Being Frank (30 page)

* “
Uncle Meat/Dog Breath
” (which appears in various permutations on several different recordings, but the closest, appropriately enough, is on the
UNCLE MEAT
CD (worth a listen for other reasons; it's one of Frank's best). There is no ‘live' recording on any of Frank's CD's which exactly replicates the version I played, and it was not part of the repertoire of that particular touring band).

Selections (at random) from “
Billy the Mountain
”, which appears in its entirety on
PLAYGROUND PSYCHOTICS
, of which more below.

A medley of “
Status Back Baby”, “Concentration Moon”,
and
“Mom & Dad”
. These were all earlier compositions, re-arranged and glued together with shtick and dialogue, as well as quotes from Stravinsky (the ominous
Agon
fanfare,
Petrouchka
, and
The Rite of Spring
). The sequence is featured on
PLAYGROUND PSYCHOTICS
.

* “
Mystery Roach
”, from the
200 MOTELS
soundtrack (the CD release of the soundtrack has come and gone).

Examples of Frank's guitar playing could cover an entire discography by themselves. Here are a few suggestions :

* “The Village Inn”, “Power Trio Segment from ‘The Saints ‘N' Sinners”', “Speed Freak Boogie”
, and
“The Original Mothers at the Broadside (Pomona)
” from
THE OLD MASTERS
,
Box 1
(from the ‘Mystery Disc'). An expensive investment, featured on the final disc of a seven-disc boxed set, released only on vinyl — but highly indicative of Frank's early guitar style, as he never released any other examples of his pre-Mothers playing. Also includes some early tracks (‘63:-'64) with Captain Beefheart. Just how hardcore
are
you, anyway? (Some of these tracks were released on the “Last Episodes” CD.)

On “
Status Back Baby
” on the
PLAYGROUND PSYCHOTICS
CD, Frank pulls off a flawless (well, almost) version of the
Agon/Petrouchka
stunt. (It
was
recorded at the end of the tour.) Also on
PLAYGROUND PSYCHOTICS
, there's a brief example of what he sounded like on a good night: “
Brixton Still Life
”. Over an essentially non-descript one-chord vamp, he goes from space-jazz, suspended chords to kick-ass funk to convoluted lines — a fine projection of numerous attitudes in three minutes.

There are two interesting, somewhat uncharacteristic semi-acoustic interludes on
WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH
: “Toads of the Short Forest”
and
“Dwarf Nebula Processional March”
. “Toads of the Short Forest” was a pre-Mothers composition, dating back to the Studio Z era (‘63-'64); Frank plays the ‘head' a little stiffly, but the tune is one of the most effective guitar pieces I've ever heard by anybody. “Dwarf Nebula Processional March” features the novelty of Frank playing what sounds like a
gut-string guitar
. It also has a fascinating, graceful-but-obsessive little melody which breaks every harmony-book resolution rule but is steadfastly, strangely beautiful. Frank seemed to be drawn to medieval
anything
; this piece could be called
neo-medieval
. Finally, if you're a hardcore Zappa listener, there's a truly one-of-a-kind moment in “
Get A Little
”: the only
obvious guitar clinker
Frank ever released on a recording. A little past the middle section of the solo, his hand inadvertently slips, resulting in six passing tones that aren't part of the scale. Non-musicians — most listeners, actually — probably wouldn't even notice. It's a safe bet Frank did, however.

* “Transylvania Boogie”,
from
CHUNGA'S REVENGE
, is worth a listen if you want a sterling example of Frank's guitar strengths and weaknesses side-by-side. He plays the Hungarian minor introduction as though he's having his wisdom teeth pulled without Novocaine; each note in the scale is more painfully wrought than the one before it. But when the solo gets rolling and he's on more comfortable terrain, he grabs hold of that same scale and teaches it a trick or two. In another mood entirely is * “
Twenty Small Cigars
” (which started life back in the Studio Z days as an insipid vocal that began, “If you say goodbye/I know that I will surely die.”). It's one of the prettiest guitar melodies that Frank, or anybody, ever wrote.

“
The Grand Wazoo
”, from the CD of the same name, kicks off with a striking, highly characteristic minor-eleventh opening chordal passage that still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Those dense harmonies against a shuffle rhythm, tossed off with real authority but sounding like the most casual of afterthoughts — that, folks, could only be Frank Zappa, (For more on
THE GRAND WAZOO
CD, see below.)

“
Zoot Allures
”, from the eponymous CD, is another of Frank's pieces that takes modern guitar composition into the fifth dimension. This is as about as close as you can get to whatever it was that made Frank, and his music, so powerful, unsettling, and exhilarating.

Finally, one of Frank's most effective and exciting guitar solos, live or canned, is captured on the
MOTHERS/AHEAD OF THEIR TIME?
CD
during “
The Orange County Lumber Truck
”. (This is the complete version of the song, which also appears in truncated form on
WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH
.) Frank was always fond of downgrading the musicianship of the ‘original' Mothers, but the spontaneous kick of hearing the entire band becoming audibly excited by Frank's solo and responding with ever-more-fevered playing, could have served as an object lesson for some of his later, more technically advanced but emotionally withdrawn, groups.

The *
SHUT UP ‘N' PLAY YER GUITAR
and *
GUITAR
sets, while they may be fascinating to Zappa completists and fanatics (and/or rock guitar players), have an awful lot of the same thing — long guitar solos over fairly simple chordal backdrops. It should be kept in mind that during most of Frank's lives performances (with the exception of a few tours in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s), the focus was on the compositions and arrangements rather than his guitar. In the 1971 band, as an example, he averaged five or six solos per show, none of them more than one or two minutes long. He really didn't need more time than that to drive home his point; with Frank, as with most things, brevity was the soul of wit. It's my suspicion that he began emphasizing long guitar solos in the late ‘70s because he hoped to attack a younger, primarily rock-oriented, audience as his older listeners began drifting away. He was a fine rock guitarist, but I think he was even better at other things — like composing, arranging, and bandleading, If you want to get into the minutiae of that particular aspect of his work, by all means don't Let me stop you; but to me these collections come dangerously close to monotony — not a quality I'd otherwise associate with Frank Zappa.

Note
:
If you think some of the situations described in this chapter are science fiction, a listen to the earlier-mentioned
PLAYGROUND PSYCHOTICS
should convince you otherwise. This two-CD set, assembled by Frank in 1992, chronicles the approximate time span I'm describing (although it mostly covers the six months before I joined the tour, and then skips to the tall end, the Rainbow Theater show). Masterfully edited, it consists of ‘field' recordings of band members in everyday road situations, interspersed with music from the shows. A rare anthropological artifact, and full of (sometimes painful) laughs.

* “
Igor's Boogie
”, on
BURNT WEENY SANDWICH
, may or may not have been arranged by my junior college Composition teacher, but it
does
sound Stravinskyesque. My composition “Opus One”, mentioned in this chapter, was based on the opening piano theme to * “
Little House That I Used to Live In
”, also on
BURNT WEENY SANDWICH
.

Frank made a fine recording of “
RDNZL
” during the series of sessions in which he recorded parts of “Over-Nite Sensation” in late 1972. Because the band be had then was considerably smaller, the instrumentation was accordingly reduced from the original Grand Wazoo version, but there was certainly no loss of effect. When he went to mix the song, however, Frank detected the presence of
intrusive audio crud
which had somehow crept onto the tape, He evidently felt it made that version of “
RDNZL
” unreleasable. A similar ‘live' version of “RDNZL” by that same (1972-74) band appears on
YOU CAN'T DO THAT ON STAGE ANYMORE, Vol. 2: The Helsinki Concert
. Other versions appear on the original
SLEEP DIRT
release,
YOU CAN'T DO THAT ON STAGE ANYMORE, Vol. 5
, and on “The Last Episodes” (the original version).

THE GRAND WAZOO

This recording doesn't even come close to capturing the grandeur of the Wazoo, but it's still worth a listen. The title track (also known as “
The Grand Wazoo
”) has some good guitar playing on it; the “
rum-pum-pum
” wordless vocal on “
Cletus Awreetus-Awritus
” has been described by Eric Weaver as sounding like “
the high school band conductor singing the parts to the musicians
”. (Eric may have been closer to the truth than he realized.) There's more good guitar playing on “
Blessed Relief
”. The liner note story about Cletus Awreetus-Awritus, the funky emperor, and his valiant stand against the Mediocrities of Pedestrium, is a little like sitting around drinking cognac with Frank in a jovial mood and listening to him expound on his view of ancient history. Still, I'll bet a verbatim ‘live' recording of the Wazoo's Hollywood Bowl concert (which included “RDNZL”) on September 10,1972 would have been the first record ever to win simultaneous Grammy awards in the Classical, Jazz, and Sarrusophone Solo categories... I'll bet...

OVER-NITE SENSATION

Many of the tracks for this CD and
APOSTROPHE'
were recorded during the same period; in fact, both albums are combined on the same CD release, although
OVER-NITE SENSATION
was released nearly a year before
APOSTROPHE'
. On the back cover of the vinyl version of
APOSTROPHE'
is the attribution “Produced, arranged and struggled with [by] Frank Zappa.” Having witnessed these tracks being recorded, I can attest to the struggle. In the end, the music may have gotten away from him. One of the musicians described
OVER-NITE SENSATION
as being “like looking at the band through the wrong end of a telescope.” Most of the female vocals are by Tina Turner (whose identity should be apparent to most people, although her name isn't listed anywhere. Well, she's in good company — neither is mine). “
Fifty-Fifty
” features the dipsomaniacal vocal and George Duke's big organ solo described in this chapter. “
Dirty Love
” has Turner's gospel-chorus-in-heat backup vocal and a ‘live'-sounding guitar solo that required something in the vicinity of 24 takes. “
Montana
”, is, in my estimation, the most successful song on the CD, with its low-rent-Copland intro and absurd premise (
moving to Montana to raise dental floss
).

The song “
Flambay
” appears on the
SLEEP DIRT
CD with an overdubbed vocal by Thana Harris.

Ray Collins was the lead vocalist on the
FREAK OUT!, ABSOLUTELY FREE
, and
CRUISING WITH RUBEN AND THE JETS
albums, as well as parts of
UNCLE MEAT
. His vocal on “
Oh No
” is featured on
WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH
.

BONGO FURY

The
BONGO FURY
CD is the only commercially available recording (as opposed to various bootlegs) of a collaboration between Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart (with the exception of the “
Willie the Pimp
” track on
HOT RATS
and the early stuff on the last record of the
OLD MASTERS, Vol. I
boxed set). It's basically a ‘live' recording, with some overdubs, and as such it has a rather ‘unfinished' quality, but its premise is interesting.

BONGO FURY
chronicles Frank and Don's relationship — more or less. “
Debra Kadabra
” is full of references to Don's adolescent fascination with cosmetics (his mother was an Avon Lady), and the no-budget monster movies Frank and Don used to watch (e.g.,
Brainiac
, a low-tech Mexican groaner — the braying brass lick in the background was the movie's
actual leitmotif
for its guy-in-the-rubber-suit monster; “Make me grow Brainiac fingers,
but with more hair!”
) “
Cucamonga
” is straight autobiography, a semi-nostalgic description of the Studio Z days. So, to a certain extent, is “
Advance Romance
”, Don describes his surreal youth in “
Sam With the Showing Scalp Flat Top
”, Finally, Frank paints characteristic scene from his
adult life
in “
Carolina Hardcore Ecstasy
”.

Note:
For an interesting example of how Zappa and Beefheart influenced each other's music, compare Don's first single, *“
Diddy Wah Diddy
” (originally released on A&M Records in 1966, available on a 1984 A&M Records vinyl-only reissue,
CAPTAIN BEEFHEART: THE LEGENDARY A&M SESSIONS
) and Frank's 1966 single, * “
Why don't You Do Me Right
”, now on the
ABSOLUTELY FREE
CD. They share the same growling vocal, fuzztone guitar, and harpsichord fills — and both records are based on the same menacing blues riff, copped from “Smokestack Lightnin”'.