Zappa is very much “a guy thing.” Not because women can’t appreciate the twelve minute freeform jams or the whimsical lyrics about vegetables, but because the requisite epileptic air guitar and paroxysmal flailing that accompanies Zappa music is decidedly not feminine. Every male Zappa fan that I know reverberates themselves into an orgasmic spectacle of musical pantomime at some point or another during a Zappa song.
I have always been intrigued by this compulsion, so when I was invited to see the “Zappa Plays Zappa” concert on Halloween in Madison Square Garden, I couldn’t possibly resist observing the male Zappa fan in his natural habitat. I was not disappointed.
The music was spectacular and I now have a renewed appreciation of the genius that was Frank Zappa. Every riff, beat, tinkle, pop, and slide was lovingly reproduced. Steve Vai and Terry Bozzio accompanied Dweezil Zappa on so many Zappa favorites, like I’m the Slime (how often do your hear the word “pernicious” in a song?!) Punky’s Whips, St. Alphonso's Pancake Breakfast, Montana, Zomby Woof, and The Black Page. Alternately mesmerizing and ridiculous, it was everything I thought a Zappa concert should be.
And I can confirm that the one commonality between the Sheik Yerboutis in sheets, Devils in glowing horns, the life-sized pink panthers, hirsute Yetis and those dressed as drunken and aging baby-boomers desperately trying to recapture their lost youth by wedging themselves into a pair of long retired blue-jeans and a Grateful Dead t-shirt that fit twenty years ago that were all in attendance, was the uncontrollable spastic contortions synchronized to the music. Glad I was there to nod my head along with them.
(Another bad RAZR photo, but if you look close enough, that formidable tan smudge on the right is Terry Bozzio's sick drum kit...)
My Trusted MOGs
Rapunzel!!! Rapunzel!!!...what an awesome post...great wordage...I was just thinking about the Sheik myself...
My Trusted MOGs
I have epileptic air guitar and paroxysmal flailing envy. Nice one.
My Trusted MOGs
The devil in glowing horns sitting right behind the sheiks was yours truly. (at least until the dude behind me told me that my horns were directly in his field of vision.) The crowd was nearly just as entertaining as the music itself..definately filled with lots of people that do not get out much and left their social niceties in Joe's Garage! That being said, it was a treat to experience the Zappa scene in that element live. The band was real tight just as Frank would have demanded it to be. His music needs to be carried on for eternity.
My Trusted MOGs
If only everybody would write with such descriptive and accurate language as this.
My Trusted MOGs
"Epileptic air guitar and paroxysmal flailing" -- what a great expression! Every Zappahead I know also gets into throes of of ecstasy in describing how tight Frank's bands were, how technical the musicians he played with, etc. I dunno know. I acknowledge the virtuosity,but the music has just always left me pretty cold. Most of the Zappa lyrics I've heard are pretty infantile, so either I've had a bad selection or 'pernicious' was a rare occurrence. I 've found a much higher frequency of less familiar words in Bad Religion and occasionally Ted Leo (how often do you hear 'ossify' in a chorus?).
My Trusted MOGs
Great post - saw Zappa 3 times in his prime but never air guitared. Lyrics may infantile but who else would write:
Whizzing & pasting & pooting through the day (ronnie helping kenny helping burn his poots away!) And all the while on a shelf in the shed: Kennys little creatures on display!
Ronnie saves his numies on a window in his room (a marvel to be seen: dysentery green) While kenny & his buddies had a game out in the back: Lets make the water turn black
My Trusted MOGs
damn girlie YOU RAWK i wish my mind could stay still long enough to produce such words of beauty
My Trusted MOGs
Dayum. Sounds like a good time. You can never have too much flailing in a smoky theater! Helluvah review. ;)
My Trusted MOGs
Right on, good for you going to that show. Awesome review.
I hope I can get in to one of the West Coast dates. Dweez is doing a good work by carrying on his dad's legacy like this, and the players are definitely top shelf. Does Humor Belong In Music? HELL YEAH!
Name that tune:
"I need a dozen tow'ls so the boyz can take a show'r"
"Make way for da Iron Shau-sashge"
My Trusted MOGs
Dong Work for Yuda and Torture never stops?
My Trusted MOGs
No, wait - both are from Yuda?
My Trusted MOGs
I just finished listening to the audiobook version of "Laurel Canyon," which is a history of the seminal L.A. rock scene of the '60s and '70s. Zappa and his wife had a small house in Laurel Canyon, which was the heart of American rock music in that period (think Crosby Stills and Nash, The Byrds, and Mamas and Papas). Zappa had a 24/7 jam in his basement that went on for months! Can you imagine what that was like? I also found out that he advised Alice Cooper on how to be a rock star.
My Trusted MOGs
Justin, those horns were perfect! I got a laugh everytime I saw them marching around in the dark. I was thinking the same thing, that some of these people must have been locked in their house for the past 15 years, else they would know that people are laughing at their mullet. Not with it.
Chainsaw, I can understand where you are coming from. It is all a bit stream of consciousness and for the most part, there aren't any hooks to latch on to. I don't think you can approach Zappa like it is regular music. Its like a vacation from normality, which is why I think people get so in to it. But what still blows my mind is that the songs are deliberately planned, like freeform poetry in a jar.
Sethpian-Yes, it was a good time, but... erm, I never mentioned that the theater was smoky... ;)
My Trusted MOGs
You nailed it S'pian.
There are more advanced, more poetic, and just downright better lyrics of FZs, but those always seem to spring to mind whenever I think about what we lost when we lost FZ, for some reason. I guess I'm one of the "infantile" fans...
Mr Vince Furnier was completely a FZ protege, many were, or at least gravitated to his orbit. Just look at the list of players that matriculated through his band, it's ridiculous. Some of them ended up hating him eventually, but everyone knew he was writing some of the most advanced, out there, demanding, virtuosic, funny, honest, PERSONAL music ever written. Sure it's kind of 'statistically dense' and thematically overbearing at times, but at least it never posed, and he went to bat in front of Congress for your right to hear infantile, rude music. If that isn't fucking heroic, I don't know what is.
Musically, a lot of the characters, tonal and rhythmic content, rhetorical approaches, and thematic flavor runs straight through all of his albums. It's one big project, one man's life work, and he recorded almost all of it. It's simultaneously advanced and yet not obnoxious or scholarly. It's 100% homemade, American music, plus genius, times the record industry. If you dig, you will find more and more in the music, I promise.
Go get Bongo Fury and enjoy rock band Beefheart madness. Listen to Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up with a fresh drink if you had a long day and feel blue. Listen to Fine Girl and laugh your ass off. Listen to Black Napkins (or anything with Terry Bozzio) and have your brain melted by pure drum power. And when the world feels like a huge ripoff, put on Outside Now and know that Joe - - fresh out of prison - - gets it, and would sympathize with you, if he weren't so distracted by the endless piles and piles of discarded. burning, outdated toasters and assorted kitchen appliances.
My Trusted MOGs
This is an Absolutely Sensational post sugarbaby. I absolutely needed this! Thanks! Zappa is right up there with Rundgren for me!
Zappa was an absolutely Incredible guitarist! Not many people realize that. Especially heavy metal fans.
Steve Vai knows this, though, amongst others.
My Trusted MOGs
great post Sugarbaby...I am so jealous!!!! I agree Frank's lyrics were written for guys...they are not PC by any means...but there are some great messages hidden in the filth...but for me it was always a listening experience...So damn Jealous you got to see that show...I hope they come to Austin.
My Trusted MOGs
Frank was one of a kind; his catalog is huge and diverse, truly an Artist in every sense of the word.
My Trusted MOGs
Well said!
My Trusted MOGs
definitely not for the women My childhood changed once I heard that "the price of meat has just gone up..." Zappa on Halloween, well done. Down here in the Tampa area it's known as Zappaween with Bogus Pomp
My Trusted MOGs
I resemble those remarks!
If you check my "First Concert" widget, it was Zappa back in '72; he was still on a cane (and i think wearing leg braces) from the time the guy tossed him into the orchestra pit. Had a large and rather fromidable-looking bodyguard on stage.
Of course, with the Georgia Tech football players wearing the black t-shirts lettered "Alex Cooley Security" in big white letters, i don't think the bodyguard was necessarily needed.
(At a Ramones show at the Roxy here in Atlanta, years later, the Security guys formed a line standing a few feet apart in front of the stage, and if anyone tried stagediving, the nearest one grabbed him and then they lateraled him down the line till the last one slam-dunked him out the exit...)
I know i went to at least four Zappa concerts between '72 and '77; Doctor Hook was the opening act at one - '74, i think. (Zappa was touring behind The Grand Wazoo and Doctor Hook were just off Cover of the Rolling Stone...) They had some technical problems setting up, and, because the hall was the old Atlanta Municipal Auditorium, which had a strict 11PM curfew, they had to cut the set short.
Frank announced that "...because they're going to shut us down at eleven sharp, we will now make an effort to do a two-minute-thirty second version of The Legend of Cleetus Awreetus-Awrightus, which we have never managed in less than three minutes before..." (or whatever the exact numbers were) and they tore into it. About two seconds after the last honk, the lights went out.
As to Bozzio's kit - yeah, i bet it's killer, but, if you want to see a drum/percussion setup that'll drop your jaw, take a look at the inner fold of the Burnt Weenie Sandwich LP cover (can't recall if the photo is on the CD insert or not) a two-drummer setup consisting of about twenty linear feet of every kind of drum and/or percussion you can imagine, from tympani to woodblocks, with a full trap kit at each end; what The Indian of the Group and Bill Mundi did on that stuff is awesome...
Last time i saw Frank live (in '77), the tix were a thirty-ninth birthday gift from my wife for me and a friend who was a fan to see him at the Omni; Frank began the show by saying "Good evening - and welcome to Atlanta's biggest echo chamber..."
I leave you with a Zappa quote that is amazingly apt for where we are:
Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
Current National Terror Alert Level
My Trusted MOGs
LOL never a truer word said about Zappa fans. I should know, I'm one of them :)
My Trusted MOGs
i just can to the realization whist listening to steve via and doing some epileptic air guitar and paroxysmal flailing,that i too,resemble one of THOSE people now you won't love me anymore :(