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Frank Zappa / Strictly Critique / Re: I like (some of) The Yellow Shark. Now what?
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on: November 17, 2006, 02:39:12 PM
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Frank's music isn't like anyone else's music. You can't really compare him to anyone else, or catagorize anything he composed. You either like him, love him, or listen to something else.
What does that have to do with the subject? He was just asking about Frank's non-rock stuff (and there is, often, a major difference between Frank's genres, even if none of them are easy to describe in detail).
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Frank Zappa / Strictly Critique / Re: I like (some of) The Yellow Shark. Now what?
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on: November 13, 2006, 10:40:24 AM
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Hi, Ben --
I would highly recommend Lather. I know it's pricey, since it's a three-disc set, but it's got some of Frank's greatest instrumental pieces, which combine orchestral with jazz and rock and all sorts of different genres that he seems to have invented.
If that's too much at once, I should add that Frank broke Lather up into four separate albums in the '70s, after his silly record label wouldn't release the boxed set. His best instrumental music from that period is found on STUDIO TAN, SLEEP DIRT and ORCHESTRAL FAVORITES. The latter is probably closest to what you're looking for, but the others contain some of his most amazing mind-blowers, like "RDNZL," "Revised Music For Guitar and Low-Budget Orchestra," "Naval Aviation in Art," "Duke of Prunes" (1975 instrumental version) and "The Ocean Is the Ultimate Solution."
Finally, there are two full albums of purely orchestral music that are, as far as I know, still available. The Perfect Stranger is very dense, inventive stuff; in fact it sounds like a cartoon soundtrack. Not one of my favorites, but it's still performed with more verve than LSO Vols. I and II, which I don't recommend. Frank called them "high-class demos of what actually resides in the scores," because of the lack of enthusiasm on the parts of the (excessively alcohol-enjoying) musicians.
Civilization: Phaze III, on the other hand, is eye-poppingly beautiful. It resembles the Yellow Shark material most closely, and it's a double disc of some of the greatest music ever composed (to my ears, anyway). But it has to be listened to at least five times before your brain even begins to assimilate it. It's not nearly as "accessible" as the other stuff I've mentioned; it is, in fact, like nothing ever heard before or since.
Hope this helps!
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Frank Zappa / Strictly Critique / Re:Books on Zappa - which one?....
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on: October 24, 2005, 10:49:40 AM
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Do yourself a favor and avoid the Michael Gray book. The author comes off like a magazine writer who was turned down for an interview by Frank in the '60s and has a chip on his shoulder; he doesn't even seem to like Frank's music.
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Frank Zappa / The Blue Light / Re:some questions on FZ's lyrics
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on: October 21, 2005, 08:57:07 AM
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Well written, Sista. One isn't meant to sympathize with or relate to the city-hall employee, Balint; Frank's trying to paint the picture of a perverted scumbag for us by referring to his sexual daydreams. What confuses a lot of people (and makes a lot of others consider Frank himself to be perverted) is that he offers no "lesson" at the end, no moral yardstick from his own standpoint; he presents an aberrant society just how it is, and leaves it up to the listener to form his own conclusions about what might be wrong with this picture, as it were.
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Frank Zappa / Strictly Critique / Re:Sleep Dirt
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on: October 13, 2005, 09:30:22 AM
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I think it's silly that they didn't include "Sleep Dirt" as one of the bonus tracks on the three-disc Lather. Strange decision to leave it off.
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Frank Zappa / The Blue Light / Re:some questions on FZ's lyrics
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on: October 11, 2005, 08:19:46 AM
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Flo & Eddie used to send toys through hoops of fire as part of their on-stage silliness, I believe.
Beyond that, the song is full of band inside-jokes about a groupie.
A couple of the easier bits to figure out: "Box your dog" means "tighten her vaginal canal with her groin muscles very drastically around your penis so that you climax more quickly," to put it bluntly.
"Knirps" is a German umbrella company. Use your imagination.
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The guy's dreaming about a girl who's no more than a child.
