Nathan Ahlers Says:
August 26th, 2005 at 10:31 pm

Thing Fish is the greatest. Thing Fish is one of the greatest works of the 20th century. Bow to Thing Fish. If only it could have been actually staged as intended. The humor element is amazing, yet behind it lies a deeply disturbing storyline that I think many people overlook, or do not understand.

Mower B. Yard Says:
August 28th, 2005 at 2:31 am

Thingfish is brilliant. Those Zappa fans who claim to hate it should go back and listen again. I used to be one of them too, but I’ve seen the light. My wife was introduced to Zappa by this album, before I met her, and she loved it right away.

Marco J Says:
October 19th, 2007 at 6:01 pm

FZ himself stated (somewhere) that he felt “Thing Fish” was one of his most important releases. This is very important, folks.

Jake St. Vitus Says:
October 19th, 2007 at 7:45 pm

As an artist who recycles my own ideas often, I found this realization of mine and your “mirror discovery” of it to be a pleasing sign of ‘complex clairvoyance’ in the Zappa community.

The lines about ’string beans to Utah’ (on Them or Us’s “..Divorce”, and Drowning Witch’s and Thingfish’s “No Not Now” ) which just made me giggle when I was 15 now seem like an understanding of the distances our food travels to get to us and the petrol and effort of blue-collar workers whose soap-opera life is directly affected by another person’s need to eat. Donny and Marie and the Truck Driver are on different ends of the socio-economic scale - bridged by a string-bean.

As a writer, I have long been familiar with the literary recycling begun by William S. Burroughs and the beats in the 1950s and their influences on writers and artists in the coming decades (including Zappa, among others).

So to see and hear FZ do his own bit of musical recycling on Thingfish was nothing less than a brilliant use of self-generated allegory with a uniquely sardonic purpose (as well as a response to those detractors who considered him small or dirty minded). One could say that Thingfish was the equivalent of a musical middle finger at critics.

I have no problem with the amount of reworked tunes (hell, who can - most of us go all excited at all the different live versions over the years!)

I don’t have a problem with the supposed offensiveness, or the subject matter.

I have no problem with Ike’s narration, every now and then it raises a smile. Although, that said, it’d be nice to hear those reworked tunes a tad better undreneath it.

But at the end of the day it doesn’t gel for me. Sure, its nice to have all that conceptual continuity stuff going on, but this time none of it has any impact, the whole thing feels rushed.

‘Brown Moses’ is good though, as is the ‘Evil Prince’ section of ‘Torchum’. The versions of these (and ‘The Mammy Anthems’) that can be found on YCDTOSA 1 and 4 show the music in a different light though. Maybe the track listing for ‘Thing Fish’ would have made for a cool set list…

Well said. I just listened to the entire remastered discs yesterday during a long car ride. I was very impressed by the prophecy of it and I was thinking about how “Thingfish” was not dated material at all. I also came to the realization that the already released songs chosen were chosen for a reason and not just to “fill space”.

As an artist who recycles my own ideas often, I found this realization of mine and your “mirror discovery” of it to be a pleasing sign of ‘complex clairvoyance’ in the Zappa community.

The lines about ’string beans to Utah’ (on Them or Us’s “..Divorce”, and Drowning Witch’s and Thingfish’s “No Not Now” ) which just made me giggle when I was 15 now seem like an understanding of the distances our food travels to get to us and the petrol and effort of blue-collar workers whose soap-opera life is directly affected by another person’s need to eat. Donny and Marie and the Truck Driver are on different ends of the socio-economic scale - bridged by a string-bean.

Ok, I Watson-ed out there for a while. Thank you KUR for letting me “step forward and express myself”. I will be letting my brain melt on a number of other discussions in the near future.

I agree: “Thing Fish” is amazing, is arguably the most difficult Zappa relelase to not only get into, but keep digging into (even Ben Watson himself professed his intellectual road-block when approaching this work). Maybe visiting it with listening breaks in between is the best approach.

Everyone before me pretty much hit it all on the head quite well: inside jokes, references and Conceptual Continuity clues abound, a strong re-uniting of the themes that Zappa had been dabbling with since “You Are What You Is” are re-explored in a far deeper, darker way, and the 1993 “FZ approved” remaster is TONS better than the first Ryko 1986 2-CD, which also suffered from the same quiet, thin “digital ’80’s sheen” that “Them or Us” did upon its first CD release.

FZ himself stated (somewhere) that he felt “Thing Fish” was one of his most important releases. This is very important, folks.

My personal take is this: this is far more in the category of Frank’s “political” albums (”We’re Only In It For the Money”, “You Are What You Is”, “Broadway the Hard Way”) than “experimental” works, even though “Thing Fish” is both in droves. What I think you are hearing as you listen to “Thing Fish” is the brazen confidence of a composer and social theorist realizing and even boasting that in this case, he is also a PROPHET of sorts.

Yes, I fully know how pompous, pretentious and over-dramatic that sounds and reads on my monitor, but please bear with me for a minute and don’t tune me out yet, OK?

Let’s face it: Frank was SPOT-ON back in 1981 when he put out “You Are What You Is” (religion, the political right, etc….), and there is NO COINCIDENCE that on this release (in 1984) Frank determinedly decides to borrow most heavily from that original 1981 release. The songs and their lyrics are actually more relevant NOW than then, and plus the AIDS thing is scourging the country. The “PROPHET” part is that Frank is actually making an emotionally touching plea to WAKE UP and face all the dead, old, static and re-cycled COVER STORIES we utilize daily in our wonderful U.S. of A. to ignore what is REALLY GOING ON. Frank REFUSES to allow the glitz, sheen and suspended reality of BROADWAY MUSICALS to mind-numb us from asking REAL QUESTIONS, both of ourselves as human beings, as well as of those who proport to “represent” us in government, societies, churches and even our own families.

So screw all the surfacy criticisms about how much Frank “recycled” his stuff for this project. HE DID IT ON PURPOSE FOR A REASON FOLKS!! Everyone above this review is absolutely right: “Thing Fish” is beyond essential Zappa: it is an essential part of taking a long, hard look at the whole human race in multiple areas simultaneously.

Frank used to say (I’m paraphrasing obscenely) that the music and culture of any particular time will end up telling the TRUE HISTORY of that time infinitely better than the ofiicial “history books” will. Listen to “Thing Fish” and keep listening, because we keep on making the same mistakes folks….so much of Frank’s work was a desperate attempt to get his listeners to WAKE UP and SMELL the “coffee” that is still getting more and more rancid all around us every day. Unfortunately, too many Frank “freaks” holed themselves up in their little bedrooms, got fanatically obsessed with Uncle Meat, Suzy Creamcheese and the “fanciful world of mad man Uncle Frank” as though they were listening to the aural eqivalent of “H&R Puffenstuff”, and didn’t really get the message to GET OFF OF THEIR ASS and DO SOMETHING in terms of the world around them. I’m sure these are the Frank fans so deeply hurt and wounded by songs like “We’re Turning Again”.

Frank’s entire body of work was a huge act of love toward the entire human race. If you don’t understand that, I think you’re hopeless…..

How can you not love an album that gives Broadway a prolonged and well deserved thrashing? Like Frank’s other more successful satires, he uses their own tools (musical and otherwise) to beat them silly.

All of the new music is top notch (”Brown Moses” is possibly one of Frank’s most towering achievements of songwriting, and it’s a gospel number no less). The reworked material is great too, once you get over your expectations. Frank *meant* to do it, that’s important to keep in mind.

Some other reasons why TF is great:

The reference to the Tuskegee Experiments in “Prologue” (”since dey done used a few of ‘em befo’ when dey was messin’ wit de ZYPH’LISS”)

The idea that the folks in charge might not want people who live in trailers to vote, or to live - “Galoot Update” (see also “The Green Hotel”).

The Mammy Nuns, a brilliant conflation of two opposites.

“that’s right, we got fairies on a string for your ass just a little later”

“Harry, he pissed on my fox!”

The Mystery Resease

“The Crab-Grass Baby” + “The White Boy Troubles”

Scott Thunes shines throughout

“sleepy wimp seeks lastin’ relationship wit’ anally-oriented ‘luminum sidin’ salesman”

“Briefcase Boogie” (dig that cello)

the very cogent summation and updating of that well-known bible story in “Brown Moses”…

…on into “Wistful Wit a Fist-Full” - go Napoleon, go!

“Drop Dead” - very harsh, the extreme positions of the various protagonists presented in all of their glory

“tater husbandry” - once again Frank was decades ahead of his time

“it’s just like the ‘lympics”

etc. etc.

I love the way the ending (It’s all symbolism, deep thought provoking broadway symbolism [to quote from memory, so don't shoot me]) points forward to Civilisation III (The piano is really a metaphor for that place inside yourself): both Zappa’s Big Weird Stories are ment to be more then just entertainment. And they are.

I can’t do the reworking of, for example, “The Blue Light” or “You Are What You Is”. I just don’t enjoy his reworking of those songs that I love so much. There are some other examples of this on Thingfish that I don’t care for.

On the other hand I like “Clowns On Velvet” and I love “Brown Moses” and “Wistfull Wit A Fistfull”.
The dialogue cracks me up and I get the point about the government creating AIDS.

Don’t forget “Won Ton On”.

FZ supposedly had been working on this project for about 3 years (’81 to ‘84). Ike must have spent a LOT of time getting the Thing-Fish character down. Or he may have just come up with it in an hour. And it really is quite hilarious, he does it other songs: The Evil Prince - YCDTOSA #4; Purple Haze>Sunshine of Your Love -The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life; We’re Turning Again, Porn Wars - FZMeets the Mothers of Prevention. I thought it was funny before I knew that was Ike’s Thing-Fish voice.

Plus the other thing about Thing-Fish is that it’s kind of a new thing to throw at people, so Frank includes old songs (gasp!) and Thing-Fish “raps” over them. Hearing him (it?) dub over No Not Now and throw comebacks at Harry cracks me up: “Now Not Now!!!” “Yep! Gotta do it now!” “No Not Now!!!” “Dis ERMERICA, boy!!” etc. This way the character is introduced to the audience. Or something.

Also this “nasty sucker” is FULL of FZ in-jokes. Conceptual continuity fans must LOVE this album. Here’s some FZ characters that are finally explained.
-Quentin Robert DeNameland (original appearance: Studio Tan)
-The Evil Prince (original appearance: Zoot Allures), and why he “eats a steaming pig in a chamber right near there”
-Harry ? (original appearance: We’re Only in It for the Money… Harry you’re a beast… listen to FZ’s sped up voice “Madge, it’s not merely physical! I…Doggone it!”)
-Harry-As-A-Boy talks about needing his allowance for “glue and Grateful Dead tickets”. See Teen-Age Wind (You Are What You Is)
-King Kong (YCDTOSA #3) has the same stanza as is found in The Massive Improve’lence: “I want a nun/I want a nun etc”

Then, later when you hear Thing-Fish return on the other songs (mentioned above), it’s like hearing a particular singer: it’s as unmistakeable as Captain Beefheart.