Beppe Colli, at Clouds and Clocks, commemorates the 20th anniversary of Zappa’s death with a slew of reviews — 14 in all, in both English and Italian — culled from his large archives. I look forward to digging into these reviews, and still hope to continue, in some shape or form, the Zappa throwdown in the new year.

Alas, a little something about the music. Or maybe a lot of something, who knows? Jeff Pike, who has occasionally written about Zappa on his excellent Can’t Explain blog, provides a Top 10 (+9) Zappa-themed list, along with a few additional thoughts on the man. I’ll follow-up Jeff’s list in a later post with my own Top 10+, and we’ll see where it goes from there. (If anyone reading this would also like to submit a list — any size, shape, form, or theme, so long as it has something to do with Frank Zappa — let me know, I’d be happy to print others; you can always use the comments box too, of course.)

And now, without further adieu, here’s Jeff… (I’ll provide YouTube links where possible.)

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Disclaimers, context, etc., partly based on your recent posts (which I just got to this past weekend): I think I might come to this with a circumscribed view, maybe more so than you want, confined to the first dozen or so albums, 1966-1970 (listed below). I so disliked Fillmore East – June 1971 and 200 Motels (album and movie) that I lost most of my interest from that point on. I was introduced to Zappa originally by a friend whose older brother in college was a fan. I never saw him perform, though I saw a Captain Beefheart show in 1971 (he is a separate matter for my purposes, along with GTO’s, Wild Man Fischer, Jean-Luc Ponty, etc.). I came in at about Weasels Ripped My Flesh and with the help of my friend got quickly caught up. The infatuation was intense and maybe even formative (the humor mostly, within a likeable enough Groucho Marx frame, with generous doses of Three Stooges). But it did not last much longer than a year. I have had occasion more than once since to come back to many of the albums and songs and I usually like them as much or even more than before.

My basic view of Frank Zappa is that he was 1) a reasonably good comic and a funny satirist of morals (which is different and better than just a satirist of morals), 2) an interesting, sometimes amazing composer and studio savant, 3) a terrific guitar player, and 4) a decent human being, by all signs a good parent too, though obviously warped/deranged by anger, or something. I think he was sharpest and most vital, in terms of his music, during the ’60s, but am certainly open to hearing a case otherwise. It was ultimately the infantile humor, one of the few constants across his career, that did me in with him. I’m sure there’s a ton of great stuff post-1971 but I would almost have to be led to it. Most of my forays have been unsatisfying. For me, his political activism in the ’80s until his death was more interesting than his music.

The list: I know it’s a motley list, with two full solo albums, kinda sorta a third album, one series of three songs, and a 36-second song, among other things. Hot Rats is there because I think it’s such a sparkling showcase of him at his best as guitar player and composer both — and no farting. Lumpy Gravy is there because it has no constituent parts, it’s just this blobby single thing, for all that it is a pastiche of pieces (like, for comparison, Third Reich ‘n’ Roll). I think We’re Only in it for the Money is nearly as blobby, but has the convenience (especially in CD releases) of separate tracks, with titles, which you might as well call songs. At the same time, “Flower Punk” is reasonably representative of the whole. “The Little House I Used to Live In” is his studio stitchwork style at its best, jamming division. “Transylvania Boogie” is his pure guitar playing, with emphasis on his specialty with the wah-wah. And then I just love how sweet and gorgeous “The Air” is, would have liked more of that from him. “Sleeping in a Jar” is precision short songwriting, though maybe more properly a fragment. Also-rans follow.

1. Hot Rats (1969)
2. “Plastic People” (1967)
3. “Oh No / The Orange County Lumber Truck / Weasels Ripped My Flesh” (1970)
4. “Flower Punk” / We’re Only in it for the Money (1968)
5. “Who Are the Brain Police?” (1966)
6. “The Little House I Used to Live In” (1970)
7. “Transylvania Boogie” (1970)
8. “The Air” (1969)
9. Lumpy Gravy (1967)
10. “Sleeping in a Jar” (1969)

11. “Stuff up the Cracks” (1968)
12. “Hungry Freaks, Daddy” (1966)
13. “King Kong I-VI” (1969)
14. “Dog Breath, in the Year of the Plague” (1969)
15. “The Nancy & Mary Music” (1970)
16. “You Didn’t Try to Call Me” (1966)
17. “Directly From My Heart to You” (1970)
18. “Aybe Sea” (1970)
19. “Help, I’m a Rock” (1966)

Albums
Chronological. Here are the limitations of my basic Frank Zappa universe. I also knew at least two of the anthologies, though not the one you wrote about, which sounds a lot like the ones I knew. Also, honestly, I don’t really know very well anymore the last two albums listed.

Freak Out! (Mothers of Invention, 1966)
Absolutely Free (Mothers of Invention, 1967)
Lumpy Gravy (Frank Zappa, 1967)
We’re Only in it for the Money (Mothers of Invention, 1968)
Cruising With Ruben & the Jets (Mothers of Invention, 1968)
Uncle Meat (Mothers of Invention, 1969)
Hot Rats (Frank Zappa, 1969)
Burnt Weeny Sandwich (Mothers of Invention, 1970)
Weasels Ripped My Flesh (Mothers of Invention, 1970)
Chunga’s Revenge (Frank Zappa, 1970)
Fillmore East – June 1971 (1971)
200 Motels (1971)

 
“Memories of El Monte,” the Penguins, 1963 — written by Frank Zappa and Ray Collins. Not often commented upon (at least from what I’ve seen) is the fact that “El Monte” holds its place in pop history as one of the early sampling records, stitching in, as it does, quotes from eight doo-wop classics, all of which are helpfully listed on the song’s Wiki page.

“Thanks to songs like ‘Dinah Moe Humm,’ ‘Titties & Beer’ and ‘Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow,’ I managed to accumulate enough cash to bribe a group of drones* to grind its way through pieces like ‘Mo ‘n Herb’s Vacation,’ ‘Bob in Dacron’ and ‘Bogus Pomp’ (eventually released on London Symphony Orchestra, Volumes I and II) — in performances which come off like high-class ‘demos’ of what actually resides in the scores. So how did I wind up using those guys? Well, it’s a long story…”

Okay, so I’m reading The Real Frank Zappa Book (above quote is from p. 146), enjoying chunks of it, finding some sections boring enough to speed read my way through them, but this anecdote stopped me dead in my tracks. I don’t know what’s more maddening here: a) the idea that these dreadful songs (and “Titties,” “Yellow Snow,” et al. are all dreadful, I’ve never thought otherwise about any of them) were merely cynical exercises in securing dollars for more thoughtful projects (which, if true, would seem to diminish Zappa’s own endless statements on the corruption of the rock process, no?), or b) that this offhand short paragraph (one paragraph in a book that is 352 pages long) is the best he can come up with to to deal head on with this particular side of his music/persona**.

Obviously, Zappa is hyper-aware of the critical response to this phase of his music in particular*** and for someone who has always slammed critics — sometimes in print, but often in his music too — and is more than willing to expound on his own ‘Frankness’ about his art and his life, this strikes me as little more than a self-serving evasion — unless the correct answer really is that all his smutty juvenilia was merely a cash-out tactic of sorts (though even if so, a couple sentences hardly suffices as an explanation, right?). (Note that, as I write this, I feel myself potentially falling into all sorts of traps here.) If this were Bob Dylan, or virtually any other pop musician I can think of, I wouldn’t have batted an eye; Dylan has never trumped himself up as a truth-teller**** the way Zappa did — and did so endlessly. Yes, you could argue that Zappa’s an artist not a critic and therefore the playbook is a little different, but no — important point here — that’s not in fact true. Zappa always set himself up as both (and more), it’s one reason I’m here doing this exposition in the first place (not that I’ve had the opportunity yet to expound much on that particular idea), so I want to take the man on his word and hold him up to standards not just of musicality (do his musical effects hit me where it counts?) but of verbal thought and intelligence (I should have conducted a word count of “stupid” in the book; not surprisingly, it shows up frequently).

(On the plus side, I’ve enjoyed some of FZ’s early Mothers anecdotes, and really like his explanation of what he believes he actually does; his definition of “composing” is a good riposte to people who think he’s using that word as a way to beat down the rock audience. Also — in the same section — the stuff about Project/Object is worthy of expansion here, eventually — it gets to the nub of the matter, in fact.)

I need to dig back into Ben Watson’s FZ tome; he deals with this stuff much more compellingly and directly, I think.

* By which he means the LSO. Zappa’s attitude towards classical musicians and audiences is no less scathing and condescending than it is to the rock crowd; indeed, it might be moreso.

** Big caveat, obviously; I’ve still got a long way to go. However, flipping through the remainder, I’m not seeing the words “Dinah Moe Hum” anywhere, though there is an upcoming section regarding his dirty lyrics, which I have a sinking feeling is him merely arguing about his “right” to sing what he wants to sing and why people who want to stop him from singing what he wants to sing are misguided for doing so… um, yawn.

*** There’s an entire chapter on critics, which I haven’t got to yet; I expect it to be fairly predictable.

**** With Dylan, bullshit was always part of the territory, and you’d be foolish probably to place too much stock in his statements outside of his music, though I personally love his sixties interview persona, which is perversely enlightening in at least a Warholian sense.

“‘Louie Louie’ repeatedly figured in the musical lexicon of Frank Zappa in the 1960s. An early live version of his original composition ‘Plastic People’ (from his You Can’t Do That Onstage Anymore series of live albums) was set to the melody of ‘Louie Louie’ (the official version was released on the album Absolutely Free in 1967). Zappa reportedly fired guitarist Alice Stuart from The Mothers of Invention because she couldn’t play ‘Louie Louie.’ At a Zappa concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London, Mothers of Invention keyboardist Don Preston climbed up to the legendary venue’s pipe organ, usually used for classical works, and played the signature riff (this can be heard on the 1969 Zappa album Uncle Meat). Quick interpolations of ‘Louie Louie’ also frequently turn up in other Zappa works.”
– Wikipedia

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“In the end, the most pertinent thing to be said about Frank Zappa is probably that for all he knows about music, he lacks the talent to write a song like ‘Louie Louie.'”
– Lester Bangs, qouted in Jim DeRogatis’s Kaleidoscope Eyes: Psychedelic Rock from the ’60s to the ’90s

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“When Kevin Ayers said that Johnny Rotten was the most exciting voice since Little Richard’s, and all the punk bands started playing [Richard] Berry’s ‘Louie Louie,’ rock reconnected to the sparks that originally inspired Zappa: the abdurdist mind-fuck of R&B. By the late ’70s Zappa was too occluded in his private enterprise to notice such continuites and he dismissed punk as a fad. It was Iggy Pop — another exponent of ‘Louie Louie’ and an intensity that transcends the categories of the absurd and the sublime — who received the ‘godfather of punk’ title. Nevertheless, Zappa’s attitude has always been an extension of the transcendent idiocy of the ‘Louie Louie’ riff — the revolutionary heart of rock.”
– Ben Watson, Frank Zappa’s Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play, p. 15 (merely the first of 20 unique references in Watson’s tome to “Louie Louie”)

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– – – – – – – – – – – – –

“Well, I was also in bands when ‘Louie Louie,’ before the Kingsmen made it into the joke that everybody recognizes now. ‘Louie Louie’ used to be a really cool tune, the Richard Berry version of it. It had, y’know, a nice arrangement to it, and a whole different feel to it. It wasn’t until The Kingsmen version that it became, y’know, the Animal House joke that it is right now.”
– Zappa, quoted at Eric Predoehl‘s Frank Zappa and ‘Louie Louie’ (which has more quotes from FZ and an indispensable listing of all the Zappa reworkings of the tune)

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

cf. Dave Marsh‘s “Louie Louie” book, which I believe has a lengthy bit on Zappa but which I don’t have handy to pluck something from right now.

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

“FWIW, Joe’s Garage is probably one of my favorite albums, and I absolutely hate parts of it, too. But it was very mind-opening for me when I was sixteen, moreso than the early Mothers albums or fusion stuff or post-Demento crap etc. New [Janelle] Monae reminds me of JG in weird ways — self-consciously flimsy conceit keeps getting in the way, mildly amusing in-song narrative codes as filler but oddly necessary to the character of the album, a couple of highlights that have nothing to do with the framing stuff, fussy funk-rock, busy enough to require close listening to really appreciate how big and hooky (and not in need of “close listening”) it also is — but I probably won’t put in enough effort to really understand it (Monae) better or make the comparison work. But maybe I’ll read something about it that sends me back a few more times.”

– Dave Moore draws an intriguing comparison between Joe’s Garage (which I’ve listened to very little of) and the new Janelle Monae album (which I’ve listened to absolutely none of).

“_____________ is probably one of my favorite albums, and I absolutely hate parts of it, too” is an entirely useful — perhaps absolutely necessary — way to start a piece about Zappa.

I started responding in the comments box to something from Patrick regarding Zappa and the critics, but I ended up writing stuff I thought would make more sense in its own post, so — I’ll just post it here instead. Patrick mentioned Christgau’s “A” review of We’re Only In It for the Money (as partial proof against my contention that Zappa is the most “critically despised rock musician of all-time”), and that got me to thinking about how all the Mt. Rushmore folks treated Zappa.

Christgau: Yes, the Dean (imagine Zappa snickering at that?) grades Money an A, but that’s 28 years after the fact, and it strikes me less as a gushing rave over Zappa himself than as an almost slight acknowledgement of the man’s formal innovations, and the rest of Christgau’s run-ins with FZ suggest anything but a fan. (And by the time of Christgau’s ’80s collection, he reduces his interest in Zappa to a one-sentence write-off: “Oh shut up.”)

Bangs: He wrote an enthusiastic (though ambiguous re: Zappa himself) review of Hot Rats in Rolling Stone but in 1981 (in “Untitled Notes” collected in Psychotic Reactions) he calls Zappa “a despicable wretch morons actually call ‘composer’ instead of ‘rip-off artist,’ walking human offal if such matter ever lived.” (I had to look up offal. Turns out it has nothing whatsoever to do with vegetables.)

Marcus: Includes Absolutely Free in his Stranded canon, but again — and maybe I’m just projecting — doesn’t seem terribly enthusiastic about it to me (admires FZ as a satirist of sorts, but also notes his smugness). Don’t recall reading anything else by him on the subject (actually, I think he reviewed Ruben & the Jets in RS? Don’t recall the review, though; might’ve been semi-satirical?). I did hear Marcus once, in an interview about Dylan, note that he could never imagine himself wanting to explore the sort of country Frank Zappa and the Grateful Dead inhabited (unlike the country Dylan mapped out) — or something to that effect, it was much more Marcus-like coming from the source, of course.

Meltzer: Possibly worthy of future exploration here. He wrestles with FZ’s work some in Aesthetics of Rock, but he comes off as a bit irritated by it. (In general, Meltzer keeps explicit value judgements out of the book, though sometimes they slip through a little.) I actually like the interview he did with FZ which is collected in Whore — from the mid-’70s, I think. Comes across more as not-giving-a-shit than as a despiser. But nothing at all like a fan.

Marsh: Big fan, which surprises me; at least in the Marsh books I own, he has written very little about the guy (save for some stuff in his “Louie Louie” exposé). Heard a recent (fairly enjoyable) Sirius-XM show hosted by Marsh in which he interviewed Gail Zappa and played Frank stuff from all eras (or anyway, he discussed all eras, he didn’t limit himself to just the early stuff). He’s actually quite over the top in his Zappa love; I’d like to read something by him on the subject, if it exists.

Willis: Don’t recall anything from her anthology, which is a shame. Willis on Zappa might’ve been a fascinating critique. I’d be shocked if she cared, though; no one close to her who has ever written about her has suggested such a possibility.

So anyway, that obviously doesn’t account for all of rock criticism, but of the six instrumental early figures of the American chapter, I count one actual fan, two much closer to the despise-him camp (Christgau and Bangs), two possibly ambiguous (Meltzer and Marcus) — and I feel even that’s a generous description — and one highly-unlikely.

Some good email comments from Steven Rubio re: Zappa, which he said I could use here.

…an interesting discussion might be had about Ruben and the Jets. [Zappa’s] love of doo wop oozes from the record, but he can’t help himself, he has to fuck with it, so the album works more as comedy than as doo wop. You could say he’s messing with our expectations, and that can be a good thing.

I’m not immune to him, or at least I wasn’t at one time. The first four Mothers albums got played a lot, although now that I think about it, I never owned any of them, it was always friends. But we showed how cool we were by referencing Suzy Creamcheese, and to this day, when I hear the word “rutabaga”, I burst into “Call Any Vegetable.” After Ruben and the Jets, though, I lost track of him (maybe I just changed friends). Not that there’s any real connection, but I like Beefheart much more than Zappa.

But my reaction to Zappa is entwined with my thoughts about his stance re: rock and roll. And the older I get, the more I appreciate that there is room for a multitude of stances.

Again, as with the Penman piece, a bunch of stuff in there to eventually, over time, try and unpack: the doo-wop-as-comedy angle; the idea of Zappa “[fucking] with it” (clearly the most [over?]used move in Zappa’s bag of tricks); the Beefheart connection, which btw I think is very real on several levels, including the critical one (for every rock critic who loves Beefheart there are 75 who loathe Zappa); finally, and perhaps most importantly, the idea of Zappa having a particular “stance re: rock and roll.” I think I know exactly what Steven’s talking about with that, and though I think it’s a hugely arguable point, I’ve long pegged it as the #1 reason why Frank Zappa is the most critically-despised rock musician of all-time (can you think of someone more universally reviled?).