zappa plays zappa

WARNING: Music geek post. Some of you may want to start doing your income taxes or cleaning the cat box instead.

DISCLAIMER: I have a really hard time maintaining this as an art-only blog. I visit other artists' blogs and am impressed by their commitment to the brush. I like to think I'm committed, too (always a double entendre when discussing artists), but sometimes I just can't help myself, so...

On Wednesday night my husband and I went to what might be the best concert that either of us has ever attended -- and we both have very eclectic taste. The minute you hear about a musician riding his dead-legend-dad's coattails the red flags go up, so you'll probably never see me at a concert done by a Lennon or a Marley, but when I heard that Dweezil Zappa had collected a bevy of some of the most respected musicians in the biz, I was in. I tried to keep the tickets a secret from Greg and surprise him (he is one of Frank Zappa's most devoted followers and never saw him play live before his death in 1993), and actually managed it for two months, but last week he saw a billboard for Zappa Plays Zappa downtown. Damn.

Amongst the musical 'guests' were legendary guitarist Steve Vai, drummer Terry Bozzio and vocalist/saxophonist/flautist Napoleon Murphy Brock. Dweezil himself, an easygoing performer with his own music career, has made it his current mission to faithfully reproduce Franks's music, and the pundits say it's almost like he's channelling his father through his guitar.

If you've read this far and either aren't familiar with Zappa's music, or only know it by mainstream reputation, this is from Wikipedia:

In his 33-year career as a professional musician, Frank Zappa established himself as one of the most prolific and distinctive musician-composer-band leaders of his era. Zappa worked in almost every musical genre and has written music for rock bands, jazz ensembles, synthesisers and symphony orchestra, as well as radiophonic works constructed from pre-recorded, synthesised or sampled sources. He wrote and recorded hundreds of musical works, spread over almost sixty albums released during his lifetime (plus several posthumous releases).

Zappa evolved a unique compositional approach — which he dubbed "conceptual continuity" — that ranged across virtually every genre of music. His work combines satirical lyrics and pop melodies with virtuoso instrumental prowess, where long, jazz-inflected improvisational passages are counterbalanced with densely edited and seemingly chaotic collage sequences that mix music, sound effects and snatches of conversation. Conceptual continuity clues are to be found throughout Zappa's entire oeuvre.

As for the mainstream reputation I mentioned, the following is from Dweezil's blog:

Let's face it, popular music becomes popular through massive exposure and repetition. Frank's music has never been exposed in that manner except by accident with certain songs like Valley Girl, Don't Eat The Yellow, and Dancin' Fool just to name a few. Those songs are great but in my opinion they barely scratch the surface of Frank's music. I think many people mistakenly got the wrong impression of him by casual exposure to those songs. They seem to have perceived him as a "Weird Al" type of character with a penchant for silliness when it came to naming his songs and his children. He was often characterized that way in the press as well. That became the extent of "common" knowledge about Frank and subsequently obscured the rest of his music. I think it's really important for people to get a sense of the big picture when it comes to Frank's music. There is so much depth and variety in all of his albums it's hard to believe it's possible for one person to have created all of it. He had no boundaries in his music which obviously gave him so much freedom. One of my favorite quotes of Frank's is, "the mind is like a parachute, it doesn't work unless it's open."

There are plenty of music video clips of both Frank Zappa and the Zappa Plays Zappa tour on YouTube, but this little news item caught my attention. I wonder what the final bid was.

(Update: I was curious about what happened at the auction and found this story.)



As for me, I'm just another old boot pretending to be 16 again in my concert t-shirt with my dog Zappa. (And yes -- we finally decorated the tree last night!)