Noise from the Catacombs of the Mockbee
Travelled to Cincinnati over the weekend to perform at the "Brutal Damage" Benefit at the Mockbee Art Gallery. Here is the set list:
24 (dada poem)
A Day of Fire (with projected video of Bush)
The Eternal Frat Boy
Car Crash (written by Penelope Houston/Avengers)
The Projector Goes Crazy (with View Master projection throughout the room)
Osamalude
(When I Kiss You) You Look Like John F. Kennedy
All but the last were new pieces. The show was planned out Monday. The words for 24 and Frat Boy weren't even written out until Thursday. I was still working on Frat Boy the afternoon of the show. I always like to roll out new things when I play Cincinnati because I figure they've all heard the old ones. But I always do "Kennedy" because if I don't people ask me why I didn't play it. It's sort of my equivalent to Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp minor.
I also played with de fenestra, which is what we're calling the trio with Will Soderberg, Adam Mokan and I. That was bone-crunchingly powerful, although we got a tad derailed when the PA blew up. Robert Inhuman was really on the ball and got another head in so we could finish. I haven't heard the tape of de fenestra from Mockbee, and Will says his is not very good. But the one I made of myself turned out nicely, and I remember someone was videotaping us who said he might put the video up on the Art Damage website.
I'd like to share another comment about this show which has come along since:
Will Soderburg:
adam and i set up wondering if dave was gonna make it... he did, almost at the last possible moment... my equipment was problematic... adam was primed, dave added an oscillator to his set, he seemed to be on top of it... the p.a. totally croaked about 5 minutes in... dave ripped off a nasty version of iron man thru his amp while we waited for a replacement head...
everything seems to fly out the window (ha!) when we play, plans, strategies, whatever, its just a whirlwind of frequencies... was nice to have some folks there watching... p.a. was reactivated, so we pretty much started over and did a 2nd 15 minute set... adam and dave seemed pleased, which is a good thing... i was bummed that due to various stuff going on before i left i wasnt as set up and it affected what i was able to do...
was another recording where the mixer md recording sounds almost nothing like what was heard in the room... at d.a.s. the recording was way better than the live sound... here, so far my impression is the opposite... looking forward to hearing & seeing the vid to see if that holds up...
a good thing was that despite the p.a. ceasing, no one panicked, we rolled with it... kudos to robt inhuman for scrambling to grab another head, he seemed to have the organizational thing well in hand... not an easy thing
Some Thoughts About Frank
My friend Brandon Krueger (who also plays a mean marimba) turned me onto some CDRs of Frank Zappa stuff at my request. It had been a really long time since I have listened to any of it and I used to listen to Frank everyday. I poked around the web for a bit and was disappointed about what I saw for Zappa - sure there's plenty of lyrics, transcriptions, tabs, discographies, anecdotal detail, and even a site devoted to analysis of his music. But there is very little that I would call critical or honest about his work.
I listened to five of the CDs Brandon gave me while driving to and fro Cincinnati. Here are some thoughts:
We're Only In it for the Money (March 1968)
This was the 1987 remix which I had never heard. Zappa dumped the original bass and drum tracks and replaced them with new ones made by studio musicians. He managed to turn what was a silk purse into a sow's ear.
In its original form, this was a life-changing album for me, and I think it helped define some parameters for the audience for which it was intended.
But the 1987 remix is not that album. It is a hybrid, with the old tracks dominated by the new. Frank, IMHO, had a tendency to overuse changing speeds. In the hybridized version he is forced to speed up sections to fit the pitch of the new tracks. It's terrible. He does manage to restore a line that was cut from "Mother People" because it had the "f-word" in it. You can find it spinning backward at the end of the album, side 1, titled "Hot Poop." Well, going the right direction, where it belongs, is a treat to hear once, but it doesn't really improve "Mother People." No does anything done in 1987 improve on what was done in 1967, which is when most of this was recorded.
I understand that the reissue of 1995 undid what was added in 1987, so that's the one you should get. Or a copy of the original vinyl album. The original 1968 is five stars, the 1987 is like "no stars."
Lumpy Gravy (May 1968)
Lumpy Gravy is We're Only in It for the Money's evil twin. Concieved as a purely orchestral album, it ended up being padded out with a lot of goofy conversation, some taking place inside of a piano, inside a drum, etc. The orchestral parts range from good to great, but very little great - I really don't think Frank was really yet up to the purely orchestral concept at this point in his career. Some folks really love the talking - in fact a large part of Frank's audience that continue to buy his albums really don't give a damn about his music - they just like all the filthy humor and stuff. Lumpy Gravy is pretty tame in that regard. As much as I like the versions of songs like "Oh No" on Lumpy Gravy (which tend to be too short - more on that in a minute) can I imagine wanting to listen to all of that stupid talking over and over again? No dice; it's mostlky lumps and very little gravy. Two and a half stars for the musical parts.
Weasels Ripped My Flesh (August 1970)
This album I love, and on the CD the first track is three minutes longer, and the title track about 30 seconds longer. Frank regarded this album as a kind of a collection of odds and ends - the Mothers broke up the month it appeared, and some of the material on the album goes back to 1967. But one thing I find frustrating about his early work is that he seldom sees the need to carry his best ideas forward to the end. If he can spin it off into a tape collage or ram it into the beginning of another song he's happier than to end the number conventionally. His endings, when he chose to use them, could be amusing and diverting in their own way, for example the ending of "Pedro's Dowry" on Orchestral Favorites.
But the result is that some things are just cut too short - "Dwarf Nebula Processional" is a great piece, which lasts about 45 seconds, followed by "Dwarf Nebula" - about two minutes of disposable tape twaddle. The CD of "Weasels" is good, but the sequencing of CD programming turns the album's continuity into mincemeat, though admittedly not as badly asin the chopfest that is the CD of "We're Only In it for the Money." But there is no reason to have a break in between "Oh No" and "The Orange County Lumbertruck." From the live recordings I've heard of the Mothers, these two were played together just as on Weasels.
But of the non-complaints I have about Weasels, it seems to be the instance where his technique of collaging a lot of tracks together really does work - it has a flow. On the web, I read somebody writing that "If the title track "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" is a song, then it's a very bad one." I don't think so. It's about the only time Frank wrote a whole piece that was pure noise from beginning to end. Weasels is a four star album, even on CD.
Zoot Allures (October 1976)
This is a straight-up rock album for the most part, and "Disco Boy" is one of Frank's most embarassingly bad ideas. But the title track, "Zoot Allures," is one of my very favorite things that Frank did. Zappa tended to think in linear terms musically - a lot of his pieces tend to gravitate around a single line of music, to which Zappa would assign kind of nonchalant, non-committal harmonic underpinnings. When he was soloing on guitar he tended to like either standard Blues derived changes or pedal tones. Generally Zappa's music is not rich in harmonic ideas, so I guess it's perverse of me to be attracted so strongly to the few instances where harmony plays a critical role in his music. The song "Zoot Allures" is perhaps the best of them. Five stars for the title track, and perhaps nine tenths of a cumulative star for the rest of the album.
Orchestral Favorites (May 1979)
Zappa never got good record reviews on the whole during his life time. The reviews for this album were particularly brutal when it came out, and Frank was doing a lot of complaining in the press about this album and two others (Studio Tan and Sleep Dirt - both of which I bought and liked very much, so I should've known better) becuase apparently they were released by Warners without his final say-so in the midst of a legal conflict with them.
In any event I didn't get it, and when Greg Fernandez played me a little of it years later I really regretted not doing so, as this is one the finest things he ever did. The CD is fine - thank you Brandon, but I'd like to have this as an LP. These are very long, busy, complex pieces, and to take the six tracks in three at a time makes sense. Some of the oil and water orchestral combinations tried on Lumpy Gravy which turned out then, uh, sort of like oil and water, really work on Orchestral Favorites. You never knew that a piccolo and bass clarinet could blend so well playing the same melody three octaves apart. The album is rich with such fine details. The pieces are long, but they don't seem overlong or padded out, and none of the music seems cut off abruptly. Frank did not master form in music - he followed his nose most of the time, and that's one reason why his results are so often of a mixed variety. But Orchestral Favorites, despite his griping and carping, is a true masterpiece and is as worthy of his legacy as Freak Out, Live in New York, Bongo Fury or the other records that he made which are considered truly great. This is a five star album all the way.
Whew!
Uncle Dave Lewis