Show Start/Bogus Pomp Explained
Frank Zappa:Well, hello, folks. Hello, hello. Can you bring this up any? Okay, just calm down there now. Alright. Here's the deal. For those of you— Turn this sucker up. Hello-oh . . . Alright.
For those of you who might be wondering—it's not a rock & roll concert—it's one of those other kinds of concerts. And if you were here last night, by some stretch of the imagination, you might think, you might think that you know what's going to happen tonight, but, you don't know what's going to happen tonight.
Because in keeping with that great tradition of our organization, we will deviate tonight from the patterns established yesterday in certain very important areas. However, the show will begin in much the same way that it did last night, with these sterling differences—one, folks, remember, we're recording this one live, so I want you to have a good time . . . And, two, I'm going to, I'm going to take the liberty of narrating the plot line to this piece that we're going to do here.
Now, the first tune is called "Bogus Pomp" and, this is a melancholy little extravaganza—actually, it says, "Short sort of ballet or choreographed 'orch.' number for 12 winds, 11 brass, 4 amplified strings, 1 amplified harp, 3 keyboard players, 4 percussion, 1 electric bass, and 1 drumset." That's 37 folks.
Now, it opens up with this archetypally corny sort of fake classical music intro, that goes—I'm going to hum it to you now, you'll really like this part—it goes, "Dunnnnt, runt-ta-da-da-dunt, tadadant, tunt tunt, tunnt," and then the oboes come in and they go, "Wat-wat-wat, wat-wat-wat." So right off— right off the bat you know how deep this sucker is, so . . . A little bit later on though, it starts getting real weird—there's a deluxe piano solo, which will be played for you by Doctor Lang, and uh—Mike Lang, you know Mike Lang—and uh, there is also some synthesizer stuff in it.
But the main thing that's happening that's fun in this piece—because, folks, fun is the keyword to everything—there is a fun part in this where there's a war in the string section over here, now . . . I want you to, I want you to watch very, very carefully in this one part where they just uh, mildly begin to cavort and suddenly, as if by some sort of mysterious inspiration, the viola player cuts loose with a wah-wah pedal solo, which causes . . . This solo causes consternation among the other legitimate members of the quartet. Also because she's a girl and she gets the first solo. So that's pissing them off right from the beginning. This coupled with the fact that the solo is being played on a viola—not one of your popular instruments—is going to really make them want to gang up on her later, which they do—later in the piece, one by one, the other members of the string quartet prepare to take their revenge on the viola player.
So, then, a little bit later after all that has happened, the melody—if there be such in this piece—atomizes itself, why it just sort of blows itself to little pieces, and then in the end you'll hear it being sprinkled all over the orchestra with harp notes, celesta notes and high piano notes—just like they do in the movies when it's going to go, "Woooohh . . .," and then you hear the wind machine, and then at the end there's a special visual surprise that we have gotten permission from the Hall to do.
Before I, before I introduce to you the gentleman who is going to conduct this monstrosity—and do one heck-of-a-job at it, I might add, 'cause we recorded it this afternoon without an audience and it sounded pretty good then, but maybe this will be hot one—before I bring, before I bring out the conductor, I wanna tell you that one of the problems in doing this kind of a concert is the fact that without amplification, even 37 people are not loud enough for rock & roll standards, so in order to make it balanced—and I hope it does balance—I'm going to jump off here and go down and sit at the mixing console and try and keep the sections together and keep the feedback from happening. Of course if I chump it, you'll just have to realize that it's my fault, they're doing it okay—if it sounds wrong, blame it on me.
And now, I'd like to introduce to you, Michael Zearott, who is going to conduct it . . . Ta-dah!
Recordings
