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.