Zappa - what a tight music arranger

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Numanoid wrote: You are aware of the classic Helsinki show?
I picked "Inca Roads" at random because the name was cool, and it was also incredible. I thought I maybe just had heard the wrong songs or at an age when I didn't really understand music like I do today.... until the next song from that Helsinki live, "Whipping floss/Montana", and it was ********.

Could someone care to recommend a really solid album or two of his to kick of my journey? Preferably something without these awkward comedy rock elements.

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The comedic (Zappa called it "the eyebrows") is an integral part of Zappa's music. As a philosophical aside, a German writer (Max Goldt) once said that, in his experience, an audience usually does not applaud the performance, it applauds its own memory. I find that to be very true in most cases. Your appeal to a "really solid album" means that you want to hear some Zappa that corresponds with your idea of what music should be. If there's one thing Zappa taught me (apart from having the nerve to deviate from the norm), it's that it is important to drop your preconceptions now and again and really LISTEN.

I always find burdening music with preconceived notions baffling - something like "Bach would be okay, if it had a beat that I could dance to."

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.jon wrote:until the next song from that Helsinki live, "Whipping floss/Montana", and it was
Each to his own, but that live performance is among the best, most funny, I have ever heard :D

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ariston wrote:The comedic (Zappa called it "the eyebrows") is an integral part of Zappa's music. As a philosophical aside, a German writer (Max Goldt) once said that, in his experience, an audience usually does not applaud the performance, it applauds its own memory. I find that to be very true in most cases. Your appeal to a "really solid album" means that you want to hear some Zappa that corresponds with your idea of what music should be. If there's one thing Zappa taught me (apart from having the nerve to deviate from the norm), it's that it is important to drop your preconceptions now and again and really LISTEN.

I always find burdening music with preconceived notions baffling - something like "Bach would be okay, if it had a beat that I could dance to."
I think everybody prefers listening to music they find "good", in all possible meanings of the word. I already dropped my preconceptions and gave Zappa a second chance, and I'm very glad I did. And during this evening I heard a beautiful, classical piece, progressive rock, more traditional instrumental rock with fantastic harmonies, ecstatic crossover jazz with a mindblowing guitar solo, and annoying, boring rock where a dude tries way too hard to be both clever and funny.

My point is he seems have a lot of variety, and I was really impressed with some of it, and not so much of some. Going through, what, 60 albums, is a bit of a project, so I don't think it's my preconceptions to blame if I ask for tips on albums to listen to with a consistent quality to them.

I'm not sure if I have to find him funny to dig his music?

EDIT: I don't actually even like funny things in general. Comedy is bullshit.

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So you've already discovered a lot to like, which is great. Is there any "rule" out there that you have to like everything he did? In my opinion, to really "get" Zappa, you need to accept that he was primarily irreverent towards any idea of "great art" versus "bad art". He achieved a very high level of pure technical artistry, and frequently used that to embrace the mundane and the banal. I can connect with that, because I've always been turned off by the snobbery of classical "purists". Here's Zappa employing astounding compositional complexity to make a silly point, be it musical or lyrical. He's saying that music is not high art, while proving himself wrong with every note he's playing. He's saying "I'm no better than you" by being much better than you could ever be. It takes an adult mind to accept that kind of contradiction.
Additionally, you have to listen to these songs in the context of other songs. Zappa was heavily into context, contrast, and balance. Complexity is only interesting when contrasted with banality. A deluge of complex harmonies needs a simple blues riff in order to stand out. Zappa understood this better than most of his contemporaries.

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Here's a funny thing about people and music.
this:

https://youtu.be/8wTeBPeg5AE?t=3m22s
at 3:22 in the answering machine comp
is, rhythmically, that complexity some will say 'for its own sake'
but it's the rhythms of saying the message conversationally rather than metered.

Chad Wackerman recalls FZ saying to him 'There's nothing more unnatural than 4/4."
WHAT?! "Think about it. Do you talk in 4/4?" (sorry if that's a rerun of something I already said)

Now, that is kind of for its own sake because FZ liked that a lot. When he chose the guitar, that's what he liked about the solos of Johnny Guitar Watson. That is something I gravitated to independently and realized it in FZ music a little later than when I first heard some of it.

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ariston wrote:So you've already discovered a lot to like, which is great. Is there any "rule" out there that you have to like everything he did? In my opinion, to really "get" Zappa, you need to accept that he was primarily irreverent towards any idea of "great art" versus "bad art". He achieved a very high level of pure technical artistry, and frequently used that to embrace the mundane and the banal. I can connect with that, because I've always been turned off by the snobbery of classical "purists". Here's Zappa employing astounding compositional complexity to make a silly point, be it musical or lyrical. He's saying that music is not high art, while proving himself wrong with every note he's playing. He's saying "I'm no better than you" by being much better than you could ever be. It takes an adult mind to accept that kind of contradiction.
Additionally, you have to listen to these songs in the context of other songs. Zappa was heavily into context, contrast, and balance. Complexity is only interesting when contrasted with banality. A deluge of complex harmonies needs a simple blues riff in order to stand out. Zappa understood this better than most of his contemporaries.
Astute remarks!

Ben Watson went on about this in Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play, the rubbish element. FZ rubbished his own work, and inside the work at times.



For my part, no, I don't much care for Bobby Brown. Or Dynamo Humm.

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ariston wrote:The comedic (Zappa called it "the eyebrows") is an integral part of Zappa's music. As a philosophical aside, a German writer (Max Goldt) once said that, in his experience, an audience usually does not applaud the performance, it applauds its own memory. I find that to be very true in most cases. Your appeal to a "really solid album" means that you want to hear some Zappa that corresponds with your idea of what music should be. If there's one thing Zappa taught me (apart from having the nerve to deviate from the norm), it's that it is important to drop your preconceptions now and again and really LISTEN.

I always find burdening music with preconceived notions baffling - something like "Bach would be okay, if it had a beat that I could dance to."
I pretty much need Google Starbucks for a happening wifi. So. I'm subject to all of this music which is a product of pure CONDITIONING. All this major key shit, song after song of major key, the same goddamn chord changes, the same SOL FA MI, the same moves. And the employees often sing along, conditioned to follow suit. This is what the industry relies on to make stuff that isn't really very good sell millions of units. Repeat, repeat, repeat and we are surely going to record it in our little mind and need to have that internal playback matched in the acoustical space so we must buy the record.
Last edited by jancivil on Wed Nov 08, 2017 2:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Numanoid wrote:
.jon wrote:until the next song from that Helsinki live, "Whipping floss/Montana", and it was
Each to his own, but that live performance is among the best, most funny, I have ever heard :D
Frank hated that they couldn't just whip it out right then and do that number.
'hum some of it and we could fake it' or like that. Nothing. 'It must be a John Cage number'.

Then, 7 yrs down the line and Bobby Martin gets in and he's been doing it forever...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxegBgNzyz0

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jancivil wrote: Chad Wackerman recalls FZ saying to him 'There's nothing more unnatural than 4/4."
WHAT?! "Think about it. Do you talk in 4/4?" (sorry if that's a rerun of something I already said)
You did mention it before, it's still pseudoscience.
ghettosynth wrote:
jancivil wrote:FZ said to Chad Wackerman (and in all likelihood to others) '4/4 is the most unnatural thing in the world'. Baffled, CW questioned that. "Well, do you talk in 4/4?"
Of course, he was wrong. I mean it all sounds good when you're trying to justify something based on whatever prejudices that you might have, but that doesn't make Frank a scientist. In fact, that's a great example of Dunning Kruger, where ignorant Frank was overly confident based on his caveman understanding of music cognition. It comes across like those making arguments regarding gender and sex as being reducible to "simple biology." Well, yes, the biology (music cognition) in question IS relatively simple, but not AS simple as presented. If it were actually understood, one wouldn't make such claims in the first place.

There is something to a relationship between speech and music rhythm that is language dependent, however, there are aspects to the perception of meter relating to how we synchronize that are, within the brain, unique to music, so trying to claim that 4/4 is unnatural is simply self serving speculation based on ignorance. In fact, it can be reasonably argued that time signatures based on an even division of time, like 4/4, are the most natural.

I'm not going to do your homework for you, but it's all there in the music cognition literature, Temperley has a survey and a couple of books on the topic. Of course, a lot of this research happened after Frank's death, but that doesn't forgive a false claim based on ignorance, especially given the context here.

Carry on children.

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anyway
Lisa Popeil with VE Pro loaded
Lisa Popeil VE Pro.jpg
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sartre.jpg
Slonimsky had a solo spot on Pound for a Brown right before that
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Lisa Popeil, brilliant musician, great voice, what a charming lady.

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Yes.

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