aworks :: "new" american classical music

Crazy on You (1975). Ann and Nancy Wilson /what would frank think?/

Ok, it's hard for me to ignore the concerns of a (non-American) Frank Zappa blog since Frank was clearly in the precise (and sometimes unpleasant) intersection of low- and high-brow American musical culture.

So for the record, In my youthful days driving too fast on the streets of a red state, I hated Heart's Barracuda ("burn, burn, burn...Barracuda." Yawn).

But I always cranked it up for their Crazy On You.

Still, one might wonder why we are focusing our political energy on the past given the seriousness of our current economic problems. The relevant lyrics:

If we still have time, we might still get by
Every time I think about it, I wanna cry
With bombs and the devil, and the kids keep comin'
No way to breathe easy, no time to be young

I don't particularly relate to the last two lines from the Seventies but the first two may stll be relevant.

Wikipedia:

"Crazy on You" attracted attention both for the relatively unusual combination of an acoustic guitar paired with an electric guitar, and the fact that the acoustic guitarist was a female - a rarity in rock music

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lala: girls rock america version of crazy on you. not to be confused with a dubious version of madonna's crazy for you
youtube: i really need to lay off the politics but "it would be funny except"

Chunga's Revenge (1970). Frank Zappa /programming the classics/

From the Rehearsal Studio:

If our listening of Lindberg is well informed by past experience of listening to Zappa, when will the San Francisco Symphony program one of Zappa's works on its subscription series?

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youtube: chunga's revenge

You Look Sweet upon the Seat of a Bicycle (1963). Frank Zappa

Let the conciousness revolution era begin, circa 1963:

We believed that self-expression took precedence over self-control—even if we still assumed that big institutions would continue to cohere and function without much difficulty.

And they said the avant-garde can't be fun... (YouTube videos via American Street):

Dog Breath Variations (1969). Frank Zappa

The Teheran Symphony Orchestra plays Frank Zappa's Dog Breath Variations, among other works:

Muhammad Hussain Ahmadi, general director of the music and poetry office at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance who accompanied the orchestra, said the government places no restrictions on which Western composers can be performed.

Revised Music For Guitar And Low-Budget Orchestra (1975). Frank Zappa

Comments on classical music popularity:

• In Allan Kozinn's optimistic article, I particularly enjoyed this paragraph:

Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" observation about relationships and sharks — that both must either move forward or die — also works for culture. In classical music, lots of people really just want the dead shark. They pine for the days when Bernstein, Reiner, Szell and Toscanini stood on the podium, with Heifetz fiddling, Horowitz at the piano and Callas and Tebaldi locked in a perpetual diva war. Most of all they want their repertory dials set between 1785 and 1920. You can send those people your condolences.

• On the other hand, after eighteen years of shopping for classical music at Tower Records in the Bay Area, I might conclude the outlook is more bleak. The Castro/Market, San Mateo and Campbell stores have shrunk their classical sections so much they aren't worth the trouble. The fine Berkeley Tower Classical closed, they moved classical to the second floor of the main Berkeley store, and then that store closed. Fortunately, Mountain View has shrunk less and Tower Classical on Columbus in SF is still reasonably well stocked. (And the SF Amoeba classical section was recently reorganized but on first inspection, is not measurably smaller. Whew.)

• And the overall competition for my musical mindshare continues to amaze me. While last year's biggest musical event was the premiere of Doctor Atomic (and before that, Oakland Opera's Akhnaten), this year's biggest musical happening so far is Austin's South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, and in particular, the concurrent bittorrent -- 700+ downloadable free MP3s of surprising quality. I knew a few of the artists e.g. The Stills, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and Christopher O'Riley (playing Paranoid Android), but although I'm only two hundred tracks into it, I have been turned on to Birdy Nam Nam (French DJ turntablists), Morningwood, Sarah Hepburn, Tunng, Whitehouse, etc. In my fantasy world, hundreds of hip classical artists and composers would converge on some town for an equivalent frenzy of classical music played in clubs and other atypical venues. Call it SXSQ.

You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here (1966). Frank Zappa

I've started my quest to understand the intersection of rock musicians Frank Zappa and Don Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart. I justify this for many reasons, none of them particularly respectable.

First, anytime I blog about Zappa, my traffic goes up. Second, I consider this background research for when I listen to all those classical ensembles making wimpy attempts to play Zappa's music, especially anything related to Beefheart -- a rather manic guy as far as I can tell. Next and similar to SFMike's counter-factual conjecture about what if Charles Ives left the insurance business and moved to California, I wonder what would have happened if, unlikely as it is, Zappa didn't try to balance being popular and being serious and instead truly focused on his art as Beefheart ultimately did with painting. This is the questionable aesthetic equivalent about asking what if Bernstein had specialized on composition.  More trivially, I am also seeking confirmation that Zapaa really did ask for, as a childhood birthday present, a phone call to the avant-garde composer Edgard Varese. Finally and somewhat tangentially, I think this is all culturally relevant to the 1960s consciousness awakening era, a captivating period becoming increasingly archaic.

To experience a taste of those times, last night I downloaded Frank Zappa and the Mothers' first album, Freak Out from 1966. I wasn't all that impressed except as an early indicator of the cultural eruption to follow. Also, the music had more love songs than expected, even if they were ironic and "anti-love."

Then, I've just read the book Necessity Is... The Early Years of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Unfortunately, Captain Beefheart doesn't get much mention. The book does describe how the two (FZ and CB) were high school buddies listening to records together. By the late sixties, FZ signed him to his Bizarre record label where CB recorded Trout Mask Replica (an I Love Music thread on whether that album is really listenable or not here). Overall, the various members of the Mothers paint FZ as serious, compulsive, hard-working, an anti-drug use advocate and overall perfectionist while CB was warmer, less calculated, and more broadly talented.

As I continue my schooling in Frank Zappa 101, the most interesting fact so far was Don Preston, Mothers of Invention keyboardist and friend of Detroit's jazz drummer Elvin Jones, modestly making an audacious claim:

Because I knew Elvin, I used to go over and talk with him when they [Coltrane group] were playing in town. One night when they were through playing and packing up, I cornered Coltrane. I said to him, 'I have something very important to tell you. Do you agree that everybody (in jazz and contemporary music) looks up to you as a main influence with your saxophone playing?' He said, "I never thought of it that way." ... I then said to Coltrane, 'The evolution of music -- to change music and to play something new is the most important aspect of music. Now you've been playing and you play wonderfully and you are exemplary in the way you choose everything -- except one thing -- you've been playing the same way ever since you started playing with Miles. I think it's your duty to evolve and change musically.' And that's all I said. And he looked at me and went, 'hmmm - I'll have to think about that.' It was right after that Coltrane became this other person and changed his whole style of playing and everything and started playing this far-out music! So I felt I was in some ways responsible for that.

Put a Motor in Yourself (1994). Frank Zappa

I'm listening to Ensemble Modern's recording of Frank Zappa's Put a Motor in Yourself. Would I recognize Zappa as the composer if I didn't already know? Probably not. And is Frank Zappa postmodern? Of course.

In yesterday's comments, Richard Friedman suggests he and I both like modern but not postmodern music. The former is clearly true -- Cowell! Varese! Antheil! the austere Copland! Ok, not everything but more than I ever knew. On the postmodern pop side, I get a thrill (usually) from examples like Radiohead, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, and Frank Zappa (at least when he doesn't sing).

On the classical side, a much harder call. To investigate, I reread listen101's quote of Johnathan D. Kramer's list of postmodern musical traits. Then, on to Wikipedia's postmodern music entry, pointing out minimalism as the first postmodern style, starting with La Monte Young and Terry Riley. But wait, Terry Riley, in my opinion, doesn't fit. I've never talked to him but what I've seen and heard from afar indicates he doesn't have a smidgen of irony in him. He may have written some music that today sounds very much of its era (say, A Rainbow in Curved Air) but I think he was and is quite sincere, all flowing from his strong spiritual beliefs. Young, presumably sincere as well, does embrace more of the postmodern ethic e.g. his playing microtonal electric piano in the Forever Bad Blues Band crosses barriers between "high" and "low" styles. Robert Palmer in the liner notes:

Stylistically, this "roadhouse blues/rock" covers a lot of territory. Among them, Young and His Forever Bad Blues Band cohorts have had experience of boogie woogie, shuffles and stomps, country blues, Chicago electric blues, heavy metal, punk, noise, raga, modal jazz/blues (note guitarist Jon Catler's extended quote from "Summertime"), bebop, trudge, grunge, thrash...the list goes on. These influences don't pop sequentially so much as they coexist, layered into the music throughout, in constant flux between overt expression and occultation.

Zappa's music is a stew of influences as well.

While confirming Young's place in the American musical tradition (if not the 19th century European one), Devin Hurd makes a comment that particularly applies for me in listening to Zappa and Young:

Why deprive one's self from so many compelling sounds and ideas? Even the most distasteful music is informative.

On the other hand, the music of Riley has a certain aesthetic I find appealing and often peacefully mesmerizing. Similarly, I'll highlight Richard Friedman's Owed to Michael Nyman, more urgent than Riley but entrancing nonetheless.

One related note: at work today I had some Haydn string quartets on in the background. So tranquil it reminded me of a Betty Davis movie, (Now, Voyager) partially set in a sanitarium. Not coincidentally, the local classical radio station titles their sampler CD KDFC Islands of Sanity. No James Tenney in that collection. And I can imagine Fred saying all this modern and postmodern trash belongs on a CD Islands of Insanity...

Dirty Love (1973). Frank Zappa /strictly commercial/

Thinking about yesterday's post, it occurs to me I can only speculate on which music is truly "semi-popular" and which music qualifies as "long-tail" obscure. Surely, "The OC" soundtracks are popular but does Mission of Burma's CD sell more than John Adams'? Using Amazon sales rank as a proxy, let's find out:

music sales rank 1-10:
11-100: Amadou & Mariam
101-1000:  Music from the OC: Mix 1
1001-10000: Music from the OC: Mix 2 Slint
10001-100000: Kronos Quartet Frank Zappa Mission of Burma John Adams Charles Ives/Bernstein Eric Dolphy  Alan Hovhaness/Shanghai Quartet
100001-1000000: The Anomoanon/Black Sabbath Henry Cowell/Anthony de Mare Robert Moran

Ok, so Mission of Burma only slightly outsells John Adams...

A Pound for a Brown on the Bus (1969). Frank Zappa

If you remove the coarseness, profanity, crudeness, amplification, and percussion from the music of Frank Zappa, there's still something good left, in this case played by the le concert impromptu woodwinds.

And even the original Zappa recording may have been overwhelmed. From William R. Nicholas' review of Uncle Meat on Amazon:

You don't hear many albums like Uncle Meat. Even in the context of 1969 experimentation, Zappa's ideas are simply too esoteric and sophistacated for mass conception. Only very obscure bands like Henry Cow even hinted at picking up Uncle Meat's massive torch. In an age of Hendrix, Joplin, and Led Zeppelin blasting out flame-thrower blues, Zappa's brillant, mad-geunius confetti was bound to get lost beneath the whale of Stratocasters.

Harry, You Are a Beast (1968). Frank Zappa

Harry, You Are a Beast is a song from Frank Zappa's 1968 album We're Only in it For the Money. I bring it up since today's Financial Times has a culture column by Peter Apsden discussing the merits of Frank Zappa and how his music is more serious than might be realized.  He also mentions a "Zappa Plays Zappa" tour in Europe, with sons Dweezil and Ahmet. Finally, he champions the European sensibility:

We got Zappa: his twists and turns, his reckless veering between high and low culture, his sarcasm, his innovations. These were all too much for his own country, which remains, relative to its size and power, culturally simplistic.

Ouch. Though the reckless veering part sounds right...

Oh, and sample lyrics from Harry, You Are a Beast:

You paint your head
Your mind is dead
You don't even know what I just said

Amazon samples and has this conjecture:

Can it be mere coincidence that the '60s ended within a few years of this album's release?