Frank Zappa 'Tinsel Town Rebellion' - CoD?

Okay my bad I've never heard this song and have nothing worthwhile to contribute. Please ignore as appropriate.

I love this q.

for me, Zappa's mid '70s output was proof that Zappa's oevre was irrecoverable, destined to disappear up it's own inexhastibly funny patented moustache

specifically,
Overnight Sensation and Apostrophe are the double barrelled reality of the incarnation of Zappa's music the stupid over meticulously muso manicured empty glossy shmaltz presents Frank Zappa the person : a "musicologist" misogynist and misanthropic bore who revels in this music as evidence or proof that he can get away with scatalogical soft porn -- zappa the sort of guy who _knows_ he's some sort of musical genius, second coming etc. ie reminding us he's "the clever guy" making sport of an audience who thinks songs like "Dirty Love", "Stink Foot", "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow", "Camarillo Brillo", "Montana" are (honk honk barf barf) accurate satire of all rock'n'roll was capable of producing etc. (and consumer society in general, all the pigs and ponies)

zappa's joke : "isn't it funny how it takes this little imagination and taste to titilate dads and grads in that nudge nudge wink wink way ? (so the joke's on my audience)"

Joe's Garage is redundant excessive filth masquerading as freedoms last stand -- endless bad muso cliches, "clever" time signatures and chords to make the audience feel "clever", sicko jokes at the expense of less fortunate people (zappa's justification: that's the sort of grade humour people in real life end up getting into, so jokes about getting raped in prison are "comment on where culture/people is at in 1979") -- stuff that screams "go on, censor this shit, because it is shit with no redeeming qualities, but hey, it's by an artist so it'll create a stir about freedom of expression etc if you do censor it" -- uh,.. Franky, there's _still_ no point to it

You Are What You Is is chock full of more dumb jokes about people/situations that might be sad, but that's like, so let's laugh at them (for example, Christian baiting is something this album is strong on, yet to me joking about and satirising of fundamentalist Christianity serves no purpose except upsetting the Christians, but it's not going to change their beliefs, but never mind, hey it's fun teasing them, and the songs are _so_funny_)

Zappa in New York (live) presents Zappa baiting his stoned and pissed audience with the real life story of "The Illinois Enema Bandit" (not a sexual predator, no, just a guy with a weird fetish, ha ha ha) and "Titties and Beer" (let's laugh at the dumb biker who likes his beer and his girlfriend's tits and may have to give up one in a Faustian bargain (the literary allsuion for the special wise-ass NY audience, and hey, aren't bikers dumb in a funny sort of way anyway?)

Studio Tan presents the stupidest 20 minute musique concrete assemblage i have ever heard (that must have taken six months to piece together) featuring plots that don't work, characters that are meant to be funny but aren't, simply lame non-holllywood un-happy ending, observations about society that are so trivial that one wonders why anyone bothered putting it all together, "studio tan" and all -- in total, mere product, evidence of "i'm clever in the studio" and over-budgeted orchestration for absolutley average guitar solos

and there are other albums from this period like Sheik Yerboutti (oh, that pun is _so_ _lame_ dad, ha ha ha ha ..) but i needn't list them all

for anyone who enjoyed the promise of the original recorded mothers line-up on those great verve albums from the '60s and who may have grinned and beared it through the spotty, Chunga's Revenge, Another Band from LA, Live Filmore East, 200 motels (the Fellini rip-off film), then Apostrophe and overnite Sensation were the final proof that Zappa had a new special dumber than dumb for its own sake culture in mind fo his discerning fans of the mid '70s (a crowd who given the gap in values '60s albums to '70s albums he can't have had the slightest of intellectual respect for)

if Flo and Eddie's stage antics and cheap smut weren't incitement enough (remember these were the stage show antics which led a jealous male to pick up Zappa and throw him off the stage because of the effect Zappa had on this guy's smitten girlfriend), these mid '70s albums were all critics of the time dissapointed at Zappa's about face needed to kick Zappa way down below low-middle-brow where his dirty work ("but it's my job, I have a duty to society to expose these truths, blah blah .." ) belonged

golly, i could rant for hours about the quality lows of Zappa's '70s stuff, the dissapointment after the promise of the '60s mothers stuff, the cynical sell-out "as artistic comment on the state of the art (ha ha)" and the effect it had on me (which is to say i wish i'd had the opportunity to throw him off stage myself sometime around '78)

actually, Chris Clark, i can't believe what you'd elevate these awful records to,..

are you really a Zappa-hater-baiter ?

there's a sleazy current song with horrid keyboards "easy meat"(1979), in fact a couple of songs that were only recorded once, here, and yeah, you may have a different opinion to my own on them and on the title track which is a '79 track about punk bands & hollywood

Zappa always led a slick rock band and certainly did on this live record, and i agree that the band rocks quite well on some of the tracks here (i particularly like "Brown Shoes Don't Make It", originally from 1967, and "Tell Me You Love Me" from 1971)

this is a document of him putting on a show mainly for college students, and yes, that band knew how to put on a show sounding slick and naughty (y'know, dads and grads)

many of those album tracks from the records i listed however do not stand the test of time so well
(and these were his crucial sell-out records i was complaining about, Joes Garage and Overnite Sensation, neither of which have tracks presented live on Tinseltown Rebellion)

Tinseltown Rebellion waa an early exposure to Zappa for me too, and i was impressed by the slick muso stuff as i was 16 years old, but the lyrics grew tired on repeated listenings -- sure it's a great amusing-ish one-off show to present to college students live (students who're probably not familiar with any of his back-catalogue anyway), but could you really live with these tracks for any length of time, as over the top as they are ?

regardless of that sentiment, side 4 reprises "Peaches en Regalia" and "Brown Shoes Don't Make It", both tracks from '67-'69, tracks i liked anyway and tracks that work on this record i believe because they were composed before Zappa "lost his mind" but were nonetheless played well here

as a one-off blast under the influence i can see that it would be easy on the ear and pleasant, hell the show is designed to appeal to stoned students new to zappa

but that wasn't really the subject of my post

ie
I still can't believe that anyone thinks Overnite Sensation -> Joes Garage could be viewed as an artistic peak by anyone

(nostalgia of some of Zappa'a more acceptable stuff on the Tinseltown album is a different story)

i think you _have_ _to_ _hear_ the stuff on the albums i was referring to
to really appreciate
just _how_ _dumb_
that material was
(clearly too dumb for college students since none of it appears on Tinselton at all)

yes it really is a whole new dimmension of dumb, this mid '70s stuff, and that's my point really, that this mid '70s period has to be Zappa's nadir

OK Tinseltown Rebellion is tolerably mindless (admittedly from my 16 year old mind nostalgia perspective)

but, yeah,
those other _unforgiveable_ '70s albums were really what my post was about

It's the most overtly Zappa influenced stuff I've ever heard.
I don't mean in a shallow Mr Bungle flitting through genres way either. They've got the multiple style appropriation, sneering/smutty lyrics, funny voices stuff going on and some of the guitar licks and soloing even sound a little like Zappa. Yes, I know there's much more to Frank than that!

It's on Ryko too.

tinsel town is OK, not great -- prob. because of its dual nature (some new songs, some live versions of old songs). not as good as what immediately preceded it (sheik yerbouti and joe's garage) and what immediately came after (you are what you is, which is a genuinely underrated zappa record).

i understood that the guy who threw zappa off stage did so because of the mis-placed affections of his girlfriend for zappa -- anyone know more ? was this the reason ? Zappa used to tease people in his audience (singling out minorities for humiliation/humour always seemed like the _most_ most cringe-worthy of zappa's "humour") so it's easy to imagine him pushing soemone in an audience too far

no, if i'd been there and had the opportunity to push zappa off the stage i would have been sorely tempted especially if it was Joes Garage or You are what you is being played

so Tad,
why do you like these records ? do you find these songs funny ? anthropoligically revealing ? i've always wanted to know why Zappa get's excused for all the excesses of his '70s stuff...
was there no other "humour" of whatever sort in rock ? the humour that has brunts of jokes for instance

like,
the girl with the weight(mouth) problem ? ("Charlie's Enormous Mouth")
or
the downer problem ("Any Downers ?")
or
the suicide attemptor seeking attention ("Suicide Chump")
or
the draftee who doesn't want to get "shot in her foxhole" ("I Don't Want to get Drafted")
or
the fat girl that makes unwanted advances ("Jumbo Go Away")

why do any of these pathetic subjects deserve whole songs devoted to them ? don't tell me the lyrics aren't important.. it's like zappa is trying to cast a net and include many of Americas individual's problems in You Are What You Is

is this meant to be humour (at the expense of a collection of truly wretched subjects) ? i don't find any real insight in the lyrics to the songs, just shallow rhyming junk .. satire of popular music, vignettes done in the then current style of popular music, attacks on ordinary people .. what is the point of these songs on You Are What you Is ?
the treatment of the subjects is shallower than typical everyday conversations and the humour more forced, and yet this so-called composer thinks this is important work, in that studio time is spent, musicians learn parts, lot's of work is spent on these songs

OK love songs are shallow, and lot's of pop music has meaningless lyrics, but tell me Tad, why does anyone want to defend You Are What You Is ? what was then imho a truly excessive series of un-catchy bad-jokes (they're not good enough to be sick jokes) on a double album complete with lyric sheet for these dumb, puerile songs

Tad, you say You are .. is genuinely underrated

tell me, what's it got going for it ? this guy Zappa if not prolific, no, this is just evidence of the sort of excessive indulgence of one individual's limited compositional powers, someone who's really run out of ideas, but apparently someone with enough clout in the record industry to be able to pay others o work on his limited visions so that as i remember it around 1980 the public at were treated to four or five double lps all from within about three years of work on the most throw-away of pop music _purporting_to_be_ _something_ _befitting_ _a _major _composer_

i understood from reading somewhere that the guy who threw zappa off stage did so because of the mis-placed affections of his girlfriend for zappa -- anyone know more ? was this the reason ? Zappa used to tease people in his audience (singling out minorities for humiliation/humour always seemed like the _most_ cringe-worthy of zappa's "humour") so it's easy to imagine Zappa himself pushing plenty in an audience too far

no, if I'd been there and had the opportunity to push zappa off the stage i would have been sorely tempted especially if it was Joes Garage or You are what you is being played

so Tad,
why do you like these records ? do you find these songs funny ? anthropoligically revealing ? i've always wanted to know why Zappa get's excused for all the excesses of his '70s stuff...
was there no other "humour" of whatever sort in rock ? the humour that has brunts of jokes for instance

like,
the girl with the weight(mouth) problem ? ("Charlie's Enormous Mouth")
or
the girl with the downer problem ("Any Downers ?")
or
the suicide attemptor seeking attention ("Suicide Chump")
or
the draftee who doesn't want to get "shot in her foxhole" ("I Don't Want to get Drafted")
or
the fat girl that makes unwanted advances ("Jumbo Go Away")

why do any of these pathetic subjects deserve whole songs devoted to them ? don't tell me the lyrics aren't important.. it's like zappa is trying to cast a net and include many of Americas individual's problems in You Are What You Is

is this meant to be humour (at the expense of a collection of truly wretched subjects) ? i don't find any real insight in the lyrics to the songs, just shallow rhyming junk .. satire of popular music, vignettes done in the then current style of popular music, attacks on ordinary people .. what is the point of these songs on You Are What you Is ?
the treatment of the subjects is shallower than typical everyday conversations and the humour more forced, and yet this so-called composer thinks this is important work, in that studio time is spent, musicians learn parts, lot's of work is spent on these songs

OK love songs are shallow, and lot's of pop music has meaningless lyrics, but tell me Tad, why does anyone want to defend You Are What You Is ? what was then imho a truly excessive series of un-catchy bad-jokes (they're not good enough to be sick jokes) on a double album complete with lyric sheet for these dumb, puerile songs

Tad, you say You are .. is genuinely underrated

tell me, what's it got going for it ? this guy Zappa if not prolific, no, this is just evidence of the sort of excessive indulgence of one individual's limited compositional powers, someone who's really run out of ideas, but apparently someone with enough clout in the record industry to be able to pay others o work on his limited visions, so much so that, as i remember it, around 1980 the public at were treated to four or five double lps all from within about three years of work on the most throw-away of pop music _purporting_to_be_ _something_ _befitting_ _a _major _composer_

(did Zappa exhibit share many of the self-obsessive delusions of Stalin ?)

yeah, Tad, seems like you're a real apologist for someone i consider one of the great scam-mongers of the late twetieth century, someone with an opinion of his own talents so out of tune with reality as to put it beyond mere arrogance
i look forward to your expalantion of Zappa, for mem the unpleasantly uselss phenomena

um, george, i don't know what the law in either the UK is. but under american law, a performer goading an audience member would not be considered adequate provocation to justify the audience member's attacking the performer. again, while i don't know british law regarding assault and battery is, i can't imagine that even if Zappa did goad the audience member that such goading would be adequately provocative to justify a battery. furthermore, Zappa's assailant was mentally deranged (so how trustworthy would his account about Zappa's alleged provocation be) and Zappa himself said that he couldn't even see the woman that he was allegedly ogling (because the stage lights were blinding and someone onstage could not see either the woman or, apparently, Zappa's assailant when he climbed onto the stage to attack Zappa).

in other words -- whether your argument is that Flo and Eddie or Zappa himself provoked the assailant -- yer argument is full of shit. as usual.

in other words .. yer argument is full of shit. as usual.
sorry to piss you off so much -- i would never go as far as to use this sort of language about another poster -- and "full of shit .. as usual" really doesn't say or prove much

but since it seems you have plenty of energy to rave on, more importantly i think, how about getting down to defending You Are What You Is, please ?

and i'm puzzled as to why yer sticking up for the religious fundamentalists Zappa skewered on the "the meek shall inherit nothing"/"dumb all over"/"heavenly bank account" suite. his focus was on the televangelists and their political enablers. perhaps it's because yer not an American, but the early eighties was when that bunch were beginning to flex their muscles, politically and culturally, over here (Falwell and the Moral Majority, Reagan and his lot pandering to them, etc.). Zappa certainly wasn't alone in mocking fundamentalists.

i also like yawyi because i think that it's musically quite accomplished and well-produced -- it's almost Brian Wilson-esque in that way.

if you don't know the circumstances regarding the incident, then why do you feel qualified to prattle on about it as if you do? or speculate that either flo and eddie, or zappa, had adequately provoked zappa's assailant? the typo was not "trivial," and "full of shit" seems an entirely appropriate description of yer rant.

does that mean "no-one singing", because that sure makes sense

and, "tad", i wasn't sticking up for the televangelists with the songs i listed, and to be honest, i think you're the one dodging the issue (though i don't really thinking saying say stuff like "as usual" is called for)
and i thought we're only in it for the money was "well produced", but it was also good in substance, and i guess eno's work on u2 albums makes them "well produced" too, but that doesn't stop me finding them grossly simplistic compared to his other production work
so how about we settle for"Y.a.w.y.i. is well produced but half of it resorts to humour at the expense of cheap, undeserving and un-interesting targets" (cf: his better sixties work, which wasn't overtly (lyricly) parcularly critical about anything, and was more about having fun)

dave, i think "excessive" is good if it's the right sort of force deployed in the right way (for a good example of excessive force see zappa, Israel,.. ie "overkill")

jeez, arguing about frank zappa of all things at six in the morning !!

why bother about the git anyway, .. thankfully there is no more music coming from that source, and in thirty years he'll hopefully just be a blip on the bibliography of something else

so much of his efforts in life and escpecially near the end went into making sure everything got recorded, so there were 8 double live cds released in the last ten years of his life "curated" by this self-appointed master bearing the words "FZ approved master",
and it's as though he had to set up this "Zappa Family Trust" to use existing funds to preserve his own legacy, like the self-important wanna-be composer that he wasn't

in nz and the uk there are laws specifically forbidding many self perpetuating estates (for example, you can't leave money to buy land all over the place and build statues of yourself or as was the case with George B Shaw set aside funds for the creation, study and teaching of your own new "better" alphabet) but the master recording industry beaurecrat do-all-jobs for the great work stalin-esque control freak zappa ensured that there would always be four slots in the cd store devoted to all those double cds and all the other re-issue upon re-issue cds perpetuating his dumb cult, pushing the common assumption that "prolific" equals "quality" (and i'm not even sure that "prolific" is really justified in his case, since that does imply some sort of "genuine" output cf: the grateful dead industry)

the anal-retentive attention to this detail makes a case for someone very unloved, very lonely, very needy in this "make his mark" way -- he was going to be a composer, even is he had to set up his own record company and earmark large chunks of his estate for the continued maintenance of this industrial waste strength creation, market forces be damned

that he felt that isloated and seperate and unloved i suppose leads to delusions of grandeaur (who hasn't met some band leader carried away with his new spotlight) and explains the constant hatred for every other human being as evidenced in so many of his empty-headed hate-songs, this punk who could only complain, not create, only ape and satirise

yes duane, arguing about zappa is really cheap target stuff itself, i admit it, but is there a more deserving american musical ego that's so much fun to beat up on ? so easy to find fault with by applying his own wretched agenda to himself ? hang him again and again with own old rope ?

what possible respect did zappa have for fans of his earlier work given the later slop ?

is being da-dah of pop music that easy in america that this guy can slouch towards it by name-dropping real composers, ripping off their ideas ?

frank zappa, the fart-joke prince ("duke of prunes" a self-fulfilling prophesy ?)

or is it just that his earnest collect-all-the-albums fans form what is really a cult, with all these dumb in-jokes that seemed funny in 197x still worshipped in the same way that other nostalgia in american culture is sacrosanct ?

i'm not offended by zappa as much as by his adoring defend-him-to-the-death as justification for owning all the albums wannabe counter culture fans

(and Tad, considering the tone you've used in criticising not just what i've written but _me_ as well i think i deserve some sort of answer to the questions i posed to you, even if offering just a tad seems like an acceptable m.o. in your book)

chill out ... go listen to some MiSex or something

witness the other threads -- i'm hardly alone -- note ian penman's "notorious" wire rant; it's actually quite typical of the contempt in which zappa is held by so many music lovers that
it's actually been cathartic for lot's of people to spit at zappa at any opportunity, in the same way that he seemed to use his own bastardised cheap ripped off and endlesslessly re-hashed version of rock'n'roll (as satire/critique, in his head alone) to spit at humanity from his third-hand-imitation-ivory-bargain-basement -- the fact that it's dead would not have stopped him from stooping to criticising something else, and frankly, while his corpus is rotting many people feel it entirely appropriate to clear the air, set the record straight

eg. Beefheart has lashed out at Zappa for ripping off large nos. of ideas off of him -- Anthony Braxton, a Beefheart fan, enjoyed ripping into Boulez for bothering to spend time on "the rock composer Zappa, of all people" (that was a heavily sarcastic caustic interview excerpt, emphasis his)

and so many people who once thought through limited exposure to this prick that he was a force for good in music have been left with a sour taste in there mouth, a feeling of being ripped off by the equivalent of this american fraud qua composer who was really one of the worst cases of rock excess this side of any number of other expoitative rock'n'roll jerks (eg the way people love to hate Kiss and Led Zeppelin for their exploitation of young female minds)

i don't need to chill out, but i enjoy setting the record straight as i see it -- his fake plastic precociousness, his adoption in his own marketing of status as some rock-art master (never mind what any number, the majority of critics on such things happened to think) -- he's ego-centric marketing run amok -- there's _nothing_ in anything he recorded in the mid-seventies to afford him status (or let's say audience mandate) as anything other than the rock equivalent of a ghetto landlord

to me he is the absolute epitomy of american wannabe-artist ugliness and grossness, and the way he assumed he was some sort of commentator on american life to side-step all the usual rock-bore problems with the lack of quality in his work is such an overworked and tiresome conceit, so badly worn out, that it pisses me off that anyone might still believe he achieved _anything_ _at_ _all_ of worth after 1972

c'mom, i'm not wasting any bandwidth in this broadband world -- i don't believe i'm raving and mad at zappa anyomore than he's driven thousands of other people to be

i don't know anyone who's musical taste really interests me here in new zealand who has a good word to say about zappa, would bother wasting their time or mine revisiting such slum-excesses as "Zappa in New York" again, though most of them would have had a negative experience with zappa, wouldn't blink an eye at admitting they have a complaint to make about him or would mind admitting that from there experience they probably hate him or at least hate his body of work

i wasted too much time on him when i was an impressionable young punk, and i regret it, and i want to warn people about him, warn them that there ain't a good thing about his mid-seventies work, warn them, so that they don't waste the time i wasted, so that they find some constructive relevent art that gives rather than sneers, that enriches rather than hovers in the trash -- why do'ya think i'm responding to this guy "ss" who's new and apparently impressed by Tinseltown Rebellion given one heavily muffled impression ?

tad,
please save your imputations about how i might be "talking shit again", how i "might be wasting bandwidth", how i'm "dodging important issues" (i.e. the impression that one sentence i wrote might of made that has one accidental false second meaning through simple bad grammar, that i've admitted was an un-intentional proof-reading problem already), how i "might need to chill out"

but please get down to the substance of what i'm writng about zappa if you're going to respond at all,
ie
i would appreciate if you could explain to me what's really so cool about you are what you is (and expecially those songs i listed, not the songs about christian fundamentalism, which i didn't even refer to)

.. use more than three sentences, try to refer to some of the complaints i've made here about zappa (zappa's the subject of the thread, not my eccentricities, imputed prejudices, brain blocks)
.. give examples
.. explain why Sheik Yerboutti and you are what you is and Joes's Garage encompassed 2lp or 3lp sets (ie what's so good about the majority of that material, not just a couple of convenient songs that might actually be OK)
.. all those 6lp sides of those records, they're not filler ? not adolescant level smut humour and dumb jokes with cheap/obvious brunts ?
.. this stuff is not the product of an artist relying on that cred.-filled "complete artistic control" clause to foist loads of swill on consumers hoping for some parytial return to form, rather than what seems to me to be a lapse in editorial policy that makes Lester Bangs accusations of Lou Reed that Metal Machine Music was a con on his velvet underground oriented loyal fan base seem like a one-off bad 7" 45 if comparing scale

ie please stick to your side of the argument, that those albums were good, and please explain why, because anecdotal evidence is that i'm hardly the first person to be pissed off with zappa by these large scale excesses

of course "don't eat the yellow snow" always seemed like the first big lurch in that baaaad direction, and songs like "dynamoe hum"

you go and listen to "MiSex or something" if you want, if you don't feel like answering this (and since the zappa material/period quality hasn't got that special piquant thing to it really, i wouldn't blame you if you were to "go listen to some MiSex or something") .. me, i'm happy to take/fly the "don't bother with (mid-'70s zappa)" flag opportunity antime i can

as for the "off the stage" thing", once again, a sentence i wrote was capable of misinterpretation --
so here is the sentence :"if Flo and Eddie's stage antics and cheap smut weren't incitement enough (remember these were the stage show antics which led a jealous male to pick up Zappa and throw him off the stage because of the effect Zappa had on this guy's smitten girlfriend), .. "
doesn't read very well, but i never intended it to mean that flo and eddie or the stage show were what lead that guy to pick zappa up and throw him off the stage .. OK, believe me ?? i always thought it was a jealous boyfriend (and again i stand to be corrected)
but c'mon, this wasn't even really the thrust of what that post was about -- it was just another way for me to admit how much contempt i had for what zappa and cronies did on stage
i think this is a red herring

what i'm talking about is the quality of Zappa's material

i'm very familiar with all the albums you've valiently defended, and i will happily go through each and every track of each album and discuss it if you want

i know the material, and as far as i'm comcerned that's what we're disagreeing about -- you think Joes garage, You are What you Is and Sheik Yerboutti are great, and i think they suck -- that's what i'm trying to get at here

so, please tell em what's so good about those seven sides of vinyl

you're avoiding me

we're actually talking 14 sides of vinyl (not including Tinseltown Rebellion)

(and Tad, am i a fool for simply asking you to back up your exhortations of the merits of those 14 sides, because it seems like you're doing everything you can to avoid the actual issue of those albums quality -- y'know, the ones you said were good albums ?)

and could you try not to be so gross yourself, please ?

(from what i read of it anyway)

both albums use Sugar-Cane Harris effectively, as part of a well organised instrumental troupe, cut'n'pasted into two album length avant-rock sprawls (that have been rewarding to me musically, ie have not bored me, for years)

having achieved these and other such rewarding outings as "we're only in it for the money", "absolutely free" and "lumpy gravy" in the concept album dept., all on verve, it seems most of the original mothers deserted him (weren't paid adequately if dialogue on "Uncle Meat" is not atypical)

so Frank moved towards the english-music-hall/panto entertainment troupe thing with flo & eddie, and the cheap material, the smut seems to have gradually taken over (i guess bad taste shows make more money than albums of interesting music)

mark, he was _never_ my idol, no, no, NO WAY !!!
because those early exposures to him as a teenager included such trash as "yellow snow" (which idiots seem to routinely speak highly of and even recommend) -- "overnite sensation" was also recommended warmly to me some otherwise reliable older record shop people, and i listened to it and found myself thinking "this is just dumb", "these jokes are laboured", "how can jokes be funny after three listens if they aren't really very clever at all on the first ?" etc.

so having pursued the early Mothers material (which pre-cds used to be quite hard to find) i realised the quality control just falls away around 1971, and so this prolific outsider rock'n'roll maverick persona adopted really erks me, and coupled with the way this idea was presented in album art and p.r. as though zappa was some sort of genius, it all seems really deliberately misleading, and i guess that representation to the public of zappa as some rock'n'roll second coming composer is what i find truly despicable

(and that he seems to have believed this hype himself even as a he ripped ideas off his own musos and people like beefheart maybe thinking he could use those ideas better, it erks me that he ended up living in expensive l.a. places, quite possibly at the expense of all the creative people that helped him during that late '60s period)

it leaves me thinking that the old "no-one ever went broke under-estimating the taste of the public" was applied here in true hollywood fashion to make lots of money in the seventies, with the idea of zappa as somehow belonging in some american composers hall of fame used in p.r. quite misleadingly to provide teens everywhere with that outsider maverick they all need at that impressionable teenage stage, explaining perfectly the job done by all that juevenile smut all over his records

another american corporate music snow-job, sitting there taking up too much space in the music stores waiting for more teenage rock fans attracted to the idea of "intelligent rebellion" cults

"friends" have described the effects of some of these substances to me in an effort to talk me into trying such'n'such, but i'm not prepared to risk it -- it could effect my livlihood, so end of story

i assume experiences like watching a good fellini movie come close to the fast flight of experiences and thoughts i imagine people get as effects, i don't know ..

i have lived with Tinseltown Rebellion for twenty years though, and i like getting myself half asleep listening to music, so that the music overlaps with dream proocesses, so i may have dreamt it one way or another :
certainly "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" has a noir-ish musical charm for the unfamiliar -- repeated exposure has shown me that that song, however initially convoluted sounding, uses an episodic forward motion that, alas, appears to lack an overall melodic cohesion (Varese, big influence on zappa around the time that song was written, 1967, used juxtaposition of _unrelated_ themes in his works too)
some other songs use a device where a guitar and a singer will speak/sing/play two melodies that are only related rhythmically, producing a random walk effect, a feeling of drifting into the unknown (a bit like Ornette Coleman's "harmolodics" i suppose, if i understand that at all), but again there is no unifying harmonic element allowing the disparate elements to merge subconsciously, again examples of semi-random juxtaposition (wasn't Ornette Coleman a mate of w.s. burroughs ? weird ..)
frank's best used devices were :
timing, ie the element of surprise used effectively given a whole band being quite meticulously synchronised, heavily practised and even conducted
and
timings, ie the resultant ability to spin the band on various bizarre feeling effects created by well orchestrated odd musical timings set against each other, sometimes with some members of the band playing in a timing complimenting the rest, sometimes jumping from one timing to another, often & quickly within short periods of time, jarring the audience by playing with the audiences intuitive feel for "normal" rock rhythms (surprise again i suppose on a more subconscious level, and very hard for many musicians to play)

and why is it that anytime anyone points out [that gosset doesn't] know what the hell [he's] talking about [gosset's] defense is 'I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but you can't call me on it'.
-- James Blount (littlejohnnyjewe...), March 30th, 2003.

what's the problem here ? why are we at cross purposes ?

just becauuse i was mistaken the way i phrased something about what happened on stage ? make a big deal of that if you want ...
so
for me that's not the point, but i'm happy to concede that

i was wrong, dude

but now it's your turn, Tad

seems to me whatever mr Blount said applies as much if not more to how you've behaved

i'll use his language, to show you what i mean :

why is it that anytime anyone points out ["Tad" doesn't] know what the hell [he's] talking about ["Tad"s] defense is
"hey i proved you wrong on that other thing, so just accept that"

but quoting something someone else said in another situation, it doesn't really answer the question does it
and
b.t.w. i've found plenty to agree over or enjoyably argue about with James Blount
whereas you're just avoiding the subject altogether here

and how about stringing a few sentences together, putting as much effort into defending Zappa as you do into throwing cheap shoots at me

you sat the law school exams right ? is that you ? well address the quality of Zappa's lps, please ? it's just boring if we both say the other is avoiding the subject all the time .. say stuff that isn't just attacking the poster rather tha the subject

and while i normally don't take cheap shots at people's education and occupational training -- as you seem to be doing with mine wr2 yer comment about whether i've "sat for my law school exams" -- in an american court of law, you'd have been ruled out-of-order long ago and would probably be cooling yer heels in the pen for contempt of court ('cause no american judge would put up with yer sort of tantrums for long). and spare us all yer lawyer-bullshit, no-one here is impressed.

case dismissed w/ extreme prejudice, and all that.

thanks for the craziness ;-)

I didn't know braxton liked beefheart. kewl!

is it true?

many beefheart interviewers have asked him about zappa, so beefheart seems to have developed a routine, having had to say something about what had been a friendship, so (paraphrasing him,) it was usually something like "i used to be friends with that guy, but when i got older and wiser/ when he'd decided that he must be some sort of musical genius/ after i'd had sufficient ideas ripped off me so as to be more careful/ after he became this uptight, super-controlling, rigid _humourless_ industry .. etc.. etc. ..", so it seems beefheart concluded zappa was something of a jerk

but yeah dave, it maybe that beefheart moved out of music about the time many musicians were looking for more equitable ways of dividing up royalties from the creative process

of course the record companies still seem to make the vast bulk of any profits going, and if one were to compare that industry to the film industry, beefheart seems to have behaved like a typical hollywood director or director/producer partnership, with zappa very early on the producer/director, organising things amoungst his band so that royalties and other payments all went through him and/or his manager herb cohen (and cohen would have been "producer" for Trout Mask Replica, with zappa picking up a few points too for (allegedly) falling asleep at the mixing desk)

lot's of musicians can't be bothered with the swathed in mystery accounting side of music, and so there have been so many cases of people who contributed creatively to music that went on to earn millions subsequently complaining about all monies going to others

is this why zappa as boss went through so many musos, why so many musos apparently parted with him on bad terms ?

maybe beefhearts complaints seem a bit hypercritical in the light of fly-on-the-wall band bios like Bill Harkleroad's (aka "Zoot Horn Rollo"), but the way musicians were treated back then was not as if they were composers, and if they got a holiday-like session at a swankly located studio, that most likely was it

zappa must have learnt the ins and outs of the music industry and it's accounting practises that so many musicians have complained about over the years as early as 1963 when the payment for the sountrack he wrote for Run Home Slow "finally arrived", yet he settled out of court with cohen in 1977 for control of those early verve recordings (the "quite-possibly-good frank zappa records") -- he knew that all revenues ultimately flowed to the owner, regardless of who did what work on the original recorings

it's been noted that throughout his career zappa was "litigious", and maybe these experiences led to the formation of "The Zappa Family Trust", which many fans have complained about for witholding to-them interesting material like the 200-odd pieces zappa recorded using the Synclavier, and complained generally about keeping his most loyal followers in the dark -- it seems to me that the chief mandate of this trust is to "keep the legend alive" by keeping four-five racks of space in your average cd store full of zappa re-issues, keeping alive this impression of a "prolific talent" i suppose -- to me it's extraordinay that anyone would still want to buy a cd of "overnite sensation" or "sheik yerboutti" or "joe's garage", stuff seemingly so connected to the times in which it was created as to make any residual artisitic value a very questionable quality

anyway, since you can't copyright an idea in law, only it's realisation, zappa and van vliets' manoeuvreings have guarenteed them and their estates income streams that will (especially in van vliet's case, as the beefheart cult has never stopped growing) simply continue to consolidate the power of that ownership, as "Cult Status" never goes out of fashion and lot's of people like to have their own special personal musical fetish

being a "cult" fan gives so many individuals a special seperate pseudo-hobby-like feeling of belonging, and if it's music, and it's zappa, no-one can call you're a mere consumer, no matter how easy, buy-able and passive participation turns out to be

oh, of course, i meant zappa and israel as examples of innapropriate, excessive uses of force

cf: appropriate or reasonable force: Ameriques, an early Varese composition, with an orchestra of 100+ with at least 60 orchetra members being percussionists -- to me that's a perhaps prophetics example of american potential (as he saw it, americas go-get it attitude coupled with indusrial strenth in the early part of the 20th Century) -- as we know now industrial strenth can be re-directed into american miltary-industrial strength, that can operate as an incentive to cooperate with america in matters of trade and of course at the tables of the UN Security Council, and translates into raw military power when those avenues "fail".

really there are many real composers of the last thirty years both in rock and elsewhere that merit peoples' attention deservedly

b.t.w. taddie-o, how about some sort of explanantion cum-justifcation of those '70s zappa records you were rallying around

seriousley, how old were you, what circumstances led you to favour this music, and do you still like it now ??

(and Taddie, as to your question for Mark, i think it's _harder_ to respond to all the stuff Watson has written in defence of Zappa than to defend those records from the mid-seventies that you singled out -- hard in his case for the sheer volume of pro-zappa writings that there are so many seperate yet intermingled issues raised - hard in your case given the opposite, ie your refusal to get down to brass tacks)

no? so why not let mark answer the question for himself if wants to, hey?

it seems as though you'll pop up and respond to other stuff i say, just not the questions i actually ask of you, so i am working on a round-a-bout way of inducing something interesting and constructive out of you ('though i concede that complaining about my posts, selective subjects only of course, typically most likely on me and my style rather than the substance of what's been said, does seem to be your m.o.)

i'm sure mark will respond to your enquiry if he wishes to -- i'm not getting in the way, am i ?? (hey, hey ??)

maybe i'm annoying you here, but Watson's work on Zappa is not confined to his heavy tome, and so has been truly voluminous, so some trite substitue from me for an answer from mark would never do, and i would never be so preumptuous as to be answering for him anyway -- answering for you in the absence of some glaring omissions seems more provocative and more fun, but i'm always curious to see what mark says

oh, i owe mark and julio some information on Braxton's comments (when i track them down -- Ratonalising Culture on IRCAM contains some helpful back-up, but the real answer is in Forces in Motion, Graham Lock's road diary with the 1984 Braxton 4tet -- did i lend these books out ? the Braxton a Beefheart fan question (& Crispell too, from memory) will take some time to clear up)

but hey, i kept you attention taddyo, and even squeezed a couple of sentences out of you, so there's been some good come out of it, in addition to replying to Dave of course

may his memory be a blessing

gg