Zappostrophe' 3: Oh Hell Yes

Sometimes seeing a band live really helps you appreciate their music (I could tell a story about Bison here). But Zappostrophe', who played last night at the Fox Cabaret (see also here and here) is the first time that seeing a band live helped me appreciate someone else's music.   

The thing about Zappa - his perfectionism means that his end product, whether it be studio or live, is often utterly seamless. There is (oftentimes, anyhow) no sense (to an untrained ear, at least) that anything requires effort. Which is ideally what you want: when a non-musician hears music that is seamless and flowing and pretty, they're not s'posed to think on how much co-ordination, how much forethought, how many years of talent and practice and discipline and commitment were necessary to producing it; they're supposed to tap their toe or dance or hum along or lose themselves in reveries or hyuks or whatever task-at-hand the music is serving as background to (fucking, driving, cleaning the apartment, etc). As Zander Schloss said in a recent interview with me - regardlessof how much the musicians are sweating and straining and focusing like motherfuckers to get every detail, every flourish EXACTLY right, the end product is supposed to feel like an effortless magic trick. And if it doesn't, it might be because the musicians just aren't very good - kinda like special effects in cheap SF movies, where you can see the strings on the big rubber bug. 

And while this might be just a personal opinion, Frank Zappa's music may be more like that than that of other musicians, it's so slick and fun and easily consumed - by and large, anyhow: some Zappa is more challenging and overtly virtuosic than others. I mean, "Peaches en Regalia" borders on lounge exotica or adult contemporary instrumental jazz, is as slick and smooth as Spyro Gyra, if not as tacky or empty. It can slide right down your chute. 

I think that's one of the reasons that a "systematic derangement of the senses," as a sometimes partner in state-altering used to say (riffing, I think, on Rimbaud) can help you appreciate his music - which is bottomlessly rich and rewarding, but which fact isn't always obvious to a very casual or untrained listener. You may not be noticing the riches before you when straight, but here, smoke this, and... 

I realize Zappa was rather stridently anti-drug - and I have no idea how Zappostrophe' or Charles Ulrich might feel about the above observation - but I actually can't think of any musician my appreciation for whom has been enhanced more by a few puffs o' the green then Frank; it wasn't really pissing my bed in hospital in December that got me as deep into Zappa as I got for awhile there, but rather, the CBD-heavy edibles I turned to to help me recover. How many days did I spend on the couch with Zappa albums on, doing nothing ('cept maybe distractedly patting the cat) but listening to them, floored, enraptured, wholly engaged? More than a few. Got a whole new appreciation for Joe's Garage Acts II and III, I tellya.  

Seeing a virtuosic eight piece band delivering Zappa's music live was the next best thing to listening to Zappa stoned. The challenges of making this music, the amount of thought and skill that went into composing it, arranging it, and delivering it were palpable in a way that I had never fully appreciated before now (...because I never got to see Zappa live, and somehow seeing video footage of his bands performing doesn't quite pack the same punch as seeing people making it happen right in front of you). Some members of the band could be seen concentrating more than others, but I think in part that had more to do with the physical nature of their instruments than their musicianship, which uniformly seemed "flawless," as the marquee proclaimed (subject of jokes from Blair Fisher, last night, which I here purloin). 

And I think Zappa would appreciate the sense of humour these guys had. I approached two of them at the start of the night - having acquired a copy of The Big Note for a friend - and asked which one was Blair (they weren't holding instruments at the time, but they're pictured below) And they broke into this "I'm Blair/ No I'm Blair/ We're both Blair" routine that I suspect they might have used before, which I ultimately just ended by saying, "I'm Allan." (I had forgotten that one of their guitarists was named Blair Lewis). I think it was Lewis who joked about whether I would be checking each song they played against Ulrich's book...

My notes eventually grew scattered, typed quickly into my phone while the band was still performing. There was a lot of playfulness from the stage last night, but even less serious moments called aspects of Zappa's music to mind that I might not have previously missed. After an instrumental start ("King Kong") the band brought female co-vocalist LJ out, who reminded me a bit of the great Cass King. The audience participation of the second number, "Wind Up Workin' at a Gas Station" - involving an invitation to stick up our thumbs, which some of us obligingly did - was fast betrayed by the chorus of "show me your thumb if you're really dumb;" it had not ever registered to me, listening to the album at home, that this line was actually Zappa putting down his audience (or rock audiences in general). Blair 1 (Fisher) described it as "a little 5/4 punk" and Nick Apivor chimed in "Dave Brubeck meets Nomeansno," which won my heart a little further. (I had a similar experience seeing "Rags and Bones" performed at a rented banquet hall in Vancouver, probably my favourite Nomeansno live show, where that whole "in the belly of the beast/ I shall be released" turned into a metaphor for the moshpit, though later attempts to ask Rob Wright about that bore no interesting fruit). 

I kind of ruined Blair Fisher's subsequent gag - "who knows what this is," he said, holding up a stuffed animal - by immediately and matter-of-factly observing, "Echidna," short-cutting the possible fun of having the audience call out wrong guesses. Though I was right up front, I am not sure if he saw my subsequently pointing at my penis to communicate that there was something special about the echidna's member (do see this episode of "The World's Most Terrifying Penises" if you are uninformed on this point.) In hindsight, the gesture might have been misread. The echidna, of course, was in aid of Zappostrophe' playing "Echidna's Arf. (of You)."

There were other inspired moments. The band deserves some sorta prize for changing "TV set" to "internet" for "I'm the Slime." Crowd pleasers like that, the "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" suite (which came later in the night) and "Dirty Love" (complete with poodle prop) vied against more composerly and demanding Zappa tunes (like a singularly great "Big Swifty" off Waka/ Jawaka. There seemed very little that the band was afraid to tackle). I could not tell with the new songs ("Andy," say) that they were new. Probably the most crowd pleasing moments of the show had to do with "special guests" who joined the band, the vocal group Strictly Commercial (actually the front four members of the band in a costume change, occasionally wielding kazoos, doing a Ruben and the Jets medly that climaxed with one of Zappa's greatest-ever nods at the genre, "Dog Breath in the Year of the Plague," off Uncle Meat (Red Herring's Steve Lazin taps this as his favourite Zappa album, incidentally. I'd love to turn Zappostrophe' on to Red Herring; can think of no better local band to share a bill with them, actually). 

A lot of my other typo-ridden self-texted observations may have to wait for a later interview, so I can frame them in the form of questions. Does Blair Fisher (or any other members of the band) have any particular insight as to how to understand "Montana" and "Zomby Woof," which on the face of it seem to have two of the (deliberately) dumbest lyrics Zappa ever wrote? Did any members of the band ever reach out to, or rigorously study, the performance of Zappa's bands? (No one seemed particularly to "be" Zappa, not even usual lead guitarist Guenter Schultz, but I delighted in how well Nick Apivor channeled Ruth Underwood, though occasionally he was a bit low in the mix for my tastes, at least in the first set; I love a good malleting. Maybe I'm just biased, because she's almost almost my favourite thing to watch in vintage Zappa footage, actually - check out "Florentine Pogen," also on the set last night, with Blair1 remarking it was the only song in the set that was "about a cookie" (actually, because of the nature of the edibles I'd ingested, every song they did last night was kind of about a cookie, for me, but...).  

The night ended promptly at 10, so that there could be a DJ set - a tedious practice I remember well from the days of Richards on Richards and the Biltmore of ten years ago, which almost always seemed like a money-losing proposition (more than once I saw the venues clear out a crowd of a hundred plus people, gathered for live shows, so a dozen or so dancers could enjoy canned music). Blair polled the audience on whether they preferred a "moshpit" style arrangement or a seated seating arrangement, which is what we had (he observed from the cheers that there were fewer people who preferred the moshpit, but they were louder, which seem thought-provoking). In fact, my friend Ken/ ARGH!/ Nick Mitchum, the man of many names - who had first urged me to catch Zappostrophe' - had hated the moshpit arrangement of the previous show, because it meant that he couldn't easily escape talkers in the crowd; it took him out of the night, he told me, and he left early because of it. By contrast, last night's seats, while not particularly comfortable, spread people out more and offered more opportunity to locate oneself AWAY from problem talkers (which I heard almost none of). I cheered for seats. It's not just because I'm old, fat and lazy, honestly! 

There will be a further attempt to catch Zappostrophe' next month at the Langley Jazz Fest, along with  what I presume is a Steely Dan cover group (better than a Spyro Gyra one, anyhow). Truth is, I kind of had burned myself out on Frank Zappa during my binges of January-March, somewhat to my wife's relief, since the house was all Zappa all the time, for awhile there. Zappostrophe' might have re-invigorated my enthusiasm. I never got to see Zappa live and never will - not Frank, anyhow; I might go see Dweezil sometime. But I was delighted by last night, am very glad to have seen Frank's music played so well, so enthusiastically, by people who are just damned good at what they do. So, uh, c'mon, Frenchy - get yourself a ticket to the Fort Langley Jazz Festival, why don'tcha? Zappostrophe' plays Thursday, July 21st... 

More to come on that, maybe!