Essential Weird Stuff

"I write the music I like. If other people like it, fine, they can go buy the albums. And if they don't like it, there's always Michael Jackson for them to listen to" - Frank Zappa.

You got here by clicking on Frank Zappa - the King of the Underground!

This is the home of the really weird stuff in my record collection - and Frank Zappa basically has it to himself.

Frank Zappa was the only place you could hear stuff that was funny, complicated and different. He rose to prominence in the late 1960's, once again as part of the experimentation boom. He put together massive bands that were bent on playing the most complicated and difficult stuff they could get their hands on, ignoring record company advice (something Frank was to do throughout his life) and releasing and playing whatever he wanted. Frank closed the 1960's by getting himself and his band, The Mothers of Invention, banned from the Royal Albert Hall after someone heard the stuff he was playing and took him to court - this was Frank's first confrontation with law.

Later on, Frank was to become something of a guitar hero, with his own approach to the instrument being.... well, a little different. Along the way, Frank built up a relationship with quite some gang of musicians;

• Vinnie Cottliula - drums (frank says he was perhaps the only drummer who grasped his stuff)
• Terry Bozio - drums (also played with Jeff Beck!- see pic below)
• Steve Vai (Guitar  god - went on to play with Whitesnake)
• Adrian Belew (later went on to play with King Crimson)
• Warren Cucorulo (later joined a reformed Duran Duran)
• Chester Thompson (Genesis drummer)
• Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan (lead singers of the Turtles)

Regular Zappa drummer Terry Bozio...subtle drumkit!

My own relationship with Frank was through the 1979 album Sheik Yerbouti - this was a collection of tracks that Frank had put together from concert out-takes, soundchecks and studio jams. These had all been bashed together with overdubs (that Frank admits to) and constructed into one of the best albums of his career (REM also made an album made up of soundcheck off-cuts called Adventures in Hi-Fi). I was deeply impressed and my album collection became full of his stuff - it was different, inventive and liable to offend anyone who listened;

• Frank once did a song called Jewish Princess - the anti defamation league were not impressed
• Frank once did a song called Catholic Girls - the rest of the population were not impressed
• Then he did Crew Slut - about groupies
• A song about not eating the yellow snow - from right there where the huskies go.....

It was not all ridiculous lyrics - every album included a load of instrumentals, complicated sections and very inventive use of just about every instrument - no musician was 'in the background' with Frank;

• The Black Page Drum Solo - the most ridiculous drum solo ever - given its name because that's what the sheet music looked like on completion - if this was too difficult for you then he did a stripped down 'easy' version
• Tink Runs Amok - lets use a Bass to play the melody - sounds good to me
• Rubber Shirt - lets strip a drum track off a four track recording and add it to an unrelated bass ad-lib - fusing together two unrelated tracks and making one really tough one
• Water Melon in Easter Hay - lets record a guitar solo, but to make it more difficult, lets have the various backing instruments play at different speeds

This gave Frank some real muso respect! His bands were always massive - for instance, the lineup for his 1978-79 world tour was likely to have been like this;

• Frank Zappa - Guitar and Vocals
• Adrian Belew - Guitar and Backing Vocals
• Patrick O'Hearn - Bass
• Ed Mann - Percussion
• Terry Bozio - Drums
• Peter Wolf - Keyboards
• Tommy Marrs - Keyboards

This made for a superb 'big band' feel to his stuff from this period, and the fact that most of his best stuff was drawn from live recordings and not studio sessions reflects how tight and well drilled this band were.

Later in his life, Frank would take on just about everyone who stood in his way. He took a brave stand against the government attempts to censor music (led by a gang of Republican wives) and did a whole tour in order to get young people to register to vote, the main message being that if you did not then lunatics like Gerry Falwell and Jimmy Swaggert would cruise to power on the back of a disinterested electorate - well Bush got in so nobody could have been listening that hard! The tour made a massive loss and Frank eventually had to drag his band off the road - a shame.

When Frank died in 1993, it was all the more sad because Michael Jackson was still alive, Stock, Aitken and Waterman were beginning to really annoy me and mediocrity had truly taken root. He had changed the musical outlook of countless idiots like myself and made some pretty superb music along the way - and still managed to remain virtually unknown and unspoilt for it. He had also upset my dad who really does not like him one bit.

Some Essential Zappa

Yo Mama - Sheik Yerbouti 1979 - this forms the climax to the best of the Zappa albums. The basic track came from a concert in London, but the guitar solo came from another small concert in Germany recorded on a portable four track - sheer brilliance. Just what the track is on about remains a mystery.

Montana (Whipping Floss) - The Helsinki Concert 1974 - this live version of song had the vocals completely changed in response to a request from a fan at the start of the song (the fan wanted to hear the Allman Brothers song, Whipping Post). This is typical FZ - also typical is the fact that the band were so used to the material that they could, in the words of FZ, play it with their eyes closed - the result is a quite deranged version of a Zappa classic - that was originally about growing Dental Floss in Montana (!!!)

Water Melon in Easter Hay - Joe's Garage 1979 - The climax of the ultimate concept album - a guitar break accompanied by bass and drums playing completely out of touch with each other - has to be heard to be believed.

   back to essential music