Orchestral Maneuvers
By Bill Milkowski
Modern Recording & Music, August 1984
After 18 years of playing practically every concert hall and hockey rink in the free world, Frank Zapper was nearly ready to call it quits. Disgusted with the whole exhaustive prospect of touring and playing before legions of rowdy, potentially violent fans, Zapper decided to shelve his rock career in order to concentrate on other pursuits, namely, symphonic music.
Phase One of Zapper's new career began last year with the release of a digitally-recorded album of his ambitious contemporary symphonic pieces, performed in concert by the London Symphony Orchestra. That program was conducted by 31-year-old Kent Nagano, of the Berkeley and Oakland symphonies. The recording session was produced and engineered by Zapper for his own Barking Pumpkin label.
Phase Two occurred in February 1983, when Zappa shared the baton with maestro Jean-Louis LeRoux for a 100th anniversary celebration of the music of Edgar Varèse and Anton Webern, which was performed by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players at the city's War Memorial Opera House.
Zappa's burgeoning interest in symphonic works continues. This past January, three original Zappa chamber compositions were performed by conductor Pierre Boulez's prized chamber orchestra, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, with Boulez himself conducting the proceedings at the Theatre De La Ville in Paris. An album on EMI Records is forthcoming.
Last spring, Nagano and his Berkeley Symphony presented the world premiere of Zappa's "Sinister Footwear," a ballet performed by the Tandy Beales Company and featuring the puppet creations of Ron Gilkerson.
And there's more. Zappa has been invited to guest conduct at the prestigious Magghio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, Italy, and has also been asked to guest conduct for the Honolulu Symphony 1984/85 season and to conduct his own music and selections from Edgar Varèse at the University of Buffalo in 1985.
All this from the man who brought you such irreverent rock classics as "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow," "Dinah-Moe Humm," "Illinois Enema Bandit," "Half A Dozen Provocative Squats," "Help, I'm A Rock," "Saint Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast," "My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mamma" and the notorious "Stink Foot," to mention just a few in his discography of hundreds of recorded compositions.
Zappa has not abandoned his rock career. He's just put it on the back burner for a while. This summer he plans to release Them Or Us, the 36th album of his career. Besides featuring his regular band of Steve Vai and Ray White on guitars, Chad Wackerman on drums, Bobby Martin and Tommy Mars on keyboards, and Scott Thunes on bass, it will be something of a family affair. His oldest son Dweezil will be making his debut with daddy, playing some insanely wicked wang-bar riffs on "Stevie's Spanking" and a reggae remake of "Sharleena," a love ballad that originally appeared on Zappa's Chunga's Revenge album. Daughter Moon Unit will also make an appearance on the new LP, offering up a Valley Girl rap for a mock aerobics tune called "Hoznia." And Zappa's youngest son Ahmet Rodin actually penned one of the tunes, "Frogs With Dirty Little Lips," which is a little ditty he dreamed up at the age of six and sang around the house every day. Johnny Guitar Watson also makes an appearance on the new album. Other tunes include "Baby Take Your Teeth Out," "In France," "He's So Gay," "Won Ton On" and "Planet Of My Dreams."
And as if that weren't enough... there's also a book in the making and a Broadway musical in the offing, a production called Thing Fish, which Zappa has been working on for some time now. While in New York recently, Zappa talked about his music, his career and where he's headed.
