Artist - Bands - Stars Interview Videos

My first exposure to Zappa was a vinyl copy of “Zappa In New York,” a double-LP of live material recorded in December 1976. I was fascinated by the arrangements of tunes, such as “Manx Needs Women” and “The Purple Lagoon/Approximate.” I found myself giggling like a 10-year-old at “Titties And Beer” and “The Illinois Enema Bandit.” Here was a musician willing to take chances and have fun, all while highlighting the monstrous virtuosity of his band members. It was my first time hearing the likes of Terry Bozzio, Ruth Underwood, Eddie Jobson and Patrick O’Hearn. It also began my serious investigation into Zappa’s back catalog, which was and remains an astonishingly diverse and accomplished body of work.

Zappa was a pioneering artist in many ways. Few of his peers could bring such an often disparate array of genres together, including blues, rock, doo-***, soul, avant-garde, jazz and fusion, and keep an audience’s attention for long.

He was also a pioneer in sound. Beginning in the late 1960s, Zappa was one of the first artists to use 16-track technology-even before The Beatles. His 1969 release, “Hot Rats,” was a landmark recording in many ways. It was the first record Zappa recorded without The Mothers Of Invention. It was the first that showcased Zappa’s leanings toward jazz-rock, (it’s really a rock and blues record at heart); and it was one of the first to use 16-track recording technology. It’s also one of the best-sounding LPs in Zappa’s oeuvre. (The original pressing, Bizarre RS-6365, is what you want).

“I remember Frank was also as meticulous about sound as he was about his music,” recording engineer Bernie Grundman said.

“A Movie For Your Ears”
By the time Zappa began recording the tracks for “Hot Rats” in mid-1969, he was already a seasoned producer with nearly a decade of experience behind him. The new 16-track technology opened the doors for Zappa to make extensive use of multi-tracking and overdubbing, creating complex compositions that could be realized with just a handful of musicians.

In essence, “Hot Rats” was the work of a two-man band — Zappa and multi-instrumentalist Ian Underwood — with additional support from Captain Beefheart, Jean-Luc Ponty, Don “Sugarcane” Harris and a handful of other studio notables. In the original album liners, Zappa described “Hot Rats” as a “Movie For Your Ears.” And the opening instrumental, “Peaches En Regalia,” sets the table for a sumptuous audio feast. Five of the six tracks are instrumentals. Though thick with overdubs, the music doesn’t sound contrived. Instead, it has a loose and improvised vibe that was more characteristic of Zappa’s live shows of the coming decade.

“She said her stereo was four-way”
Even as Zappa was getting a leg up on his peers with 16-track, 2-channel stereo recording, he was also branching out and recording in 4-channel quad. Quadraphonic LPs were a short-lived phenomenon, and only two of Zappa’s albums, “Apostrophe” (’) and “Over-Nite Sensation,” were released as quad versions. However, it was Zappa’s intention to release all his subsequent albums in both 2- and 4-channel discs. In 1973, the year “Apostrophe” (‘) and “Over-Nite Sensation” were both issued, Zappa co-founded DiscReet Records. The name was a play on the word “discrete,” which described one method for encoding quadraphonic sound onto LPs. Two follow-up albums — “Roxy & Elsewhere” and “One Size Fits All” — were each pre-advertised for quad release but only 2-channel versions were ever offered. Zappa’s fascination with quad sound even carried over into his lyrics. One of his most famous lines comes from Over-Nite’s “Camarillo Brillo,” where Zappa sings, “She said her stereo was four-way/And I’d just love it in her room.”

The demise of quadraphonic music was like so many high-res formats that followed. There was no standard. Assuming consumers were willing to plunk down for an additional pair of speakers and a quad-capable receiver — and many were — few were going to carry the practice out to accommodate playing LPs, 8-tracks and reel-to-reel tapes.

Although the quadraphonic craze died long before DiscReet folded in 1979, Zappa continued to experiment with “surround” sound. Little did anyone know he was doing so nearly a decade prior. It wasn’t until his son, Dweezil, found a reel-to-reel tape among the masses in Frank’s home studio, aka The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen, with the name “Dweezil” and “1970” written on the tape box that it all came to light. There it was, from March 1, 1970, a Scotch Magnetic Tape with a diagram of speakers and instruments and 4 tracks labeled, 1-Left, 2-Center, Front, 3-Right and 4-Rear.

In 2004, a collection of 4-channel recordings were released on a DVD-Audio disc titled QuAUDIOPHILIAc. The sampler included previously unreleased material dating back to that “Dweezil” tape and others, recorded before the first quadraphonic albums were even commercially available. Among the earliest goodies are a nascent “Chunga’s Revenge,” here simply called, “Chunga Basement,” and 4-channel quad mix of “Waka/Jawaka” from 1972.

In the liner notes, Dweezil Zappa recalls discovering the tape. “We carefully placed the tape on the tape machine and asked it to play. When it didn’t, we forced it to by pressing play on the machine,” he wrote. “It became obvious that there was something different about what we were hearing. It was three-dimensional… No, it was four-dimensional! That’s when we decided to study the picture on the box. It was a panning map for: Quaudio. This recording was as close to an audio photograph of an event as you could ever get.”

Audio photograph? That sounds very familiar. And very good. Frank knew it all along.

dirtmudd · June 14, 2017

FRANK ZAPPA

Zoot Allures
Digital Music Prophet
by James Paton
(August 2013)

When one thinks about Frank Zappa, he is (depending on the intellectual capacity of the person) generally recognized as a musician, songwriter, composer, producer, director, conductor, satirist and politician of unwavering talent and unmitigated wit. He is often seen, as the title of one of his numerous albums claims him to be, ahead of his time. Exactly how far ahead of the curve he was though, very few people will have actually realized.

Aside from his incredible, genre-hopping musical career (and the various other tangents that he explored), Frank had a few ideas that actually fell through the cracks, doomed to be recognized as nothing but abject failures. He proposed to write and stage a bizarre show for the closing of the FIFA World Cup in 1990 (featuring appearances by Hitler and an image of the devil, personified by Elvis Pressley), he devised a concept for his own nightly television show, and on top of these, he also recognised the expense that the music industry incurred by relying almost exclusively upon the phonograph record format. This was in the early eighties, prior to the advent of the compact disc, after all.

He was understandably worried that, as it had become the norm for the industry to shamelessly promote and force feed the popular acts of the moment to the unwitting public, great musical releases were being removed from the shelves of record stores due to the limited space they afforded. And to this particular problem, he devised a rather interesting solution.

"Put aside momentarily the current method of operation and think what is being wasted in terms of great catalog items, squeezed out of the marketplace because of limited rack space in retail outlets, and the insatiable desire of quota-conscious company reps to fill every available slot with this week's new releases."

Whereas the record industry saw home taping as a vile force that was stealing much needed cash away from them (they were clearly struggling after all), Frank saw it as something that could be turned into a positive. The solution that could keep real music alive, whilst substantially reducing the distribution costs to the labels. "It is our proposal to take advantage of the positive aspects of a negative trend afflicting the record industry today: home taping of material released on vinyl."

His concept, was that digital copies could be made of the entire back catalogues of each and every label, and stored in a central location that consumers would be able to access from the comfort of their homes via their telephone lines or cable television boxes. He whole heartedly believed that the music lover wanted to consume music and not the frivolous packaging that the product comes housed in.

"We propose to acquire the rights to digitally duplicate THE BEST of every record company's difficult-to-move Quality Catalog Items (Q.C.I.), store them in a central processing location, and have them accessible by phone or cable TV"

"All accounting for royalty payments, billing to the consumer, etc., would be automatic, built into the software for the system."

However, he also proposed that for such people (like myself) that enjoy both, the cover art and technical information of an album could be streamed to users via just one of the many unused cable TV channels-even whilst the download of the album was taking place-to give the consumer the full album experience. Due to storage limitations at the time though, he also proposed that the available downloads could be rotated on a monthly basis, and that listings for these could be distributed to users to keep them up to date on what was available, and when.

“...a visualization of the original cover art, including song lyrics, technical data, etc., could be displayed while the transmission is in progress, giving the project an electronic whiff of the original point-of-purchase merchandising built into the album.”

He also pointed out that automated billing software could be easily integrated into the system; speeding up the process and further reducing the costs to the labels.

"Monthly listings could be provided by catalog, reducing the on-line storage requirements of the computer.”

So, exactly how far ahead of his time was he then? Well, according to Wikipedia, there was an astonishing 795 million single track downloads in 2006, up from just 160 million in 2004- this equates to a revenue growth of around $1.6 billion. And this, of course, doesn’t even take into account the wealth of full album downloads that have taken place over the same period either. After a fairly slow start, this effectively marks the point when consumers began to shift their attention away-en masse-from physical music releases towards download services, a trend that has only continued to grow since, finally usurping the compact disc from its perch at the top of the music medium pecking order.

It is rather sad that despite the growth of digital distribution in recent years, Frank will never receive the recognition that he deserves for creating this concept so many years ago, and that his idea will forever be perceived as nothing other than a colossal failure, despite the fact that the figures most assuredly prove otherwise. We, however, know the truth, and now whenever someone claims that Frank Zappa was indeed ahead of his time, you’ll be able to point out roughly how far forward he truly was, roughly twenty-four years by my calculations.

CITATIONS: All quotes come from The Real Frank Zappa Book which FZ wrote with Peter Ochiogrosso (published by Pan Books, 1989).

Check out the rest of PERFECT SOUND FOREVER

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