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Music / Musik » alt.fan.frank-zappa » Son knows best
| Son knows best [message #283539] |
Do, 22 Juni 2006 06:17 |
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http://www.calendarlive.com/music/cl-wk-pop22jun22,0,5561000 .story?coll=cl-home-more-channels
Frank Zappa's music is brought to life for a new generation by his
ardent offspring.
By Josef Woodard, Special to The Times
Virtuosic composer-bandleader-guitarist-prankster Frank Zappa met his
premature demise, from prostate cancer, in 1993, at age 52. If
anything, the subsequent years have made it clearer that Zappa's work
belongs in a genre all its own. On planet Zappa, extreme musical
sophistication, outrageous comic twists and a bad-boy perspective on
progressive rock collide.
Such singularity comes into sharper focus when his complex - yet also
nasty and fun - music is played live, and correctly. Angelenos are
getting a chance to hear it this year, through projects directly linked
to Zappa's history. In April, the Grande Mothers, featuring alumni Don
Preston, Roy Estrada and Napoleon Murphy Brock from Zappa's band
Mothers of Invention, played tightly machined versions of Zappa music
at REDCAT.
ADVERTISEMENT
And on Friday at the Wiltern, the band Zappa Plays Zappa returns from a
successful tour of Europe and the East Coast, landing in the city where
Zappa reared his family and launched his adventures. A labor of love
and, well, plain labor, the band was assembled by son Dweezil Zappa, a
nimble guitarist himself, and a passionate advocate for his father's
work.
"My real goal is to let the music speak for itself, and give it a live
platform," Dweezil says by phone from Detroit. "That's the thing that
has been missing for so long."
A showbiz kid who has worked in television and made metal-flavored
music under his own name, Dweezil, 36, is the second-born in the Zappa
brood. He's sandwiched between older sister Moon Unit (the "oh my God"
vocals on the fluke Zappa hit "Valley Girl") and younger siblings Ahmet
and Diva.
>From the start, Dweezil recognized the questions he'd face from
die-hard Zappa fans. "Before we played a single show," he says, "a lot
of people were very skeptical that I would be able to pull it off in
any way, shape or form. Now, having done 30 shows, people recognize
that I have put the time in. It is possible to make this music sound as
authentic as can be without Frank."
Response so far has been mostly flattering. After last week's concert
at Manhattan's Beacon Theater, the New York Times ran the headline
"Best Band He Never Heard in His Life." Reviewer Nate Chinen wrote that
Dweezil "led a sharp assemblage of musicians in a program complete with
harrowing intricacies, inscrutable grandiosities and several of his
father's alumni as featured guests."
Zappa's music is distinct from virtually any other, before or since,
through its blend of theatricality, heavy doses of satire, rock 'n'
roll audacity, and also for its fiendish difficulty, tinged as it is by
jazz and classical ideas. With its spidery lines and cerebral
arrangements, heavy lifting is required of its musicians.
In Zappa the Younger's case, preparation translated to some serious
effort honing his skills. As he says, "to do it in the way that I knew
it could be done, and should be done meant that I needed to spend
several years on my own, in my own autodidactic bubble, and learn the
music."
He described his learning curve as resulting in "a complete guitar
makeover. I changed my whole physical picking technique, sort of akin
to training yourself how to walk differently. It was a very challenging
process, but that's just what this job required, for me."
He then sought out young musicians able to tackle the difficult
songbook. He was aiming young, partly because he seeks to appeal to
young audiences. "I also thought there would be a whole other style of
enthusiasm from younger musicians," he notes. "Another purpose was that
I wanted to make sure that I got to train the band the way I wanted to
train the band, and not have it be all about people who formerly played
with Frank."
On tour, the band does include former Zappa mates guitarist Steve Vai,
drummer Terry Bozzio and, again, vocalist Brock.
Despite the family brand, Dweezil insists that his "goal is not to try
to pretend to be Frank, or to step into Frank's shoes, which is the
mistake a lot of people make. This is just about just playing the music
and trying to do it as authentically as possible.
"There are plenty of people who think that it requires rearranging and
putting their own stamp on it. I think that's a very bad approach to
Frank's music, because he's a real composer."
Their nearly three-hour show covers a broad span of Zappa's career, but
focuses on the early '70s, from such albums as "Overnight Sensation,"
"Apostrophe" and "One Size Fits All."
Will it be an ongoing project? "I would hope so," he says. "There's
clearly a treasure trove of material there."
Zappa's discography is close to 70 albums, including posthumous
releases.
The music, Dweezil says, "will hopefully be better and better
understood by many more audiences, as opposed to the years that have
gone by where he's just described as some sort of satirical iconoclast
with 'hairpin turns in his music' and stuff like that."
Zappa Plays Zappa
Where: Wiltern LG, 3790 Wiltern Blvd., L.A.
When: 7 p.m. Friday
Price: $42.50 to $52.50
Info: (213) 388-5005
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