Anyone seen the Zappa plays Zappa show?

[shniggens]

Gimme me some reviews!!!!

 

http://www.zappa.com/cheezoid/whatsnew/zpz/

 

Dweezil Zappa plays Frank Zappa. With Terry Bozzio, Steve Vai, Napolean Murphy Brock and others.

 

I just got my tickets!

[coyote-1]

I never dug Dweezil's guitar playing. Aside from that it oughta be a great show (and who knows, maybe Dweez has learned to play a bit better).

[-=MYK=-]

It sold out soooper quick around here.

[dougsthang]

 

Originally posted by coyote-1 I never dug Dweezil's guitar playing. Aside from that it oughta be a great show (and who knows, maybe Dweez has learned to play a bit better).

 

 

Having listened to Dweezil play many hours sitting next to me in a studio where he was just jamming not sure what you've been listening to. He has and has had for along time chops o plenty. He wood shedded big time for this tour and was freaky about not only nailing the phrasing but the tones of Franks playing. He was always a great player but for this tour he's taken it up many knotches.

[coyote-1]

He always had 'chops'. I won't dispute that.

 

What he lacked in the past was phrasing and taste.

 

Originally posted by dougsthang Having listened to Dweezil play many hours sitting next to me in a studio where he was just jamming not sure what you've been listening to. He has and has had for along time chops o plenty. He wood shedded big time for this tour and was freaky about not only nailing the phrasing but the tones of Franks playing. He was always a great player but for this tour he's taken it up many knotches.

 

[shniggens]

 

Originally posted by coyote-1 He always had 'chops'. I won't dispute that. What he lacked in the past was phrasing and taste.

 

 

I actually feel the same way about his dad. They both can tear it up, but they become annoying real fast. Especially the later years for Frank Zappa.

 

But the song compositions are where the goods are.

[offramp]

Got my ticket the morning they went on sale.

[kylen]

I went to the local record chain to get some Zappa since you guys were yappin about it....Good Grief not even a "Z" section...I'll have to dig some Zute out of my boxes somewhere. Haha - life in the Bible Belt - I can dig it. I saw Zappa a while back - quite the experience! I wouldn't mind seein this show if I can get to an Oasis.

[d. gauss]

 

Originally posted by shniggens they become annoying real fast.

 

 

ain't that the truth!

 

-d. gauss

[coyote-1]

I LOVED FZ's guitar playing! There was a style and a focus, and not just "lemme play as many fast things as I can".

 

That said, I can understand some folks not digging FZ's particular style.

 

Originally posted by shniggens I actually feel the same way about his dad. They both can tear it up, but they become annoying real fast. Especially the later years for Frank Zappa. But the song compositions are where the goods are.

 

[Magpel]

As long as we're opining on FZ...

 

When I was young and a fan of guitar gods, his playing just didn't sing for me. It seemed like frenzied clusters of notes without a clean sense of phrasing or a "narrative" concept.

 

Now I kind of dig those frenzied clusters and I hear more "intent" in them than I used to. Kind of mono-modal though.

 

Re: his compositions, yeah, that's where the action is at, but ulitmately his lyrics and the sheer, ceaseless mockery of stuff gets me down. I'm not one who believes him to have been a beacon of political wisdom, but he was a smart guy who did stick up for some admirable ideals. And he was positively Oscar Wilde-like in his way with a one-liner.

 

All in all, "+1" on Zappa. Glad he happened. He wrote some beauitiful music before, in between, and after he or his surrogate opened mouth to sing...

[shniggens]

While I am a huge fan of Zappa, I also agree with this reviewer -

 

"Frank Zappa was a guy who simply couldn't shut up. He was like a kid who'd just gotten a tape recorder and spent every second of every day putting down anything that popped into his head, thinking it was hilariously genius and needed not only to be preserved on magnetic tape forever, but also played back to friends, relatives, milkmen, random passers-by, and anyone else within earshot. The guy who was forever recording his farts, or trying to create an electric guitar out of an old transistor radio, a roll of aluminum foil, and sbout fifteen gallons of solder, or singing showtunes in some Looney Tunes voice and cracking up like he'd just given a wedgie to the Pope or something. You know, not the class clown, but the dude not even the freaks and weirdos could understand. It was exactly this childish inability to color within the lines and self-edit that both sealed Frank Zappa's commercial failure and formed an unbreakable bond with a certain group of insane fanatics who hung on his every note. The man attracts and repulses with equally irresistible force - The man's a master guitar player who often spends too much time talking to actually play. He writes extraordinarily complex music that often just comes across like a poorly organized in-joke. He's never met a musical form he didn't try to master, from free-jazz to doo wop to modern classical to electronic music, and he's never met a musical form he didn't then try to wad up into a little Zappa ball, filtered through his perverse sensibilities and stripped of most of what made it distinct in the first place. He's diverse stylistically, but a whole lot of his stuff sounds EXACTLY THE SAME AS ITSELF. He's fun, but he's irritating. He's intellectual but revels in the retarded. He's a satirist that likes to write lots of sexist {censored}ing songs that liked to put down women and their warm, wet, inviting woo woos. He defined the very freak-culture he later spent albums savagely attacking. He gathered groups of some of the most instrumentally accomplished musicians available and lorded over them, quashing a lot of their creative sensibilities. He loved orchestration but hated orchestras. He was a modern classical composer who preached against becoming a modern classical composer, telling students to get their real estate licenses instead. He eschewed drugs and alcohol but smoked like a Turkish air traffic controller. He bravely stood up against the phoniness of the Grammy Awards but was equally dismissive of even his own audience. Hell, he even began to disown the earliest and most popular sections of his back catalogue and the band that played them.

 

Zappa is important, however, and there's no denying the man was an Innovator with a capital Vader. From introducing the concept album, extended running times, wacky cover art, acid guitar soloing, tape collages, humor, jazz-rock, electronics, and modern-classical into the fertile crescent that was pop music in 1966, the man had almost a supernatural tendency towards original ideas that were later taken to heart by many in the rock vanguard some years after Frank did 'em. Even more have yet to be incorporated, and some probably never will due to sheer impossibility. Frank's bands (though arguments occur over which was the best) were some of the tightest outfits this side of the JB's, adjusting to Frank's subtle control via hand gestures, always musically literate (a rare thing in modern popular music) and talented beyond belief. As I mentioned, though, Frank has little room for collaboration, preferring to keep his deck stacked with capable, intelligent performers rather than creative foils. In short, most of the ideas short of the solos come straight from the noggin' of Sir Frank, which lends a certain numbing monotony of tone to just about everything ever made under the Zappa name. The man has opinions, lots and lots of them, and some of them are pretty well-formulated. The guy just doesn't have much emotion, and tends to discount emotion in his work, even musically. His overall tone is one of sarcasm and mockery, but often in a soulless and mean-spirited way. Hell, I'm not saying the guy couldn't imitate 'soul' or 'sincerity' or 'corniness', but he sure couldn't generate it. It's as if the real Frank Zappa is so buried underneath layers and layers of sarcastic body armor and weirdness that he's only let out for short periods in the deepest space of a guitar solo or classical instrumental. Otherwise we get 'Frank', alternately provocative and annoying as {censored}, who only seems to be truly passionate about, first and foremost, his defense of freedom of expression, for which his career is one huge testament, and may be his biggest achievement. Then there's also his contention that most 'art' is so dumbed-down and commercialized as to be nothing more than just another personal-grooming product, and the fact that unions are awful, horrible things that prevent his symphonies from being performed. Hrm...oh, and he doesn't seem too happy about love and sex, (and, therefore, women) either."

[dougsthang]

While some of that review has some truth, much is just a bunch of over blown BS. If Frank was such a emotionless person and dominating why would all these top notch musicians be lining up to get the chance to share the stage with him? Was he quirky? absolutely but that's what made him so endearing.

 

Go read his autobiography if you want to laugh out loud. He was a smart ass and again that's why people liked him. He didn't take himself seriously yet people who tried to put him in a box did everything they could to generalize his work.

 

I'm not really a big fan of his but as a musician I completely respect the drive he had for his craft. Look back in history at the true artists and I think you will find many were whacked out of their minds.

 

Personally I think "Shut up and play your guitar" is friggin' brilliant. How can you play a double albums worth of solo's and barley quote yourself once! try that one at home kids.

[coyote-1]

FZ himself used to talk about it. He was indeed demanding, and while great players wanted to be in his band they were as often relieved to move on when they did.

 

Originally posted by dougsthang While some of that review has some truth, much is just a bunch of over blown BS. If Frank was such a emotionless person and dominating why would all these top notch musicians be lining up to get the chance to share the stage with him?

 

[Rudolf von Hagenwil]

There where some musician in Frank's band I really liked and infused some emotion into his rather cool multi media theater, if not to say emotionless cynism. Musician like George Duke and Chester Thompson where my favorits, and this two never played wild stuff alike with their own bands.

 

I enjoyed Frank and his men and women a lot so till 1976, after I simply grew out of it. In the mean time I can't listen to it as virtuos as it still is. Hot Rats for example is an album I can still enjoy, I guess simply because he doesn't talk on it, but plays some great guitar.

 

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