The Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar set, and Guitar, were really special to me when I first heard them. It was so cool, kind of studying how Zappa constructed and deconstructed his leads.
I love both guitar albums. I find FZ's playing more interesting than most of the famous guitar virtuoso heroes. He improvises melody rather than playing licks and stock phrases.
I loved Them Or Us. I heard a lot of bad reports on it, before I got it, but I thought it was great. I loved it even more once the You Can't Do That On Stage stuff came out, and the whole Whippin Post/Whippin Floss thing was revealed to me.
It's a diverse set of music. FZ's solos on that record are pretty dark and brutal but he never runs out of ideas. I'm not a fan of the title track because I don't like static pieces, but the rest is great. I'm pretty sure they are all live solos inserted into the studio tracks.
Not one of my favorite FZ albums by any means. I was poo-pooing it a couple months ago till I saw Dweezil and his killer band on the Hot Rats tour. The second half of the show he did, if I remember right tracks 7-10, and 15 and 16. I knew every song word for word and by golly those tunes were a serious earworm. I could not get them out of my head for a couple weeks.
I do like Vai a lot, but on the other hand, I never could get over my disappointment that he didn't continue his solo career in his Flex-Able/Flex-Able Leftovers mode. By far that's my favorite solo stuff of his. Of course, that mode was very derivative of Zappa, but that's why I liked it so much.
I think in the mid period he got trapped in the guitar hero thing by the fans expectations. The later stuff isn't flex-able/leftovers, but it is certainly a different flavour. I think in some ways it just shows how much more variety we would get in music if everything was recorded with a mind towards it not being released as product, but recorded as art, or whatever terminology we prefer.
I am a big FZ fan (actually for a long time a hero) musically and he was a really sharp dude, but he was kind of a judgy pants at the same time a caffeine guzzling-nicotine addict, stay up all night- work-a-aholic, and pretty much a wife cheating sleazeball/ things you do that if you are not into booze or drugs.
Or making a f**ck ton of money on doing what you love to spend on crazier projects or just to be a guitar hero? Imagine how awesome it must have been in that moment.
Harder Than Your Husband This is one of Zappa's double entendre's, that we probably don't need to explore too deeply. The thing about this track that always gets me is, in spite of its not so subtle tongue in cheek lyric, this track has such a genuine sounding country feel. It's so well written from a musical perspective, that the lyric comes across so unusually genuine. I honestly don't know who is playing which parts of the song, but every player has such a genuine sounding approach to the song, that this track just really appeals to me. I suppose it isn't everyone's cup of tea, but this track in its apparent simplicity is just quite brilliant. Zappa rarely played subtle, but here, musically at least, he does, and quite brilliantly.
This kind of preempts some of the songs coming up, but it is a magnificent show, that features one of Zappa's tightest bands. Recorded at the Palladium on Halloween 1981, and I believe, at least sections of it, were broadcast by MTV, back when music was part of its programming ... I never had MTV, so please correct me if I am wrong. I would love this to get a proper dvd/bluray release. Anyway, I thought some folks may like to check this out when they have any down time. Vai isn't obviously a focus on the video, for the most part, but you will see and hear some of his more obvious contributions to the album, in a live setting. 0:00:00 Black Napkins (late show) 0:04:00 Montana (late show) 0:07:48 Easy Meat (late show) 0:14:37 Beauty Knows No Pain (late show) 0:17:33 Charlie's Enormous Mouth (late show) 0:21:13 Fine Girl (late show) 0:24:26 Teen-age Wind (late show) 0:27:28 Harder Than Your Husband (late show) 0:30:02 Bamboozled By Love (late show) 0:35:33 We're Turning Again (early show) 0:40:37 Alien Orifice (early show) 0:45:51 Flakes (early show) 0:51:05 Broken Hearts Are For Assholes (early show) 0:55:11 You Are What You Is (early show) 0:58:56 Mudd Club (early show) 1:01:49 The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing (early show) 1:05:01 Dumb All Over (early show) 1:10:43 Heavenly Bank Account (early show) 1:14:49 Suicide Chump (early show) 1:16:50 Jumbo Go Away (early show) 1:20:42 Stevie's Spanking (late show) 1:26:43 The Torture Never Stops (late show) 1:38:35 Strictly Genteel (early & late show) 1:45:13 The Illinois Enema Bandit (late show)
Doreen This track seems so unusual for Zappa, it is one of the catchiest things he ever wrote, from a commercial pop/rock perspective. Ray white's vocal is absolute dynamite. and the arrangement is like Frank's beloved Doo-wop crossed with power pop or metal or something (genre's are my strong suite) Whenever I hear this track I find it hard to believe it wasn't some kind of hit somewhere. The layers here are dense and beautiful. We have thick and rich backing vocals with lots of nice little nuances. We have a rhythmic structure stronger than the most perfect parabola. Then we get Zappa just burning down the fretboard for the super extended fade out ... and even the little vocal outro is just brilliant.
Amsterdam, 2010 or 2011 I think. The production manager told me to be at the hotel where they were staying at some ungodly hour (I lived an hour away from Amsterdam and Amsterdam itself is a nightmare to drive in). I am at the front desk at the desired time, a tall guy wearing dark sunglasses is waiting for me with a sheet of paper in his hand. He says "Hi, I'm Steve", and I suddenly realize this is Steve Vai, all by himself. My passenger. I don't have a clue where we are going, He tells me to find a large Starbucks (which are quite rare here in the Netherlands). We drive to Schiphol airport where I know for sure there is one that's open. He orders coffee, tea, cake and some other stuff for well over 300 euros and we go back to the hotel. He bought the entire crew coffee because he apparently lost a bet. I have always loved Steve's work, the first album I bough was Passion and Warfare, followed by basically everything else he released. And he is a really great guy who can play anything with strings.
Goblin Girl This is pure Zappa fun. We have more double entendre's, somewhat novelty sound effects, kazoo's, a mellow, semi-reggae kind of groove going on. This track is much more a keyboard track. Killer bass line. Although not my favourite track on the album, it fits nicely into the opening set of songs. One of the things I love about this album is the layers. This track is no different, many layers and an almost hypnotic effect when you're in the zone. If there was any criticism of this song and the last two, it would be that the extended fade outs possibly are a little long, but I always found that to be part of the charm with them. This fade out incorporates Doreen's chorus layered with the Goblin Girl chorus and then some random interjections telling another story altogether. I guess it is something you are either going to love or hate. I always loved it, and it really brings the next track into sharp focus, which to some degree I think was Zappa's plan. Anyway, in the morning we will get that track and try and hear it in context, and the amazing beautiful layers that it has.
Theme From The 3rd Movement Of Sinister Footwear Sinister Footwear has so much conceptual continuity it hurts my head. Obviously we have the Stinkfoot connection, but I believe there was a ballet in three movements called sinister footwear, and various other little bits and pieces through the catalog, but today we are looking at this particular piece from You Are What You Is. This may well be Zappa's ultimate piece of Xenochrony. We have essentially a Zappa lead break, that I believe is from the second show at the Palladium October 27 1978. So Zappa takes this solo, and when we hear the final version on this magnificent album, we have a lot of things going on, and I am very likely to miss much, so please feel free to correct or add to anything I say ... I don't consider myself an authority, just a music lover. To me the highlights, aside from another Wonderful Zappa lead break, is the way Zappa chose to write it as a piece of music, which goes a long way to explaining his approach to lead breaks in itself. We have Zappa, and some wonderful percussion from Ed Mann, playing and embellishing the theme, and also, we have Steve Vai doubling Zappa's lead also, which is some feat .... I was a pretty good player back in the day, but I find it hard to imagine being able to follow this so accurately, and even if I could have, it would have taken so much time to get all those nuances right, that I am sure the project would have been abandoned. To me this is a remarkable piece of music in so many ways, and where some tracks these days are very good, but have not much more to offer, this track has grown in stature over the years with each subsequent listen.
Society Pages Side two is probably my favourite side of the album. There is some very sharp social observation, and some wonderful sequencing, and the intricacy of the writing, is really quite easy to miss, due to the way it is written and put together. Again these layers are just so lush and deep, with wonderful bits and pieces, that it would be easy to hear these tracks as almost pop songs. Here we start of with a modified kind of blues riff. We have the dense layered vocals. We get several kind of feel changes, and it ends up, for me at least being a really cool earworm that will probably sit with me all day. In the middle of the song, we stay in a groove for a while and then probably the highlight of the song for me, is the break down where we get the line "one day you won't be on page three or page four anymore" ... I just love that vocal arrangement, and the harmonies in it. The song then segues straight into I'm a Beautiful Guy
I'm A Beautiful Guy I love the way this track is structured. This tracks incorporates some of Zappa's almost patented song structures. We start with a great harsh guitar riff, that breaks into one of those extended musical lines, that in anybody else's song would seem odd. It is one of Zappa's signatures to me. In these runs we get to hear the job that Frank has given Vai. Also we get these wonderful kind of jazz standard, cocktail lounge type interludes, that just work beautifully. Perhaps I am just too used to listening to Zappa these days, but this track is really terribly erratic, but still has a sort of commercial appeal to it. This works as a link song, but it has so much going on it musically, it is really not one to slide over without a good listen.
Yeah. I like side 2. Guitar-wise, nothing remarkable. Just good , well put together songs. Getting a little ahead (I’ve got intermittent Wi-Fi at the mo), I really love ‘Any Downers’. The vocal lines are genius. Probably my fave track, oddly, as i initially thought it was pretty inconsequential. But the vocals-earworms-that’s what they are!
Beauty Knows No Pain. Again we have this beautifully disjointed structure. I love the guitar riff, and the way it crosses over to the vocals, and then that broken down section with the drums used as the main theme... It is just beautiful writing. Then we get Frank with his wonderfully sarcastic little Beauty monologue. Then as we discover all through this wonderful album, we move through another change. I will go so far as to say, some of the vocal arrangements on this album, are about the best vocal arrangements I have ever heard.
