Though 1967's Lumpy Gravy contains touches of the pop satire that made Freak Out! and Absolutely Free so outrageous, it represents Zappa's first solo foray into the modern-classical zone. An astute student of musique concrète, electronic music and sound collage, the freaker weaves together scraps of orchestration, psychedelic rock, jazz, what sounds like television soundtrack fodder and even oddball snippets of dialog. It makes for a listening experience that's deeply focused and contemplative rather than gut-bustingly absurd -- what Zappa's work with The Mothers was all about.
When released in 1969, Hot Rats represented a major shift for Zappa. The solo effort found the guitarist/composer eschewing the Mothers' absurdist art-rock for jammy jazz-fusion. Except for the grimy "Willie The Pimp" (featuring Captain Beefheart's mush-mouth growl), every piece is instrumental. What's more, three of the album's six cuts break the eight-minute mark. The most potent is "The Gumbo Variations," spotlighting as it does the ensemble's mix of brutish groove exploration and dexterous interplay. Pay close to attention to Zappa's full bodied and slyly phantasmagoric production.
Though credited to just Frank Zappa, Chunga's Revenge boasts a line-up that very much resembles the early '70s incarnation of The Mothers Of Invention; there's Ian Underwood, George Duke, Aynsley Dunbar and, of course, those loveable perverts Flo & Eddie (Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman of The Turtles). As for the music, compared to the complex studio experimentation of Weasels Ripped My Flesh, released two months prior, it's some fairly stripped-down, performance-heavy stuff: comedy blues ("Road Ladies"), avant-garde jazz ("The Nancy & Mary Music") and horny hard rock ("Tell Me You Love Me").
This four-cut 1972 set is bookended by two long, trumpet-packed jazz-fusion instrumentals that take the music Miles Davis had only recently concocted on Bitches Brew and A Tribute to Jack Johnson and extract most, but (thanks partly to George Duke's piano) not all of the funk. The 17-minute opener eventually curdles into distorted squealing; the 11-minute closer, a probable inspiration for certain '90s Eastern European prog-rock bands, winds up doing a sort of mariachi thing. In between are two shorter faux-blues shimmies with oddball time signatures and Hawaiian guitar and pedal steel breaks.
As with its predecessor Waka / Jawaka, 1972's The Grand Wazoo documents Zappa's foray into big band art-rock and fusion. The music -- obscenely difficult and elaborate -- serves as the bridge between Bitches Brew-era Miles and Henry Cow's chamber-prog-jazz aesthetic. What's interesting about this stuff (especially compared to his late-'60s output) is how it never explodes into full-throttled madness; rather, it slowly drives the noggin bonkers with its zigzag movement and pointillist compositions. Then again, closer "Blessed Relief" might be one of the prettiest pieces Zappa ever recorded.
In the mid-'70s Zappa became the very thing he had always mocked: a rock star. After 1973's Over-Nite Sensation became exactly that, he released Apostrophe ('), which again went gold. Steeped in silly Eskimo humor, both the opener "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" and "Nanook Rubs It" became stoner-joke anthems for young nerds across America. Further into the record, former Cream bassist Jack Bruce lends his services on greasy groover "Uncle Remus." Apostrophe (') closes with the perv-blues "Stink-Foot"; no idea what that title means, yet by song's end you'll be praying you don't contract it, too!
Perhaps foreseeing the back-to-basics ethos of punk, Zoot Allures is significantly streamlined. Relying heavily on atmosphere and mood, it lacks the complexity of both Roxy & Elsewhere and One Size Fits All (released in '74 and '75, respectively). This stuff is also way less funny. Spotlighting his searing fretwork and bass-croak, "The Torture Never Stops" might be the scariest tune Zappa ever committed to wax. More than a few of its creepy lines ("He stinks so bad his stones been chokin'/ weepin' greenish drops," for example) would feel at home in William Burroughs' Cities of The Red Night.
Zappa in New York is a stand-out live set. But in all honesty, it's hard to get pass that genius opener. "T*tties & Beer" really is an absurd tale, one revolving around a breast-loving, beer-guzzling biker (played by Zappa) and none other than Satan himself (drummer Terry Bozzio). The skit begins with the devil eating the biker's "p*ssy," but devolves into Bozzio making fun of Zappa's love for Igor Stravinsky; meanwhile, Zappa grills Bozzio over his obsession with Angel guitarist Punky Meadows. And on top of all that, it contains a slew of "stop playing with your pickle" jokes. So awesome.
A play on KC and the Sunshine Band's "Shake Your Booty," Sheik Yerbouti is the best-selling title in Zappa's catalog. It also marked a shift in style. Emphasizing his love for pop satire, as well as embracing orthodox song structures, the cranky maestro was basically laying the groundwork for Weird Al's own brand of parody-rock. This can be heard in his mocking of Frampton ("I Have Been in You"), as well as Dylan ("Flakes"). Amazingly, his razzing of disco, the thoroughly derisive "Dancin' Fool" ("My shirt's half open to show you my chain/ And the spoon for up my nose") became a club hit.
The most accessible "classical" album in the Zappa catalog is, not surprisingly, also the one most recognizably related to his pop styles. In this world, blues filigrees bump up against surprise polkas that stomp off into atonal back alleys. It's rambunctious, but also thoughtfully arranged and sequenced. It helps, of course, that many of the themes were already road-tested on more traditional Zappa albums like 200 Motels. But "Pedro's Dowry," new to his catalog as of this recording -- and revisited by other groups in later years -- is something any Zappa fan ought to spend real time with.
Frank Zappa never subscribed to the belief that, as a satirist, there are places one simply doesn't venture (hence why he inexplicably appears in blackface on the cover). Joe's Garage is one of the composer's most ambitious projects: an X-rated opera about a young rock musician making his way through a society overrun by massive government, oppressive religion, New Age hokum, sexual perversion and art censorship. It was a prescient story, considering the record came out in 1979, the year just before Ronald Reagan took office and subsequently kick-started the modern neo-con movement in America.
Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar collects together three albums of guitar solos lifted from various live and studio performances by the virtuosic composer. With the absence of his trademark zany sense of humor and sections where he gets taken over by "jazz," you get to hear Zappa simply shred, which is a welcome turn as (say what you want about his avalanche of highly singular output) the dude can play guitar.
Even the most hardcore of Zappa fans are divided over their hero's early-'80s output. Those who love the intense outsider/freak streak in his work from the previous two decades have a hard time dealing with just how normal it feels. You Are What You Is, released towards the end of 1981, very much reflects this issue. If you fail to pay close attention to the satirical lyrics, the majority of its cuts sound like straight-ahead pop-rock from the '80s. "Doreen," for example, veers dangerously close to becoming the very thing it mocks: power-ballad cheese a la Eddie Money and Night Ranger.
Zappa going New Wave -- which is what Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch is all about -- might seem like an odd move for the veteran freak. Then again, the new wave's post-modern celebration of American kitsch and trash culture is something Zappa was exploring as far back as the late '60s. He even scored a minor hit with "Valley Girl." It's a pretty awesome song for two key reasons: (1) It sounds like Sparks, and (2) it features his daughter Moon Unit mocking the shopping-mall chicks at her high school. She unloads some real zingers, including the classic "Gag me with a spoon!"
Though released in 1983, the Baby Snakes soundtrack contains live fodder recorded in 1977. The track listing is representative of Zappa's sound just after dissolving The Mothers for the last time. Indeed, it's packed with fan faves, including "T*tties & Beer," "Disco Boy" and "Punky's Whips." Drummer, pervert and growler Terry Bozzio is all over this thing -- which makes sense, seeing as how his unpredictable talents played integral roles in Zappa's late-'70s sound. The film, by the way, is really rather tweaked: a trippy mix of concert footage and animation created by artist Bruce Bickford.
Title aside, the French composer-conductor only leads his ensemble through three of these pieces. (Other tracks are Zappa's own Synclavier efforts.) And so "Naval Aviation in Art?" gets another flight, post-Orchestral Favorites, as does "Dupree's Paradise" (familiar to Zappa fans from other contexts). They're fine, but the big draw is the 12-minute title track, which Frank wrote in a style after Boulez's own heart. "The Perfect Stranger" is severe stuff, with dissonant brass and pitched percussion tweaks. There may not be typical Zappa guffaws in this music, but an abstract wit is alive here.
Jazz From Hell is quite possibly the oddest record in Zappa's oeuvre. And that's because it's so normal (hey, it snagged the Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance). Then again, this normalcy is somewhat deceptive. What we have here (on the surface level, anyway) is a synth-fusion album: cold, clean, precise. Yet these tunes are utterly maddening in their pinprick aggression (like an acupuncturist turned sadist). Get a load of the proto-IDM melodies and stuttering rhythms on "While You Were Art II" and "Damp Ankles" and how they never stop dissolving, reforming, then dissolving again.
After exploring the Synclavier DMS synthesizer on 1986's Jazz From Hell (an album that landed the legendary outsider a Grammy Award, amazingly enough), Zappa returned with Guitar, a colossal collection of live recordings captured between the years 1979 and '84. It's this record (along with Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar) that made Zappa a guitar god to the burgeoning instrumental-rock scene. Of course, Steve Vai actually worked with him, but after just a few tunes it becomes obvious that hot-shot fret-masters Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson also studied the guy's masterful playing.
Outside of a few classical performances the year before his death in 1993, Zappa undertook his last tour in 1988. It would be documented on three titles: The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life, Make a Jazz Noise Here and Broadway the Hard Way (which came first). Because a good portion of this music had been recently composed, it reflects his battle against the PMRC, as well as his utter contempt for American politics. Zappa also unleashes "Promiscuous," a rap-rock jam about Reagan's beleaguered Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. The song's chorus is fantastic: "Anal sex! Anal sex! Anal sex!"
Zappa may have begun his career name-checking composer Edgard Varese in the liner notes to a Mothers album, but he ended it by actually making an album of contemporary classical music worthy of that inspiration. The virtuosos of Germany's Ensemble Modern approached Zappa just before his untimely death; the ensuing series of live concerts in Europe resulted in his best classical album. There are arrangements of familiar tunes like "Uncle Meat," but even choicer are fresh pieces like "Outrage at Valdez" and "Be-Bop Tango," which perfect Zappa's catchy-but-aggressive classical style. Essential.
The complete history of Läther demands a book. Though intended for release in the 1977 to '78 zone, a mess of management/label disputes derailed its release until Rykodisc's unabridged package in 1996 (three years after Zappa's death). Many of these tunes -- including "Big Leg Emma," "Punky's Whips" and "RDNZL" -- saw the light of day via other titles. But to hear them in the context Zappa originally intended really drives home Läther's ambitiousness. It's just about the only record from the composer's late-'70s period that contains the grandeur of his '60s work with The Mothers Of Invention.
After Orchestral Favorites, Zappa pulled in bigger classical names to work on his notated pieces. First up was the London Symphony Orchestra, which cut two LPs (both collected here). If stiffer and less accurate than the Ensemble Modern would prove in The Yellow Shark and not as violently impressive as Pierre Boulez was on his Zappa (half) album, they conjure a lively mood throughout these works, including the swing moments that crop up in both "Bob in Dacron" and "Sad Jane," the moments of rock groove in "Envelopes," and the Stravinsky-ian woodwinds that kick off "Mo 'n Herb's Vacation."
