Monday, December 08, 2008
On The Fifth Day Of Zappadan....
A Zappadan Miracle...Look what I found for you! A 1968 Live on the BBC performance of King Kong by the Mothers of Invention. This is basically the same band I wrote about in my Case History Post a few years later. This also features Jimmy Carl Black...the Indian of the Group as well as Motorhead Sherwood, Don Preston, Bunk Gardner, Roy Estrada, Ian Underwood and of course, Frank. They had evolved into a small disciplined orchestral group capable of playing complex time signatures and musical ideas as well as the greasiest rock on the planet.
This is arrangement of King Kong that appears on Uncle Meat.
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6 comments:
Yes quite cool ensemble sound; tho' ah think FZ could have used a bit more jazzy chromaticism (Kenton, Ellington, etc) in his arrangements: he tended to rely on that "jam-rock modality" sound. It was quite an improvement on the moptops or hippie hymns, however.
The early Steely Dan (countdown to ecstasy) developed that rock-jazz sound (tho' Fagen tends to be a bit schlocky at times). Rock-jazz truth lies somewhere between FZ-Mothers and SD
Hmm. rock jazz can go vertically or horizontally....
Steely dan never quite did it for me.
Rock Jazz or Jazz Rock, are they the same? Zappa was probably more influenced by and influenced Mahavishnu and The Eleventh House...
There was a lot of stuff happening here in Europe as well that never made it to your local record store.
"""Rock Jazz or Jazz Rock, are they the same? """
Not exactly. Rock jazz more like, er, FZ mothers, early Dan I would say, maybe Return to Forever. Then it turns into fusiony stuff--jazz rock.
Mahavishnu ok. A bit pretentious: plus he doesn't really play through changes. At least the Dan play some complex music, tho' yes it's a bit schmaltzy at times. Caves of Altamira type stuff tho' fairly close to real jazz.
I have ECM records (and catalog), so fairly familiar with the tradition. That said, I prefer like Bill Evans best (and Evans/Miles D Kind of Blues) over about any rock, or jazz rock. FZ put his shoulder to the wheel, and did some cool stuff (but quite a bit of noise), but I just don't think he's the god of experimental/rock/jazz. etc. that some take him to be. Listen to the jazzier stuff--its' really like George Duke, or the Underwoods, the horn players at work, even if he wrote it out. Then FZ steps in and does Hendrix riffs, more or less. Tasty, but not even really Mahavishnu
Perzoso, it's the almagam..the total of the elements that define something.
Zappa is a lot of things to a lot of people. For me, when I first heard him in 1965, it was a bridge into another world. It enabled me to listen to a lot of different things and hear them as music.
I like "free jazz". I like music that might sound like an industrial accident to someone else.
I played punk rock and other genres of rock for 15 or so years.
I listen to everything...I even like a snappy polka...
You think FZ and his bands like up to Ornette or Dolphy? I'm not so fond of free-jazz-- more of a jazz traditionalist (50s be-bop, cool jazz, Kenton, Ellington, noir, Mingus, etc.--) but I don't think FZ or mothers did much advanced free-jazz playing. Wonder what Mingus thought (CM was not down with much rock, so I doubt he was much of FZ fan.).
That said, listen to like late Scriabin, Bartok/Kodaly, Igor S, the Schoenberg school: they had already done jazzy and atonal sounds, and complex rhythmic music (Bartok especially) starting like in 20-s. Frank's listening to that or studying the scores, maybe, ah suspect, but
more of a dilettante than a great......but it's true he did open the ears of many
a bit pompous, 'scuzi.
The Bartok-Kodaly free jazz-mazurka band. That would have rokked. Kodaly has sort of a dark, zappaesque sound now n then........boogie with Zoltan
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