After unleashing five albums
(two of them doubles) in 1979, Frank Zappa took all of 1980 off as a recording
artist. He continued to tour relentlessly, and he funneled much of his Sheik Yerbouti and Joe’s Garage money into his new home studio, which he ironically
called the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen, after the dead-end job Joe took in
“A Little Green Rosetta.”
The first project he intended
to assemble at UMRK was a triple live album called Warts and All, which soon collapsed under its own weight. It became
Crush All Boxes, a combination
live/studio album, and that slowly morphed into Tinseltown Rebellion (although material intended for the aborted
projects would appear on the next few Zappa releases). In fact, the cover of Tinseltown Rebellion is the same one
intended for Crush All Boxes, and you can still make out the original title
behind the new one.
Released in May of 1981, Tinseltown captures Zappa’s early-‘80s
band on their 1979-1980 U.S. tour. This band is Zappa’s most reliant on
synthesizers, with three keyboard players – Tommy Mars, Peter Wolf and Bob
Harris – trading off here. It also, significantly, features the debut of
guitarist Steve Vai, a Zappa disciple who would stay through 1984, and then
would go on to a solo career that mainly serves as a tribute to Frank. Vai is
an extraordinary player and composer in his own right, but his time with Zappa
forever colored what he does.
This tour was also the last
for drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, who plays on all but two of the songs on Tinseltown. Coliauta is one of the
finest drummers Zappa ever employed, although his talents are more evident on Joe’s Garage and the Shut Up ‘N Play Yer Guitar series. The
band also includes longtime Zappa collaborator Ray White, singer Ike Willis,
guitarists Warren Cuccurullo and Denny Walley, bassist Arthur Barrow and
percussionist Ed Mann.
Tinseltown
begins with two studio-enhanced tracks, “Fine Girl” and the nine-minute “Easy
Meat,” which introduce new drummer David Logeman. It is in the instrumental
midsection of “Easy Meat” where the newfound emphasis on synthesizers truly
becomes apparent, with Tommy Mars overdubbing blatting keyboard horns atop one
another. The effect is intricate, but dated, though Zappa’s guitar solo saves
things.
The following 13 tracks are
entirely live, with no overdubs, and they offer a strong glimpse of Zappa’s sound
and material during this period. The music is slightly more plastic, befitting
the era to come, and the songs performed with a wink. The album contains a
healthy mix of new songs and reinvented old tunes, including “Love of My Life,”
“I Ain’t Got No Heart” and a raucous run through “Tell Me You Love Me.” Hearing
the thick synthesizers crash through songs from Freak Out and Cruising With
Ruben and the Jets is fascinating, even if it feels a little disrespectful,
as is the keyboard-heavy take on “Peaches in Regalia” that closes the album.
The new songs continue
Zappa’s obsession with sexual and romantic foibles, and your enjoyment of this
album will likely depend on your reaction to the lyrics. Zappa has not quite
entered his bitter old man phase, but he can see it from here, and his words
are becoming even more sarcastic and sneering. Opener “Fine Girl” emphasizes
its subject’s willingness to do the dishes and laundry, before she “go down in
the evening, all the way down.” “Easy Meat” is about a sexual predator, who
“saw her tiny titties through her see-through blouse, I just had to take the
girl to my house,” where she “rub my head and beat me off with a copy of
Rolling Stone,” before he ditches her: “I told her I was late, I had another
date…”
“Bamboozled By Love” is
perhaps the most problematic. It is a parody of blues-style done-me-wrong
songs, in which Willis’ character threatens to kill the object of his
affection: “I ain’t the type for begging, I ain’t the type to plead, if she
don’t change those evil ways I’m gonna make her bleed, she can scream and she
can holler, bang her head along the wall, if she don’t give me what I want, she
ain’t gonna have no head at all…”
More successful, though no
less smirking, is the title track, an evisceration of the then-current music
scene. It follows a new wave band through their first record contract through
the selling-out process: “They used to play all kinds of stuff and some of it
was nice, some of it was musical but then they took some guy’s advice, to get a
record deal, he said, they would have to be more punk, forget their chops and
play real dumb or else they would be sunk…” The band “sells their ass, their
cock and balls” to “those record company pricks who come to skim the cream from
the cesspools of excitement where Jim Morrison once stood.” The music is filled
with clever references, and aside from some vague homophobia (“…leather groups
and plastic groups and groups that look real queer…”), this song is on target.
“The Blue Light” contains the
first released instance of a vocal technique Zappa would use more frequently in
the 1980s. He called it “breakdown” – it is similar to improvised scat singing,
but with far less tunefulness. In later years, Vai would be enlisted to
transcribe improvised breakdown singing and play it on the guitar along with
live recordings.
Whatever else can be said
about Tinseltown Rebellion, it
showcases a band that can play “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It” live, and that alone
deserves respect. It is a transitional release, one that showcases the
musicians who would play with Zappa throughout the early 1980s, and its new
material points forward to the likes of You
Are What You Is and Ship Arriving Too
Late to Save a Drowning Witch. It’s a perfectly fine, if inessential, live
document that heralds a new era in Zappa’s output.
Rating:
Worthy.
Which version to buy: The 1990s Ryko CD master introduced several errors –
cross-fades, drop-outs – to the mix, and though Ryko did issue a much-improved
version in 1998, it is nearly impossible to tell which version you have before
buying it. However, the 2012 Zappa/Universal remaster returns to the original
vinyl mix, and it sounds impeccable. This is the definitive Tinseltown Rebellion on CD.
Next week: Shut
Up ‘n Play Yer Guitar.
The word for Frank's neo-jazz sprechgesang is actually "meltdown", not "breakdown".
ReplyDeleteThe rest of the review disturbs me, quite frank-ly. You seem like you haven't quite grown up, and certainly haven't developed senses of either humour or proportion.
The joke in Easy Meat is that he REJECTS the girl, however turned on he was by her see-through blouse: the fact that she reads Rolling Stone is the big repellant-factor! (Or maybe she's too kinky for him).
Bamboozled... is, as you say, a parody, so pretending to either be terrified by, or feel wounded or affronted by, the lyrics misses the point entirely (and serves to make you look pathetic).
I believe Fine Girl is partly a parody of Brown Sugar (the last verses, esp. the payoff line. suggest the narrator may be a slave-keeper in centuries past) and partly an elaboration upon something Frank apparently witnessed in the rural area outside Ljubljana (a scene of domestic slavery, woman as beast-of-burden).
Frank's neo-jazz sprechgesang is called "meltdown," not "breakdown." The reviewer's lack of maturity and understanding of humor and proportion is unsettling. Easy Meat's rejection of the girl who reads Rolling Stone is the joke, while Bamboozled is a parody. Fine Girl is partly a parody of Brown Sugar and an elaboration of Frank's experience with domestic slavery. Homework Help Website
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