On the other hand, some contend that Zappa was a musical con-artist, a pretentious artiste peddling scatological, misanthropic lyrics. Or, as one of my friends put it, "Zappa fans are just pretentious Dead Heads."
So, what do you think?
― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Monday, 14 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 14 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― ethan, Monday, 14 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
On the other hand, stuff released in the late seventies and through the eighties was often fairly puzzling. Musically speaking, it was incredibly well-played, and the lyrics had a bitter sting to them that you couldn't help but admire a good chunk of the time. By this time, though, he got into a really nasty groove that went past obvious satire to the point where you weren't quite sure that he wasn't being serious anymore: how many times can you release an album filled to the gills with songs about big breasts, blow jobs, drugs, and various other degeneracies until any claims to satire are dismissed? In a lot of ways it became a one-note dirty joke, and while it remained clever it became redundant and increasingly transparent. Moments of brilliance were still there: Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch was actually quite solid if you jettisoned the novelty hit single. The Yellow Shark proved that the man knew how to compose music (though Jazz From Hell had already proved that, it was a bit on the sterile side). More than anything, this became a period where Zappa was more notable just for the sheer amount of product he cranked out. That's not enough to change my vote, though. Still classic.
― Sean Carruthers, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
If you bother to learn how to write music, write a big, run-on sentence like Zappa did so you can just sit back and hire super-professional musicians to play it later, as a challenge to their virtuosity and a feather in all of your caps! And then mix and match your paragraphs, so you never have to start a new book (since it's such a mess to begin with) and have people call your entire body of work a brilliant intertwined "concept"!
Music that is composeurish is rather dull, unless it is actually goodlike Mozart, Vivaldi or Beethoven, when the orchestration is so good, you don't notice the minutia unless you concentrate and are then blown away on a whole different level. Zappa falls way short of that. Everything is "hey, listen to this little weird thing" *insert cowbell rattle followed by kazoo*. (This reminds me of Metallica, by the way; I can hear the metronome ticking in the background. That's bad music! Is that supposed to be emotion? Hmmm...)
I prefer the Grateful Dead to most Zappa, with the exception of "Apostrophe" & "Sheik Yerbouti". Some others that are okay, but by no means what the fans make it out to be, are "The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life", "Yellow Shark", "Joe's Garage" and "You Are What You Is". I also have "Live At The Ritz" (or something?) that I never listen to. It is some of the most boring shit I own, except for the one track "I Am The Slime" which I don't have on any other recording... Which album has "Zombie Woof"? That'sa good one, actually.
Anyway, I think what I'm trying to say is that it's a lot harder to make a cohesive song that has some emotion rather than filling a music sheet with black dots and having Steve Vai and Anton Figg play it for you while you play composer genius. The main guy from Jethro Tull is like that, too, but I think he actually has a reason to be, since it's not 1/2 just free improvisation and studio overdubs.
Of course, if you are a fan of his music, you'll be ridiculously offended by the notion that he's nota super genius, even if you have no musical knowledge or skill yourself as a source to draw upon for judgement, and tell me to piss off or something for daring to compare my unfamous non-music-reading sensibilities to the god of avant garde. He definitely gets tons of points for being first. Who knows if I would be able to lay on a couch, imagining constantly changing music patterns if he hadn't shown me how (or did he)? I do it all the time, but it drives me nuts because songs that wander off into insanity are boring. Playing simple and well is difficult. I think Zappa released too much of too little value (except to those fanatics of course). But, I still think he's a classic for the good stuff he did put out and for trying to do something interesting (even if not really very funny at all, just weird and kinda perverted) with music.
― , Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
hey, nobody's mentioned 'hot rats' yet, perhaps his greatest album?
― ethan, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Oh, check out his autobiography. It's got some good laughs. Spoo!
― Dave M., Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Interestingly I don't really feel qualified to respond to this thread any more, despite owning a load of Zappa. I haven't listened to any of it in more than a year.
I think my favorites used to be Apostrophe'/Overnite Sensation (esp. "Montana" - "I think I'll raise me up some DENNIL FLOSS"), the guitar box (esp. the track with the bouzouki), parts of Joe's Garage (mostly for the guitar sound, cf. 'Watermelon in Easter Hay', and because I get an enormous kick out of hearing the Ceeeeentral Scrooooaaaatinizer), One Size Fits All, much of Zoot Allures and Lather (I get an infantile kick out of the Stravinsky namedrop on "Titties 'n' Beer", but that's just a perk).
― Josh, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Omar, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― DG, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Andrew L, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
- following the awesome tribute night to zappa and beefheart at THE CLUNY - where was the fuckin' WIRE ? - another night is planned on thursday 17th may at newcastle arts centre - featuring ex- zappa/beefheart drummer jimmy carl black and the muffin men, zoviet france, hounds of the hill and many others - zappa and beefheart classics fucked over bigstyle - like susan george in straw dogs !
― geordie racer, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― gareth, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Tadeusz says astute, but I've never thought FZ was over-and-above astute — just, y'know, run-of-the-mill astute. Never heard an FZ commentary that I hadn't already heard elsewhere (not nec. heard elsewhere in pop /rock, but in Letterman or Alex Cockburn, or just somewhere... ): I think the prob. is he NEVER turned his laser-eye on himself and the wackness of his dreams/fears. "Astute" somewhat excepted, all the good words TS uses are true — but (to me) so what. FZ is just too guarded, so that's how he makes me.
― mark s, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Anyway, my own thoughts: I tend to like Zappa's earlier stuff most (just about everything he did with the Mothers of Invention), plus a great deal of his late seventies/early eighties post-Mothers stuff. Faves would have to be Apostrophe (as someone upthread said, so gleeful), Freak Out!, Hot Rats, Joe's Garage, and Läther (because it's so over-the-top, has all of the best bits from Sheikh Yerbouti and Orchestral Favorites, and that cow on the cover with the Zappa goatee-and-beard). Guilty favorites would be Sheikh Yerbouti (great pop songs and awesome guitarwork mixed with pure wank and pointlessly stupid lyrics) and Thing Fish (mainly because it brings together everything that was good and was bad about Zappa). Largely agree that he tapered off towards the end, when he was releasing albums largely because he could (and because he'd gotten that damn Synclavier doing music by himself, without anyone or anything to keep him or his sketchier ideas in check).
As for the astuteness -- I guess some of that's from my having read a lot of his interviews as well as his autobiography. His lyrics are a grab-bag of the funny, the astute, the obscene and the flat-out stupid ... even he admitted that a lot of his lyrics and plots (esp. Joe's Garage) were stupid.
― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Monday, 21 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
'Hot Rats' is good though, and is it 'Suzy Cream Cheese' (?). Actually, Zap ain't so bad. I mean the guy did twiddle the knobs on 'Troutmask' right? It's just he's so fucking odd; but for the sake of being odd, you know. Whereas with Loonheart, you know that he is genuinely fucking out there, Zappa is always trying so damn hard.
With this is mind: Dud.
― Roger Fascist, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― JUlio Desouza, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― DeRayMi, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Jeff W, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― dog latin, Sunday, 4 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
So... Nobody here has a sense of humor unless they're STONED??
All of you hate fun and sweet sweet guitar solos. REVIVE!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssjVez9UA4w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew3Dq82Q1bQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCG4Caw7IIc
― Andi Mags, Monday, 28 May 2007 04:34 (sixteen years ago) link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_i_HVBD9ks
Alternate '73 version of Montana with better video quality but lower sound. KILLER solo.
― Andi Mags, Monday, 28 May 2007 04:50 (sixteen years ago) link
ahhhhh thanks
― cutty, Monday, 28 May 2007 04:50 (sixteen years ago) link
whoa i just clicked on that "last zappa interview" video--really sad
― cutty, Monday, 28 May 2007 04:53 (sixteen years ago) link
fuckin ian underwood!
― cutty, Monday, 28 May 2007 04:57 (sixteen years ago) link
I haven't brought myself to watch that yet, but there are 5 sections of the Zappa bio from BBC on there too, which I highly recommend.
― Andi Mags, Monday, 28 May 2007 05:11 (sixteen years ago) link
That video of "You are what you is" made the 8 year old me extremely nauseous when it originally aired.
― Sparkle Motion, Monday, 28 May 2007 16:08 (sixteen years ago) link
I just read about this morning--no recollection of it playing any festivals here, and I can't find a listing on IMDB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7figLnhYZ44
― clemenza, Sunday, 4 March 2012 13:48 (twelve years ago) link
”both” is the answer to the this thread
― the wild eyed boy from soundcloud (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Sunday, 4 March 2012 18:41 (twelve years ago) link
haha, otm
― Steamtable Willie (WmC), Sunday, 4 March 2012 19:49 (twelve years ago) link
So much material that there are extremes of both.
― c'est ne pas un car wash (snoball), Sunday, 4 March 2012 20:59 (twelve years ago) link
Full catalogue to be reissued by Universal this year, apparently including some new mastering jobs. (By Joe Travers? No details given.)
My first question is whether Gail and the ZFT retains the right to keep on mining the extensive vaults and putting stuff out themselves.
― Biff Wellington (WmC), Tuesday, 12 June 2012 21:30 (eleven years ago) link
hmmm, i seem to recall that the mixes of a lot of those 90s reissues had been futzed w/ by Zappa? wonder if these are the "original" mixes or whatever.
― tylerw, Tuesday, 12 June 2012 21:43 (eleven years ago) link
RIP Rykodisc.
― Electro-Shock Rory (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, 12 June 2012 21:47 (eleven years ago) link
I hope they're the "unfutzed" versions.
― EZ Snappin, Tuesday, 12 June 2012 21:50 (eleven years ago) link
I dunno - the original version of "We're Only In It For the Money" is pretty horrible, really
― frogbs, Tuesday, 12 June 2012 21:53 (eleven years ago) link
sonically, I mean
― frogbs, Tuesday, 12 June 2012 21:54 (eleven years ago) link
Would like somebody to explain me the difference between remixing and remastering in the context of this news. When FZ did the CD releases of Ruben and the Jets and WOIIFTM with new bass & drum tracks, it's safe to say he did new mixes. There are fairly radical differences in LP and CD mixes of Hot Rats. But I imagine that most of the CD catalogue consisted of digital transfer of the original vinyl masters, right, without much fiddling around?
― Biff Wellington (WmC), Tuesday, 12 June 2012 22:06 (eleven years ago) link
You have it right, Remastering is tracking down the best possible format of the final mixes of an album (in Zappa's case probably 1/2 or 1/4 inch analog tape reels and adding equalisation and/or compression & limiting to get the best overall sound and dynamics onto whichever format the recording is going to end up on. Of course the potential abuse of the process is a big issue in the digital age.
Remixing is loading the original unmixed master tapes onto whatever the relevant playback machine would be and repeating the process of mixing the album from scratch.
― MaresNest, Tuesday, 12 June 2012 22:15 (eleven years ago) link
The regular cds of Freak Out have a bunch of digital echo Frank added in the 80s. The reissue entitled MOFO has the og mix.
― Electro-Shock Rory (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, 12 June 2012 22:18 (eleven years ago) link
I remember reading that he apparently dicked about with recordings other than Hot Rats and WOIIFTM too, that's where the UMRK Approved master tag came in.
― MaresNest, Tuesday, 12 June 2012 22:19 (eleven years ago) link
the version on cd with added slap bass is a whole new level of awful though
― zappi, Tuesday, 12 June 2012 22:38 (eleven years ago) link
"futzed" is putting it mildly.
ReissuesIn 1984, Zappa prepared a remix of Cruising with Ruben & the Jets for its compact disc reissue and the vinyl box set The Old Masters I. The remix featured new rhythm tracks recorded by bassist Arthur Barrow and drummer Chad Wackerman, much as the 1984 remix of We're Only in It for the Money had featured. Zappa stated "The master tapes for Ruben and the Jets were in better shape, but since I liked the results on We're Only in it For the Money, I decided to do it on Ruben too. But those are the only two albums on which the original performances were replaced. I thought the important thing was the material itself."[2]After the remixing was announced, a $13 million lawsuit was filed against Zappa by Jimmy Carl Black, Bunk Gardner and Don Preston, who were later joined by Ray Collins, Art Tripp and Motorhead Sherwood, increasing the claim to $16.4 million, stating that they had received no royalties from Zappa since 1969.[2]In 2009, the original mix of the album was released as part of a compilation entitled Greasy Love Songs.[6]
In 1984, Zappa prepared a remix of Cruising with Ruben & the Jets for its compact disc reissue and the vinyl box set The Old Masters I. The remix featured new rhythm tracks recorded by bassist Arthur Barrow and drummer Chad Wackerman, much as the 1984 remix of We're Only in It for the Money had featured. Zappa stated "The master tapes for Ruben and the Jets were in better shape, but since I liked the results on We're Only in it For the Money, I decided to do it on Ruben too. But those are the only two albums on which the original performances were replaced. I thought the important thing was the material itself."[2]
After the remixing was announced, a $13 million lawsuit was filed against Zappa by Jimmy Carl Black, Bunk Gardner and Don Preston, who were later joined by Ray Collins, Art Tripp and Motorhead Sherwood, increasing the claim to $16.4 million, stating that they had received no royalties from Zappa since 1969.[2]
In 2009, the original mix of the album was released as part of a compilation entitled Greasy Love Songs.[6]
― Tarfumes The Escape Goat, Tuesday, 12 June 2012 22:40 (eleven years ago) link
zappa was so nuts about that sort of thing, it seems. i remember reading something about the creation of "shut and play your guitar" (i think) where he would put guitar solos from, say, 1974 into a recording from 1981.
― tylerw, Tuesday, 12 June 2012 22:43 (eleven years ago) link
He would lift guitar tracks from live recordings and drop them into studio based stuff, he did a whole track by layering elements from different recordings, Tink Runs Amok? He called it Xenochrony iirc.
― MaresNest, Tuesday, 12 June 2012 22:51 (eleven years ago) link
XENOCHRONY! Exciting. Bands that never were.
― tylerw, Tuesday, 12 June 2012 22:53 (eleven years ago) link
"Rubber Shirt," from Sheik Yerbouti:
SPECIAL NOTE: The bass part is extracted froma four track master of a performance from Goteborg,Sweden 1974 which I had Patrick O"Hearn overdub ona medium tempo guitar solo track in 4/4. The notedchosen were more or less specified during the overdubsession, and so it was not completely an improvised"bass solo." A year and a half later, the bass track waspeeled off the Swedish master and transferred to onetrack of another studio 24 track master for a slow songin 11/4. The result of this experimental re-synchronization(the same technique was used on the Zoot Alluresalbum in "Friendly Little Finger") is the piece you arelistening to. All of the sensitive, interesting interplaybetween the bass and drums never actually happened ...also note, the guitar solo section of the song "Yo' Mama"on side four was done the same way.
One of my favorite Sheik Yerbouti tracks.
― Biff Wellington (WmC), Tuesday, 12 June 2012 22:59 (eleven years ago) link
I was just to talking to a big Zappaphile firend of mine, and he mentioned that some of the other "futzing" was undoing vintage edit jobs done to fit lp time constraints. He cited these two (and was only partially wrong):
Wiki on Hot Rats:
In 1987 Zappa remixed Hot Rats for re-issue on Compact Disc. "Willie the Pimp" is edited differently during the introduction and guitar solo. "The Gumbo Variations" has 4 minutes of additional material including an introduction and guitar and saxophone solo sections which were cut from the vinyl LP version. Piano and flute which were buried the LP mix of "Little Umbrellas" are prominent on the CD. Other differences include significant changes to the overall ambiance and dynamic range. The original mix was reissued in 2009 as a limited edition audiophile LP by Classic Records.
Wiki on Weasels...:
The CD version of the album features different versions of "Didja Get Any Onya?" and "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask", which featured music edited out of the LP versions. Some of this extra music was used (in a different studio recording) as the backing track for "The Blimp" on the Captain Beefheart album Trout Mask Replica, produced by Frank Zappa.
― Electro-Shock Rory (C. Grisso/McCain), Wednesday, 13 June 2012 01:16 (eleven years ago) link
― zappi
I was trying to youtube some songs off it a few years back, and the only versions that came up were from this, which I hadn't been aware of before, and I was seriously appalled. Especially since the original WOIIFTM is one of my all-time faves.
― I wish to incorporate disco into my small business (chap), Wednesday, 13 June 2012 12:04 (eleven years ago) link
I'm a sort of dabbler in different Zappa eras. For me, he peaked with Hot Rats and I like him way more when he sticks to the instrumental work, but I've grown to appreciate more of his catalog as I've gotten older. I used to hate him completely and I still kinda hate 60% of what I hear, but that other 40% is pretty damn good.
― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, 1 April 2024 14:26 (two weeks ago) link
Grateful Dead is just inoffensive Californian hippy music, I find it neither very bad or very good, not in any way comparable to the awfulness of Zappa at his worst.
― The Prime of the Ancient Minister (Tom D.), Monday, 1 April 2024 14:30 (two weeks ago) link
i love that every once in a while this thread gets revived for no particular reason but to talk about how vile and hateful so much of zappa's music is
and yeah i'd say zappa and the dead are completely unrelated, he made fun of the hippies once, but that was more like LA-SF rivalry than anything else. if there's a point of comparison to zappa i'd almost say prince. like, if prince thoroughly _hated_ women, held them in complete contempt, rather than the, uh, complex relationship he had with women and womanhood, then he might be similar to zappa in some ways. controlling, workaholic, using everyone around him as tools to accomplish his Creative Vision. oh and prince was also a way better songwriter than zappa, like, if he couldn't write songs but had taken a semester of composition at community college, decided that it was all bullshit and that he knew _way_ more about composition than any of those squares, got a letter from, i don't know, pierre boulez when he was 12 or something, and decided he was one of the greatest living composers without having actually heard any other living composers. then he might be kind of like zappa.
god, that comes of as pretty harsh, doesn't it? like i'm not actually trying to put zappa down here. he's just so fucking easy to hate!
― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, 1 April 2024 14:33 (two weeks ago) link
Seems like the obsessive anality of their fans is the point of contact. I've never known a Grateful Dead fan though. I did know a Zappa fan once and at least I've known people who have some of his records.
― The Prime of the Ancient Minister (Tom D.), Monday, 1 April 2024 14:35 (two weeks ago) link
I do think there's something cool about the sheer volume of material he produced, the way it all kind of relates to each other (like a long running sitcom), how his live shows recontextualized stuff from all over his catalogue and often featured new material and improvs, it often makes me wish I liked his music more. But I'm not gonna pretend he doesn't have some killer material in there, I mean even the stuff that sucks often has something cool in it - the middle section of "Jumbo Go Away" is pretty interesting but I hate the song so much that I can't even pay attention to it. Which I guess makes me the exact kind of square he was trying to piss off.
― frogbs, Monday, 1 April 2024 15:16 (two weeks ago) link
come to think of it I never really made it further than the first 15 minutes of Thing-Fish, maybe I should listen to it just to torture myself
― frogbs, Monday, 1 April 2024 15:27 (two weeks ago) link
― The Prime of the Ancient Minister (Tom D.)
seeee that's a _little_ more complicated for me given that i spent the entirety of my 20s and much of my 30s as an absolutely _obsessive_ zappa fan. and i mean ok, sure, i was annoying and autistic in the same way that, like, libertarian rush fans used to be (although in my defense, i will say that i was _never_ a libertarian). like yeah i had the "privilege" of being profoundly ignorant of, like. love? i mean i used to think it was cool that zappa had never written a love song. i thought of myself as being basically unloveable and awful and to me zappa was like, hey, who cares if you're ugly and repellent? love is STUPID! let's all be smart together and make fun of how stupid people who experience love are. and then when i was 33 i, like, actually got into a relationship for the first time in my life and zappa didn't seem so smart all of a sudden. i'm kind of starting to come around to the possibility that i'm not actually ugly and repellent, which is kind of funny really considering how hard some people go on the idea that trans women are ugly and repellent. mmmm-hmmm whatever you say there friendo.
i haven't actually heard "jumbo go away", or if i do i can't remember it. being fat myself i didn't exactly relish the idea of zappa going, like... you know who's had it too easy for too long, _fat people_, somebody needs to put _them_ in their place. like no sorry. like even in my most hardcore zappa days i had my limits. i tried listening to thing-fish once, basically because i figured it was so awful it had to be good, and it wasn't. i had sheik yerbouti on CD and good god i tried to like that one but i decided that "jewish princess" was not a song i ever needed to hear. those kazoos would kick in and within five seconds my brain would just say "NOPE" and i'd hit the "skip track" button.
the main reason i'm particularly down on "the illinois enema bandit" is, i think, because of the way it made me confront my own basic ignorance. like for whatever reason i was _really_ into the '88 band, i was absolutely convinced that the '88 band was, like, the best thing ever. zappa fandom at the time was all about that band. he released like five CDs of that band and honestly i, uh. don't know why i thought the '88 band was better than, like, the '82 band. but i did, and so i had dozens of bootlegs, and he basically _always_ played "the illinois enema bandit" as the last song. and it was just, like, an awful song. an awful song with a bad guitar solo and i never understood, still don't really understand, why he ended all his concerts with _that_ song. it wasn't a fan favorite. nobody really liked it but him. it was like if bob dylan made his final encore "silvio" for 20 years. i mean ok?
then i read ben watson's book, which, i'd never really read any leftist academic lit before so i found it extremely funny. leftist academic lit _is_ really funny and i agree with a lot of it, i'm really inspired by a lot of it. i feel like that's kind of cringe of me but you know, there are a lot more cringe things about me, like me having spent my entire 20s and the first half of my 30s as a die-hard frank zappa fan. anyway watson comes down really hard on "the illinois enema bandit" and i was just like, huh, i guess i'd never really thought about it that way, like maybe that's not just "misanthropic" but is actually kind of specifically misogynist.
you have to understand at that point i was too shy to, like, actually talk to women. and here's this guy who's just died and people are like wow total iconoclast, great composer, really smart, doesn't even _try_ to be "normal", truly, a man going his own way lol. like there was this whole culture where being a zappa fan was, like, the ultimate form of "weirdness". plus i'm super autistic and he's got like 70 albums and i'm like "oh boy! look at all the fun facts i could learn! pink floyd only have, like, 10 albums".
so he's doing this song about how all college educated women need to be sexually assaulted and i'm just like hmmmm i'm not so sure about that one frank, like i wished i could be college-educated and i wished i could be a woman but i didn't particularly wish i could be sexually assaulted. well i mean i kind of did but not in the same way i wished i could be college-educated and wished i could be a woman.
ANYWAY i wound up with the trifecta and look, i'll be honest with you. i do strongly recommend being college educated and being a woman, they're both great things, really difficult and challenging things for me, both of them, but totally worth it. sexual assault not so much. i don't really feel like that was something i "needed". anyway at some point i go "hey wait i'm a college-educated woman" and i'm kind of... kind of deeply ashamed of not having realized how utterly awful and repellent the song was before. and like so many things in my life frank zappa is someone who i really liked a lot for a long time and who i still really like in a lot of ways but is also awful and fucked up. i mean that's kind of the story of my life, to be honest.
idk how much that has to do with zappa but we start talking about the guy enough and i start talking about my personal trauma just because, fuck it, it's better than talking about zappa. talking about frank zappa is so depressing.
-
deadheads are cool. when i was a kid they were fucked up burnout junkies desperately chasing highs that stopped being actually enjoyable decades ago. a lot of my friends these days are fucked up burnouts so i'm a lot more ok with the dead. dead fans now are basically weird nerds who like jazz and are fascinated by the idea of "what if a bunch of fucked up stoners got so high they sort of accidentally started playing jazz sometimes"
which is the complete opposite of zappa who knew perfectly well how to play jazz, but hated jazz as much as he hated everything except '50s r&b
― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, 1 April 2024 15:33 (two weeks ago) link
come to think of it I never really made it further than the first 15 minutes of Thing-Fish, maybe I should listen to it just to torture myself― frogbs
― frogbs
i mean it's not actually interestingly bad. there are a lot of albums that are bad in interesting ways and this is, like. about as interesting as "summer in paradise".
― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, 1 April 2024 15:34 (two weeks ago) link
search: FZ the composer, the guitarist, the bandleader who wrote/arranged for players' strengths; destroy: FZ the lyricist, the impresario, the bandleader who discarded players like kleenex, the workaholic
Great albums for enjoying FZ music because FZ was dead and couldn't stick his honker in: Ensemble Ambrosius, The Zappa Album; Omnibus Wind Ensemble, Music by Frank Zappa; Le Concert Impromptu, Prophetic Attitude; Ensemble Modern Plays Frank Zappa (2003); some Ed Palermo and Meridian Arts Ensemble stuff.
― Ippei's on a bummer now (WmC), Monday, 1 April 2024 15:40 (two weeks ago) link
And side two of Roxy and Elsewhere.
― Requiem for a Dream: The Musical! (Dan Peterson), Monday, 1 April 2024 16:01 (two weeks ago) link
The awfulness of Thing-fish is only fully appreciated on physical media, because the booklet with all the pictures, stage directions etc. is a big part of it.
― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, 1 April 2024 16:04 (two weeks ago) link
― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, April 1, 2024 10:34 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink
yeah I'm finding this out now. always assumed this album would at least be somewhat entertaining or subversive or even "so bad it's good" in a way but it's not any of those things. it just sounds like really bad satire. it's like the worst episodes of South Park but four times as long. most of it comes off like it was written by an 11-year old. like its hard to believe that this was written by someone who's actually had sex before.
theres only one level on which this could work, if it was a deliberately awful album designed specifically to get out of a record contract. there are a few examples of that happening and you can't really hold them against the artist, it's just business. I mean with nearly all the music being shitty retreads of past work that's always what I assumed this was! But it's not...Zappa wanted people to hear this!
― frogbs, Monday, 1 April 2024 17:27 (two weeks ago) link
The storyline was enough to make me steer clear. I’ve never heard it.
― Requiem for a Dream: The Musical! (Dan Peterson), Monday, 1 April 2024 17:40 (two weeks ago) link
I might be interested in an interview with Ike Willis talking about the album. But I still wouldn't be interested in listening to it.
― Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson), Monday, 1 April 2024 17:48 (two weeks ago) link
I know two of my Mom's friends, women in their seventies and eighties, who like Zappa. One was a flower child, the other an eighth grade teacher, both seemed to like the satire in a Lenny Bruce/Marx Brothers anarchy sort of way that maybe doesn't resonate later on because so many subsequent rock artists have eclipsed it. Maybe knowing Zappa as part of the pop landscape rather than a cult artist changes something. There was an era when he was much more a character in the pop landscape with a couple of different approaches going on, like a Clapton of Neil Young.
― bendy, Monday, 1 April 2024 17:48 (two weeks ago) link
now I've nearly gotten to the end of this thing I'm thinking Zappa wasn't just dismissive and hateful towards women, he might've been actively terrified of them as well. as though one of them really let him have it over some transgression a long time ago and its just something he never forgot.
― frogbs, Monday, 1 April 2024 17:57 (two weeks ago) link
Never planning to listen to this, I suspect the skeleton key to the meaning of the record is when you realize Thing-Fish is a pun on "Kingfish".
― Halfway there but for you, Monday, 1 April 2024 18:00 (two weeks ago) link
the gender (and racial) politics of robert crumb with none of the self loathing
― your original display name is still visible (Left), Monday, 1 April 2024 18:10 (two weeks ago) link
omg
― Make Me Smile (Come Around and See Me) (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 1 April 2024 18:12 (two weeks ago) link
the gender (and racial) politics of robert crumb with none of the self loathing― your original display name is still visible (Left)
― your original display name is still visible (Left)
imagine being frank zappa and not hating yourself
― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, 1 April 2024 19:55 (two weeks ago) link
I think he was riven by insecurity if not self-loathing.
― The Prime of the Ancient Minister (Tom D.), Monday, 1 April 2024 19:56 (two weeks ago) link
Ya think? Endlessly lashing out humorlessly at simplistic targets and acting like everyone else is stupid. Hmm.
― Make Me Smile (Come Around and See Me) (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 1 April 2024 21:13 (two weeks ago) link
Sorry, wrong thread.
https://media.tenor.com/1jI6hMtarW4AAAAM/marvel-is-it-though.gif
― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, 1 April 2024 21:20 (two weeks ago) link
Ha, not really, but it might have been.
― Make Me Smile (Come Around and See Me) (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 1 April 2024 21:23 (two weeks ago) link
a thing people in this thread are not grasping (understandably) is that zappa shows were really really fun and a "happening" and seeing those bands play that complex music live were really cool to see. i think that's where he got a lotttt of his fans and your moms friends who are hold hippies.
― kurt schwitterz, Tuesday, 2 April 2024 06:19 (two weeks ago) link
* like your mom's old hippie friends.
― kurt schwitterz, Tuesday, 2 April 2024 06:20 (two weeks ago) link
(i kno cuz my parents and their friends talk about going to see him a lot and how OUTRAGEOUS it was but own 0-just a few of his records)
― kurt schwitterz, Tuesday, 2 April 2024 08:07 (two weeks ago) link
I saw him on what turned out to be his final tour in 1988 and yeah, it was a good show. He had a twelve-piece band that included a five-piece horn section; the thing that stuck out the most at the time was their cover of "Stairway to Heaven," on which the horn section played the original guitar solo, as a lead-in to Zappa's solo.
― Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 14:57 (two weeks ago) link
I only had the Broadway the Hard Way CD but parts of that performance are amazing. could be his best ever live band.
― frogbs, Tuesday, 2 April 2024 14:59 (two weeks ago) link
I had never listened to it before just now. All the dated political references get a bit wearing, but at least they outnumber the misogynistic ones, I guess. Band is super tight, but I don’t think I’ll be relistening.
― Requiem for a Dream: The Musical! (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 18:12 (two weeks ago) link
Try Make A Jazz Noise Here. Same band but almost entirely instrumental.
― Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 18:14 (two weeks ago) link
That one I have heard. It’s good in places, I like him revisiting some oldies, but then there’s a lengthy track of endless sampled snork noises.
― Requiem for a Dream: The Musical! (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 18:19 (two weeks ago) link
I think every double disc album he released could be trimmed 50%, except Uncle Meat.
― Requiem for a Dream: The Musical! (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 18:21 (two weeks ago) link
What would I get out of this that I wouldn’t get out of listening to an actual jazz band. Or going to see some classical thing, the symphony, the opera etc.
― Make Me Smile (Come Around and See Me) (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 19:12 (two weeks ago) link
Probably already asked this one before, rhetorical question, don’t really want to know the answer that much, pvmic etc.
― Make Me Smile (Come Around and See Me) (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 19:13 (two weeks ago) link
Party atmosphere, rock and roll gymnastics, cultural commentary and audience participation.
― kurt schwitterz, Tuesday, 2 April 2024 19:26 (two weeks ago) link
Oh wow, thanks!
― Make Me Smile (Come Around and See Me) (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 19:37 (two weeks ago) link
I hate all that stuff, so I think I'll pass, thanks
Well, not quite, but mostly
No, I think you were right the first time.
― The Prime of the Ancient Minister (Tom D.), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 19:43 (two weeks ago) link
🥸
― Make Me Smile (Come Around and See Me) (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 19:57 (two weeks ago) link
yeah go listen to an actual jazz band tbh
zappa is dead _and_ he smells funny
― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 20:54 (two weeks ago) link
What would I get out of this that I wouldn’t get out of listening to an actual jazz band.
you'd get something you won't get from, say, a bop combo, but George Duke's solo records of the 70s deliver basically all the same thrills you can get from Zappa stuff with only a fraction of the DO NOT WANT factor. however it should also be remembered that late in his life he released this, that this album's title and cover were a choice he made.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a0/George_Duke-Dukey_Treats.jpg
― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 21:59 (two weeks ago) link
Stockholm Syndrome!
― nickn, Tuesday, 2 April 2024 22:35 (two weeks ago) link
Lol!
― Make Me Smile (Come Around and See Me) (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 22:38 (two weeks ago) link
― Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson), Tuesday, April 2, 2024 2:14 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
IMO I think this is the best thing he released from the best tour he did. Incredibly jealous you saw them on that tour, unperson.
― ヽ(´ー`)┌ (CompuPost), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 22:38 (two weeks ago) link
As a hater, I guess I might say the same
― Make Me Smile (Come Around and See Me) (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 22:44 (two weeks ago) link
Virtuosi on recordings sometimes ill-used but live is a different story
― Make Me Smile (Come Around and See Me) (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 22:45 (two weeks ago) link
The other '88 tour albums (Bway the Hard Way and Best Band You've Never Heard) are filled w/ gorgeous stuff, too, but there's still a lot of Zappa schtick to wade through. Make a Jazz Noise has always struck me as his his most straight-faced (aside from all orchestral stuff) – minimal silly stuff, minimal caustic songs, just a really, really tight band doing a lot of Zappa's best live material.
― ヽ(´ー`)┌ (CompuPost), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 23:00 (two weeks ago) link