Zappa the man

Oh boy. I’ve been very preoccupied with this one. I feel like I always talk about this. It’s only because it have adopted the firm belief at this point in my life that in fact the art and the artist cannot be separated. Some may cite, for example, the Nazi affiliations of great thinkers like Ezra Pound or Heidegger. I don’t believe this is cause for isolation of factors: it is cause for deeper, more critical, and more complex examination. Art isn’t complicated, beautiful or meaningful intrinsically. It is so because the people who create it are also that way.
So I’ll put aside the interaction of character and creation. How did Zappa’s personality affect his work and legacy? His workaholic nature was both a blessing and a burden. There is no doubt that we would not have had nearly the same sheer bulk of material to amount to a legacy. The fact that he constantly drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, loved work and music and despised rest and leisure meant he produced dozens upon dozens of unique albums for fans to enjoy. The unavoidable bigotry inherent to the times and his heritage, both patriarchal, meant the messages in his work were convoluted head-scratchers, trying to get at something, an opinion or a solution. His treatment of women in songs like The Illinois Enema Bandit may be unconscionable but at least he’s trying to work through some inner problem with that phenomenon. Songs like that sabotaged the songs where his message was better executed, and his personality itself would be further sabotage. Rather than admit that he wasn’t sure about some things, he preferred to say it was all a joke, something to be laughed at, or that it was stupid, or wasn’t supposed to mean anything.
If I’ve learned anything from studying men like Zappa, it’s that if you don’t have something nice to say, say something anyway. Negative aspects of personality or reality should not be hidden, because they are a part of you. Personal expression in all forms is of ultimate importance.

Zappa the social critic

I just finished writing a research paper this morning that included Tupac Shakur, another musical artist famous for his societal views. As my penchant for literature demands, I included a little quote from Emerson, about how the misunderstanding of what is brute and dark connotes a lack of recognition of that aspect of one’s own personality. General audiences tend to be scared off by people who rap about violence or musicians who sing about incest because they can’t or don’t want to recognize those acts in their own communities. For Tupac it was more about exposing the public to the atrocities being committed in their own backyards, but I think Zappa zeroed in on things to a greater extent: he wanted to get at the reason why middle-class America was so blind to all that was wrong with their society. He occupies a unique social niche which allows him to do this perhaps more accurately than Tupac. He was impoverished, but white; his parents were immigrants, but he was born in America; he was a major rock star, but only to a certain type of fan, and even then he was not always taken seriously as a cultural influence. I believe it was this standpoint which allowed him to offer such searing social commentary.
He doesn’t differ as much from Tupac in his methods, however. It’s the same sort of shock tactics. The only problem is that people act stupidly when they are scared, and so they jump to conclusions. In the same way that many people felt threatened by the images in Tupac’s videos, such as children pointing handguns, they also felt threatened by Zappa’s incorporation of incest or homosexuality into his lyrics. I think when a regular-looking white guy mentions these things, though, it’s more of a fear of infection than an oppositional fear: you mean this could happen to me, or someone like me? Is it possible that someone like me would be ok with this?
Everything that Zappa has created has a sort of echo of cynical laughter. A girl in one of my classes last term said that someone once said laughter is the best way to get people to understand something because your head is tipped back and your mouth is open, allowing everything in. Zappa’s exaggerations might make it more difficult for some to accept certain realities, but I think in these discussions we have to keep in mind that it is not just the Republican bigot we are talking about when we talk about the target audience for Zappa’s music. If someone is already part of the way there, or even just a tiny bit of the way there, seeing or hearing exaggerations of a present problem make it more obvious that their views or actions are wrong. At the time that Zappa was writing tunes there still wasn’t much information out there about homosexuality, sadomasochism, feminism and the like—the amount of information, when you think about it, is even today still somewhat pathetic, lacking. Someone who had watched Amos N’ Andy and seen nothing at fault in it might reconsider that on seeing the grotesque mutations representative of blackface in Thing-fish. A young woman who had been comfortable in her confusion about sex and subservient in relation to men might see herself in the Annie character in Thing-fish screaming “Harry, yer a worm!” She might be encourage to develop her sexual personality when she sees the behavior of women like the GTOs or hears about women performing sexual acts she might have thought were reserved for men. An older woman might see herself in the intonation: “Time to go home, Marge is on the phone, time to meet the Gurneys and a dozen grey attorneys.”
With these kinds of artists, it’s all about walking the walk. These things exist and it’s time to talk about them. It’s time to become the cultural minister of something, time to get into politics or call on politicians to take action. In another book I was reading for my research paper, Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Black Swan, he recounts an episode of his youth where he was arrested during a riot and from then on felt he no longer had any need of teenage rebellion, because he had actually done something. I view this the same way. These artists are not trying to rebel and don’t need to. It is only when these issues finally manage to speak for themselves that musicians like Zappa will be obsolete.

more literary criticism

Samuel Coleridge said this about Wordsworth, and I think it applies to Zappa:

"Had Mr. Wordsworth's poems been the silly, the childish things, which they were for a long time described as being: had they been really distinguished from the compositions of other poets merely by meanness of language and inanity of thought; had they indeed contained nothing more than what is found in the parodies and pretended imitations of them; they must have sunk at once, a dead weight, into the slough of oblivion, and dragged the preface along with them."
- The Great Critics: An Anthology of Literary Criticism, pg. 528 (ed. Smith & Parks)

Zappa the entrepeneur

I'm annoyed because I was saying something the other day about art and commerce, music specifically, I think something to do with Brian Eno, and now I can't remember what it was.

The first thing that comes to mind at the moment is Lewis Black. The other day on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart he was saying how Trump would be an ideal president for America because he can make you want to buy anything, even if you know it's just a turd with a bow on it. The thing about art is that it's not commerce, and it's not politics. It's supposed to be a realm where truth reigns, and selling things implies a definite bending of the truth. But wouldn't the parallel be that art bends reality in order to, in a way, sell itself? Is there not a sort of immaterial transaction taking place? The worlds of art and commerce might appear more closely linked if we look at them this way.

For this entry I choose to view Zappa as using his commercial skill to sell not an item but a worldview. Of course a major part of his career was packing this worldview into items: his albums. But he also used techniques which begin to seem strangely resonant with business and advertising. His registration booths at concerts are not unlike kiosks or free samples at malls. Putting up a banner at the back of the stage reading "WARNER BROS SUCKS" is similar to putting up a billboard. His movies sometimes seem like extended music videos, a major promotional tool for mainstream music.

I think I mentioned in another entry the sensitivity of the artist, and how he puts up defences to guard that sensitivity which I will postulate is his delicate artistic conscience. This form of commerce contains that conscience. Even if Zappa did try to sell you a turd with a bow on it, he wouldn't want you to buy it because you thought it was anything else. He'd want you to know not just in the back but in the very forefront of your mind that it is a turd with a bow on it, and to love it and want it precisely as is.

Zappa the musician-performer

Beginning perhaps in the same anecdotal element as my last entry, though not quite so skewed in that direction, I'll say I was listening to that Peter Bjorn and John song last night, Young Folks:

I caught myself wondering this morning whether anybody actually understands what that song means, or if it means anything. Does it matter? The song is catchy enough to have been popular when it was created, and I found myself thinking that the lyrics could be ketchup has the hair of bigfoot and my spaghetti's drying out, dear, and I'd probably still be humming it despite myself.

I could go into the relationship between music and lyrics, but for this topic I'd rather focus on that "meaningless" quality of music; its transportative, transcendent abilities. Because that's what I feel Zappa contributed to the stage.

Most people involved in any way with creative production know the temptation, whether it is theirs or not, to play endless solos, write novels the rough dimension of phonebooks, coax out and perfect the tiniest details. These same people would also know, however, that this does not make good art, or really even art at all. It's obvious to any audience that a practice such as this is purely masturbatory. As with the literal activity, the end result might be pretty smashing but no one else is allowed to enjoy it. Frank Zappa, in his usual way of tweaking convention, kind of poked his head into the music world and said, But doesn't it feel good? And don't you kind of want to watch?

Zappa was no doubt experienced in both literal and musical masturbation. Actually, not experienced, master. Zappa was always interested in the scientific result: if you rub this nerve something wild is gonna happen, and if you play this riff they'll all go wild. If Zappa's mission was to teach American youth the value of self-indulgence and self-expression, he did it with acrobatic guitar solos, defiantly goofy stage acts and straight zeal. I think it's something about Zappa every fan loves at their core, but doesn't really talk about.

Maybe we don't want to admit that watching him whack off is actually the best part. Maybe it does get us hot. There is no doubt that the canonical artist has need of many qualities, but every once in a while someone comes along who hasn't been systematically engineered by the entertainment business or education who takes such unabashed joy in their craft that some of that joy is transferred to the audience. It's called fun.

also, thing-fish!

An enlightening web page on Thing-Fish; includes all photos, transcribed libretto, and even the section of Annie Ample's autobiography pertaining to Zappa and the making of Thing-Fish.

Zappa the composer

I'm trying for a mix of personal and professional in this blog, so in an effort to cover my bases I'll do some entries this way, addressing each of the five questions individually and directly.

I think Zappa's music sounds like an elaborate joke to a lot of people when they first hear it. Before taking this class, what did I know of Zappa's music? I knew "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow" and "Muffin Man" and Charlotte Cornfield has a Killy Ugly Radio poster in her living room. That was about it and I think most people without a previous interest might say the same. In an episode of the Simpsons entitled "A Midsummer's Nice Dream," Cheech and Chong come to town inspiring one of several psychedelia/sixties-influenced episodes. One of the jokes exploiting the seventies involves holding up several comedy albums with funny names that bear a distinct resemblance to, say, Zappa's "We're Only In It For The Money" and "Ruben and the Jets."

The interesting thing is that in Googling that episode combined with the phrase "comedy albums," the first few comments from blogs and reviews say that this particular joke had them in stitches. I feel I've learned a whole lot this year not just about Frank Zappa's work but artwork in general: in almost every case, what seems difficult, obscure or absurd has another more serious side to it. I remember when I was a kid, that whole scene reeked of a kind of dangerous symbolism. Around that time in my life kids were walking around my middle school wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the anarchy symbol, the Nirvana smiley face, The Ramones, Guns N' Roses, London Calling, and of course you had to have your cons. They started dying their hair with Kool-Aid. I of course was completely baffled by it all (as I had been by reggae and Macy Gray). At that age I was already disgruntled by the sexual implications of "Guns N' Roses" (I actually remember very clearly one boy making gestures with his hands and saying, "Get it? GUNS and ROSES?") and though I was ok with the other shirts, I was disturbed by the ones that said HEY HO LET'S GO thinking it was possibly yet another derogatory statement towards women, as that was the majority of what I saw in that music.

But there was an almost religious hermeticism to it all, and I wanted in. The only problem is that when you don't know enough about something, especially something you have previously disdained, you tend to lump all the things you know about that subject into one generalized category. So for me rock music became smoking weed-guitar solos-funny clothes-weird hair-lots of sex-drinking-more and crazier drugs. As you can see very few of those things have to do with actually making music. I'd thank a couple bands primarily for introducing me to that aspect of rock music, but Led Zeppelin in particular. I had developed an interest in jazz around grade seven and that led me to blues, which I knew I liked, and I already knew I liked poetry. Zeppelin had good lyrics and a bluesy undertone that eased me in.

The thing about Zappa was that he just wasn't into that. For works of art in general, the ones that are going to become successful do present something original, but usually accompanied by something familiar. A poet might write a poem about the Tower of Power that Zappa found so amusing, but write it in a classical form like a sonnet to give it a framework. A visual artist might paint a still life of a cat's skull, old bubblegum, torn slippers and a TV guide, but it's still in the form of a still life so it's a little easier to grasp, even though it's surprising. Zappa was just completely off the wall and he knew it. He said a lot that he was making music for the fans, and maybe he really meant it, but he was clearly so laden with artistic preoccupations that he couldn't even produce a decent hit single (with the exception perhaps of songs such as "Valley Girl" which were usually accidental hits anyway).

These preoccupations were: being a superb technician and the importance of progress. However cantankerous the artists who are consumed by the need to realize these two ideals, ultimately I feel they are optimists. They are actually too sensitive to reveal that they believe the world in which they see so much pain, ugliness and violence could be made perfect. Most artists accept that the world is imperfect and a few die trying to perfect it.

Quantifiably, Zappa changed much about rock music with his compositions and recordings. Improvisation was brought to a new level, not just improvising lyrics or riffs over chord changes like scat and jazz, but everything in the world, even material objects as hinted at in Uncle Meat. He didn't stick just to instruments when he was composing, writing in directions for funny things to be done with the instruments or the members of the orchestra themselves. He spliced tape obsessively leading to new overdubbing and sampling techniques, as well as placing the recording process in the same venerable bracket as performing. A rock musician didn't have to be someone who just knew about all the flanges and tweeters and wah-wahs and six ways to use a whammy bar to make yourself look like an idiot. He could be someone who understood, technically, the building blocks of classical music and all the technical equipment onstage, not just theirs. Zappa in his blowhard manner actually ends up accepting all types: even nerds. Kids didn't have anything to turn to in those days other than "Peggy Sue Got Married" and other loner Buddy Holly tunes, and there was no way those could possibly communicate the angst and rage they probably felt when all they heard were songs about the football quarterback dancing with the high school cheerleader, or worse, songs about being ultra-sexy and having it in for an ultra-sexy unattainable foxy lady. Numbers, arrangements, compositions, chemicals, harmonies, theory: these things are more calming for people like Zappa and true music geeks than swaying one's hips to a sexy backbeat could ever be.

The truth is, the people who don't exactly fit the mold are able to progress an art form because they have a different way of looking at things and the courage to realize it. I always think about Zappa's interest in the graphic aspect of musical notes on score paper. That may not be the dimension of music that is meant to be appreciated, but why not? Not many would disagree that all those tiny little notes are actually quite pretty sitting quietly on the page without anyone messing with them. It takes time. Because I associated Zappa with rock music, I thought he did a lot of drugs and just had a talent for saying funny stuff to his friends into a microphone, and they would laugh because they were drunk or high, or because they were weird and weird stuff made sense to them. Frank Zappa wasn't really like that--he just had an expansive imagination, and if I work to extract meaning and beauty from his music like Zappa extracted the beauty of those written notes on the page, my imagination will expand too.