Zappa - what a tight music arranger

[jancivil]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duUiebf1PqM

The guitar solo is what's on YCTOSA Vol 5. The second section is at half-tempo which is weird, that's definitely not on the record. I don't know if any other section made the cut. You wouldn't know it, I didn't know but he liked to create ideal versions from live recordings thru editing. But this solo is a monster, just creating a solid melody all the way through. The AUTHORITY of the beginning of it.

[rp314]

Tight, and IMHO sometimes just silly or fun...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b-wdILZxPM

As has already been suggested by others, some of us are not exactly objective when it comes to appraising the totality of his prolific output. Still, I bet that up there George and Ira aren't giving him too much of a hard time for what Frank did to their tune...

[jancivil]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHkHA4JOt8Y

[ghettosynth]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHkHA4JOt8Y

Mmm! Well, that's good enough to steal. Sue me for my pedestrian tastes but I liked that. I kept waiting for when I was going to hate it because someone was going to start talking about poop or something, and it never happened, and then it ended.

[jancivil]

When I was 14, I was hanging out with this girl from the wrong side of the tracks, you know. Her father was a big fat ol' redneck POS, truck driver and biker gang sort, nasty family in a naborhood my parents got me away from before jr high. But she was hip. Two records I borrowed from her, or traded for I forget, were Mothermania and Spirit Fresh Garbage. She loved that song. Anyway, this is 1970; I had not heard anything like that in the world. It Can't Happen Here.
In 1971 my main record, I wore this record clean out, was Soundtrack to 200 Motels. The combination of things on this album, there was never anything like it and there isn't likely to be any time in the foreseeable future. The thing that really turned my mind was Lucy's Seduction of a Bored Violinist and Postlude.

most specifically this, this ending: https://youtu.be/-DxXV1jd6Tk?t=3m22s
So he's writing completely unique music, a combination of things such as here, it's this modal thing (this is lydian w. flat 7 type iinw) such as he would play in improvised guitar solos but he's planed it with that sonority. There are a number of things, a musical language that's truly original.

So there's this orchestra music for the movie - which he wrote in motels, touring - spanning to the rock thing, including this stylin' rhythm and blues thing such as Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.

Myst'ry Roach/Magic Fingers



Open up your pocketbook,
Get another quarter out,
Drop it in the meter, mama
Try me on for size

Yeah, this is not a boring thing. - that guitar solo in Magic Fingers...

[jancivil]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CriMV-CdT3A

the band there is, the two lead singers of THE TURTLES, Aynsley Dunbar, Ringo Starr's chauffeur and George Duke.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8JRqTW_-90

[jancivil]

dude HAD to share "I can't even listen to a full track"

I was so impressed by this too: "a dated perspective on aliens"


TINY IS AS TINY DO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBbH6EsNBAQ

[jancivil]

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

[rp314]

Greg Allman, RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQygtzJGry4

[woggle]

Oh, but recently I saw this:

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

BTW, for fun, please go to 9 minutes and listen

I can't even watch a full interview of him, let alone listen to a full track. I suppose that's something, eh? I can't think of another artist who triggers such a feeling of imminent dread at the thought of having to listen to them. I know that if I click play, I'm just going to regret wasting the time. He's just boring and it's pretty clear that he doesn't think so.

I'm not saying anything about his skill as a musician, I just find his messages utterly uninteresting. Does he think the whole bit with the brown lipstick is funny?

totally agree - and an awful sexist right winger who seems totally up himself with the "artist as genius", bully-as-hero thing (consistent with his generally conservative ideological positions)

I know jancivil is a big fan of Zappa's, but to my mind she is a far better musician and composer than Zappa and infinitely better as a guitarist

The guy was obviously highly skilled in some ways but his work always seems to me about trying to impress people which makes it sound too much like a technical exercise and not enough like an art work for me

[stratology]

Saw him in concert in Germany many years ago - one of those concerts you never forget.

They played around 3 hours, felt like 20 minutes. One of the best live sounds ever. The concert was heavy on comedy, very entertaining. 'Stairway to Heaven' with Page's solo done as a harmonised horn arrangement. Ravel's 'Bolero' with 'Ring of Fire' vocals.

A drummer friend of mine attended Zappa's concert on the next day in a different town - completely different, almost entirely instrumental, no comedy.

[jancivil]

well, Frank absolutely despised the actual right-wing albeit was a staunch capitalist and developed an attitude about unions that I think should have been more relegated to the actual unions he dealt with which are pretty bad for a composer. You can't even record a rehearsal of your own music in the states because of the Musician's Union rules today.

But when Johnny Guitar Watson and Kent Nagano, from pretty opposite ends of the spectrum of music both admire the man's work tremendously, he was clearly doing something right.

[V0RT3X]

He had some pretty awesome gear!

http://www.juliensauctions.com/images/a ... talog.html

Gear starts on page 186

[sfxsound3]

THE king of kitsch! You know, the dirty, perverted, overdone, gross and utterly not funny type of kitsch. His musical talent was totally nullified by his... 'character'.

Aaaargh, and now I need to take a shower. Be right back.

[incubus]

Right winger? Wow. I mean, just wow.