obliterati (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} obliterati) wrote,@ 2009-04-18 15:18:00 |
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Unfinished Easter Eggs of All Persuasions
Random find:
The Program Director asked the DJ guy when exactly Mother's Day was this year, the usual day of their Zappa marathon, and they looked it up and found it on May 8, which was well-timed for them because it's in the middle of their funding drive, and anyway I think it was good I brought it up, as they might've walked into that holiday unprepared being pre-occupied with other matters. Their formal Zappa collection is basically the complete catalog released on Rykodisk years ago when that company was first starting, but for the Mother's Day special they call in the ringers who bring the rare stuff to the studio. The fact that Mother's Day falls during their funding drive this year (KBOO is listener supported and supposedly has no ads) raises an interesting question about Zappa and money, typified perhaps by the new heading Gail Zappa put up on frankzappa.com: "Lumpy Money". Lumpy Money is also the name of a 3-disc set that she and the Zappa Family Trust put out recently, officially Frank's 85th album, made up of unreleased recordings from near the period when Mr. Zappa recorded "We're Only In It For The Money" in 1968. Its creation between "Lumpy Gravy" and "We're Only In It For The Money" is the obvious origin of the title "Lumpy Money", but still it's kind of humorous considering the state of the Zappa Family Trust these days. Gail really really wants you to buy Lumpy Money, I think she's made that abundantly clear, these people need cash, their shit is falling apart. Here is Gail grabbed from the cover of Absolutely Free, where Frank had originally put a caption under her image which read "My pumpkin".
A few days after the radio station party my friend who brought me there in the first place reported that the Program Director had estimated me to be "the 4th largest Zappa fan", which is some extremely high praise, though lo, I am old and crusty, I forget notes sometimes and say wrong things, I just do not know if I am worthy of this claim of being the 4th greatest Zappa fan, but I shall try to earn it somehow.
For me there is never enough reason to stop playing Zappa tunes or talking about Zappa tunes, it is a complete lifestyle more thorough than Soviet Communism, and even though he's been dead since 1993 there has never been a shortage of new material to think about. I've never even heard Civilization Phase III for instance, so I still have that out there waiting for me. There has also been no shortage of people playing the music, from marching bands, to guitar instructors, to independent piano freaks, multiple touring bands of old Zappa musicians, entire festivals full of people in multiple countries, it is a fairly awesome thing to behold. I never really believed when he died that anything like this could take root, I thought the music was too inaccessible and too hard to listen to for a large audience to be sustained, but I am happy to be wrong about this.
There has been weird shit happening in Zappa land lately. A few weeks ago Ray White didn't show up for rehearsals with Dweezil's band ZPZ and every phone number they had for him was disconnected, so they were very confused until Dweezil was able to find an email in his records from Ray saying that he was quitting the band over a pay dispute. Apparently some musicians got their wages cut in half because the egregiously expensive ZPZ tickets weren't providing enough cash for everything. It sounded like there was some disappointment with Ray over his quitting but to think about it logically, the guy quit because there was no money for his efforts, and his telephones were disconnected for some reason, probably not artistic reasons, probably because he couldn't even afford to keep a telephone while not getting paid to go on tour to sing with the band. Part of this could be my fault maybe, when they came to Portland a few months ago I went to a different show on Hawthorne instead and was just all sorts of dazed when someone told me ZPZ was in town. Wha? Where had I been? We wandered around Hawthorne that night to see if any of the band was still hanging around at the bar on 39th maybe but it was deserted. If I had been more prepared maybe I could have somehow helped Ray White get a few more dollars. Sorry Ray.
Before that ZPZ lost another musician, a keyboardist named Aaron Arntz, and they were really confused trying to figure out how they were going to play tours of Australia and Japan without him. Dweezil's requirements for a potential replacement are pretty strict: "a replacement would need a minimum of 4 months of solid solitary practice on all of the material before showing up to a single rehearsal with the band", so it's not like a new keyboardist is showing up soon. Dweez has reported in from Japan though and said the shows are going pretty okay. You know what they have in Japan? Shitloads of female Zappa fans, girls who know all the words and headbang to the guitar solos. I know I know, this makes no sense, what kind of sicko mutant of any gender at all would learn all the words? *cough*
But this is not why I've come here today, in the hours before the Easter Bunny comes by later and gets me baked as shit.
I am here because of Easter.
LEGEND HAS IT that Frank had a favorite among all his guitar solos, specifically the one from Filthy Habits, a very evil song in 5/4 which was finally released on the Sleep Dirt album after years of turmoil with Warner Brothers. WB did not like that Frank was trying to fulfill a four-record deal by showing up with four records' worth of music for one album, which was to be called "Leather". Warner Brothers wanted four different albums presumably with four different promotional tours for each one, and so refused to release Leather in its original form. Then Frank tried to release it under another label but Warner Brothers broke out some lawyers. Then he just went and played it on the radio for free, and the only public copies of Leather for many years were owned by hobbyists who managed to randomly record the radio that afternoon. The songs came out on subsequent albums in bits and pieces, most notably Sleep Dirt, which is without doubt one of my favorite Zappa albums of all time. "The Ocean is the Ultimate Solution" from the end of that album might be one of the greatest rock instrumentals ever recorded by anyone at all, and the science fiction theme of Sleep Dirt only gets more timely as years go by. What would the giant spiders talk about while on their way to conquer Earth? Would they only talk business? Would they let personal drama get in the way of destroying the Earth people? Do you have a guess?
Conversely, transversely, whatever, to Frank's love of Filthy Habits, Gail Zappa has a favorite solo of her own. ACCORDING TO LEGEND, Gail's favorite Zappa solo is Watermelon in Easter Hay, from the end of the Joe's Garage album, which was a three-act musical play from 1979 about Frank's turmoil with Warner Brothers and other forces. The autobiographical Joe character had been put in jail for breaking an expensive Scientology sex toy, where he was imprisoned with the musicians and record executives who became criminals when music had been outlawed. He fantasized about guitar solos and irritating noises through all his time in prison and when he was finally released, there was no one to play tunes with anymore, and seemingly no hope for himself.
The Central Scrutinizer narrates Joe's dilemma:
WHY DOES THIS MATTER? WHAT IS THE POINT!
The point is that since then, Gail has very famously become the most prominent form of Zappa censorship there is left anywhere in the world, pulling valuable items off Youtube and suing a yearly Zappa festival in Germany because she wasn't getting any royalties. Even Warner Brothers has been acting up again. I would like to try to find a way to convince the Right People to let the Right Music through at the Right Time.
This is a version of Watermelon in Easter Hay played by an enthusiast, a friendly neighborhood guitar instructor, who was not paid to do it and who shouldn't have to be scared of playing such a beautiful song on the open internet.
Random find:
On the third day, Jesus rose from the dead and he didn't see his shadow, so he went door to door and slid down the chimneys of all the well-behaved children in the neighborhood while dressed as a rabbit. And he left chocolates in their beds and this caused the Angel of Darkness to pass over their houses at night and take only those evil men who had looked back upon their wives as they were led out of Hades. And he turned their wives into pillars of salt, around which men of the nation gathered and fell to arguing over who got the salt and God grew angry and caused them to babble unintelligibly to one another, and so language was born. And it was with this new language that Peter betrayed Jesus in the garden, and he went and hid beneath the rock that became the foundation of the company we know today as Prudential.Last weekend a friend brought me to a party at the KBOO radio station where I had a very nice time and even broke my rule and drank a beer. That part was medicinal and only made me tired, but it was still a great night. I got to speak with the Program Director and one of their record spinning people and ask about the Zappa special they do every year, where did they get the rare music and everything, and it was all very rewarding. KBOO and Zappa had come up elsewhere recently when somebody found a lost interview from 1974 in KBOO's archives, and when I recognized a sticker for Kill Ugly Radio on the lockers in the KBOO hallway, I decided these people were okay, and definitely Friends of Frank.
The Program Director asked the DJ guy when exactly Mother's Day was this year, the usual day of their Zappa marathon, and they looked it up and found it on May 8, which was well-timed for them because it's in the middle of their funding drive, and anyway I think it was good I brought it up, as they might've walked into that holiday unprepared being pre-occupied with other matters. Their formal Zappa collection is basically the complete catalog released on Rykodisk years ago when that company was first starting, but for the Mother's Day special they call in the ringers who bring the rare stuff to the studio. The fact that Mother's Day falls during their funding drive this year (KBOO is listener supported and supposedly has no ads) raises an interesting question about Zappa and money, typified perhaps by the new heading Gail Zappa put up on frankzappa.com: "Lumpy Money". Lumpy Money is also the name of a 3-disc set that she and the Zappa Family Trust put out recently, officially Frank's 85th album, made up of unreleased recordings from near the period when Mr. Zappa recorded "We're Only In It For The Money" in 1968. Its creation between "Lumpy Gravy" and "We're Only In It For The Money" is the obvious origin of the title "Lumpy Money", but still it's kind of humorous considering the state of the Zappa Family Trust these days. Gail really really wants you to buy Lumpy Money, I think she's made that abundantly clear, these people need cash, their shit is falling apart. Here is Gail grabbed from the cover of Absolutely Free, where Frank had originally put a caption under her image which read "My pumpkin".
A few days after the radio station party my friend who brought me there in the first place reported that the Program Director had estimated me to be "the 4th largest Zappa fan", which is some extremely high praise, though lo, I am old and crusty, I forget notes sometimes and say wrong things, I just do not know if I am worthy of this claim of being the 4th greatest Zappa fan, but I shall try to earn it somehow.
For me there is never enough reason to stop playing Zappa tunes or talking about Zappa tunes, it is a complete lifestyle more thorough than Soviet Communism, and even though he's been dead since 1993 there has never been a shortage of new material to think about. I've never even heard Civilization Phase III for instance, so I still have that out there waiting for me. There has also been no shortage of people playing the music, from marching bands, to guitar instructors, to independent piano freaks, multiple touring bands of old Zappa musicians, entire festivals full of people in multiple countries, it is a fairly awesome thing to behold. I never really believed when he died that anything like this could take root, I thought the music was too inaccessible and too hard to listen to for a large audience to be sustained, but I am happy to be wrong about this.
There has been weird shit happening in Zappa land lately. A few weeks ago Ray White didn't show up for rehearsals with Dweezil's band ZPZ and every phone number they had for him was disconnected, so they were very confused until Dweezil was able to find an email in his records from Ray saying that he was quitting the band over a pay dispute. Apparently some musicians got their wages cut in half because the egregiously expensive ZPZ tickets weren't providing enough cash for everything. It sounded like there was some disappointment with Ray over his quitting but to think about it logically, the guy quit because there was no money for his efforts, and his telephones were disconnected for some reason, probably not artistic reasons, probably because he couldn't even afford to keep a telephone while not getting paid to go on tour to sing with the band. Part of this could be my fault maybe, when they came to Portland a few months ago I went to a different show on Hawthorne instead and was just all sorts of dazed when someone told me ZPZ was in town. Wha? Where had I been? We wandered around Hawthorne that night to see if any of the band was still hanging around at the bar on 39th maybe but it was deserted. If I had been more prepared maybe I could have somehow helped Ray White get a few more dollars. Sorry Ray.
Before that ZPZ lost another musician, a keyboardist named Aaron Arntz, and they were really confused trying to figure out how they were going to play tours of Australia and Japan without him. Dweezil's requirements for a potential replacement are pretty strict: "a replacement would need a minimum of 4 months of solid solitary practice on all of the material before showing up to a single rehearsal with the band", so it's not like a new keyboardist is showing up soon. Dweez has reported in from Japan though and said the shows are going pretty okay. You know what they have in Japan? Shitloads of female Zappa fans, girls who know all the words and headbang to the guitar solos. I know I know, this makes no sense, what kind of sicko mutant of any gender at all would learn all the words? *cough*
But this is not why I've come here today, in the hours before the Easter Bunny comes by later and gets me baked as shit.
I am here because of Easter.
LEGEND HAS IT that Frank had a favorite among all his guitar solos, specifically the one from Filthy Habits, a very evil song in 5/4 which was finally released on the Sleep Dirt album after years of turmoil with Warner Brothers. WB did not like that Frank was trying to fulfill a four-record deal by showing up with four records' worth of music for one album, which was to be called "Leather". Warner Brothers wanted four different albums presumably with four different promotional tours for each one, and so refused to release Leather in its original form. Then Frank tried to release it under another label but Warner Brothers broke out some lawyers. Then he just went and played it on the radio for free, and the only public copies of Leather for many years were owned by hobbyists who managed to randomly record the radio that afternoon. The songs came out on subsequent albums in bits and pieces, most notably Sleep Dirt, which is without doubt one of my favorite Zappa albums of all time. "The Ocean is the Ultimate Solution" from the end of that album might be one of the greatest rock instrumentals ever recorded by anyone at all, and the science fiction theme of Sleep Dirt only gets more timely as years go by. What would the giant spiders talk about while on their way to conquer Earth? Would they only talk business? Would they let personal drama get in the way of destroying the Earth people? Do you have a guess?
Conversely, transversely, whatever, to Frank's love of Filthy Habits, Gail Zappa has a favorite solo of her own. ACCORDING TO LEGEND, Gail's favorite Zappa solo is Watermelon in Easter Hay, from the end of the Joe's Garage album, which was a three-act musical play from 1979 about Frank's turmoil with Warner Brothers and other forces. The autobiographical Joe character had been put in jail for breaking an expensive Scientology sex toy, where he was imprisoned with the musicians and record executives who became criminals when music had been outlawed. He fantasized about guitar solos and irritating noises through all his time in prison and when he was finally released, there was no one to play tunes with anymore, and seemingly no hope for himself.
The Central Scrutinizer narrates Joe's dilemma:
This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER...Joe has just worked himself into an imaginary frenzy during the fade-out of his imaginary song...He begins to feel depressed now. He knows the end is near. He has realized at last that imaginary guitar notes and imaginary vocals exist only in the imagination of The Imaginer...and... ultimately, who gives a fuck anyway...So...So... Excuse me...So...Who gives a fuck anyway? So he goes back to his ugly little room and quietly dreams his last imaginary guitar solo...Which happens to be Watermelon in Easter Hay. The song's name comes from an unattributed rant from somewhere along the way, "playing in this band is like trying to grow a watermelon in Easter hay."
WHY DOES THIS MATTER? WHAT IS THE POINT!
The point is that since then, Gail has very famously become the most prominent form of Zappa censorship there is left anywhere in the world, pulling valuable items off Youtube and suing a yearly Zappa festival in Germany because she wasn't getting any royalties. Even Warner Brothers has been acting up again. I would like to try to find a way to convince the Right People to let the Right Music through at the Right Time.
This is a version of Watermelon in Easter Hay played by an enthusiast, a friendly neighborhood guitar instructor, who was not paid to do it and who shouldn't have to be scared of playing such a beautiful song on the open internet.