What does it sound like?:
Frank Zappa was a serious composer who found working in the rock n’ roll idiom and making complicated popular music with knob jokes enabled him to subsidise his artistic work that had less commercial potential. He once observed that “some artists put their money up their nose, I put my money in my ears”, and the concerts on this set of discs were paid for from the profits made from the single “Don’t eat the yellow snow”: there is something Platonic in that equation. I’ve been listening to the is album for almost 40 years, and in that time it has gone from “What is THAT?” to “Could be a film soundtrack” (admittedly an odd film).
For the uninitiated, this music is tunefully and busily abstract, self-consciously difficult and sometimes effortlessly cheesy (I love the big band “Duke of Prunes”), mostly made with an orchestra but occasional guitar, synthesiser, and bass art comedy music. Does that help? It would have led to energetic frugging at a Bauhaus ball (as in German art movement, not Northampton goths) and would surely appeal to hipsters and avant-rock types if it wasn’t for the terminally unwoke cachet that Frank Zappa now deservedly has, and which endears him to me even more.
Along with a fine titivated recording of of the original album, is a great concert of most of these tracks plus a number of instrumental bits from other recordings (“Rollo”, “Lumpy Gravy”, “Dog Meat”, “Gregory Peccary” and an early outing of a nascent “Black Napkins”, soon to appear on “Zoot Allures”). Fred Zappie is having a good time, and his sardonic asides and intros are cheerful and almost warm. They ran out of tape for the final flashy coda that ends the live “Strictly Genteel”, but this is, in it’s own way, ideal – a big blob of bathos, and deeply Zapparian in itself.
What does it all *mean*?
The Proms have just finished, and we’ve had the guitarist from Radiohead given pride of place. Don’t give up the day job, Johnnie. “Orchestral Favourites” is serious, funny, tuneful, bloody awful, profound, subversive, trivial, and slyly commercial. You can work to it as there are not a lot of words. Nobody could call the music boring, though it may well take some people out of their comfort zone. Oh how I miss Frank Zappa. He could have made the perfect music to match the sounds and personalities of our currently troubled times.
Goes well with…
Modern classical music, film soundtracks of gratuitous pomposity, chin-stroking, indifference to what’s the “in thing”, red wine, strong tea, cold water, and cold black coffee. As the sound of a bass saxophone.
Release Date:
Out now, pop-pickers
Might suit people who like…
Frank Zappa, avant-garde music, modern classical, soundtracks, pushing their comfort zone, something different from the past.
Being already used to previous Zappa instrumental pieces, his orchestral works came as no great shock to my ears. Quite percussive and rhythmic, generally, with sly references to cheesy TV and movie theme styles and pretty unconventional in their instrumentation.
At the BBC Proms in 1997, John Adams conducted Ensemble Modern, who had already recorded with Zappa shortly before his death, in a programme of contemporary American music by Steve Reich (Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ), Michael Gordon (Love Bead), Lou Harrison (Concerto for Organ and Percussion), John Adams (Scratchband), Philip Glass (Facades) and Frank Zappa (Dog Breath Variations/Uncle Meat, Get Whitey and G-Spot Tornado), with Zappa’s “Moggio” as an encore.
Unauthorised recordings are available.
“complicated popular music with knob jokes”… Afterword T-shirt.
Great review, btw.
Looking forward to this. Great review!
I’m more than happy to plough on with tying up the loose ends up to (but not necessarily including, I haven’t decided yet) Chunga’s Revenge.
My next trip to the capital, rather than a record shop trawl will, very specifically, be a Zappa/record shop trawl for all those Joe’s Xmessage, Joe’s Corsage, Cucamonga-type pre-Mothers releases.
However, my love for Zappa – already great and growing – has been enhanced twenty-fold by the idea that “hipsters regard him as terminally unwoke” (Afterword T-shirt right there!).
Good, whatever those 60s dodging, Duran Duran (“it’s only £25”) vinly loving mugs think, I think the opposite.
Make sure you get the 2012 remasters. The earlier ones have 80s studio trickery all over them. There are some good 60s gigs in the Beat the Boots set of semi-official releases, if you see them individually.
“Piquantique” is a particularly good one from the “Beat the Boots” series. Frank Zappa, George Duke, Jean-Luc Ponty, Ian Underwood, Ruth Underwood, Bruce Fowler, Tom Fowler & Ralph Humphrey.
An all-instrumental set mostly recorded live in Stockholm in 1973 but one short track “T’Mershi Duween” is from 1974 somewhere else with a slightly different lineup. Very good sound quality for what was originally a bootleg. Taken from a radio/TV broadcast.
https://www.discogs.com/Frank-Zappa-Mothers-Piquantique/release/1731525
This is a bit of it from the filmed footage.
(Dupree’s Paradise)
Fred Zappie? Oh dear.
A further thumbs up for Zappa’s back catalogue, in this age of vastly inflated reissue prices, is how reasonably priced many of the items are.
The Meat Light 3-cd compilation, an update of Uncle Meat, cost be £8.99 in Selectadisc.
The price range in Fopp seemed to be £6 (Weasels, Burnt Weeny, Chunga’s, Mystery Disc) to £12 (for the more obscure releases, pre-Mothers etc.).
Sure, there’s a lot to get – even my 62-70 range is about 25 releases deep, but they’re not prohibitively expensive. It’s almost as if they want people to buy the product.
Someone should give David Gilmour a bell.
And check this out Stones’ fans … they even have detailed sleeve notes.
No, really, it’s sort of, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, lovingly done!!!