temper my hatred, but just spoon it out judiciously upon occasion)

the fans deserve a space to discuss the genius of the 21/8 guitar-and-marimba section of "the cosmic wang" in peace

Many XPS

By the standards of Zappa's '80s fuckwithery, what he did to Freak Out was pretty minor; as I understand it, he just applied a load of digital reverb to make it sound less time stamped to 1966, and there was no overdubbing/instrumental replacements/editing/restoration done to it.

By 'restoration' I mean adding back censored material or using previously unreleased full-length versions of tracks.

idk if i'd get much out of a hate thread for a guy who died 30 years ago. i _do_ hate him, but i find myself always coming back to the aspects of his music i think are interesting.

It's appropriate that the discussion thread is also the "hate thread"; even "the fans" dislike much of Zappa's work and personality.

It is a classic or dud thread, so hate is as relevant to the thread as love.

Dud Work For Yuda

this is the man who famously refused to write a love song. it seems just inappropriate and wrong to use the word "love" in the same sentence as "frank zappa".