Abundance of Zappa Volume 1
Gotta start somewhere
Hey Everybody!
Helio here!
This Saturday night we are taking an evening off from recording a “normal” episode of the Indie 500 podcast but hey why not think about music anyways. I mentioned in our previous episode that I would love to do some deep dive episodes about Frank and his prolific legacy. Just this evening I popped onto the Zappa reddit sub-forum and put out a rather simple request…or so I thought!
I told them that I was mostly familiar with Frank’s material throughout the 70’s and some of the “shutup and play yer guitar” run…what else should i dig into next? To no surprise, within the first 20 answers, there was not a single repeat recommendation! It genuinely speaks to the depth of his catalog that there entire decades of output that far surpass most bands entire career output.
During his lifetime, Frank released an incredible 62 albums. Sure, some of them were live albums which is sort of a copout I suppose but since his passing in 1994, the Zappa family trust has released 67 more albums! You can add, I know, but I just gotta say it, 129 albums to the mans name through the end of 2024. Wow.
If you haven’t seen the excellent documentary titled simply, “Zappa” by Alex Winter (yes…that Alex Winter…Bill S. Preston Esq. if you will) and you have read this far, I would recommend you watch it as soon as you can. It’s a wonderful glimpse into Frank, his life, his methods as an artist and creative genius but one thing mentioned in the documentary that’ll keep even the next generation of fans happy…he recorded and vaulted EVERYTHING! A lot of those posthumous releases are items that the family and Joe Travers (the vault master, what a title) had found within Frank’s archives and deemed worthy of seeing the light of day with no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
So I’ve got about a 15 year head start on Frank, if you are new…where would I recommend you start? Hmm, great question! I’ll give you a few options depending on your taste how about that?
If you like concept albums/rock operas then start with “Joes Garage” there is a lot of incredible music on it, Frank’s bizarre & perverse sense of humor and possibly his greatest guitar composition, “Watermelon in Easter Hay”. If I haven’t sold it yet let’s see what Wikipedia has to say about it…
The story is told by a character identified as the "Central Scrutinizer" narrating the story of Joe, an average adolescent male, from Canoga Park, Los Angeles, who forms a garage rock band, has unsatisfying relationships with women, gives all of his money to a government-assisted and insincere religion, explores sexual activities with appliances, and is imprisoned. After being released from prison into a dystopian society in which music itself has been criminalized, he lapses into insanity.
If you’re the kind of sarcastic ass to mock entire music scenes, citizens of California, and the alpha-male archetype then boy have I got an album for you! Franks 1979 album, “Shiek Yerbouti” delivers another eclectic array of songs, eighteen songs to be exact, some of them hilarious, some tongue and cheek and some musically brilliant. It features some pretty prominent Zappa alumni as well: Adrian Belew, Terry Bozzio, Napoleon Murphy Brock.
The last one I’ll drop for now is '“Roxy & Elsewhere”. This is a double live album, you know in the before time, the long ago, when music came on physical media, let alone two of ‘em! The concerts were recorded in late ‘73 over three nights and the best bits and pieces of them mixed together not only by song, but within the songs themselves. Frank, one of the pioneers of “xenochrony” a technique of pulling parts of recordings and placing them into other recordings (see shutup and play yer guitar, all of the guitar leads were actually solos on prior tours then placed over a different backing track to form a new song) had sifted through the shows to find the best versions of each part of the songs and it really does deliver. Since then, there have been numerous re-releases including all the shows, remastered blu-ray footage of the concerts, you name it
If you can track down the blu-ray it’s an incredibly fun watch but if you have nothing but the audio you’re still in for a treat.
So where do I go from here? I’m thinking let’s bounce back to the 60’s and the very beginning of the journey with Frank Zappa & The Mother Of Inventions “Freak out!” maybe from there bounce into the 80’s with “You are what you is” a little classic pincer movement, closing in on those 1970’s records I already know. Next time I write on the matter of Mr. Zappa I’ll share my thoughts on those albums as well as a few other tidbits.
Thanks for reading and let me know if you have any favorites I should jump on!