Zappa Lives!

Bought a DVD the other day, Frank Zappa hizself in concert circa 1984, and had a great time watching him and the band weave their way through all the old classics - The Dangerous Kitchen, Dinah-Moe Humm, Dancin' Fool - lotsa fun.

I love this guy, always have. There are two artists who've held my head up over the years, Clapton and Zappa. I'm a guitar man... hmm, that sounds a bit like "I'm an ass man." Guitar is the only instrument I've cared enough about to try and play myself, with some limited success. And, yeah, there's a plethora of axemen out there, amazing players all. But do they play the blues? Not too many, and those that do whizz-bang it up as if to say 'yah, I'm playing the blues, sure, but just listen to how I'm playing it."

Clapton has almost singlehandedly kept the blues alive over the span of 40+ years. I admire him and his obvious integrity, and might even credit him with keeping me sane a few times. He's definitely my hero, and my life would be perfect, musically speaking, if I could one day shake his hand and thank him for working so hard.

And then, yep, there's Mr. Zappa. I think it was late Spring, 1968, at a high school dance, where I heard his stuff for the first time. The band was from Boston, excellent where we'd listened to uniform mediocrity beforehand. They could play anything you asked them to, and were cool enough to play a couple of Cream songs for me. As they played, I hung around the stage watching the guitarist weave his magic (I was a guitar-teen, too.) As I watched and listened I noticed a large poster behind the drummer of a mostly naked guy on the toilet with the caption 'Phi Zappa Crappa'. When I got the chance I asked the band who the guy was, and the guitarist said 'just give a listen, man, we're going to play a couple of his songs.'

So I listened. And so began my contrary love of FZ's music. Contrary because otherwise I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to what I listen to. Well, I don't know if perfectionist is the proper term. I like intricacy. I like Pink Floyd's The Wall for that - because really, it's seamless. I ate Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick for breakfast, lunch and supper when it came out, and thought that Crime of the Century by Supertramp could never be equaled by anyone.

Maybe it was just that those groups and albums weren't afraid to say 'this is our stuff, this is the direction we want to take rock and roll.' As a late-middle-aged man, I'm discovering almost daily that there is still so much to be learned from music, then and now. Music sustains me, music feeds me. Frank Zappa, at certain times, reminds me of the timelessness of music while taking the top of my head off with some high-octane riff. Zappa is another of my heroes because he brought irreverance and perfectionist-relief to me. I have an old recorded tape of the album Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch, with the song Envelopes followed by Teenage Prostitute. Get hold of that if you can, and play it LOUD. I dare you to tell me that ain't some of the best shit you ever heard.

Zappa Lives!