Frank Zappa – Funky Nothingness

What does it sound like?:

“Funky Nothingness” is a largely instrumental triple-CD package recorded in the period around which Frank Zappa released “Chunga’s Revenge” and “Hot Rats” (i.e., 1969 to 70). As always the case with Frank Zappa, there was an awful lot going on in the background, with touring, many production jobs (e.g., Captain Beefheart’s classic date-night album, “Trout Mask Replica”, and the even-more “Hot Rats”-like jazz rock album, “King Kong: Jean-Luc Ponty Plays the Music of Frank Zappa”), and, and, and …. Zapparians will know he never bloody stopped, and he generally recorded it all as he went along. Zappa saw the emergence of the violin in rock, and Don “SugarCane” Harris regularly obliges here. Zappa also saw blues-rock taking dominance for teenage rockin’ combos, and rightly wanted to mark his tree there. In a time when listening audiences were often mildly intoxicated and amenable to long-form bits of music which eventually showed a pattern, “jamming” was also a thing; again, if anyone could make this happen, Frank Zappa, with his musical bones, could.

This is both the glory and the tragedy of “Funky Nothingness”. As a single album, it is great. As a double, it’s good. As a triple… let’s just say, I doubt many will listen to disc 3 much. I’m not sure the man himself would have let this happen. Despite critical suspicions that Frank Zappa would have been better with judicious editing, he was selective about how he used his work, was not beyond leaving stuff on tape to review later. He would often recycle, as sometimes an idea worked if juxtaposed with something else recorded elsewhere, even if it didn’t work on it’s own. This makes sense: you get some great musicians in the studio, and encourage a jam; even if it doesn’t all work, some might, and you can then either develop what works, or see it as a spontaneous, free-form, once-in-a-lifetime “lightening in a bottle” moment. I did not find much lightening in the bottle over 15 minutes of drum/ percussion solo “The Clap” (parts A and, oh joy, B) ,nor the “Tommy/ Vincent duo”. The latter, an almost 22-minute piece of music, that brought to my mind the old musican’s joke about the terror invoked by the ending of an apparently endless drum solo, as it leads to … a bass solo. These tracks will be one-off listens for most people, and the rest will skip them. One or two may love it, and good luck to you if you do.

Fortunately, the first 2 discs (and even a some of disc 3) has much else to hear, and here, for me, lie the riches. “Love will make your mind go wild” is a cover of an old doo-wop song which you can understand appealing to Frank Zappa. “Work with me Annie / Annie had a baby” is a cracking old r’n’b number with Zappa singing in a different register than usual, making him sound more tender than usual. I do not mind the multiple variations on “Sharleena” and “Chunga’s Revenge” with their varying twists and turns. “Khaki Sack” has some fantastic organ work by Ian Underwood. Conceptual continuity is big in the album, with musical ideas and motifs that would pop up in other songs later emerging, one jam being what I previously knew as “speed freak boogie”, from the “Metal Man has Hornet’s Wings” bootleg. “I’m a Rollin’ Stone” is a 12-minute talking blues that led to the mighty “Stinkfoot”, and embraces a variety of blues standards without sounding like what “Fat Possum Records” aptly called “the same old blues crap”. There are many jams which ARE interesting, and, this being Frank Zappa, those occasional brilliant melodies and middle-8s (also middle -16s and -32s) he seemed to be able to throw out without effort.

What does it all *mean*?

Everyone, even the TRUE FANS, has/have their own limits with Zappa. Do you get annoyed by the snorks, the puerile sex songs, the retro guitar solos, the atonal classical music, the satirical cynicism, his appearance… Everyone’s a critic, and I think there is merit in the idea that annoying someone who likes other aspects of the work provokes attention, and because no-one could agree on what it was that was so annoying, for those who like Frank Zappa, he remained interesting and worth discussing.

Long jam-based music continues to exist in popular music in the USA, whereas jam-bands are of more selective interest in Europe; in fact, not even that, the style being somewhat archaic outside men of a certain age. Though Frank Zappa is of historic and academic interest these days, I think this album is one for the jam-loving cadre of gently-ageing men with a past. If you like this, it fills in the gaps between ‘Rats and Chunga.

Goes well with…

hay fever medication.

Release Date:

Out now, pop-pickers

Might suit people who like…

Frank Zappa, noodling, jams, 60s blues-jazz instrumentals

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