“Once upon a time there was a guy who thought that music was important and that rock 'n' roll songs ought to say something different in their lyrics. So he wrote a few hundred of these items, trying to get this point across to the people in the U.S.A.
Twenty-five years later, most of the people in his own country had never heard any of this music (it had been systematically "removed" from the mainstream of American broadcasting and made mysteriously absent from many important retail outlets). but he kept on doing it anyway because he believed that one day things would get better.”
In 1990, Frank Zappa had finished touring, and may already have been diagnosed with the cancer that killed him three years later. I was only a recent convert. My first exposure was a mini-CD single of ‘Peaches en Regalia’, that I only bought because it was the first miniature CD I’d seen. The track itself is a jazz-rock fusion number that at the time I didn’t rate and is now one of my favourite Zappa pieces. The other 2 tracks I decided at the time were even worse. Suffice to say I was underwhelmed until a friend demonstrated a new stereo system installed in a BBC basement near broadcasting house, using ‘You Can’t Do that on Stage Anymore volume 1’ as the example, being the only CD to hand. The disc starts with a discussion over breakfast in an early 70’s airport diner about how one of the singers “…puked on stage! Right in the middle of singing ‘Easy Meat’ or something.” I was staggered, by the fidelity of the sound system; by the bizarre music that eventually started and by the idea that someone would start an album with this revolting conversation. I went down the road to Virgin Records and bought the CD. But this was in May 1988. Zappa had played Wembley Arena that April, and never returned.
Unusually for me, this shirt doesn’t represent a particular event. Janet bought it for me when we saw it in a shop and I commented that I used to have the original shirt (not coloured in) but it went with all my other favourite t-shirts when my tent was stolen at Glastonbury in 1993.
The drawing is by Cal Schenkel, long time artist for Zappa (also responsible for many of his album covers and Captain Beefheart’s ‘Trout Mask Replica’). The conceptual continuity is there in force: multiple album covers; Billy The Mountain; Cleetus Awreetus Awrightus playing the Mystery Horn from Grand Wazoo; the window of dungeon where The Torture Never Stops; the Gypsy mutant industrial vacuum cleaner of Chunga’s Revenge; newts, toads (of The Short Forest) and rubber chickens; not to mention the man himself. I’m not sure about the helicopters, but most of the rest of the image makes sense. Really. It does.
Thirty years later I have almost everything ever released by the man, and am looking forward to the box set of ‘Hot Rats’, featuring multiple versions of the song I hated back in 1995.
Videos
Dug out from around the web.
Even though I only know some of his music, am am not sure about some it, he is one of those artists I really wish I could have seen. He managed to make a career outside the mainstream.
Is that Steve Vai screaming on Torture Never Stops?
It is indeed Mr Vai. Stevie (sic) Vai was hired to transpose a bunch of solos for what became the 'FZ Guitar Book' and was given the job of 'stunt guitarist' in the early '80s zappa band.
Zappa's music is hard to love in it's entirety. There's some really duff material from the 80s and some of the lyrical material is problematic these days. For me, he was a starting point to look at 20th century classical and jazz music, which has broadened my musical horizons. Without FZ I'd not be listening to The Fierce & The Dead, reading Kurt Vonnegut, nor going to a Stravinsky concert tomorrow night.
What Stravinsky is it? I love some of his music. Seems lots of musicians got a start with Zappa.
The Rite of Spring, at the Barbican. Along with a John Adams premiere and something else I forget.