Writes Daniel Felsenthal, in "Hipsters Were Always Hypocrites. Ask Frank Zappa. Of the late musician's many records, Over-Nite Sensation best crystallized his cutting satire of our country’s blank-eyed habits" (The Atlantic).
This seems to follow on yesterday's discussion of the "word of the year" — "authentic."
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63 comments:
For most who hit puberty between the first Beatles album and Woodstock, "authenticity" meant:
Levi's 501 jeans
Ray-Ban sunglasses
Harley Davidson motorcycles
Mullets (male and female; big puffy hair versions)
Paying absurd money for Rolling Stones concerts
Reading Rolling Stone magazine, and reading Playboy for the articles
Etc.
They were an extremely wealthy, hedonistic, TV-influenced tribe of lock-step conformist "rebels". Few could stomach experimental music (Zappa; The Shaggs) or punk rock, nor anything that wasn't shown on ABCBSNBC.
I blame Townes van Zant for writing Poncho and Lefty.
Thus providing hipster "authenticity" to Willie and Waylon.
I've read comments over the years from a variety of "authentic" Zappa fans who scorn Over-Nite Sensation. It's my favorite Zappa LP.
I quoted Camarillo Brillo yesterday, to point out Zappa's spot-on description of Amy Carlson, the Love Has Won cult leader.
The authenticity post yesterday brought to mind Zappa's Plastic People.
Enigma,
Levi's 501 jeans were the only thing on your list I owned, and, next to Jazz, "(Zappa; The Shaggs) or punk rock" were all I've ever been about. Why the rest of the planet is, the way it is, is a mystery. Seriously:
When Taylor Swift is an artistic icon, your culture is in the trash.
“Is this where it is?”
“She stripped away her rancid poncho, and laid down naked on the floor. We did it ‘til we were unconcho, and it was useless anymore.”
Hipsters Were Always Hypocrites
Yes, but they were being hypocritical ironically.
You can't get more authentic than Mothers of Invention, that's about as authentic as it gets.
Zappa was an authentic hipster phony pop culture icon compared to his childhood friend Don Van Vliet.
I used to have a job
An' I was doin' fairly well
Depression came along
An' everybody start to yell
"Where'd they go, them good ol' days
An' all that crap we used to sell?"
Now I'm in Hot-Plate Heaven
At the Green Hotel
Republicans is fine
If you're a multi-millionaire
Democrats is fair
If all you own is what you wear
Neither of 'em's REALLY right
'Cause neither of 'em CARE
'Bout that Hot-Plate Heaven
'Cause they ain't been there
They really oughta go
'N find out how the hall-way smell –
They'd benefit to know
'Bout what the bums in there could tell
(Of course we're only dreamin'
But I s'pose it's just as well
That's ALL you get to dream
Up in the Green Hotel)
Nature didn't put me here
An' neither did my fate –
It musta been some evil ol'
Republican candidate!
He's over there in Washington
But I wish he was in HELL
'Cause I'm in Hot-Plate Heaven
At the Green Hotel
Things is slightly better now;
They hope we will forget
Their misery of 'TRICKLE DOWN'
An' jelly-bean etiquette
The Regal Presidential Style
Has simply not worn well
But neither has my rags
Up in the Green Hotel
I said the Green Hotel
I mean the Green Hotel
Been there once
The Green Hotel
We're goin' again
The Green Hotel
Neither has my rags
Up in the Green Hotel
Hey, pass me the dog-food!
I had a poncho when I was five, crocheted by my mom. It was orange, like pumpkin orange, just like my little sister's. There must have been a yarn sale. I remember wearing it to a concert, the first I ever attended (probably because my parents couldn't afford a babysitter), and wrapping it around my head because Bread, Bread, was too loud.
My parents were very authentically square twenty-somethings in the late sixties.
Crack said, "When Taylor Swift is an artistic icon, your culture is in the trash."
This is correct. Taylor is a brilliant manipulator of what the music industry has become, as well as a brilliant business person. She's very smart. But yeah, as an artistic icon? Sheesh. We've fallen so far. But then, I never got the whole Madonna thing either.
Zappa was a constant in my life. I listened to a lot of different music all the time. I'd bounce from American jazz to Brazilian jazz to rock, to country rock, to classical, to prog rock, to reggae, to...whatever. And always...Zappa would appear almost as a refreshment, washing away the other stuff when I needed a change.
Plus- aside from quoting Benny Hill or Monty Python, Frank Zappa was the only other person whose lines we could pull and use to insert into any conversation for the needed impact. (which, often enough was met with blank stares and quizzical looks- good enough for me.) "Nice to see you, Bob, how's it going? How's the kids? Great."
Zappa is, without doubt, the worst rock musician of any renown. Nobody listens to him. I’m an avid listener of Sirius Radio. His stuff is never played because it’s awful. Zappa had zero melodic sense. The stand up comic bit was funny for one listening, and then the pseudo music was unlistenable bullshit.
Even in Woodstock, no musician actually listens to or plays Zappa, although every one professes to be in awe of his intellectual brilliance. I’m a veteran of decades of jam sessions. Nobody has ever called out a Zappa tune to play.
Nobody can stand to listen to Zappa. But everybody feels obliged to salute his genius. What in the hell was it?
Good God you authentic hipsters make me want to puke. You're all so fucking cool, I feel like I should put on a sweater.
I got picked up by one of Zappa's ex drummers while hitchhiking, and he kept me entertained with stories, mostly from Vegas. At the time he picked me up he was selling clothes tagging gadgets. He said it was a good job that allowed him to choose when to play.
Jamie said...
"My parents were very authentically square twenty-somethings in the late sixties."
According to this crowd, when it comes to Zionism, Einstein was MC SQUARE
The man who advised America's youth against eating yellow snow deserves at least some respect.
Fidelity or authenticity?
authentic (adj.)
mid-14c., autentik, "authoritative, duly authorized" (a sense now obsolete), from Old French autentique "authentic; canonical" (13c., Modern French authentique) and directly from Medieval Latin authenticus, from Greek authentikos "original, genuine, principal," from authentes "one acting on one's own authority," from autos "self" (see auto-) + hentes "doer, being" (from PIE root *sene- (2) "to accomplish, achieve"). The sense of "real, entitled to acceptance as
Zappa was one of those dudes both ahead of his time and perfectly able to see the time he lived in for what it was. Also one of those musicians that other musicians listen to (like J J Cale) and Zappa's band Necessity was often name-dropped.
Hipsters had a liberal (i.e. divergent) orientation.
That said make love, not Spring.
Lose your political congruence ("=").
Diversity of individuals, minority of one. #NoJudgment #NoLabels
#HateLovesAbortion
There has always been star-making machinery behind the popular song.
We tend to think that contemporary popular music is worse than before because there hasn't been time to weed out the authentically bad.
That said, I'd take hours of Zappa over ten minutes of the Dead any day.
I don't know much about rocknroll, but I know what I like.
Artistic tastes are funny. On this thread we have testimonials from actual musicians (I'm just a big ear) that Zappa is a musical genius or a complete fraud.
One of my old friends was a very good guitar player who played nights and weekends after settling down from years on the road. He used to say that Clapton was overrated and that the Stones were a terrible band.
I can get with Zappa's bottomless skepticism and ridicule of all and sundry, but I find his personality and his work, in general, to be puerile and self-righteously smug, not to mention too self-consciously "avant garde." In short, he comes across like the smart smart-ass teen-age cynic who is funny in small doses but tiring and then irritating with continued exposure.
I enjoy only one entire album of his: Weasels Ripped My Flesh, a compendium of live and studio recordings from various sources. I have enjoyed a handful of other of his separate tunes, (no more than a half-dozen, if that) all from the era of his original Mothers. There is nothing of his post-1970 that I can tolerate. To see him perform live--as I have only on film and video--ratchets up the irritation level even more, as his self-conscious physical "conducting" of his band seems like more showing off. His later stone-faced and humorless lecturing responses in televised discussions with public figures whose ideas and policy recommendations he deplored (for good reason) just caps it all. Even though I probably agree with most or all of his opinions, he just rubbed me wrong in (most of) his musical and personal presentation.
97% of the time, he was a drag and unfunny bore.
As someone else above points out, Zappa's high-school pal Captain Beefheart, (Don Van Vliet, ne: Don Vliet), was a far better avant-garde composer and performer, producing music superior to anything Zappa ever produced. (However, to be honest, Van Vliet was a tyrant and bully to his band, playing them off against each other, and subjecting them to treatment that has been seen in abusive cult leaders, whereas Zappa was evidently a fair and decent employer and bandleader to his musicians.)
Zappa. Never could be Freddy Mercury, and was pissy about it.
Finally, an audience for the joke I thought of years ago that no one ever 'got'! Not that I tried it more than once or twice.
Q. If Frank Zappa had made an album about filial ingratitude, what would he have called it?
A. Dweezils Ripped My Flesh.
Geez, Dee Dee Ramone made more sense.
Einstein loved Zappa.
He wanted Zappa to be the president of awesomeness.
Robert Cook said...
"As someone else above points out, Zappa's high-school pal Captain Beefheart, (Don Van Vliet, ne: Don Vliet), was a far better avant-garde composer and performer, producing music superior to anything Zappa ever produced."
And that, my friends, is when I got mad enough to slap somebody. I mean, give me a fucking break. Zappa produced Captain Beefheart, so Beefheart never did anything better than Zappa, because it was Zappa making Beefheart sound better. He also had a hand in the careers of Alice Cooper, Missing Persons, George Duke, and many, many more.
And, of course, this crowd won't give Zappa points for having one of the first totally integrated rock bands (next to Sly Stone) with not only minorities but FEATURING a woman (Ruth Underwood) on xylophone, of all things. AND ALL PLAYING DIFFICULT FUCKING AVANT GARDE AND JAZZ ROCK MUSIC. That's still totally unheard of.
And who else could I turn to for Anti-NewAge song when the rest of you fuckers were down with the 5th Dimension and trying to get everyone else into it? How about taking Peter Frampton's 'I'm In You' to task for his fake sentimental bullshit - at the height of his fame - and basically telling him to suck his dick? Gut-busting Conservative humor - about gays? Only Zappa dared. Only Zappa made songs for real nerds, too.
I could go on, but then I'd never stop. Few artists will ever hope to match the range that man carved out for himself. I listen to him almost every day, as a reminder I lived when genius walked the Earth, before leaving us with all these fucking losers who think Taylor Swift and Dylan Mulvaney represent great art, or even art at all.
The world is definitely less grand for having lost him so early.
I find his personality and his work, in general, to be puerile and self-righteously smug, not to mention too self-consciously "avant garde." In short, he comes across like the smart smart-ass teen-age cynic who is funny in small doses but tiring and then irritating with continued exposure
Well put, pretty much my view as well.
To his credit, I think he easily could have written many hit songs if wanted to. Bobby Brown had a traditonal pop song melody with very crude lyrics. It actually reached #1 in Norway and Sweden and #4 Germany. Reminds me of Howard Kaylan of the Turtles, and also Mothers of Invention, writing "Elenore" as a parody of their hits song "Happy Together", never thinking anyone would take it seriously. It ended up being a big hit.
"One of my old friends was a very good guitar player who played nights and weekends after settling down from years on the road. He used to say that Clapton was overrated and that the Stones were a terrible band."
Both true. Clapton is a capable guitar player, deeply steeped in and conversant with American blues music, but he is boring. He doesn't bring any real personality to his playing. The Stones, musically, are a limited band. Mick Jagger's stage performance (which I have only seen on film) is comical. The only thing they had going for them was their songs. In their first half-dozen or 10 years of existence, they produced a sturdy body of good songs. As live performers, they are mostly mediocre. (They were at their best musically in the early to mid-70s when Mick Taylor was their lead guitar player.)
Music fans CRINGE over their Spotify Wrapped - with one user calling their top songs 'too embarrassing to be posted anywhere'
A world without real artists to prod us is just CRINGE.
Music fans CRINGE over their Spotify Wrapped - with one user calling their top songs 'too embarrassing to be posted anywhere'
A world without real artists to prod us is just CRINGE.
Everyone has a different vision of what "authentic" is.
Many of us conservative Latinos have that problem. The progressives tell us that we aren't "real Latinos" because we don't blindly support the Democrats.
My old friend used to provoke others with his opinions; I wasn't a big enough fan of either Clapton or the Stones to care, but it was interesting to watch.
Shouting Thomas:
Nobody listens ... no musician ... Nobody has ... Nobody can stand
I sense a bias in your reporting.
We no doubt hang with different crowds.
The dust blows forward ’n the dust blows back.
Back in the day, Zappa had one of the coolest houses I’ve ever seen.
Shouting Thomas said...
Zappa is, without doubt, the worst rock musician of any renown. Nobody listens to him. I’m an avid listener of Sirius Radio. His stuff is never played because it’s awful. Zappa had zero melodic sense. The stand up comic bit was funny for one listening, and then the pseudo music was unlistenable bullshit. . . etc
My feeling. Kind of like how hardly anyone's actually read Gravity's Rainbow but Pynchon is still somehow this god of modern literature.
Dr Weevil up there deserves some acknowledgment....
{golf clap}
"When Taylor Swift is an artistic icon, your culture is in the trash."
When Tupac is an artistic icon, black culture is in the trash.
Never a huge Zappa fan, "puerile and self-righteously smug" sums it up pretty well. I listened to Hot Rats about a year ago and liked it. It's an instrumental album so that might explain it. And I remember liking some stuff off of Shut Up and Play Your Guitar. He should have taken his own advice.
"Even in Woodstock, no musician actually listens to or plays Zappa, although every one professes to be in awe of his intellectual brilliance. I’m a veteran of decades of jam sessions. Nobody has ever called out a Zappa tune to play."
Because Zappa wrote compositions, not head arrangements. One of the reasons Zappa didn't allow drugs or alcohol is that his music was difficult and written out--you had to be able to sight read to play in his bands.
"Nobody can stand to listen to Zappa. But everybody feels obliged to salute his genius. What in the hell was it?"
This is the sort of all-encompassing statement that often appears here in Althouse Land (I've lost count of the number of "Dylan can't sing" posts), as if it were self-evident and irrefutable. Plenty of people don't like Zappa, but anyone whose catalog still sells on CD and in vinyl reissues would seem to have at least a few listeners.
Here's a link to Holiday in Berlin, Full Blown, a pretty amazing piece music, both as composition and playing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FccwMLnWPls
Zappa's closing solo is an example of how his guitar playing was an extension of his composition, not just self indulgence. There's plenty more worth hearing in his discography. I have nearly all of it. Things did thin out a bit in the mid to late 80s, but it's not unusual for artists to have a lull, and if Zappa had lived, he might have bounced back strongly.
If he had a fault, it was that he played and recorded somewhat compulsively and should perhaps have held back some things that were only so-so. Still, Freak Out; We're Only In It for the Money; Uncle Meat; Burnt Weany Sandwich; Overnight Sensation; One Size Fits All; Hot Rats; and loads more are great records that hold up well.
Narr said...
There has always been star-making machinery behind the popular song.
I love that song.
On Frank Z , I appreciate some of his work, but a lot is very pretentious, and quite boring. There are some jems, though, and, overall, I'm A fan.
Who could imagine?
Shouting Thomas said...
Zappa is, without doubt, the worst rock musician of any renown. Nobody listens to him. I’m an avid listener of Sirius Radio. His stuff is never played because it’s awful.
Zappa isn't played on Sirius because Sirius is terrible. I have two legacy lifetime subscriptions to XM, which was taken over by Sirius. XM had much better music than Sirius and,yes, they did play some Zappa. I gave my subscriptions to my wife, who has no ear for music, and an ex friend, who I now hate.
I did a large comment, with lots of links to examples of Zappa's greatness, but it never showed up here.
Weird.
eefhearty, Shouting Thomas said...
"Zappa is, without doubt, the worst rock musician of any renown. Nobody listens to him. I’m an avid listener of Sirius Radio. His stuff is never played because it’s awful."
Which doesn't explain why there's a statue to him in Lithuania, for his music sustaining them during their revolution, or why Classical artists still analyze his music online long after he's dead - and love it..
Zappa also launched the careers of Captain Beefheart, Alice Cooper, Missing Persons, George Duke, and many more, while working with the best musicians rock has ever known, and writing music still being performed by symphonies and orchestras around the world, but - unfortunately - not by hacks like Shouting Thomas, or on silly Sirius Radio.
Shouting fucking Thomas: He's so gay.
My law school roommate was a huge Zappa fan. I never got it. Seems like Zappa always overdid everything. More shouting for attention than trying to create anything worthwhile.
I find myself in agreement with Shouting Thomas and Robert Cook.
Heh.
The broken link, above, to Music For Nerds: Let's Make The Water Turn Black
Joe Bar said...
"Zappa isn't played on Sirius because Sirius is terrible,...I gave my subscriptions to my wife, who has no ear for music, and an ex friend, who I now hate."
Amen.
For a composer whose music was unliked, riffs from his writing occur in a plethora of pieces ranging all over the place, notably from "Peaches in Regalia".
Oh, here's the score for "Peaches en Regalia", the writings of a terrible musician.
@Crack:
I've had that happen with Blogger too. It's possibly an overrunning of their text limit which linkages make noticeably longer than what's visible.
Shouting Thomas: "Zappa is, without doubt, the worst rock musician of any renown".
Agreed. His music is mostly unlistenable. But he was not really a rock musician. He was a pop culture iconoclast clothed in a composer skin. He shared strikingly brilliant visions that kept people coming back, hoping that he would some day produce something easier to listen to.
Take it away, Bob...
I asked as nice as I could
If my job would
Somehow be finished by Friday
Well, the whole damn weekend
Came 'n' went, Frankie
Wanna buy some mandies, Bob?
'N' they didn't do nothin'
But they charged me double for Sunday
You know, no matter what you do,
They gonna cheat 'n' rob you
Then they'll send you a bill
That'll get your senses reelin'
And if you do not pay
They got computer collectors
That'll get you so crazy
'Til your head'll go through th' ceilin'
Yes it will!
-Flakes
Joe Smith said...
"When Tupac is an artistic icon, black culture is in the trash."
Bullshit. You got on and pretend white culture is all about Opie and Andy going fishing, while black American life is too dark to deal with. I don't buy it. Just like with the Palestinians, you don't want to look at the results of your prejudice.
I was friends with Humpty-Hump, who gave Pac his start, and his shine was bright, right from the beginning. That man was the son of a Black Panther, who was shot 5 times and lived to tell about it. That's practically fucking Superman. Compared to Johnny Cash, pretending he shot a man just to watch him die, his was a whole other level of art. He persuasively acted in movies and the whole world knows his name. What's not to love?
You got any icons who've defied death? Pac was shot four more times before he died - after lingering for six days. 50 Cent was shot 9 times and he's still a boss. And they're not alone. Black culture is made of uncommonly strong men. You don't even know.
You're just embarrassed by the very traits the world admires about Americans - because it's blacks - and not white cowboys killing Indians.
LakeLevel said...
"His music is mostly unlistenable."
Or you don't get it. That's a possibility. A distinct possibility. I dare you: What's 'unlistenable' about this?
In order to 'get' Zappa, for starters, you've got to know and love gut-bucket Doo-Wop and Vocal Groups. That's the anchor. If you're not there (and, for all the comments about his humor, I gather y'all ain't) then you're lost. A song like Yellow Snow has little resonance, beyond being an extravagant goof, and not taking an overlooked-but-extremely important genre of music to new heights. All his other influences - Stravinsky, Varese, Miles Davis, Johnny 'Guitar' Watson, etc. - get in the way. And he'll throw them all at us at once sometimes. A feast.
Whatever. He brings me joy and I'm hard to please. That's what matters.
Frank mentored Lowell George and gave him his start. For that, let alone his artistry, sense of humor and ability to cut through the bullschiff, I am eternally grateful.
”Zappa produced Captain Beefheart, so Beefheart never did anything better than Zappa, because it was Zappa making Beefheart sound better.”
Zappa only “produced” one of Beefheart’s albums, TROUT MASK REPLICA, and there really isn’t much noticeable “production.” It’s basically recordings of the band performing each song live. Beefheart’s vocals were recorded separately and dubbed over the instruments. Zappa’s biggest contributions to Beefheart was helping Beefheart become more noticed, and adding him to the Zappa band for a tour in 1975 or so when Beefheart’s band had left him and he needed a paying gig. Zappa in no way contributed to Beefheart’s music.
I'm reading Shouting Thomas' post and wonder why he's shouting.
For 'nobody' liking Zappa, why did you try so hard to convince us?
"I did a large comment, with lots of links to examples of Zappa's greatness, but it never showed up here. Weird."
Thanks for the heads-up. That went into spam. I got it out.
"I've had that happen with Blogger too. It's possibly an overrunning of their text limit which linkages make noticeably longer than what's visible."
It's that the spam filter is perceiving it as spam. If you go over the word limit, it will tell you when you try to publish and you can edit or break it into 2 comments.
Ann Althouse said...
"Thanks for the heads-up. That went into spam. I got it out."
Thank you.
Here's an artist saying playing with Zappa made better musicians
"Here's an artist saying playing with Zappa made better musicians"
I watched the recent Zappa documentary and at one point Ruth Underwood, who studied percussion at Ithica College and Julliard, started to tear up when she talks about how much it meant to her to play his music. It was a challenge for her, and one she welcomed.
"Zappa had zero melodic sense." Another sweeping statement that reveals the person who made it didn't bother to listen to Zappa's music. All of Hot Rats is melodic, "Orange County Lumber Truck," "Inca Roads," "Montana." There's certainly music by Zappa that isn't traditional pop, but he knew how to write earworms when he wanted to.
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