Zappa & Jazz

[Jazzrook]

FZ conducting 'Strictly Genteel' with his band at the Palladium, NYC on Halloween, 1981:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L5AJwnp6f0

JR

[Bryn]

FZ conducting 'Strictly Genteel' with his band at the Palladium, NYC on Halloween, 1981:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L5AJwnp6f0

JR

From:



if I'm not mistaken.

[Boilk]

I don't know much about Zappa's music although he is someone who was clearly extremely talented and maybe the most technically accomplished artist Rock has ever produced.

It's debatable whether as a composer he was 'produced' by rock, jazz or Edgard Varèse, but I'm more concerned about the "most technically accomplished artist" bit. He may not even be in the top 10.

[Bryn]

It's debatable whether as a composer he was 'produced' by rock, jazz or Edgard Varèse, but I'm more concerned about the "most technically accomplished artist" bit. He may not even be in the top 10.

If you are thinking of the way he employed others to orchestrate his compositions or programme his Synclavier, then fair enough.

As to the music that influenced him, https://www.quora.com/Who-and-what-i...k-Zappas-music offers a fair assessment.

[Serial_Apologist]

It's debatable whether as a composer he was 'produced' by rock, jazz or Edgard Varèse, but I'm more concerned about the "most technically accomplished artist" bit. He may not even be in the top 10.

Well, that would depend on what Ian meant by "most technically accomplished".

[Richard Barrett]

that would depend on what Ian meant by "most technically accomplished".

He was very adept at using the recording studio as a compositional tool, along with many others in the pop/rock area - George Martin, Tony Visconti, Brian Eno, Todd Rundgren etc. He was an interesting guitar improviser, though only over the simplest changes (or no changes at all). Most of the influences on his music date from the 1950s and earlier, and by the early 1970s they were all pretty much cemented in place, so that the only evolution his music subsequently underwent was technological. His lyrics range from the perfunctory to the puerile. I do quite like some of his music, partly because he was quite good at finding and assembling highly proficient sidepeople to play and arrange it, and (in later years) do the Synclavier programming, but every aspect of it has been done as well or (much) better by others.

[Jazzrook]

FZ live at the Spectrum, Philadelphia in 1976 playing 'Black Napkins':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy0mLowsAAI

JR

[Bryn]

FZ live at the Spectrum, Philadelphia in 1976 playing 'Black Napkins':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy0mLowsAAI

JR

Oops! I totally forgot to mention jazz during yesterdays Sound Out on Resonance FM. Concentrated mainly on the links with Varèse and Slonimsky.

[Jazzrook]

Frank Zappa with Napoleon Murphy Brock, George Duke, Ruth Underwood, Tom Fowler & Chester Thompson in 1974:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=KlAZnvNSGHo

JR

[Jazzrook]

FZ's jazz waltz, 'Blessed Relief', from his 1972 album 'The Grand Wazoo' with solos from Sal Marquez(trumpet) & George Duke(electric piano):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL0xBkPSRtA

JR

[Jazzrook]

'Dog Breath In The Year Of The Plague' from 'Uncle Meat'(1969):

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=wMSQ1vCxZJU

JR

[Jazzrook]

One for Joseph K(?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q0nImsfMvE

JR

[Joseph K]

One for Joseph K(?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q0nImsfMvE

JR

Nice.

[Bryn]

One for Joseph K(?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q0nImsfMvE

JR

It does smell a bit, though.

[ChandlersFord]

Way back in 2003, R3 broadcast 3 very informative programmes titled "Jazz from Hell", introduced by "Slowhand" author Charles Shaar Murray. Zappa sidemen came on stating that Zappa could not have achieved either the levels of virtuosity or the turn-on-a-sixpence spontaneity needed for realising his complex scores, let alone coping with his musical and temperamental unpredictabilities.

Back in the 1970s, a friend who joined the leftist organisation I was in threw out all his Zappa LPs. Asked if this was owing to his sexism, he said, "No, his misanthropy in general".

What a stupid thing to do.

'Misanthropy' is the natural state achieved by all intelligent and sensitive people.