For this week's post, I picked one of my favorite Zappa records and used it to try to exhaustively answer a much-pondered question: "I want to check out Frank Zappa, but I don't know where to begin. Where do I start?"
When I first decided to get into Frank Zappa, I took the logical approach and started at the beginning. Rather fittingly, however, the 'logical approach' didn't really work with Zappa: I found Freak Out! (1966) to be too rambling, psychedelic and, well, freaky for my taste, and not really fitting with the Zappa that I'd heard and been curious about(the raunchy, bluesy boogie of Chunga's Revenge (1970) and the carefree rambunctiousness of Fillmore East (1971)). My teenage self didn't really have the attention span for the mammoth undertaking of going through Zappa chronologically, anyway (the man put out sixty-two albums over a twenty-seven year career - two point three albums a year, on average - and that's not counting the posthumous compilations), so I dropped the idea and moved on to more accessible pastures.
About a year and a half ago, I decided to give Zappa another try, but this time I was going to jump in the deep end: I downloaded all of it. Even after deleting all the double tracks I had due to compilations and reissues, it was 767 tracks spread over fifty-one albums. It's taken me twenty months to fully come to grips with the man's near-psychotic compulsion to spew out records, and I often feel like I'll never truly understand most of it. A lot of it is impenetrably dense ('69's Uncle Meat, '71's 200 Motels, '94's Civilization Phaze III), and many of the releases feel too colored by Zappa's arrogance and self-righteousness to lend themselves to favorable judgement ('81's You Are What You Is, '83's The Man From Utopia, '84's Thing-Fish, '85's Frank Zappa Meets The Mothers Of Prevention).
So where should one start? What is the approachable gateway drug you need to slingshot yourself into the hard stuff? There aren't too many examples of Zappa just being Zappa; an impossibly gifted arranger and musical scientist who pushed rock to the limits of its genre. It's not an easy search, but some examples come to mind.
1969's Hot Rats is the earliest candidate for a Zappa primer. Created during the heights of Zappa's Beefheart years, it features the affable psychedelic bluesman on lead vocals in Willie The Pimp, and the A-side opener is Peaches En Regalia, a true Zappa classic full of his trademark labyrinthine melodies, idiosyncratic arrangements and surprisingly catchy hooks.
1973's Over-Nite Sensation similarly meshes Zappa's ear for melody with his exuberant instrumentations, and remains one of his most celebrated and best-sold albums. It's a free-flowing, lighthearted romp through swagger-heavy organ riffs, titanic guitar solos and showcases Zappa's penchant for exceedingly dirty rhymes, what with all the casual hippie sex, exhibitionism and bestiality.
Joe's Garage (1979) is a particularly rounded indicator of what the man was capable of. It's a rock opera telling a vaguely autobiographical tale about a much-censured and censored musician and his misadventures through the world of traitorous women, devious record executives and lecherous scientologists, all set to a stellar soundtrack of catchy rock, soulful ballads and exquisite guitar work. It may just use traditional rock as a device to signify how typical and harmless the titular musician's work is, but in nonetheless proves to the average man what Zappa self-importantly knew all along: that if he really wanted to, he could probably just have slapped together some cheap rock and roll and shot straight into the big time, but his work ethic demanded he do it the hard way, and maybe prove to everyone how incredibly smart he was in the process (arrogant prick).
Also, despite what I said earlier about You Are What You Is being a tad too preachy and haughty for my tastes, it does have some killer tunes on it, with a surprising amount of them having very radio-friendly production. It's a pop-rock epic with patronizingly silly lyrics about televangelists, Halloween blowjobs and what it's like to be really, really good-looking. Also, if you only listen to one song I've linked to in this blog post, please please please do yourself a favor and listen to this one, because it's utterly hilarious and aweXome.
All that said, as primers, these four albums are all deficient in one way or another, as they all have elements that repel rather than entice. Hot Rats's progressive complexity dissuades the casual listener, while Over-Nite Sensation's overly psychedelic sensibilities can make it sound very dated. While this is, to some, not necessarily a bad thing, I find it gives a false impression of what Zappa stood for. He always strove to have a deeper, more cynical take on composition and subject matter than his contemporaries, and I feel Over-Nite Sensation undersells his creative scope; it (and a host of his other albums, including '74's Apostrophe and '79's Sheik Yerbouti) is what Rolling Stone once disparagingly referred to as "well-orchestrated joke music." Not that there's anything wrong with "joke music," in my book, but I just don't feel like Over-Nite Sensation is all that "well-orchestrated," really. Don't get me wrong, it's nice how loose and improvised-sounding it is, but it just doesn't convey that tightness that makes some of Zappa's strongest work so unique.
The same could be said for 1981's trifecta of instrumental works, Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar, Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar Some More and Return Of The Son Of Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar, as well as 1988's Guitar. While it's very nice to sit and listen to an insanely talented guitarist do live improv for four hundred fucking hours, there are plenty of people who could do that, and once again, it doesn't really give you the full range of the man's talents.
As for Joe's Garage and You Are What You Is, their sarcastic tone and surface veneer of frivolousness do not make them terribly inviting, and You Are What You Is contains hints of the Zappa to come: 80s Zappa is incredibly soulless and mechanical, which is great if you're into that kind of thing (see '84's Them Or Us and '86's Jazz From Hell), but only of interest to the truly committed. No: the best way into Zappa is Zoot Allures.
It's an inconspicuous record, tucked between the unbridled enthusiasm of the early 70s stuff and the colder, more scientific experimentation that came next, resulting in a neatly balanced mixture of both. The production is kept from getting too ambitious, giving each track a clarity and minimalism seldom heard from Zappa, and the compositions are mostly blues-based, catchy and accessible. His rollicking silly side gets to shine, as well as his nuanced perfectionism and knack for atmosphere, sometimes even on the same track.
Also, because of the relatively simple orchestration, every track on the album functioned well as a live number, as evidenced by their frequent appearances on set lists and live albums. Black Napkins, especially, became a fixture of Zappa's live sets for the rest of his career, and understandably so; Zappa deftly solos one of his patented "sound sculptures" around a slick chord progression so smooth it fairly drips cool. It's Zappa at his relaxed, assured best: no politics, no message and no overdoing it. The Bozzio/Estrada rhythm section was at its seamless best, while the rest of the band does almost nothing, tasteful minimalism personified.
Zoot Allures also contains one of my all-time favorite Zappa songs: The Torture Never Stops, a nine-minute-plus canvas of murky atmospherics and moody theatricality. A woman screams in pain/pleasure as Zappa's lyrics describe a grim dungeon lit only by "the light of the iron sausage" (the jokes are never far off).
Zoot Allures's crisp production, straightforward instrumentation and tendency to stick to basics as far as genre is concerned also have a wonderful side effect: they ensured the record would age remarkably well. More than any other Zappa release, Zoot Allures sounds like it could have been released yesterday. The quality of the recording is nothing short of amazing for its time, with Zappa's sleasily whispered vocals on Find Her Finer sounding like he's right there in the room with you (which is kind of creepy, actually).
Those vocals are typical of the veneer of pornographic sleaze that permeates Zoot Allures, and indeed much of Zappa's work, so the album is a gateway to his work not only musically, but thematically as well. Ms. Pinky describes a masturbation aid of some sort, while Find Her Finer offers some helpful pointers on picking up women. Wind Up Workin' In A Gas Station, Wonderful Wino and Disco Boy may not be quite as amorous lyrically, but even Zappa couldn't be fixing to bone someone (or something) on every song. Rather, they convey Zappa's snide social commentary in the more jovial tone that better suited them, as opposed to the bitter hatred that infused records like You Are What You Is and The Man From Utopia.
Altogether, Zoot Allures exudes a cool minimalism and decisive sense of purpose that makes it not only an ideal introduction to Zappa's catalogue, but an excellent stand-alone record; in a weird way, it sounds more like Zappa than Zappa ever did. Paradoxically, it's so typically Zappa that it stands out to the point of being atypical, so even if you don't like most of his work, you might end up liking Zoot Allures.
Personally, though, I am fascinated by the man's seemingly endless catalogue of diverse work. He wasn't always great (in fact, sometimes he downright sucked), but to me, the shitty stuff just makes the good stuff more interesting, and vice-versa. His preference of quantity over quality leaves more for dissection and analysis, and one cannot help but feel he wanted it that way.
Zoot Allures may not have been Zappa at his most forward-thinking or experimental, but I feel it was among the places where he most efficiently used the results of his experiments to create something more fit for public consumption. Granted, such crowd-pleasing wasn't exactly what Zappa was all about, and in fact worked explicitly against for much of his career, but what makes Zoot Allures such an impressive accomplishment is how it demonstrates Zappa's abilities to craft even his far-reaching and often impenetrably nonsensical composition into an album that the casual listener can enjoy, yet still retains that unique Zappa flavor.
Perhaps it stands as testament to something Zappa could have given us, but didn't. Perhaps it's proof that he really could have been monumentally huge, given us a body of music that, rather than be fodder for speculation, could still be selling truckloads of copies the world over. In the end, he chose to be inaccessible and uncompromising, rather than give us what we really wanted. Awful jackass.
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