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All Zapped Out

Frank Zappa must have rolled over in his grave when Tipper Gore drummed on daughter Diva's "When the ball drops". During the eighties he fought an anti-censorship battle against Gore. But that wasn't the only thing he was known for of course. He was also a prolific musician who dabbled in every genre. From jazz to doo wop, he tried it all and with success. Kindamuzik wanted to focus on this musician who was a schoolfriend of Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart). Who better to talk about Zappa than Wire contributor and Zappa connaisseur Ben Watson?

Tekst: Rick Evans

Publicatiedatum: 02 maart 2000

First, some questions about you personally. We know you were born in 1956, are British, and were educated at Cambridge. What was your degree in? What were your musical interests as a youth? Besides your books, what are the primary journals you publish in?
"At Cambridge University I studied history for two years, but changed to English Literature in my last year. I had been illicitly attending lectures by JH Prynne, and once I had seen some of his poetry, I wanted to be taught by him.
I had been reading Finnegans Wake by James Joyce since the age of fourteen, and this was the first time I had seen anything that was still more bizarre and unworldly!
I grew up in West London, Kew Gardens, near Richmond. My older brothers were into "R&B" - which in the 1960s in England meant Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies and the Rolling Stones, plus American urban blues artists like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. I also listened to classical music on record - Beethoven symphonies and quartets and Vivaldi and Wagner. I liked pop music as a kid. I used a small reel-to-reel Sony my father had brought back from Japan to tape songs I liked off Top Of The Pops on TV - The Move, Beatles, Kinks, New Vaudeville Band, Mannfred Man, Esther and Abi Ofarim. I studied violin, piano and oboe, but I was useless. I listened to We're Only In It For The Money because my older brother had a copy, but at age 12 ... It was like reading my brother's copies of Oz and Suck and Frendz and International Times - a vague aura of illicit sleaze excitement, but it didn't get under my skin.
I finally "heard" Zappa in Italy in 1974 when some Mexican students kept playing his records (The Grand Wazoo and Apostrophe(')). I loved the records because they were so detailed and thought-provoking and silly and complex (the same reason I liked Finnegans Wake). The music refuses to give up its actuality - the logic of its component parts - to any overriding moral or political concept. When I went up to Cambridge to study history, all I had was ten LPs by Mahler and soon a similar number by Zappa. I said to someone who played sax at college (his name was Andrew Blake) "I really like the sound of the tenor sax `blowing its nose' on Weasels Ripped My Flesh. How can I hear more music like that?" He replied: "Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler". That set me off in another direction.
As well as contributing to The Wire, I write two pages of "jazz" CD-reviews in Hi-Fi News every month. The editors let me define jazz as a wish (it has been particularly piquant writing about lo-fi in a Hi-Fi magazine!) and the fact that there is no particular musical policy (and no music advertising) in the magazine makes it possible to say what I want. I also write regularly for Jazziz and Signal To Noise in the States, and - more occasionally - for Radical Philosophy, Historical Materialism and other "academic" journals here."

Having been exposed to so much great, life enhancing, music, is it ever hard as a critic to review yet another run-of-the-mill CD? On one hand the 90s saw an explosion in increased access to wonderful independent artists. On the other hand, with this explosion, came the added difficulty of wading through tons of mind-numbing sameness. As a critic of music, does this every bother you?
"All the time! Fashion is the enemy of excellent music, so I try and listen broadly. However, the professionalization of "the critic" quickly becomes yet another way of spreading misinformation. How can one listener trawl the whole of world music for "the best"? It is baloney. On the other hand, I do like the idea that the-critic-with-integrity can fix on and support really good musicians or composers. So far I haven't had much success at that, though."

You mentioned earlier that you don't think you're very popular among self-styled "hardcore (Zappa) fans" as per the web. I think you're being a little hard on yourself, as this hardcore Zappa fan knows many fellow aficionados in "real life" that admire your work and consider you as having achieved the zenith in Zappa appreciation. Possibly your impression is skewed and those heavy internet users don't provide a true cross-section of the community of hardcore Zappa fans?
"Thank you, that is very flattering. However "not very popular with the hardcores" is an under-statement. The alt.fan.frank-zappa Usenet-discussion guys hate my guts! These so-called hardcores tell you you shouldn't call sped-up tape "sped-up tape" because it is actually tape recorded at a slow speed restored to "normal speed"! They diss each other to hell for failing to note that Unix stores its dates in integer variables of seconds elapsed since some date in the 80s - and then calculates early-century dates by subtraction - not actually as "number of seconds elapsed since 1 January 1901". They are so blinkered and competitive and petty they make the soles on your shoes want to curl off and die. Frank Zappa should have written a song about them. Oh he did, there is one on every album ("Pojama People", "I Come From Nowhere", "Yo' Mama" etc). It amazes me that Frank Zappa's absurd mutant monstrosity of an oeuvre can attract these pedantic cretins. It is embarrassing, in a way. It suggests that my claims about him as a liberatory force are void!"

Clearly Frank Zappa considered his lyrics more inspired than many critics gave him credit, but still the music was much more important to him. Having read much of your work, it's clear that you have a very strong understanding of Zappa's actual music, yet you devote so much of your writing to analyzing his lyrics or the meaning and attitude behind his lyrical delivery. As such, have you considered any incongruence between your emphasis on his words and his own emphasis on the music? Does it kind of boil down to lyrics provide more to talk about than the music?
"Total incongruance! The emphasis on the lyrics in Poodle Play was a menippean absurdity! The real point of Zappa is, as you rightly say, the music. That is why he was so big in Europe. The lyrics are a total mystery to Polish and Czech fans. I mean, they are to English-speaking listeners too, but US and UK pop consumers expect their own tastes and prejudices to be flattered. Les Fils de l'Invention, the French Zappa society, huddle together at all-day conferences and discuss the "meaning of the mud shark" and ask questions like "who is William Manchester?". C'est vraiment bizarre! As for me "over-emphasizing the lyrics", I never said Poodle Play was the last word on Zappa. I would LOVE to read an indepth, technically-adept analysis of Zappa's music, though a mere formal ("Schenkerian") analysis would not work. The music was not written for a standard orchestra. How do you write a formal analysis of a "Satisfaction" guitar lick or a mongoloid folk riff? You need to appreciate the semiotic politics of Zappa's eclectic use of world styles. I hoped that my citations from Adorno (eg on why composers in industrialised countries cannot employ pure folk forms without a taint of bad faith) would point the way to looking at Zappa's progressive use of modes and scales. I am hoping that Regine Gonsalves - currently proposing a doctoral dissertation on Zappa - will come up with something helpful.
I'm fascinated by Zappa's attraction towards eastern music. With Zappa, it's not hippie-dippie ersatz bullshit, it's as seriously critical of western (aka bourgeois) values as Coltrane's world-music project (aka "Free Jazz")."

Richard Kostelanetz's praise must give you a sense of accomplishment? What has given you your greatest sense of accomplishment? Could it be Zappa himself expressing his own appreciation of your work?
"Yes, Kostelanetz's words on me in the Zappa Companion certainly gave me a boost. It was also amazing to go to LA and read my writings to FZ ... but remember that the society FZ criticised so brilliantly hasn't rolled over and died because of his work. If I'm right, Zappa's miscegenation of high and low music was not postmodernist (redemptive) but dadaist (critical). The social divisions still hurt. Even in his reception of my texts, there was ambivalence and tension. He was a capitalist. He wanted to buy my soul, have me tour the States "selling Poodle Play" with campus appearances etc. He said he lost the thread every time I cited Adorno. One of the points of Negative Dialectics is that it does not think that mere thought is a solution to the world's problems."

One recent book that does come to mind is John F. Szwed's "Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra." I mention this, as I see a certain connection between the two artists as musical visionaries, and Szwed's attempts to comprehensively overview Sun Ra's musical output as you did for Zappa. Although Sun Ra was largely a big band and avant-garde jazz artist, the wide and adventurous stylistic path he paved in jazz reminds me of Zappa's contribution to music. Any comments on Szwed, his book, or parallels between the two artists?
"Szwed's book is excellent. Sun Ra was fantastic. His dialectic was so extreme, he pushed the impossible at warp speed and reoccupied the infantile utopia annexed by Walt Disney Inc. Ra's music is communist and collective and electric as well as disciplined, more like Captain Beefheart than Frank Zappa. However, if you sit and listen to Astro Black (Ra) and One Size Fits All (Zappa) and think about the stars and synthesizers and improvisation, you get an inkling of the same cosmic materialism."

Regarding much of your analysis in "The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play," certainly you knew you were unveiling insights into his lyrics and even his music that Zappa himself didn't consciously see? Did he ever express this to you when you had the chance to meet him?
"This is the crux of the biscuit ("He knows not what he doth ... but maybe he doth!" as Theodore Bikel put it in 200 Motels). After I'd read out the Phaedo/Fido section to Frank Zappa and friends, FZ nodded at my suggestion that artists move symbols around intuitively and reach formulations that are more apt than they ken. I look at it this way. I do not go to art to find a leader or a prophet. If the art is valuable it has a certain objectivity, it crystallises certain forces of tension in society. I am for a radically democratic use of art, one that is more interested in the artistic material than the celebrity artist. "What Zappa really thought" becomes a black hole of inane speculation. However certain things are THERE. Read the Phaedo, listen to Apostrophe('), the correspondence is scary. Poodle Play was written because it dawned on me that Zappa was tapping historical motifs he did not have the classical education to employ conscioussly. In the end, you have to break with the ideology of creative individualism and develop some notion of the social determinants of artistic form. It is in this sense - not because he supported trade unions or talked about Karl Marx - that Zappa is a "socialist" artist rather than a "bourgeois" one. He makes you see how our own individuality - our precious "subjectivity" - is a social construction, and hence a political quesstion. If we allow the Right to roll us back to the 50s you will become a DIFFERENT PERSON."

Before the formal part of this interview you indicated that superficial journalistic accounts can be tedious. This of course is especially true to Zappa fans, who, as you mentioned, can become somewhat obsessive. The last thing they want to read is some journalist referring to Zappa as the prototypical hippie. This does bring up some interesting questions with regard to the general journalistic overview of Zappa. For example, although the tide seems to be turning, for years there seemed to be a journalistic consensus his best work ended prior to the Flo and Eddie days, with little regard to the many classics that came afterwards. One has to wonder if a few of the earlier writers got some sort of standard ball rolling that still perpetuates itself. Do you think there is some truth to this?
"The whole of Rolling Stone discourse is predicated on the baby-boomer myth that something great-but-unsustainable happened in the 60s. Everything is fitted to that. It justifies the lifestyles of the editors and businesspersonss who made their pile exploiting that culture. Rock music is reduced to an adolescent outburst that "must" succumb to capitalist business-as-usual. That is why Zappa hated being relegated to the category of "rock". It all depends where you stand. I respect Savage Pencil (the British cartoonist who writes music-jounalism under the ludicrous pseudonym "Edwin Pouncey") when he says that he craves the special aroma of the original Mothers. Marco Maurizi - the Adornoite Zappologist at Rome University - said something similar when he pointed out that the 1982 tour band could not play "Mary Lou" with the sincerity the Mothers applied to "Directly From My Heart To You" (if you want to ask him more, contact him on amnesiavivace@tiscalinet.it). However, emotional sincerity is only one facet of music, and I hate the way rock journalists make it the sole criterion. You end up with the monochrome, politically-correct mewling of the Manic Street Preachers, whereas I want the "see-what-you've-got" objectivity (Verfrendungstechnik) of The Specials and Evil Dick and the KLF. Perhaps it is best when they are combined (Pence Eleven). Though it took me years to see it, Man From Utopia is actually a masterpiece of bizarre vocal layerings, intertwinings and contrasts, like nothing ever done in music before or since. I would not be without such challenges to the Norm, such obstacles to the media notion that your first reaction to things is the only authentic one, that appearance is all. It is a good sign that no-one agrees on the "best" FZ album. At Poodle Play readings I like introducing young Steve Vai fans to old MOI purists! Fashion and peer-group conformity alienates generations from each other, preventing revolutionaries and rebels from learning from the past. Zappa is a good antidote in my opinion."

I thought your colleague Mike Fish's assessment of "The Grand Wazoo" damned the album with faint praise. Yet I find the album to be among one of his most musically exciting in its unique combination of orchestrated big band rock. It's like jazz-rock from a parallel universe, far from the usual fusion of the period. Joachim E. Berendt in his book "The Jazz Book" even says that "The Grand Wazoo" is possible Zappa's highpoint from a jazz perspective. What's your take on "The Grand Wazoo?"
"Mike Fish is an imbecile. He likes Bing Crosby. No wonder he cannot tell that The Grand Wazoo is a masterpiece! Joachim E Berendt was perceptive about Zappa's "jazz" (and 200 Motels ... in fact, it must have been Berendt's remark on Zappa's Quixotic quest for sexual freedom that named Neil Slaven's righteous Zappa-bio, because Slaven doesn't read like a Cervantes afficionado and he has no imagination). But Berendt couldn't relate to Zappa's later stadium-rock antics and perversions."

Certainly Zappa deserves a place in Down Beat's Hall of Fame, and I was glad when he received the honor. Of course I was disappointed in the myopic, yet wholly predictable, response from many jazz fans who felt that Zappa should not >be in the Hall of Fame. One has to think that if Zappa had only released the more jazzy "Hot Rats," "King Kong", "Burnt Weeny Sandwich," "The Grand Wazoo," "Waka/Jawaka," "Sleep Dirt," and "Jazz From Hell," and didn't release all the others, his Hall of Fame honor wouldn't even be questioned. Why is it so hard for some jazz fans to accept the validity of Zappa as an accomplished jazz artist?
"Because jazz - like the rest of modern art - has become a symbol of class. That is why really good jazz becomes `anti-jazz' (eg Hession/Wilkinson/Fell+Jaworzyn). Frank Zappa's music is a litmus test for snobbery."

When one looks at Zappa's catalog as a whole, the actual number of truly silly songs, worthy of the Dr. Demento show, such as "Why does it Hurt When I Pee?," or "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow," are few. Even the tracks on his most hilarious album "Sheik Yerbouti" make a statement beyond just being goofy. For example, I used "Broken Hearts Are for Assholes", and the mock emotional build-up of "I'm In You", to convey to my musically uninformed brother that the real banality is in the standard love song, and that these two somewhat vulgar Zappa tracks, ultimately posses much more meaning. Additionally, Zappa will more often use vocals simply to punctuate the music or to serve as jumping off points to often brilliant compositions. Why didn't Frank Zappa spend a little more time explaining just how complex his music was, mitigating the general lack understanding of his lyrics and educating us to the dadaist aspects of his vocals.
"I think you should publish the story about arguing with your brother. Do you have a tape-recording of your discussion? It sounds priceless! As a disciple of William Blake, I believe the physical entity that types the mythical/standardised "I" at this keyboard is actually the Real Deal. Hence I believe that songs about bodily emissions and ailments are entirely relevant. People cannot be "educated" into dadaism! That perpetuates precisely the reverence for authority it is designed to sabotage. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."

Of Zappa's big opus double albums (or more) nothing outside "Uncle Meat" has taken my breath away more than "Lather." Although not as trail blazing as "Uncle Meat", "Lather" seems to be a mid-career overview of what he was able to achieve up to that point in his mastery of composition, orchestration, stylistic breadth, and his guitar playing. It seems he had obtained a better command to successfully achieve such a far-reaching work than he was able with say with the earlier "200 Motels." Yet critically it often gets ho hum reviews. Is this just me, or do you think "Lather" is somewhat overlooked due it being from his later period? Did the fact that it first came out as four separate albums somehow dilute the historical value of "Lather?" I made the bad mistake of buying "Uncle Meat" (an album I simply can't get enough of today) as my first Zappa album when I was kid 22 years ago. I was so turned off, I didn't listen to him again for 10 years. What albums would you suggest to a Zappa novice interested in his music?
"I had a similar failed encounter with 200 Motels age 16 ("female sopranos? orchestral strings? yeeuck!"). I agree with you about LATHER. Indeed, in my Omnibus Guide To The Complete Music of FZ I left the bounds of correct grammar to opine: "discographical complexities should not detract from the fact that, Civilization Phaze III notwithstanding, L„ther was Zappa's VASTEST, MOST AMBITIOUS, MOST WIDE-RANGING AND MOST COMPLETE ARTWORK. Ever." Because Zappa's art is an antidote to musical identity-thinking (aka style-chauvinism/snobbery), people aren't always ready for it. People who turn "avant" (or "jazz") into support for their lifestyle and a rationale for moving forward in a class system do not want to be reminded of things they are now TOO MATURE to consider. However, in the abstract sense, Zappa's music is still better than anything else they can access. Thus Zappa sets a trap. However, there is no "easy way in". That is the point. Maybe it would be better to play Zappa to people who are starting to get interested in American foreign policy or biological weapons or whatever-happened-to-those-Nazi-scientists (have you read Alex Cockburn's Whiteout (Verso), by the way? phew!) rather than in what they think is "music"."

The thing I appreciate about most about Zappa is his total lack of concern with the boundaries between modern classical, jazz, and rock and the various sub-genres within each. He uses the styles separately, or mixed into a suite, or brilliantly woven together in one song. Moreover, he held the personal view that all styles, if done well, are equally valid ? no high or low brow. As hard as it is to concisely define Zappa's genius, if pushed to do so, isn't his single greatest contribution to music his sheer breadth in stylistic scope that he incorporated into his life's work?
"Yes, but hasn't "breaking down boundaries" become a bit of a toe-cringing cliche? It appears on every sad cyber-arts brochure and DJ-PR leaflet. What interests me is the venomous clarity of Zappa's deployment of various styles, and the bizarre splice of levity and authenticity in the performance. In fact, maybe it's his keen awareness of the **boundaries** between genres - the disputes at their borders, their social meaning - that allows his recombinations to be so sparkling and snazzy, so unPoMo soup-like. I mean, Frank Zappa does not sound like Sting or Butch Morris."

In some ways Zappa was the polar opposite to say Wynton Marsalis on a long continuum of musical appreciation and flexibility in utilizing various styles for one's own music. Does the "jazz is better than rock" and "fusion -- that ain't jazz," type of snobbery from the likes of Wynton Marsalis bother you? Do you feel that Wynton is completely missing the point that the history of jazz is one of constantly pushing into new directions?
"Well, Wynton Marsalis is the cultural spokesman for the black middle-class establishment in America. Those who preside over half-revolutions dig their own graves. Like the European bourgeoisies in 1848 when - frightened by the vociferous classes emerging beneath them (shopkeepers, artisans and workers) - they made pacts with the aristocracy (or "landed interests"), the new US black middleclass attempts to fossilise and curate what was once (with Bebop, with Coltrane) the music of world revolution. Obviously nothing creative can arrive from this social milieu (if it does, it'll rebel, join a hip hop editor!). As with today's concert performances of Beethoven, classicism obliterates the real meaning of music. However, unlike people in 1848, we do have the records! When I listen to Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders on Live In Seattle, I feel more in common with the turtle-kids and the longshoremen protesting against the WTO than I do with Marsalis (or his turncoat-ideologue Stanley Crouch)."

You do a lot of writing for the magazine "The Wire." In part, what seems to make "The Wire" a great music magazine is its eclectic and wide scope in featuring musical artists of all different styles. Can you think of a better archetype or poster boy for "The Wire" than Zappa?
"I wish this was so, but "The Wire" is not pro-Zappa."

Do his lyrics ultimately preclude him from such an honor?
"I don't think it's just the lyrics. The music is too satirical, too embarrassing, too "uncool", too full of surprises and challenges. Zappa isn't at home in "The Wire". They put Ian Penman's attack on Zappa (or "defence of rock/pop normalcy") on their website. Remember that "The Wire" is a clamour of different voices. I oppose what I see as the yuppification of "avant", but I get a lot of flak for these punky attitudes."

You've mentioned you think the dadaist spirit of Zappa lives in certain bands and musical subversives such as Dogbiz, Evil Dick, Pence Eleven, Culturcide, Ian Stonehouse, Diary, Simon Fell, Kenny Process Team. I must say (and being an indie music obsessive myself), I haven't heard of these artists. Can you focus for a moment on a couple of the above artist that your standard music nut might have a chance at finding through mail order or e->commerce (or even the record store), describe their sound and if you think any approach Zappa's genius?
"I am always prepared to expound on the merits of the DIY-Dada Esemplasm, the constituents of which have been specially selected because they comprehend the technical finesse and social daring required for zappological invention (there also seems to be some kind of scatological continuity lurking here - "like brown in Rembrandt").
***
DOGBIZ is an unsigned genius of tape-splicing. Since the age of 14 he has been training himself to cut together a motley as good as - if not better than - the interludes Zappa made for We're Only In It For The Money (Dogbiz also has a line in cheesy banal good-humour-truck-style chugalonga-melodies). He lives in Salford, Manchester. Warren Cuccurullo liked a tape of his "Entertainment Objects" and left a message on his answerphone once (Warren C's "it's really out there" is now part of Dogbiz's output/microstructure). Though I've been a longterm supporter of Dogbiz's (usually an indicator of extreme No Commercial Potential), his aesthetic philosophy is Pot Noodle Play (not Poodle Play). He's the least hi-tech of the esemplastic editor, is continually moving house and hence hard to trace. However, there is a track by him on the imminent Middle Class Records sampler (see PENCE ELEVEN below).
***
EVIL DICK is a another presentday composer who refuses to die. I wrote about him and his masterpiece COPROPHAGISM last year ("Evil Dick's Southern Bogey: Interview", Wire, no 179, January 1999). His "sense of humour" keeps getting in the way of academic funding and commercial sponsorship, but he can measure the distance between notes with a precision and grace that would make Vasari and Varese weep. His involvement with randomness and shitkicks begs every philosophical question since Diogenes. At least. His pungent ludicrosity may be visited on www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/3924/ or sampled on http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/14/evil_dick.html or e-mail him direct on rhemmings@aspects.net
***
PENCE ELEVEN are winsome pop tarts who write songs with titles like "Why Is St Sebastian A Gay Icon?" and "A Pea With The face Of A Tiny Screaming Buddha" and "Dressing Up So As Not To Get Beaten Up". They have founded a label - named with devastating lack-of-irony Middle Class Records (they haven't signed Wynton Marsalis yet) - and have a number of other acts like THF Drenching and Dallas Boner. If you can imagine the Incredible String Band crossed with Messiaen and produced by Stock, Aitken and Waterman, that is them. I interviewed them in The Wire, no 186, August 1999. They can be enquired after at nathan@supreme-concrete.co.uk
***
CULTURCIDE are my favourite Stateside band, but they returned-to-sender a letter I sent them, so I'm not talking to them at the minute. Tacky Souvenirs Of Pre-Revolutionary America shouted abuse at corporate rock non-entity soundtracks and circulates as a copyright-heretical underground tape. Home-Made Authority is a CD on Delayed Records which I love, especially "I Shot My Load On Telephone Road", a country song about sex chat-lines. if America has anything to equal The Members of beloved memory, it is Culturcide. Maybe one day we'll get them to fly over and play for us in Camden Town.
***
IAN STONEHOUSE is a riverine dadaist, moistly subtle - if Dogbiz is a curry-flavour Pot Noodle, Ian is flurry-savoured (he just needs a proper name instead of this annoyoying conceptual joke about brickbats and glass-houses). He has a CD in the offing.
DIARY are Leninist post-Fall expressionists, scary and angry, the favourite band of Full Strength, noted promoters at Kentish Town's Bull & Gate (the rockin' venue just by the famous Forum). Diary can be contacted at jplant@cix.compulink.co.uk
Bassist and composer SIMON H. FELL will doubtless be outraged to be listed in this dodgy company. He is the semi-respectable face of the Esemplasm, and I wrote about him in Jazziz for December 1999, where his interview appeared next to an advert for a "Holiday Album" featuring Peter Erskine on drums. He is another PDCWRTD!
***
KENNY PROCESS TEAM are the only combo who have mastered the polyrhythms of Trout Mask Replica (including Mats/Morgan - these Swedish virtuosi are amazingly precise, but it's such a chill repro I find their work parrot-like, unmediated by any creative comprehension/extension). KPT play surrealist thrift-store clutter instrumentals, warped surf, buellgrass bellybutton connivance. They are even better than your wonderful Raybeats. I can meditate on one of their finely-wrought tunes as long as I can on a composition by Thelonious Monk. Conveniently for you, Bingo has just brought out their first two vinyl albums - Surfin' With and Travelin' Light - on a single CD (distributed in the States by Southern, or amybingo@total.net). Well done Mr Sasha!
***
ESEMPLASM, by the way, is a neologism, and refers to poet ST Coleridge's coinage - launched in his Biographia Literaria (1817) - "esemplastic", meaning "shaping into oneness" ..."

Let me throw out a few of today's artists (and a couple of older ones, I don't expect you to respond to them all) that maybe don't sound a whole lot like Zappa, but often garner similar respect with regard to vision or talent, and respond any of them as you wish.
>Jim O'Rourke
>Bill Laswell
>John Zorn
>David Grubbs (and/or Gastr del Sol)
>Tortoise
>Sonic Youth
>Red Krayola
>Henry Threadgill
>Can
>Bobby Previte
>Bill Frisell
>Kronos Quartet
>Godspeed You Black Emperor
>Stereolab
"I like Threadgill and Frisell, otherwise I am afraid I find the list a bit tired and Wirey (I mean what exactly has Jim O'Rourke ever done for music?). Last great avant-yuppie music I heard was Werner Dafeldecker (Durian durian@t0.or.at), Noel Akchote (Rectangle http://rectangle.org) and Lunge (Acta www.shef.ac.uk/misc/rec/ps/efi/ehome.thml). Otherwise, for me it's the Dixie Chicks, old AC/DC vinyl, Beanie Man, JAZZ THAT COOKS (the recent High Note/Savant sampler), Eugene Chadbourne (how could a self-respecting zappologist miss him out?), String Trio of New York, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sabir Mateen, Jemeel Moondoc, Test, Roger Turner, Jef Lee Johnson. How trad! Real music, it's the new avant, folks."

Frank Zappa clearly learned much from Boulez, Stockhausen, and possibly Cage and of course Varese before them. In turn, Zappa helped turn many young adventurous rock fans onto the works of the pre and post-serialist composers and musique concrete artists. Who do your recommend to readers explore if they are interested in discovering some of today's "serious" composers?
"History doesn't repeat itself. In the mid-60s, serialism, musique concrete and atonality were undiscovered territory for pop and rock listeners. Now - because of Zappa's efforts, and The Wire, and Ambient, and niche-marketing - they're well known. I could mention the composers Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Finnissy, James Dillon, Chris Dench ... but they only really signify in the context of the minimalist/PoMo dreck they chafe against. Since the victory of PostModernism/the New Tonality "serious" copmposers aren't serious any more (look at Thomad Ades, John Tavener, Michael Nyman ... it's a joke!). My big thing today is Free Improvisation. I think practically any Derek Bailey or Lol Coxhill record has more interesting music on it than most of the Wire canon you list. Which is why I'm writing a book on Bailey ..."

Thurston Moore in The Wire (May, 98) said in regard to the current state of adventurous music "we're trying to figure out what happened that made avant-garde music be it classical, jazz or rock, the music of choice for the hip cognoscenti of young listeners." Moore goes on to say that he "saw it as a reaction to the commodification of punk rock." Do you agree that Moore's comments kind of encapsulate what has been happening the last few years?
"Yes. Thurston should know, he started it all off! And good for him. Marco Maurizi has also said interesting things about punk being the wrong negation of the mistakes of progressive rock. So we're having another go! Certainly, aspirations to freedom need to be both musical and politically "out" ... but at least punk did take the class issue head-on. Some of these downtowners seem so content to be artfart exclusives. I suspect there's more "avantgarde" music in Duke Ellington than is to be found in all this KnitFac feedback and fury. Did you hear Adam Lane's Hollywood Wedding (Cadence) - now THAT was worthwhile!"

Too often people will turn their musical hero into their life's hero, smoothing over the rough edges and viewing the artist as some sort of model to which aspire. Zappa was a musical genius, yet as a model human he left something to be desired. For example, his politics often seemed muddled. I personally find the one-dimensional depiction of him as being this family man bothersome, when his workoholism and infidelity clearly was not A-OK with his wife. Some of Zappa's sexist lyrics about women clearly bothered you. How do you view Zappa as a total human? What about Zappa the man (not the musician) do you admire the most, and the least?
"I think you're right. That is why I am not interested in limiting my interpretation of Zappa's art to his conscious intentions. I don't think it's possible for people to live "exemplary lives" under this system. Indeed, the difference between a critical revolutionary and a liberal moralist consists in grasping that fact. As far as I see it, Zappa lived like a conventional patriarchal bourgeois - but in his music I hear something different, and that is what interests me. I'm not into celebrities, role-models or saints. I can live my own life, thanks - but I could also do with some musical entertainment meanwhile!"

Before his death, Zappa finished a number of projects (Civilisation Phaze III, The Lost Episodes, Rage and the Fury - the music of Edgard Varese, Transfusion, Dance me this). The first two got released, but what happend to the rest?
" Gail Zappa has released Everything Is Healing Nicely (a title extracted from Hermann Kretzschmar's declamation of a text from a piercing mag), which is out-takes from Ensemble Modern's Yellow Shark rehearsals. Le Pingouin Ligote (which should have an acute accent on the last e, it is the journal of Les Fils de l'Invention, the Parisian Zappologists with a penchant for humour & philosophy, contactable on fdi@wanadoo.fr) was not very impressed - it is also over-priced (building palaces in Malibu to entertain prominent democrat politicians is not cheap, of course)."

How great of a loss to the musical world was Zappa's death? At 53, he wasn't old, but he wasn't young either. Do you think we got the best of his work? Do you feel any vacant musical gaps unfilled the way fans felt after the death of Coltrane or Hendrix?
"Zappa's early death was tragic and no, I don't think we got the best of his music. I feel a bit different about Coltrane and Hendrix because they died at a point when it seemed like the whole of capitalism might be overturned, so there were more political hopes riding on them. Frank Zappa was court-jester politically, so I miss him, but it's not that serious. But I wish I could ask him about Leni Riefenstahl's film The Blue Light and see if his extraordinary critique of yuppie fascism on Tisel Town was "prescience" (Gail Zappa's word for FZ's strange ability to touch on things without doing the homework), or put there on purpose ..."

http://www.kindamuzik.net/achtergrond/frank-zappa/all-zapped-out/492/
Meer Frank Zappa op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/frank-zappa