Frank Zappa and the And

Paul Carr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781409433378
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317133148
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

This collection of essays, documented by an international and interdisciplinary array of scholars, represents the first academically focused volume exploring the creative idiolect of Frank Zappa. Several of the authors are known for contributing significantly to areas such as popular music, cultural, and translation studies, with expertise and interests ranging from musicology to poetics. The publication presents the reader with an understanding of the ontological depth of Zappa's legacy by relating the artist and his texts to a range of cultural, social, technological and musicological factors, as encapsulated in the book's title - Frank Zappa and the And. Zappa's interface with religion, horror, death, movies, modernism, satire, freaks, technology, resistance, censorship and the avant-garde are brought together analytically for the first time, and approached non chronologically, something that strongly complies with the non linear perspective of time Zappa highlights in both his autobiography and recordings. The book employs a variety of analytical approaches, ranging from literary and performance theory, 'horrality' and musicology, to post modern and textually determined readings, and serves as a unique and invaluable guide to Zappa's legacy and creative force.

Chapter 1
Zappa and Horror: Screamin’ at the Monster

Richard J. Hand

When looking at the link between horror and music in general what might spring to mind most immediately is the nineteenth-century Gothic tradition as epitomised by Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on the Bare Mountain (1867) and Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre (1872) through to later works such as Béla Bartók’s opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (1918). Alternatively, we might think of horror movie soundtracks from Bernard Herrmann’s paradigmatic score for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho,1 John Carpenter’s own compositions for his early films or Goblin’s work for Dario Argento’s movies. When it comes to considering the links between horror and popular music we might think of Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett’s novelty song ‘Monster Mash’,2 the high Gothic camp of Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show (1973) and its subsequent film adaptation,3 the appropriated horror iconography prevalent in many examples of the heavy metal genre or the specific image customised by groups such as Kiss and individuals such as Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie. One of the pre-eminent ‘horror music’ icons in popular culture is Alice Cooper, who developed a neo-gothic image not least through legendary stage performances which deployed macabre illusions as a complement to the rock songs. Alice Cooper was, in fact, ‘discovered’ by Frank Zappa, his first three albums being recorded on the Bizarre label. Discovering Alice Cooper notwithstanding, Zappa may seem a surprising figure to associate with horror, and yet it is a profound relationship. Throughout his career, Zappa reveals a recurrent interest in popular horror culture which is manifest in his achievements as a creative force of performance, composition and production.

Gigs of Horror

Zappa was very much a live performer who, for much of his career, thrived on touring and stage performances and used recordings from these events for numerous album releases, including the seminal You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore series. Although Zappa could be a natural showman, almost stepping into stand-up comedy mode on occasion, his relationship with his audiences could be complex and ambiguous. This was partly because of the unpredictability of the crowd, especially in Europe: one thinks of the insurrectional atmosphere Zappa encountered in the Berlin concert of 1968; the increasing antagonism he detected on each successive tour of the UK meaning that he could only reach the conclusion that ‘Hate lives there’;4 and the concert at the Rainbow Theatre in London (10 December 1971) in which Zappa sustained serious injuries when he was assaulted by a spectator.5 Aside from the perils and menaces of the concert and the crowd, anecdotal evidence suggests that Zappa could be a temperamental performer. The academic and Zappa fan Dave Kenyon recalls how in 1970s UK concerts Zappa could be an ebullient performer engaging in repartee with the audience in one gig and, on another occasion, personify indifference by performing with his back to the audience throughout the concert.6 However, for Zappa, so evidently an artist committed to live performance for much of his working life and yet paradoxically sometimes alienated by it, there is one particular category of concerts that seem to have acquired a special – and gratifying place – for him: the Halloween concerts.

In US popular culture, the place of horror is most implicit in Halloween festivities. From the neighbourly ‘trick or treat’ of children, seasonal haunted attractions, to horror movie nights (and occasionally film premieres) arranged for 31 October, Halloween-Horror has become a distinctive form of Americana which is increasingly becoming global. Although providing a seasonal opportunity to dress up as a monster, a legitimate night for children to stay up late and gorge on candy with a valid excuse to play pranks and exploit fears, at its heart Halloween has a saturnalian function. In principal, the modern Halloween is a carnivalesque celebration in a Bakhtinian sense: perceived authority and the social hierarchies that keep society in order are subverted and even profaned through playful disorder and hilarity.7 In the case of Halloween festivities, the rational world of everyday life is challenged by the iconography of horror, the grotesque, the taboo and the supernatural and by feasting, merry-making, consuming and costuming: the energies of the suppressed voices in society and within ourselves can be given legitimised expression. In the case of Zappa, the Halloween concerts provided an especially compelling context for saturnalian activity with a context that emphasised the carnivalesque dynamics of performance, music and audience.

The first notable Halloween concert Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention performed was before they even had a record contract: on 31 October 1965, the Mothers played The Action nightclub in Los Angeles where, quite bizarrely, a highly intoxicated John Wayne was having a night out and decided to attack Zappa’s hat. It was not an auspicious start to Zappa’s Halloween concert career. Indeed, it was seven years before Zappa would be in concert on 31 October with a performance at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey, in 1972. This concert was the beginning for Zappa of an explicitly Halloween event not least because it featured as special guest ‘Zacherley’ (John Zacherle) – the legendary television horror host – who judged the costume competition. Zappa’s very early song ‘Dear Jeepers’ (1963)8 was a clear pastiche of Zacherley’s 1958 novelty horror single ‘Dinner with Drac’.9

A review from The Free Aquarian (November 1972) by Greg Carannante provides a fascinating insight into the Passaic gig.10 At the outset of the review, Carannante makes it clear that ‘Zappa, though in good spirits, did not really rise to the occasion’ and yet, somewhat paradoxically, the music represented ‘yet another step in the evolution of Zappa genius’.11 Zappa is seen as taking his music all too ‘visibly serious’ (this is neither the first nor the last time Zappa will be accused of this) which ‘did not contribute much to what could have been one hell of a crazy concert’.12 Carannante argues that the presence of the cult horror figure Zacherley and ‘hundreds of dayglo painted and outrageously costumed freaks’ served to turn ‘a concert into a special occasion’ which he likens to ‘a Betty Boop cartoon’.13 He offers a tribute to the audience: ‘Those that bothered to dress for the occasion should know that they made the show’.14 These were early days in the evolution of the Zappa Halloween concert series but clearly signal what was to come: an audience-centred carnival of frivolity, humour and meticulously performed music.

In the following year – 1973 – Zappa held a Halloween concert in The Auditorium in Chicago. However, the first of Zappa’s overt Halloween concerts took place in 1974 when he appeared at the Felt Forum in New York City. An institution thus came into being: Zappa returned to the same venue for Halloween concerts in 1975 and 1976. In 1977 Zappa moved to The Palladium in New York City for a series of concerts from 28 to 31 October 1977. Zappa would return to celebrate Halloween at the Palladium in 1978, 1980 and 1981, the latter being broadcast live as an MTV special. The following year, 1982, Zappa did not perform a concert on Halloween but did present the première of his movie The Dub Room Special 15 at the Ritz Theater in New York City: it is a concert film featuring performances from the 1981 Palladium Halloween concert. As well as introducing the movie Zappa also held a costume contest, in which the winners received a holiday in Las Vegas. In 1984 Zappa performed his last Halloween concert, returning to the Felt Forum for the occasion.

Some of the New York Halloween concerts have been valuably documented in Zappa’s films such as the aforementioned The Dub Room Special! and also Baby Snakes,16 which principally features material from the 1977 Palladium Halloween concerts. The digitally mastered Audio-DVD Halloween 17 features performances from the 1978 Palladium Halloween concert and includes footage that is particularly interesting as it closely documents the performers, the audience and their interaction. As Foggy G says in one of the many fan pages detailing Zappa’s work:

Frank played some great shows in his time, but never did he perform a run of shows as insane and inspired as the 6 shows he played at the tail end ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures, Music Examples and Table
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• General Editor’s Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Zappa and Horror: Screamin’ at the Monster
• 2 Zappa and his Cultural Legacy: Authorship, Influences and Expressive Features in Frank Zappa’s Movies
• 3 Zappa and Religion: Music is the Best
• 4 Zappa and The Razor: Editing, Sampling and Musique Concrète
• 5 Zappa and Satire: From Conceptual Absurdism to the Perversity of Politics
• 6 Zappa and Resistance: The Pleasure Principle
• 7 Zappa and the Story-Song: A Rage of Cultural Influences
• 8 Zappa and Technology: His incorporation of Time, Space and Place when Performing, Composing and Arranging Music
• 9 Zappa and the Freaks: Recording Wild Man Fischer
• 10 Zappa and Modernism: An Extended Study of ‘Brown Shoes Don’t Make It’
• 11 Zappa and the Avant-Garde: Artifice/Absorption/Expression
• 12 Zappa and Mortality: The Mediation of Zappa’s Death
• Bibliography
• Index