Zappa 89-7 - Revision history

Jason.Kreitzer at 13:17, 29 September 2021

2021-09-29T13:17:24Z

Jason.Kreitzer at 14:10, 26 August 2021

2021-08-26T14:10:28Z

Jason.Kreitzer at 19:51, 31 July 2021

2021-07-31T19:51:10Z

Spider of Destiny at 21:19, 17 November 2020

2020-11-17T21:19:23Z

Spider of Destiny at 20:54, 17 December 2010

2010-12-17T20:54:31Z

Spider of Destiny at 01:23, 7 December 2010

2010-12-07T01:23:34Z

Spider of Destiny: I know the original journalist simply misspelled the name, but the composer's name isn't "Antilles" but "Antheil".

2010-12-07T01:15:57Z

I know the original journalist simply misspelled the name, but the composer's name isn't "Antilles" but "Antheil".

Propellerkuh at 17:30, 4 February 2007

2007-02-04T17:30:00Z

Propellerkuh at 17:28, 4 February 2007

2007-02-04T17:28:14Z

Propellerkuh at 17:25, 4 February 2007

2007-02-04T17:25:25Z

@@ Line 88: / Line 88: @@
 '''Do you want to talk about what you're going to do?<br>
-No. You'll read about it in the Wall Street Journal."
+No. You'll read about it in the [[Wall Street Journal]]."
 '''Well, I can think of all sorts of things that you'd be fabulous at ...<br>

@@ Line 26: / Line 26: @@
 '''There were certain things in your book which I found completely unbelievable ... Frank Zappa in a marching band?<br>
-Well, I really have to thank [[Mr. Ballard]] (his high school music teacher) for tossing me out of the band – for smoking in uniform. Imagine that. I didn't want to be in the friggin' marching band anyway. But if you're a drummer, what do you do? What are you gonna do? Wear the hat with the chingus on the front. And it was an ugly uniform, it was maroon and grey – uuuhhh, man. Uuuuggghh. Smelly, uuuhhh, hands are cold trying to play rubbidy dub dub on an ugly sounding drum, marching, watching people play football and having to go 'Yeah!' Give me a fuckin' break. Thank you Mr. Ballard. God bless you, Mr. Ballard."
+Well, I really have to thank [[William Ballard|Mr. Ballard]] (his high school music teacher) for tossing me out of the band – for smoking in uniform. Imagine that. I didn't want to be in the friggin' marching band anyway. But if you're a drummer, what do you do? What are you gonna do? Wear the hat with the chingus on the front. And it was an ugly uniform, it was maroon and grey – uuuhhh, man. Uuuuggghh. Smelly, uuuhhh, hands are cold trying to play rubbidy dub dub on an ugly sounding drum, marching, watching people play football and having to go 'Yeah!' Give me a fuckin' break. Thank you Mr. Ballard. God bless you, Mr. Ballard."
 '''Did you ever make it to a parade?<br>

@@ Line 9: / Line 9: @@
 There are lots of ways to judge music. You can take it apart rhythmically or you can analyze its harmonic structure. You can criticize the melody or theme. You can think about the lyrics. You can concentrate on the technical aspects, or the musicianship, or the originality ... on and on and on. But there's one question that should ultimately be asked regarding the validity of any piece of music: ''Did it change your life?'' Did it stretch you, challenge you, make you view the world in a different way? If so, the composer achieved something monumental out of 12 simple notes, a few syllabic utterances, and their accompanying timbres.
-[[Frank Zappa]]'s music changed my life. When the rest of the world was happily humming, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," he was challenging "those hungry freaks, daddy." When costumes became more important than musicianship, he was putting together monstro-groups, bringing jazz, 12-tone strategy, and chillingly great players into the fringe of the Rock 'n' Roll world. He made me wonder whether drugs were actually the cool thing to do; forced me to look into a societal mirror which proved uncomfortable at best, intolerable at worst; and consistently cracked me up with his voracious sense of humor. His music changed my life.
+[[Biography|Frank Zappa]]'s music changed my life. When the rest of the world was happily humming, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," he was challenging "those hungry freaks, daddy." When costumes became more important than musicianship, he was putting together monstro-groups, bringing jazz, 12-tone strategy, and chillingly great players into the fringe of the Rock 'n' Roll world. He made me wonder whether drugs were actually the cool thing to do; forced me to look into a societal mirror which proved uncomfortable at best, intolerable at worst; and consistently cracked me up with his voracious sense of humor. His music changed my life.
 All this confession seems necessary in explaining why this interview became the most depressing experience I've had in a long, long time. Certainly not because I had the opportunity to talk with Frank again, which in itself is a remarkable experience. It was depressing because this man, who has created such a powerful paradigmatic shift in such a significant part of the population, is quitting the music business. Quitting. Getting out. Leaving. And I feel like I'm part of the problem ...

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:19, 17 November 2020
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	You tell me. I sure don't have the answers.		You tell me. I sure don't have the answers.
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	[[Category:Interviews with Zappa]]		[[Category:Interviews with Zappa]]
		+	[[Category:1989]]

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 Another drummer that I really enjoyed playing with was [[Aynsley Dunbar]]. He was great. He could shuffle his brains out. He was just a shuffling guy. And I've played many interesting solos with [[Chad Wackerman]], too. There's some good examples from the '88 tour that have yet to be released. And from a scientific standpoint, he's probably the most experimental in terms of equipment that he would use and electronics that he would put together, and a style that he developed based on his sampling gear.
-'''[[Terry Bozzio]] has some interesting things to say about working with you. He says something about feeling you'd have a hard time replacing him, and then [[Vinnie Coliauta]] walked in ...<br>
+'''[[Terry Bozzio]] has some interesting things to say about working with you. He says something about feeling you'd have a hard time replacing him, and then [[Vinnie Colaiuta]] walked in ...<br>
 Well, Bozzio was utterly fantastic, too. Remember – he was the first human being to play '[[The Black Page]].'

@@ Line 63: / Line 63: @@
 You mean drummers who get hair weaves? That's what's out there now. Ooh aah, ooh ooh aah. So what? The world wants that? Eat it up. Go ahead. I've even seen drummers who could actually play amazing stuff, but they couldn't get a job until they got the hair weave and went ooh aah, ooh ooh aah. That's what's happened to the record business in the United States. You know, it's pitiful. And probably the worst aspect of it was when punk became the fashion – where the more idiotic your performance, the more incompetent and the more messy and non-musical your performance was, the easier it was for you to get a record deal. I saw people like blotting out whole sections of their brain in order to get a contract. That's what the song 'Tinsel Town Rebellion' is about.
-Another drummer that I really enjoyed playing with was [[Ainsley Dunbar]]. He was great. He could shuffle his brains out. He was just a shuffling guy. And I've played many interesting solos with [[Chad Wackerman]], too. There's some good examples from the '88 tour that have yet to be released. And from a scientific standpoint, he's probably the most experimental in terms of equipment that he would use and electronics that he would put together, and a style that he developed based on his sampling gear.
+Another drummer that I really enjoyed playing with was [[Aynsley Dunbar]]. He was great. He could shuffle his brains out. He was just a shuffling guy. And I've played many interesting solos with [[Chad Wackerman]], too. There's some good examples from the '88 tour that have yet to be released. And from a scientific standpoint, he's probably the most experimental in terms of equipment that he would use and electronics that he would put together, and a style that he developed based on his sampling gear.
 '''[[Terry Bozzio]] has some interesting things to say about working with you. He says something about feeling you'd have a hard time replacing him, and then [[Vinnie Coliauta]] walked in ...<br>

@@ Line 32: / Line 32: @@
 '''Your music has always been filled with some of the most complex rhythms imaginable. Who were your influences there?<br>
-You mean the polyrhythms and all that kind of stuff? Well, I really don't know what to say about that kind of rhythm. Most people don't use it, they don't take to it very naturally; but there have been other composers who worked in that field. It came as a big shock to me when somebody sent me an album by a Dutch group that had ''Ballet Mechanique'' by George Antilles on one side, and the other side had pieces for violin and piano, and I swore I could have written them because of the rhythms. It was exactly the same kind of stuff that I would have done. And I'd never heard these pieces before – they'd been laying in somebody's closet, and they'd found the charts and performed them.
+You mean the polyrhythms and all that kind of stuff? Well, I really don't know what to say about that kind of rhythm. Most people don't use it, they don't take to it very naturally; but there have been other composers who worked in that field. It came as a big shock to me when somebody sent me an album by a Dutch group that had ''Ballet Mechanique'' by [[George Antheil]] on one side, and the other side had pieces for violin and piano, and I swore I could have written them because of the rhythms. It was exactly the same kind of stuff that I would have done. And I'd never heard these pieces before – they'd been laying in somebody's closet, and they'd found the charts and performed them.
 It's just something that you hear, and what you feel. Just like most people in western Europe have a tendency to lean toward rhythms in twos and threes and fours, and then in eastern Europe, you hear people being comfortable with 5, 7, 9. Then you get all the way over to India and you have people being comfortable with everything from 2 up through 13 through whatever.

@@ Line 34: / Line 34: @@
 You mean the polyrhythms and all that kind of stuff? Well, I really don't know what to say about that kind of rhythm. Most people don't use it, they don't take to it very naturally; but there have been other composers who worked in that field. It came as a big shock to me when somebody sent me an album by a Dutch group that had ''Ballet Mechanique'' by George Antilles on one side, and the other side had pieces for violin and piano, and I swore I could have written them because of the rhythms. It was exactly the same kind of stuff that I would have done. And I'd never heard these pieces before – they'd been laying in somebody's closet, and they'd found the charts and performed them.
-It's just something that you hear, and what you feel. Just like most people in western Europe have a tendency to lean toward rhythms in twos and threes and fours, and then in eastern Europe, you hear people being comfortable with 5, 7, 9. Then you get all the way over to India and you have people being comfortable with everything from 2 up through 13 through whatever."
+It's just something that you hear, and what you feel. Just like most people in western Europe have a tendency to lean toward rhythms in twos and threes and fours, and then in eastern Europe, you hear people being comfortable with 5, 7, 9. Then you get all the way over to India and you have people being comfortable with everything from 2 up through 13 through whatever.
 '''I was intrigued by your autobiography's discussion of hose you go about creating rhythmic tension. Can you paraphrase some of that for me?<br>
-Well, I think I say it really well in the book; to say it conversationally you'll fuck it up. I'd rather have you just take it out of the book."
+Well, I think I say it really well in the book; to say it conversationally you'll fuck it up. I'd rather have you just take it out of the book.
 ''[OK, here goes. Although understand, this is taken our of context and is cut drastically, lest my lovable but irascible editor kill me for creating a 22-page interview:<br>
@@ Line 66: / Line 66: @@
 '''[[Terry Bozzio]] has some interesting things to say about working with you. He says something about feeling you'd have a hard time replacing him, and then [[Vinnie Coliauta]] walked in ...<br>
-Well, Bozzio was utterly fantastic, too. Remember – he was the first human being to play 'The Black Page."'
+Well, Bozzio was utterly fantastic, too. Remember – he was the first human being to play '[[The Black Page]].'
 '''He also talks about getting to the point where he felt as important as you were to the band, and not realizing until later that he was gravely mistaken.<br>

@@ Line 39: / Line 39: @@
 Well, I think I say it really well in the book; to say it conversationally you'll fuck it up. I'd rather have you just take it out of the book."
-[OK, here goes. Although understand, this is taken our of context and is cut drastically, lest my lovable but irascible editor kill me for creating a 22-page interview:
+''[OK, here goes. Although understand, this is taken our of context and is cut drastically, lest my lovable but irascible editor kill me for creating a 22-page interview:<br>
+''Just as in diatonic harmony, when upper partials are added to a chord, it becomes tenser and more demanding of a resolution – the more the rhythm of a line rubs against the implied basic time, the more 'statistical tension' is generated.<br>
-Just as in diatonic harmony, when upper partials are added to a chord, it becomes tenser and more demanding of a resolution – the more the rhythm of a line rubs against the implied basic time, the more 'statistical tension' is generated.
+''The creation and destruction of harmonic and 'statistical' tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consonant and 'regular' throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only good guys in it, or eating cottage cheese.<br>
+''The Real Frank Zappa Book waxes poetic on rhythms, the problem of playing odd times, and more – including a startling description of how a soloist is held hostage by the abilities of his rhythm section. Great stuff ...]
 '''Can you talk a little bit about your relationship with your rhythm section? How do you get guys to play your music in the first place.<br>