ewe2
15-02-2006, 11:28 PM
If you could rank songwriters like Jedi Masters, Frank Zappa wouldn't get a seat on the Council. He'd be the Master you send your really troublesome padawans to, to so freak them out that they'd come back quaking and gibbering and willing to learn every lesson you have for them.
For Zappa is the Everest of popular music, always there but few dare to climb the heights without years of training, great equipment, and never unless the weather is perfect. To that I say pshaw pooh and rubbish. So what if you fall down a few crevasses and get clobbered by the occasional avalanche? The rewards are many, including a greater musical vocabulary, the finer points of political incorrectness, and a great ride down the hill. So for Zappa aficionados, I beg pardon, but I'm not going to review Zappa like an acolyte. Few Zappa albums are as approachable as this one and innocence must learn somewhere. All you really need is a sense of humour.
There is no Zappa "style" unless its a combination of styles, rather a lot to each song. The shift in styles is meant to suggest mood and a way of contrasting with the lyrics. With that, let's dive in with the first ditty, a coital schmaltz called I Have Been In You, which is pretty gentle by Zappa lyrical standards, and we segue straight into Flakes, a standard Zappa diatribe against useless people, and roar into Broken Hearts Are For Assholes matched by I'm So Cute, wonderful contemptous rants against general superficiality. Then we're slammed into the boogie Jones Crusher with one of my favourite lines:
Here she comes
With her red dress on
Steam shoots out
From the sprinklers on the lawn
The eyes be rollin'
On the concrete fawn
The wind can't blow
'Cause the sky is gone
A typical Zappa interlude (purportedly the engineers at work on the album) Whatever Happened To All The Fun In the World? introduces the estactic Rat Tomago guitar improvisation. Turn off the lights and up the volume for 5 minutes here. A quick breather (Wait A Minute) and we're into a Zappa classic Bobby Brown Goes Down, a story of homoerotic bondage revenge exacted by a lesbian dominatrix. Then a couple of instrumentals, Rubber Shirt and The Sheik Yerbouti Tango, the latter featuring a nice tune to destroy braincells to and then another accessible tune Baby Snakes which links SMTPE to something wet n' pink.
Tryin' To Grow A Chin races towards the finish line with the unlikely crescendo: I wanna be dead In bed Please kill me 'Cause that would thrill me ad very nearly infinitum :) City of Tiny Lites, features a live atmosphere and lyrics either about a minature city or the view of one from a plane and then we come to a true classic Dancin' Fool about a hopeless Travolta with all the accessories and none of the style:
I don't know much about dancin',
That's why I got this song,
One of my legs is shorter than the other,
And both of my feet are too long.
'Course now I'll ride along with them,
I got no natural rhythm,
But I go dancing every night,
Hoping one day I might get it right!
immediately segueing into another favourite Jewish Princess which appears to equate the car with the bride. We have another clash of styles with the sardonic Wild Love with each verse sung in three styles and the connections between them in another. And finally, Yo' Mamma with another live atmosphere and another great Zappa solo majestically closes the album.
The band assembled by Zappa at this point feature Adrian Belew, Patrick O'Hearn and Tommy Mars, to mention just a couple of the extremely talented musicians fleshing out Zappa's iconoclastic musical clashes, and for all its contrasts, the production is typically well-managed. The shock is when you read the liner notes and realize that every musical track was recorded live mainly in London and then massively redubbed, all by Zappa himself.
If you've enjoyed this rollercoaster of an album you'll find it difficult to match with the majority of Zappa's work, which falls into several phases from his beginnings in elaborate stage extravaganzas through the Captain Beefheart collaborations to the Zoot Allures period leading up to the one this album sits in. It has to be said not all of his albums are as homogenous and of such songwriting quality. But that's up to you, your taste and hopefully your whetted appetite. Go, young Jedi! Fear the strange man with the moustache you must not! Much to learn there still is!
For Zappa is the Everest of popular music, always there but few dare to climb the heights without years of training, great equipment, and never unless the weather is perfect. To that I say pshaw pooh and rubbish. So what if you fall down a few crevasses and get clobbered by the occasional avalanche? The rewards are many, including a greater musical vocabulary, the finer points of political incorrectness, and a great ride down the hill. So for Zappa aficionados, I beg pardon, but I'm not going to review Zappa like an acolyte. Few Zappa albums are as approachable as this one and innocence must learn somewhere. All you really need is a sense of humour.
There is no Zappa "style" unless its a combination of styles, rather a lot to each song. The shift in styles is meant to suggest mood and a way of contrasting with the lyrics. With that, let's dive in with the first ditty, a coital schmaltz called I Have Been In You, which is pretty gentle by Zappa lyrical standards, and we segue straight into Flakes, a standard Zappa diatribe against useless people, and roar into Broken Hearts Are For Assholes matched by I'm So Cute, wonderful contemptous rants against general superficiality. Then we're slammed into the boogie Jones Crusher with one of my favourite lines:
Here she comes
With her red dress on
Steam shoots out
From the sprinklers on the lawn
The eyes be rollin'
On the concrete fawn
The wind can't blow
'Cause the sky is gone
A typical Zappa interlude (purportedly the engineers at work on the album) Whatever Happened To All The Fun In the World? introduces the estactic Rat Tomago guitar improvisation. Turn off the lights and up the volume for 5 minutes here. A quick breather (Wait A Minute) and we're into a Zappa classic Bobby Brown Goes Down, a story of homoerotic bondage revenge exacted by a lesbian dominatrix. Then a couple of instrumentals, Rubber Shirt and The Sheik Yerbouti Tango, the latter featuring a nice tune to destroy braincells to and then another accessible tune Baby Snakes which links SMTPE to something wet n' pink.
Tryin' To Grow A Chin races towards the finish line with the unlikely crescendo: I wanna be dead In bed Please kill me 'Cause that would thrill me ad very nearly infinitum :) City of Tiny Lites, features a live atmosphere and lyrics either about a minature city or the view of one from a plane and then we come to a true classic Dancin' Fool about a hopeless Travolta with all the accessories and none of the style:
I don't know much about dancin',
That's why I got this song,
One of my legs is shorter than the other,
And both of my feet are too long.
'Course now I'll ride along with them,
I got no natural rhythm,
But I go dancing every night,
Hoping one day I might get it right!
immediately segueing into another favourite Jewish Princess which appears to equate the car with the bride. We have another clash of styles with the sardonic Wild Love with each verse sung in three styles and the connections between them in another. And finally, Yo' Mamma with another live atmosphere and another great Zappa solo majestically closes the album.
The band assembled by Zappa at this point feature Adrian Belew, Patrick O'Hearn and Tommy Mars, to mention just a couple of the extremely talented musicians fleshing out Zappa's iconoclastic musical clashes, and for all its contrasts, the production is typically well-managed. The shock is when you read the liner notes and realize that every musical track was recorded live mainly in London and then massively redubbed, all by Zappa himself.
If you've enjoyed this rollercoaster of an album you'll find it difficult to match with the majority of Zappa's work, which falls into several phases from his beginnings in elaborate stage extravaganzas through the Captain Beefheart collaborations to the Zoot Allures period leading up to the one this album sits in. It has to be said not all of his albums are as homogenous and of such songwriting quality. But that's up to you, your taste and hopefully your whetted appetite. Go, young Jedi! Fear the strange man with the moustache you must not! Much to learn there still is!