Zappa Lumpy:Uncle

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Form and the Concept Album: Aspects of Modernism in Frank Zappa's Early ReleasesAuthor(s): James BordersReviewed work(s):Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Winter, 2001), pp. 118-160Published by: Perspectives of New MusicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/833535 .

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FORM AND THE CONCEPT ALBUM:ASPECTS OF MODERNISM INFRANK ZAPPA'S EARLYRELEASES

JAMES ORDERSRecord industry executives need to find out what it is they're sellingbecause, see, they don't know how important pop music is today. All theyknow is that that's what's making money this month. They really don'tknow what a revolution it is in terms of music history because there are a lotof people working in pop music today who are doing things that are artistic,and actuallymean 'em that way! ... I think it's living serious music!-Frank Zappa, TheFrank Zappa Companion:Four DecadesofCommentary

THE IMMEDIATE AIM of this essay is to analyze the content and formof three early albums by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Inven-tion-Lumpy Gravy, Uncle Meat, and Burnt Weeny Sandwich-anddemonstrate their affinity with certain works by Igor Stravinsky. It also


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Form and the Concept Album

seeks to advance a criticalapproach that views rock as a recorded art, androck recordings as aural artifacts. Such analysis, according to a leadingproponent, Paul Clarke, is based "on the complex of created relation-ships between sounds as they act on us through time."1 The unusuallywide range of musical sources and techniques Zappa incorporated intohis recordings at this stage of his career raises a prior question: how didthese albums figure into the cultural dialogue between rock and thechanging experience of modernity in America in the 1960s? Let usaddress this question before turning to the analysisto place it into properhistorical context.The short answer is that by juxtaposing different musical genres,Zappa, who considered himself a composer foremost, was attacking theentrenched critical and academic establishments whose members distin-guished categorically between art and popular music, particularly asregards structural and tonal complexity.2 To paraphraseCarl Dahlhaus,Zappa'swas a music directed against the esoteric quality of art.3Popularmusic intended not for thoughtless consumption but careful listeningalso strained against the repetitiveness and standardization of TheodorAdorno's "consumer music."4 By contrasting broadly differentapproachesto composition, moreover, Zappawas implicitly rejecting thekind of hairsplitting that set the "modernist" music of composers likeKarlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez apart from more accessible"avant-garde"works by John Cage and other so-called experimentalists.5Zappa was not alone in striving for this kind of pluralistic synthesis.Indeed a number of self-styled modernists were welcoming the eclecti-cism of contemporary art in sixties popular media. Susan Sontag, forexample, waxed enthusiastic about the lowering of barriersthat had for-merly separated high from low, past from present in an essay first pub-lished in Mademoiselle.6Although Zappa probably held a similaropinion,he could not help giving it a satiricaltwist, drawing upon sources dispar-ate and sometimes vulgar enough to exceed the bounds of even the mostbroad-minded critic's good taste.Unlike Sontag, Zappa's intent was hardly theoretical. Neither did heseek to create a truly unpopular music with "no commercial potential," alabel a Columbia Records executive once hung on his work to which heoften referred.7Rather, as he repeatedly stated, his albums were marketproducts designed to appeal to record buyers searching for the newestsound, the latest protest music, the most outrageous novelty. So he bal-anced his instrumental music with songs, the lyrics of which mostly sati-rized the manufactured fads and fashions of contemporary America.Never mind Zappa's serious and well-known involvement in all phases ofrecord production, marketing, and promotion, or professed willingness

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Perspectivesof New Music

to reap whatever profits came along-We're Only In It For TheMoneyisthe title of one of Zappa's early albums. That was part of the put-on.Zappa's early recordings were indeed "music about music,"8 but theywere also parodic popular critiques of the mass media, advertising, andthe consumer culture that sustained them all, designed to sell in volume.9With respect to the place of Zappa's earlyrecorded output in theoreti-cal discourse, it should be obvious that his musical borrowings and usesof collage and quick-cut techniques were never ambivalent-they alwayshad a point. Thus since Zappa's earlywork in no way anticipatesthe ahis-toricity, ironic detachment, and playful depthlessness characteristic ofpostmodernist quotation, it could be classed as modernist.0l There ismore to support this label than mere wordplay, as I shall argue below.Indeed, careful listening reveals an attention to form-the organizationof recorded sound in time-that places the three albums discussed in thisessay uneasily (and perhaps consciously so) into the tradition oftwentieth-century musical modernism. Before examining this hypothesis,Zappa's earlywork needs to be put into the larger context of sixties rockand its connections with modernism.

Perhapsbecause genres closely associated with postmodern intertextu-ality, like punk, rap, and new wave, had already emerged by the time oftheir writing, some rock critics-most notably John Rockwell11-haveplaced particularemphasis on the tendency of late sixties rock to borrowmelodies, harmonies, and instrumentation from "classical"music. This isnowhere as prevalent as in discussions of progressiverock, exemplified byBritish bands like Pink Floyd, Yes, King Crimson, and Emerson, Lake &Palmer. Criticaldiscussions during and shortly after the peak of progres-sive rock's popularity, however, focused not on any indebtedness to theclassics per se, but on its eclecticism.12 The best uses of borrowedgenres-jazz, blues, folk, non-Western music, as well as the classics-were not then viewed as reflections of artists' social or intellectual preten-sions, as Rockwell would have it. Rather they were part and parcel of themodern condition that Sontag described: a shifting between traditionsand ideas that made listeners aware of the confined conceptual spacesthey occupied. "Arttoday is a new kind of instrument, an instrument formodifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility," shewrote.13With modernist notions like this spilling off the pages of Made-moiselle, it is easy to understand how the quest for an expanded con-sciousness could be transformed into a consumer item, like a rock album.Complexity was another trait of rock that listeners identified at thetime. This was not so much the complexity of contemporary art music-indeed many quoted works are "chestnuts"14-or the extended chordsand forms of jazz, or the almost competitive virtuosity of the performers.

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ather, I would argue, it had primarilyto do with recording techniques.he aesthetic of modernism, with its promise of art-science synthesis,ius reached into the very mode of the music's production.The roots of this aesthetic reach back at least as far as producer Philpector's "Wallof Sound" recordings of the early 1960s.15 In these one:adily detects the expertly crafted, multi-layered, though hardlylassical-soundingarrangementsthat would have been impossible to rec-eate outside a recording studio. Spector's hit singles also involved whatiere, by the then-prevailing

standards of rock'n'roll, exotic orchestralastruments like the timpani and castanets, along with more familiar-ounding strings, woodwinds, and brass.With these he sought to createvhat he called "little symphonies for the kids,"16 though he seldomcored them in a "classical"manner. String ensembles, for example, wereypically heard in short bursts within multi-textured accompaniments.[racing the classical orientation of progressive rock to the recordingndustry and Spector, rather than to qualities inherent in the classicshemselves, makes sense given the esteem in which later producers and*ockmusicians held his work.'7 Thus qualities of eclecticism, complexity,md technical sophistication figured prominently in rock from the early;ixtieson.Yet rock of the mid-sixties through early seventies differs from earlierworkin that it sometimes drew heavilyupon the experimentalorientationof the European avant-garde.The list of groups and artistswhose record-ings are noteworthy for introducing electronic sounds and tape tech-niques to a broad audience is short, but includes some important names.The Beatles and their producer George Martin incorporated reverse oraccelerated playback, multi-tracking, and musique concreteinto albumsreleased between 1965 and 1968.18 Jimi Hendrix was experimentingwith feedback effects around the same time.19 The Velvet Undergroundincorporated electronic noise into its stage performances and recordings,due in part to Andy Warhol's influence.20 Brian Wilson, leader of theBeach Boys, used tape manipulation on "She's Goin' Bald" (1967)released on Smiley Smile, part of a more ambitious though abortiveexperimental album set, Smile;21before

that he had added the Thereminto the instrumentation for "I Just Wasn't Made for these Times" (May1966) and "Good Vibrations" (October 1966).22 Keith Emersonbrought sophisticated music synthesis to a rock audience.Topping the list of artists inspired by experimental trends in the Euro-pean avant-gardeis FrankZappa, who led the founding members of TheMothers of Invention from 1964 through 1969.23 The group's appear-ances at the Whiskey A Go-Go and The Trip in West Hollywood and atthe Garrick Theatre in New York anticipated performance art by


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decades.24 Their first record, the double LP Freak Out! (July 1966),25includes the large group improvisation "Help, I'm a Rock," which wasconceived live at an L.A. nightclub called The Trip.26Other nods in thedirection of experimentalisminclude "Who Are the Brain Police?"whichinvolves extensive tape manipulation, and "The Return of the Son ofMonster Magnet," a twelve-minute, free-form electronic and voice piece."It Can't Happen Here" alternates between Sprechstimme,nstrumentalchamber music, contemporary jazz, and tape effects.Freak Out! was not only an avant-rock album but a satire on the rela-tively new concept of "life-style"-"straight" and "hip" alike. In deliver-ing their message of the injustice, chaos, and stupidity of contemporaryAmerican society, The Mothers were not beyond ridiculing their listenersin feigned Mexican- or African-American accents. But the satiricalweapon of choice was music. The forms, chord changes, vocal harmo-nies, and timbres of doo-wop and R & B ballads were lampooned ("IAin't Got No Heart," "Go Cry on Somebody Else's Shoulder," "HowCould I Be Such a Fool," "You Didn't Try to Call Me," and "I'm NotSatisfied"), as were some of rock's newer cliches. The riff underlying"Hungry Freaks, Daddy" originates in the Rolling Stones' 1965 smashhit, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." The sound of "Motherly Love"mimics that of the proto-Bubblegum band, Paul Revere and the Raiders,who regularlyheadlined Dick Clark'safternoon television show "Wherethe Action Is," aimed at a newly identified demographic: teeny-boppers.27 "Who Are the Brain Police?" with its aural effects and para-noid lyrics, reflects the dark side of psychedelia.In addition to the unpredictable shifts among musical styles and textmeaning, Freak Out! sends other conflicting signals. The cutting-edgepsychedelic cover art evokes West Coast Flower Power at its zenith, yetthe liner notes remarkcondescendingly on listeners' emotional and intel-lectual limitations. Concerning "Any Way the Wind Blows," for example,we read that:[This] is a song I wrote about three years ago when I was consider-ing divorce. If I had never gotten divorced, this piece of trivialnon-sense would never have been recorded. It is included in thiscollection because, in a nutshell, kids, it is ... how shall I say it? ...it is intellectually and emotionally ACCESSIBLE for you. Hah!Maybe it is even right down your alley.

False acknowledgments of pop icons who "contributed materially"to thealbum-Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and Brian Epstein, among others-appear alongside names of twentieth-century composers whom Zappa

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Formand the Concept Album

considered truly important influences: Stravinsky,Anton Webern, ArnoldSchoenberg, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. The jackets of this and laterMothers albums echo a sentiment first expressed by a defiant EdgardVarese, idol of Zappa's youth: "The present-day composer refuses todie!",28Any concern that The Mothers would be considered just another nov-elty act may have troubled Zappa, but probably only as he imagined him-self on his way to the bank. Before founding the group, in fact, he had

recognized the possibility of making a living by combining avant-gardemusic and humor. Billing himself as a contemporary composer, forinstance, he had appearedplaying an upturned bicycle on a 1963 broad-cast of "The Steve Allen Show," a late-night television celebrityinterview/comedy program.29Whereas most academic composers of theday would likely have shunned such publicity, Zappa relished it. Accord-ing to a friend at the time, Paul Buff, the appearance"in part ... con-vinced him of the viability of producing the kind of music he ended upproducing."30 Zappa even tried to cash in on his connection with theAllen show, incorporating the comedian's shtick into an early single. Hedubbed a pre-Mothers group "Baby Ray & The Ferns" and entitled theA-side of their only single "How's Your Bird?"31 Allen often droppedthe words "bird" and "fern"into conversations with his guests as poten-tially embarrassing, f humorous, hip doubleentendre for male and femalegenitalia respectively. "How's your bird?"-a frequently asked questionon the show-seems innocent compared with the sexual allusions onZappa's recordings of the seventies and eighties.)Freak Out! was followed in May 1967 by AbsolutelyFree, an albumwhich like its predecessor connects rock, avant-gardemusic, and satiricalsocial commentary. Its targets are the southern California life-style andAmerican consumer culture-note the double-edged irony of thealbum's title, a pleonasm commonly used in sixties advertisingthat couldjust as easily have originated in the counterculture. Featured is "BrownShoes Don't Make It," a seven-and-a-half-minute assault on twistedmiddle-class aspirationsthat shifts musical ensembles and styles from ato-

nality and Sprechstimme o blues-based rock in almost stream of con-sciousness fashion. Eclecticism is the norm for the album and quick cutsare ubiquitous. A short, mostly instrumental number, "AmnesiaVivace,"for example, shifts from Stravinsky'sLe Sacre du printempsand L'Oiseaude feu to Gene Chandler's "Duke of Earl" (1962).31 Other "classical"sources include Stravinsky'sHistoire du soldat and Gustav Holst's "Jupi-ter" from the Planets suite.33A look into the background of a song on the album, "Status BackBaby," suggests how fervently Zappa sought to introduce listeners not

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just to his brand of satire, but to twentieth-century concert music.34Besides borrowing from the first tableau of Stravinsky's Petrushka35(compare rehearsalnumbers 2 through 5 with "StatusBack Baby,"1:27-2:07), it features a paraphrase of the opening measures of ClaudeDebussy's "La fille au cheveux de lin" (Preludes, book 1) in the tripletcountermelody played on the soprano saxophone (albeit transposed fromG6 to G Major).36Meanwhile the lead singer laments his loss of popular-ity at the high school. Comparing "Status Back Baby" with a bootlegrelease of an earlier version37-a song from a rock musical Zappa andDon Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) conceived, entitled I Wasa TeenageMaltshop-it becomes clear that the "classical"material was incorporatedrelatively late in the evolution of the piece. As shown in Example 1 theoriginal accompaniment was a rock'n'roll commonplace lacking in "Sta-tus Back Baby."This and other comparisons of preliminaryand releasedversions of songs suggest how much Zappa was learning abouttwentieth-century music during the mid-to-late sixties.38

PF F ; F f F IIEXAMPLE 1: FRANK ZAPPA, "I WAS A TEENAGE MALTSHOP"(APOCRYPHA, GREAT DANE RECORDS, GDR 9405 A), PIANO

ACCOMPANIMENT, TRANSCRIPTION, MEASURES 1-2

In January 1968 Verve Records released the third Mothers' record,We'reOnly In It For The Money, a send-up of Sgt. Pepper.The satirebegins with the album's visual presentation: instead of the garishlyattiredVictorian-era brass band, artist Cal Shenkel's cover design features thegroup in drag with "MOTHERS" spelled out in vegetables and bits ofwatermelon in the foreground, and a collage of famous and infamouspeople in the back. The gatefold picture on a bright yellow backgroundand the printed lyricsheet on red complete the visualparody.39The lyricsand arrangements of some songs were similarly intended to puncturewhat Zappa evidently saw as the Beatles' glib psychedelia.40Compare, forexample, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" with "Absolutely Free" onWe'reOnly In It For TheMoney.Zappa skewered John Lennon's halluci-natory lyrics, using nonsense rhymes and quoting the names of Santa'sreindeer from "'Twas the Night Before Christmas."He also used a harp-sichord accompaniment where George Martin had created an ersatzeffect with the harpsichord stop on a Lowrey electronic organ. The

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authentic thus replaces the phony. "Bow Tie Daddy," "Lonely LittleGirl," and "Mom And Dad" contrast with Paul McCartney's more con-ventional view of the alienation middle-class youth in "She's LeavingHome."41 Yet despite its many visual, timbral, stylistic, and textual allu-sions to Sgt. Pepper,Moneyis still an extension of AbsolutelyFree in itsfree-wheeling combination of satire-the main target this time is the hip-pie life-style-and musical experimentation, particularly atonality ("TheChrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny") and electronic composition inthe style of Stockhausen's Kontakte ("Nasal Retentive Calliope Music,""The Idiot BastardSon").Zappa's quotation of twentieth-century art music and incorporation ofelectronic and tape sounds are two indices of his earlyefforts to fuse rockand contemporary art music, but by the late sixties these were becomingrock commonplaces as experimentation spread throughout the recordingindustry. Meanwhile, the sequence of related songs that became knownas the "concept album" had revealed itself a literaryrather than a musicalform.42 Considered in these terms, Freak Out! could be considered asong cycle with a unifying sociological theme: the Los Angeles scene ofthe mid-sixties, with its freak counterculture and racial tensions. Similarstatements could be made about AbsolutelyFree, We'reOnlyIn It For TheMoney,and most other concept albums for that matter.43 The musicaltraits that distinguished The Mothers' extended live performances-asymmetricalrhythms and unpredictable shifts from one sound, style, orsong excerpt to another-had been difficult to bring across on record,hence the reliance upon songs with satiricallyrics. But how many moresend-ups of hippies and the middle class could the group get away withbefore committing commercial suicide by so obviously repeating them-selves? Besides, Zappa's contempt for lyrics was by then becoming wellknown.The Mothers did subsequently release an album of doo-wop songsalong the lines explored on their previous records-Cruising WithRubenAnd TheJets(November 1968)-but Zappa thought even of this projectin modernist terms:

I conceived that album along the same lines as the compositions inStravinsky'sneoclassical period. If he could take the forms and cli-ches of the classical era and pervert them, why not do the same forthe rules and regulations that applied to doo-wop in the fifties?44Before Cruising, it turns out that Zappa had struck even further downthe path of musical modernism. In contrast with the extended forms ofemerging progressive rock, which had been inspired by and in turn

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inspired drug use that he had publicly rejected,45Zappa opted for tightlyorganized musical structures that would reveal themselves only throughcareful, presumably unimpaired listening.46Beginning with Lumpy Gravy (May 1968), the first album-lengthrecord he produced on his own, Zappa took the concept album to thenext stage in its modernist development-a stage that reflected his grow-ing familiarity with musical models outside rock. Side one ("LumpyGravyPart One") is organized according to principles of repetition andvariation borrowed from Stravinsky's works;47 also noteworthy is theprogress from quotation to paraphraseof contemporary styles. FollowingLumpy Gravy,as we shall see, Zappa employed the variation-rondo ideato organize music for two more albums: Uncle Meat (April 1969) andBurnt WeenySandwich (February 1970). Although he abandoned thisapproachto form afterthese releases, and for a time shelved his dream offusing rock and contemporary art music, he nonetheless retained a trans-formational approach to repetition throughout his career as a key aspectof what he called "Conceptual Continuity."Earlyin 1967 Zappa pitched a "solo" album to Capitol Records-ear-lier Mothers albums for Verve were produced by Tom Wilson, MGM/Verve's young East Coast Director of Arrangement and Repertoirewhose credits included Bob Dylan's first "electric" albums.48 WhatZappa apparently sought at this stage was artistic control over what helater called his "serious music," a term he used, ironically at times, todescribe chamber and orchestral works in which contrasting and/orsimultaneous layers of atonal and tonal music vie for attention withhumorous titles, programs, or ballet scenarios.49Lumpy Gravy,recordedover an eleven-day stretch at New York'sApostolic Studios in February1967, involved a pick-up ensemble of fifty-one musicians including oneof The Mothers (saxophonist Bunk Gardner); added later were othermembers of the group plus assorted hangers-on who held disjointed con-versations on topics Zappa suggested as they sat under a heavily drapedgrand piano with the sostenuto pedal depressed.50In their final editedform these seem to have been aimed satiricallyat hippies.51Besides the contractual disputes that plagued the project-MGM/Verve quashed the deal with Capitol and released Lumpy Gravyin May196852-the condition of the session tapes delivered to Zappa causedconsiderable delay. Individual tracks, recorded on separate lengths ofaudio tape, were spliced unpredictably one after another; some tape wasreportedly unusable.53 All these materials had to be evaluated, sorted,catalogued, edited, and mixed, a laborious process that Zappa and engi-neer Gary Kellgren completed at a different studio.54 The fact that thistook six months reflects not just the poor state of the tapes, but also

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Zappa's meticulous attention to organizing the instrumental and spokensections into a coherent, album-length form. His reputation for musicalperfectionism thus goes back to his first large-scale production work andan unfortunate necessity-that of cleaning up a mess. The experiencenonetheless suggested to Zappa a new avenue of invention: the studioediting process as the crucial stage of composition. Source recordingsmight be hastily done or even captured live; what mattered most waspost-recording production and, ultimately, the organization of sound.55Despite its serious intent, Lumpy Gravy was, like earlier Mothers'releases, parodic. The target of the packaging, for instance, was the mar-keting of classical music. Before removing the jacket's protective cello-phane the buyer confronted Zappa's two personae, each representing adifferent side of his professional aspirations.56The front cover features aserious-looking Zappa wearing a two-tone, short-sleeve T-shirt of thetype then worn by amateur softball players, emblazoned with thecorporate-sounding word, "PIPCO." He wears darkpants and suspend-ers with sprigs of red flowers and a red button. Accompanying his trade-mark mustache and long straggly black hair is a day's growth of beard.Unexpectedly, though, he stands on a conductor's podium, albeit in ten-nis shoes without socks. On the back cover leered Zappa's alter ego: thecomposer and conductor, dressed in top hat, white tie and tails, holdingwhite kid gloves. His face is still stubbled, but now he is smiling broadly,if a bit menacingly.The album cover sends other mixed marketingsignals. The performingensemble is identified as ABNUCEALS EMUUKHA electric SYM-

PHONY orchestra & CHORUS, with "& CHORUS" scrawled at anangle below the neatly printed name.57Moreover, as with many classicalmusic albums, the conductor is billed before the project: "FRANCISVINCENT ZAPPA CONDUCTS LUMPY GRAVYa curiously inconsis-tent piece which started out as a BALLET but probably didn't make it."Buyers must have wondered what kind of record this was, describing afailed project that had yet to reach fruition. Let us, though, exploreanother intentional miscue: Zappa's throwing them off track by charac-terizing the work as "inconsistent."Removing the vinyl from the record jacket created the next confusionof identities: unlike earlier rock LPs except We'reOnly In It For TheMoney,Lumpy Gravyhas continuous sides-there are no rills to separateindividual bands. The impact of this novelty, considered in light of own-ers' repeated physical involvement with their albums at approximatelytwenty-minute intervals as they played them, cannot be stressed enoughin this era of compact discs and programmableplayers, capable of storingand playing hundreds of recordings for many hours, completely unseen

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and untouched. The inspiration for the material form of the record'ssides may have been Zappa's albums of Stravinsky,Varese,or other classi-cal music. It is certain, however, that as a composer of recordedmusicZappa intended the sides of Lumpy Gravy to be heard as one would aconcert, that is, without interruption or excerpt and in order. This isclearlyindicated in the gatefold: "NOTE: listen to side one first";under-neath is scrawled "AND TURN IT ALL THE WAYUP! !" The disciplineof the classical concert hall was demanded, if simultaneously lampooned.Criticalreaction to Lumpy Gravyhas been mixed at best. Zappa devo-tee Ben Watson, for instance, called it "aprovocative and puzzling record[that] . . . refuses to 'add up'."58 Except perhaps for a brief, esoteric digat the New York arts scene-the monotonous voice in the dialogue aboutdarkness, paranoia, and Kansas is a cross between Andy Warhol's andJohn Cage's59-the album wasn't even funny. Nor did it enjoy commer-cial success; it peaked at number 159 in the U.S. charts for one week.60Yet, as has also been noted elsewhere, LumpyGravywas a mine for songsZappawould rework for later release, as well as a tribute to the Europeanmusical avant-garde.61So far,however, neither the form and its origins incontemporary art music, nor the consequences for his later releases havebeen recognized.The original vinyl sides give the first clue to the large-scale form of thework, dividing Lumpy Gravy into "Part One" and "Part Two." "PartOne" in particular bears witness to a structural sense that synthesizescontemporary music and rock. It may be described as a rondo, but onewhose refrain is the second, rather than the first element: A B1 C B2 D

B3 + coda. Here the traditional rondo pattern is, so to speak, turnedinside-out, perhapsas a nod in the direction of commercial viabilitygiventhe resemblance between this structure and the verse-chorus pattern ofthe pop song. The repetition is only apparent, however, because therefrain is varied with each recurrence so that one may speak of avariation-rondo form. Rather than attempting to reconstruct further amusical score that never completely existed given the nature of themedium, I have set out a time-line description of the recording in Exam-ple 3.62 (Timings of subdivided sections of music are given in parenthe-ses.)The first statement of the refrain, B1 (the melody of which is tran-scribed in Example 2), reveals an affinity to pop and light jazz numbersZappa recorded before forming the Mothers.63 The ensemble includesinstruments typically heard on late fifties and early sixties instrumentals:vibraphone, piano, electric guitar, Fender bass, and drum kit. Theemphasis is on the melody, which is accompanied by closely-spaced blockchords played in relatively slow harmonic rhythm. But things soon veer

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Form and the Concept Album 129

3

6# r r- -3 ^ -- - --^jjSr ri-- 3 --r --9

~ - l' - '- -lz'd J14 .r _Cr-, 1 'x$Ir j1 j18

20

2 2 ? c i '

EXAMPLE 2: FRANK ZAPPA, "LUMPY GRAVY PART ONE,'RONDO THEME, TRANSCRIPTION, MEASURES 1-23


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Form Timing Index Title orDescription Prominent InstrumeA 0:00-2:07

(0:00-0:04) [1. "The WayI See It, Barry"] Spoken(0:05-1:37) [2. "Duodenum"] Instrumental theme Lead and rhythm guibass, and drum kit(1:37-1:46) Stravinskiana cf. Le Sacre du printemps, Winds, vibraphone, e"Rondes Printanieres")(1:47-2:07) 4 swing vamp Piano, vibraphone, b

B1 2:07-3:41 [3. "Oh No"] Rondo theme Piano, vibraphone, gC 3:41-7:11(3:41-3:44) [4. "Bit of Nostalgia"] Raspberry,then spok(3:45-3:47) Surf music Guitar(3:47-3:58) Collage Manipulated voices,(3:58-4:46) Women's conversation Spoken(4:47-5:17) Men's conversation Spoken

EXAMPLE 3: VARIATION-RONDO FORM OF "LUMPY GRAVY PART ONE" (


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Form Timing Index Title orDescription Prominent Instrumen(5:18-5:44) Traditionaljazz parody Accelerated, with scrof a 78 r.p.m. recordi(5:45-6:17) [6. "Bored Out 90 Over"] Jim (Motorhead) SheCollage manipulated(6:17-6:18) Short pentatonic melody Guitar, bass, drum kiwith surf beat(6:19-6:20) [7. "Almost Chinese"] Conversation Spokenabout the preceding snippet of music(6:20-6:27) Collage Motorhead's manipul

other taped and perc(6:27-6:35) Reprise ofpentatonic melody Guitar, bass, drum kit(6:35-6:41) Collage Percussion ensemble

plus manipulatedsou(6:42-6:52) [8. "Switching Girls"] Spoken(6:53-6:56) Varesiana Flute, piano, percussi(6:56-7:11) Instrumental introduction to "Oh No" Orchestral instrumencloses in 8 meter

EXAMPLE 3 (CONT.)


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Form Timing Index Title orDescription Prominent InstrumB2 7:11-9:16 [9. "Oh No Again"] with short Light jazz combotransition and snare drum, wi

8:23-9:16 Stravinskiana cf. Petrushka,FirstTableau) with the last four measuresof the rondo theme plus extensionD 9:17-13:46

(9:17-11:04) Voice (Motorhead), interrupted briefly Spoken; reverberaby "Louie Louie" (9:24-9:25); addedpercussion in different meters(11:05-11:27) [11. "Another Pickup"] Blues rock parody Harmonica and gu(11:27-11:39) Collage Percussion ensembmanipulatedsound(11:40-11:57) Tape effect with piano sounds Accelerated percusmanipulated piano(11:58-13:04) Varesiana Winds, brass,and(13:05-13:07) Conversationsamong studio musicians,ends with [12. "I Don't Know if I CanGo through This Again"]

EXAMPLE 3 (CONT.)


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Form Timing Index Title orDescription Prominent Instruments; Comm(13:08-13:46) Orchestralexcerpt From We'reOnlyIn It For The2:24)

B3 13:46-14:06 "Oh No" / Rondo refrain Accelerated, backward,and dissE 14:06-15:51

(14:06-14:18) Tape effects Percussion ensemble

(14:19-14:45) Varesiana Percussion ensemble(14:46-14-48) Stravinskiana Woodwinds(14:48-15:51) Weberniana Piano, strings, woodwinds, solo

EXAMPLE 3 (CONT.)


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out of control. Unexpectedly a trumpet and trombone blare out theverse the third time it is heard (measures 16-19), after which theensemble instruments are accelerated through tape manipulation. Theform, which at first seemed to conform to the standardpop template oftwo verses plus chorus plus verse (AABA), truncates the return of the Asection (in measures 17-19) and closes with a four-measure section(measures 20-23) that leads nowhere. Yet by far the most incongruousfeatures of the refrainmelody, later furnishedwith lyricsand entitled "OhNo" (WeaselsRipped My Flesh,August 1970), are its asymmetricalmeterand the polyrhythms produced by the quarter-note triplets played againsta steady rock beat. These confirm one's impression that this is a pop tuneby way of Petrushka'sShrovetide Fair.The second statement of the refrain (B2 at 7:11) involves changes ininstrumentation, arrangement, harmonization, and form. Strings, wood-winds, marimba, and snare drum are added to the light jazz combo; theextra instruments are multi-tracked and, at times, accelerated electroni-cally. Sometimes the string accompaniment seems oddly out of sync.Carefullistening revealsthat the articulation is reversed in places, thoughthe correct melody and accompaniment are heard (at 7:48-7:56, 8:00-8:03, and 8:13-8:22). Zappa presumably asked the session musicians toplay these passages backward,having in mind the aural effect of reverseplayback. Beyond these changes, the melody of B2 is accompanied byparallel triads, a harmonic strategy that Zappa probably borrowed fromdoo-wop.64 A new extension combines the closing, and now repeated,four-bar phrase (see Example 2, measures 20-23) with an accompani-ment paraphrasing the First Tableau of Petrushka (compare rehearsalnumbers 26 to 29 to "Part One," 8:23-9:16).65 The final statement ofthe refrain (B3 at 13:46) involves not so much conventional variationprocedures as editing and manipulation of the tape recording of B2. Therefrain is dissected and the resulting fragments sped up and played back-wards. Avant-garde and rock techniques thus intersect once again withmodernist eclecticism.The different "episodes" (A, C, D, and the coda, E) are pastiches ofspoken text, tape collages, and allusions to contemporary concert music(underlined in Example 3). The musical allusions, to say the least, reflectZappa's sense of humor as well as his experience as a musician, recordproducer, and listener. Half relate to various styles of pop music, fromhot jazz to surf music. Indeed two surf snippets are so West Coast as tobe Far East, hence the tongue-in-cheek comment "Almost Chinese,huh?" (6:17-6:18 and 6:27-6:35). The remaining allusions are to thestyles of three composers whom Zappa identified (in the liner notes toFreak Out! and elsewhere)66as personal favorites:Stravinsky,Varese, and

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Webern (hence the designations Stravinskiana, Varesiana, andWeberniana in the table; I have not indicated the indebtedness of theelectronic music sections to Stockhausen's Kontakte,though this is prob-able). Among the styles referenced are those of Petrushka, Varese'sDeserts and Hyperprism,and Webern's Variationen, op. 30. In a figura-tive sense, these admired styles and composers have the last word, for"Part One" is brought to a semblance of closure by a longish coda(14:19-15:51) in which stylisticreferences to all three succeed each otherwithout any intervening spoken or electronic material.68Thinking about the organization of the concept album led Zappa toexplore different ways of connecting the musical and narrative threads.Working with visual media, particularly collage and film, clearly influ-enced his approach and reliance on editorial creativity,as if he were bor-rowing a page from Soviet director V. I. Pudovkin's book: "Thefoundation of film art is editing."69Yet Zappa's experience and professedenthusiasm for the movies and avant-garde art should not keep us fromlooking for primaryinspiration in twentieth-century music. That he wasconscious of the abstractmusical form of "Lumpy GravyPart One," andkept it in mind some decades after the album's release, is confirmed bythe titles of indexes for a compact disc re-issue (Rykodisc RCD 10504),which Zappawrote himself. (These are given in square bracketsin Exam-ple 3.) The first two presentations of the refrain(B1, B2) are identified as"Oh No"; the third (B3) is called "I Don't Know if I Can Go throughThis Again," referring to a remark that a session musician mumbled,apparently mmediately before playing the third statement.

If the above analysisof "Part One" be granted, one might be forgivenfor speculating about a model. Zappa doubtless recognized the alterna-tion of instrumental and electronic sounds that forms the basic outline ofVarese's Deserts.Webern's Variationenwould also seem a possible inspi-ration.70 Yet given the clearly recognizable relationship among state-ments of the "Oh No" refrain a more likely point of departure isStravinsky'smusic. The second movement of the Octet or Symphonies fWind Instruments, either of which could be construed as a variation-rondo, are possibilities.71Yet it would be uncharacteristicof Zappa neverto have mentioned or quoted an admired work-to my knowledge thereare no musical references to either piece in all his recorded output. Con-sidering this evidence, a more likely source is the Suite from Histoire dusoldat, with its recurring "Soldier's March." Not only did The Mothersand their successorsperform excerpts from this work,72but Zappa used asimilar instrumentation for "Igor's Boogie" on Burnt WeenySandwich,discussed below.

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Admonitions that rock should not be analyzed with the tools createdfor concert music, let alone with an ear to references that would leadaway from its "authentic" roots,73 might lead us to question this searchfor "classical"inspiration were it not for Zappa himself pointing us inthat direction. Indeed he invited analysisof his recordings and was genu-inely disappointed at his fans' lack of perception. A widely used music-appreciation textbook quotes Zappa on his frustrations at the time:"These things are so carefully constructed that it breaksmy heart whenpeople don't dig into them and see all the levels that I put into them."74For all his palpable affection for doo-wop and rhythm and blues, whichhe admired as much for the music as their humor, twentieth-centurycompositions are credited for their intellectual sophistication. Listeningto them was, in Zappa's apparent paraphraseof Charles Ives, "the ulti-mate test of... intelligence."75The visual, musical, and textual connections that link early Mothers'albums likewise invite analysis along lines of recurrence and variation.76Accompanying Zappa'sphotos on LumpyGravyand We'reOnlyIn It ForTheMoneyare cartoon balloons reading, respectively, "IS THIS PHASE2 OF: WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY?" and "IS THISPHASE ONE OF LUMPY GRAVY?"Cal Shenkel's collages of foundobjects also put a common visual stamp on the album art, particularlyUncle Meat and Burnt Weeny Sandwich.77 The Mothers' fictionalgroupie, Suzy Creamcheese, is mentioned on FreakOut!, AbsolutelyFree,and UncleMeat. The characterUncle Meat plays a role in Cruising WithRuben And TheJets, Uncle Meat, and The Grand Wazoo.With regard torock parody, "Lumpy Gravy Part One" and Uncle Meat both use thearchetypal garage-band song "Louie, Louie" as a point of reference(Uncle Meat, side I, cut 7; see below, Example 4), as do the paraphrases"Plastic People" (Absolutely Free) and "Ruthie-Ruthie" (commerciallyreleased for the first time on Tou Can't Do That On Stage AnymoreVol.1). Zappa also used lyrics to connect his projects. The invocation "Hearmy Plea," for example, may be heard on Cruising WithRuben And TheJets and UncleMeat ("Dog Breath, In the Yearof the Plague"). The song"Absolutely Free," which is the title of The Mothers' second album, isfound on its third release, We'reOnlyIn It For TheMoney.Along the same lines, "Lumpy GravyPart One" was the point of musi-cal departure for two subsequent albums. In the double LP UncleMeat,the vinyl format again influenced listeners' perception of structure:thereare no rills. Like Lumpy Gravy,the continuous sides were intended astotalities to be heard from start to finish, forcing the record buyer to dothe work of structurallistening. Besides this, there is an obvious musicalconnection: "King Kong" on Uncle Meat originated in "Lumpy Gravy

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Part Two." For our purposes however the most interesting link is a for-mal one.The variation-rondo of Uncle Meat, though similar to "Lumpy GravyPart One," is more complex, in part because it involves three of the fouroriginal vinyl sides (one, two, and four; note below the use of Romannumerals for record side, Arabic for cut); side three alternates betweenvocal and instrumental songs in the manner of We'reOnlyIn It For TheMoney.As shown in Example 4, the themes (labeled A, B, and C) areinterwoven throughout and generally identified respectively as "UncleMeat," "Dog Breath," and "King Kong." There is another importantdevelopment in Uncle Meat: despite the importance of spoken and elec-tronically manipulated material and purely instrumental music-the linernotes state, "Basicallythis is an instrumental album"-songs with lyricsfigure into the variation-rondo form:

Al VA2 B1 A3 WB2 XA4Y Cl Z B3 C2 ... C3-8Despite the freedom with which Zappa interwove the themes and theirrespective variations into the complex fabric of Uncle Meat, he employedvarious devices both to connect related material and to differentiate itfrom other music. Mallet percussion, harpsichord, and woodwinds figureprominently in all four realizations of "Uncle Meat" (I.1, 4, 6, 11); inclose proximity to all but the first variation (namely A2, in which themusic of Al is dissected, accelerated, and played backward) are SuzyCreamcheese's deadpan monologues (labeled "sc" in the example)."Dog Breath, In the Yearof the Plague" (B1) concludes with a quartalostinato in 7 time (probably inspired by Holst, "Jupiter,"Planets suite),which in turn resembles that undergirding "A Pound for a Brown"(B3).78 Ian Underwood's saxophone solo (C2, 11.8) is performed overthe same Eb modal accompaniment as "King Kong Itself' (C3, IV.1).Zappa also used brief electronic or other taped sounds to distinguish onepiece from another on sides one and two. While searching for musicalclues to the album's organization, we should not overlook the obvious

references to variation and multi-movement form in the titles: "The DogBreath Variations"(1.8); "The Uncle Meat Variations"(11.3); and "Pre-lude to King Kong" (11.5). It is also clear from the titles that the fourthside involves jazz-style improvisations on the "King Kong" theme as per-formed by featured members of the group.79Uncle Meat, arguably the avant-rock triumph of Zappa's early career,broke fresh ground not just by moving awayfrom Flower Power psyche-delia with which The Mothers had been associated, but also from theirbrand of guerrilla theater and toward what Dominique Chevalier calls

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Form CD LP Title Timing ProminentSide:CutAl 1 1 .1 "UncleMeat:MainTitleTheme" 1:54 Vibraphonsnaredrum

acceleratedsc 2 1.2 "TheVoice of Cheese" 0:27 SpokenbyV 3 1.3 "NineTypesof IndustrialPollution" 5:56 Guitars,eleoverdubbeA2 4 1.4 "ZolarCzakl" 0:57 Material ro

acceleratedB1 5 1.5 "DogBreath,In the Yearof the Plague" 5:51(0:00-3:00) [Vocal]Voioperasopr(3:00-4:00) Manipulatwoodwindsoverdubs

(4:00-5:48) Celesta,hakit;7 ostina(5:48-5:51) Vocalsoun

A3 6 1.6 "TheLegendof theGoldenArches" 1:24(0:00-1:20) Celesta,ha

EXAMPLE 4: VARIATION-RONDO FORM OF UNCLE MEAT (BIZARRE/RE


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Form CD LP Title Timing ProminenSide:CutZ 14 11.6 "GodBless America(Live at theWhisky 1:22 [Vocal]a Go Go)"B3 15 11.7 "APound for a Brownon the Bus" 1:29 Organ,woC2 16 II.8 "IanUnderwoodWhipsIt Out(Liveon 5:08 RemarksbStagein Copenhagen)" solo withr

accompan17 III.1 "Mr.GreenGenes" 3:10 [Vocal]R18 111.2 "WeCanShoot You" 1:48 Percussiowoodwind19 111.3 "IfWe'd All Been Livingin California. . " 1:29 Spoken20 111.4 "TheAir" 2:57 [Vocal]Do21 III.5 "ProjectX" 4:47 Organ,piaguitar,wo22 111.6 "Cruising or Burgers" 2:19 [Vocal]23 (CD only) "Uncle MeatFilm Excerpt,Part 1" 37:3424 (CD only) "TengoNa MinchiaTanta" 3:4625 (CD only) "UncleMeatFilm Excerpt,Part2" 3:50

EXAMPLE 4 (CONT.)


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Form CD LP Title Timing ProminenSide:Cutsc [no title] (1:20-1:33) SpokenbyW 7 1.7 "Louie Louie (At theRoyalAlbertHall 2:28 Parodyofin London)" a pipe orgB2 8 1.8 "TheDog BreathVariations" 1:36 Organ acmarimba,timpani,aX 9 11.1 "Sleepingin a Jar" 0:49 [Vocal]sc 10 11.2 "OurBizarreRelationship" 1:05 SpokenbyA4 11 11.3 "The Uncle MeatVariations" 4:40 Harpsichodrumkit, t

gongs/ vocaccompanY 12 11.4 "ElectricAunt Jemima" 1:53 [Vocal]VoC1 13 11.5 "Prelude o King Kong" 3:24 Saxophonmeter/tap

EXAMPLE 4 (CONT.)


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Form CD LP Title Timing ProminSide:CutC3 26 IV.1 "KingKongItself (as Played by the 0:53 Rock grMothers n a Studio)"C4 27 IV.2 "KingKong(it's [sic] Magnificenceas 1:15 ElectricInterpreted y Dom De Wild)"C5 28 IV.3 "KingKong(as Motorhead 1:44 TenorsaExplainsIt)"C6 29 IV.4 "KingKong(theGardnerVarieties)" 6:17 ModifieC7 30 IV.5 "KingKong(as Played by 3 Deranged 0:29 OverduGood HumorTrucks)" keyboarC8 31 IV.6 "KingKong(Live on a FlatbedDiesel in the 7:22Middleof a Racetrackat a MiamiPopFestival ... the Underwood Ramifications)"

(0:00-6:19) Saxophowith roc(6:19-7:22) Final statwo saxotape loo

EXAMPLE 4 (CONT.)


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electric chamber music.80 Yet the financial downside of sustaining a nine-member band signaled trouble ahead. Indeed, this is the subject of aspoken interlude on Uncle Meat, "If We'd All Been Living inCalifornia...." Making matters worse, MGM delayed paying the groupits royalties on the first four albums and censored lyricson laterpressings,which led Zappa to file suit and form his own production and recordcompanies. Creating tensions of a different kind were the increasingtechnical demands of Zappa's new music, which required lengthyrehearsalsand reportedly exceeded the abilities of some original Moth-ers.81These and other factors led Zappa to disband the group in October1969. In a press release announcing the break-up he wrote: "It is possi-ble that, at a later date, when audiences have properly assimilated therecorded work of the group, a reformation might take place."82Zappa seems never to have been without recorded material, however,and was soon planning to issue a ten- or twelve-record set by the dis-banded group, but negotiations with a record company fell through.83Adjusting his aims to prevailing commercial realities, he released some ofthis material in February 1970 as a single LP, Burnt WeenySandwich. Ifhis press statement about the break-upwere not enough, the structure ofthis album-based once again on the variation principle (see Example5)-proves that Zappa had not yet exhausted his attempts to cross-pollinate rock and contemporary art music. Burnt WeenySandwich hasbeen described as "complex instrumental music sandwiched between twochirpypop songs" and an attempt to introduce the public to music morelike Stravinsky han The Doors.84 In fact, like his two previous releases ithas a tightly organized structure involving six cuts on a rilled side one aswell as connections between side one and an extended piece on side two.Perhapsit was nostalgia for happiertimes-namely those of Freak Out!and Cruising With Ruben And TheJets-that led Zappa to frame hisalbum with two rhythm and blues covers, "WPLJ"and "Valarie,"songsthat stand apartfrom the others and relate to them formallyonly in so faras they loosely connect the beginning and end of the album.85(Given thesimilarity of style, though not theme or harmonic structure, they arelabeled X and Y in Example 5.) The relationship between the album'ssides truly manifests itself in musical connections of a type we haveencountered before: a tape-accelerated reprise of "Aybe Sea" (I.D1)brings the music for "Little House I Used to Live In" to a close (II.D2).This nearly nineteen-minute uninterrupted counterpoise to side oneinvolves five sections of instrumental music, including two (F1 and F2)that were reversed and grafted together in subsequent live performances,such as that heard on FillmoreEast-June 1971. The pastiche-likecharac-ter of this cut is confirmed by the inclusion of a violin solo by Sugar Cane

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Form CD LP Title Timing ProminenSide:CutX 1 I.1 "WPLJ" 2:52 R & B cov

Al 2 1.2 "Igor'sBoogie, Phase One" 0:37 Clarinets,toireB1 3 1.3 "Overture o a Holidayin Berlin" 1:27 Harpsichodubbed),canddrumsC1 4 1.4 "Theme romBurntWeenySandwich" 4:32 Two-chorA2 5 1.5 "Igor'sBoogie, Phase Two" 0:37 Clarinets,B2 6 1.6 "Holiday n Berlin, Full-Blown" 6:23 Organ,piabass, clarimarimba,

"Holiday n Berlin,Full-Blown" (0:00-2:56)C2 [notitle] (2:57-6:23) Two-chorD1 7 1.7 "AybeSea" 2:46 Piano, har(overdubb

EXAMPLE 5: VARIATION-RONDO FORM OF BURNT WEENT SANDWICH (R


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Form CD LP Title Timing ProminenSide:Cut8 II.1 "LittleHouseI Used to Live In" 18:42

E (0:00-1:42) Piano soloFl (1:43-4:17) TheorigiG (4:18-13:34) Guitar,vioF2 (13:34-14:53) ChamberD2 (14:54-17:12) D1 acceleorgansolo

(17:12-18:41) ApplauseY 9 11.2 "Valarie" 3:14 R & B cov

EXAMPLE 5 (CONT.)


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Harris (G), who performed with Zappa afterThe Mothers' break-up butwas not with the group that recorded the "Little House" themes. (Thealbum's liner notes fail to identify all the musicians who performed,though some are pictured. Mothers fans would have known that theoriginal group did not include a violinist.)Following "WPLJ,"side one is organized into the pattern Al B1 C1A2 B2 C2. As on Uncle Meat, related material is connected in variousways. Besides sharing the same Stravinskian harmonic language, theinstrumentation of "Igor's Boogie, Phase One" (Al)-clarinet, cornet,drum set-is the same as "Igor's Boogie, Phase Two" (A2). Both obvi-ously derive from Histoire du soldat, as mentioned above. Cuts three andsix, "Overture to a Holiday in Berlin" (B1) and "Holiday in Berlin, Full-Blown" (B2) are self-parodies of a 3 melody that Zappa had composedin 1961 as part of a score for a film called The World'sGreatestSinner.86The off-key treatment of both cuts, complete with boozy saxophonesolos, evokes Kurt Weill's Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny.Sinceby his own admission Zappa was not a fan of Weill's music,87his choiceof a cabaret style associated with the Weimar Republic may reflectunpleasant memories of his encounters with radical German youths in1968. Of a particular ncident on this tour Michael Grayhas written:

The audience at Zappa's Berlin concert demanded that he makesome public declaration of intention to bring down capitalism.Zappa refused. The audience screamed "Fascist!" at him andchanted "Mothers of Reaction! Mothers of Reaction!,88Zappa once again used music to lampoon what he saw as the conformityunderlying the European youth revolt.89 He might also have been seek-ing to hitch his record to the surprising commercial star of Weill'sWeimar-erapieces. The Doors had recorded the "AlabamaSong" fromMahagonny on their debut album (1967) and Zappa's first record com-pany, MGM, had released a Broadway cast recording of The ThreepennyOpera.90In a related development, Joe Masteroff's musical, Cabaret(music by Jon Kander,lyrics by Fred Ebb), which is set during the sameera, had opened at New York's Broadhurst Theatre in November 1966,though it had yet to be adapted to film (1972).The third varied component of Burnt WeenySandwich, side one,involves Zappa's blues-oriented guitar solos over two-chord ostinatos,both evidently recorded live. The second of these, which is not given aseparatetitle or cut on the LP, overlaps the closing three-and-a-half min-utes of "Holiday in Berlin, Full-Blown" without rill. Finally, the enig-matic title of the closing number on side one, "Aybe Sea," provides a

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tantalizing clue that may tip Zappa's structural hand: it concisely summa-rizes the form of the preceding six numbers, that is, A-B-C.After releasing Burnt WeenySandwich, Zappa abandoned the idea oforganizing his albums along abstractformal lines, and with it his ideal offusing modern music with rock. He opted instead for a more commer-ciallyviable combination of virtuoso jazz-rock instrumentals and humor-ous stage antics provided by frontmen/singers Mark Volman andHoward Kaylan, both late of the Turtles.91Nonetheless the principle ofvaried repetition left a considerable imprint on Zappa's later recordings.A glance at his song list92reveals that quite a number of songs, especiallyinstrumentals, were released several times and with significant changes.These typicallyinvolve the variation techniques described above, thoughtheir place is in a form that spans a far longer timeframe than a singlerelease.Let me suggest that this tendency toward repetition and variation isthe musical embodiment of what Zappa called "Conceptual Continuity."Zappa himself once remarked that all the recordings he made over hiscareerwere interconnected like the bands of an enormous LP.93Indeedthis idea emerged around the time that Lumpy Gravywas released. ManyZappa fans, however, concentrating on visual and textual clues, havemissed these musical relationships, just as they overlooked the variationforms of his early albums. Ben Watson, for instance, strainscredibility indrawing a connection to modernist literature.

"Conceptual continuity" may well serve as a term for an underlyingsubstratum of associations that anyone uses over the years in orderto express themselves-the network of meaning revealed, say, inSamuel Taylor Coleridge's notebooks, which show irrationalattach-ment to words that appear at key points in his poems-but whatmakes Zappa's use of it modernist is that he brings this substratumto consciousness. You cannot approach Zappa as you would AndreGide or Sting, absorbing their art and imagining some roundedhuman personality.You must deal with it as you would FinnegansWake,activelytracing images and connections as they emerge on thematerial surface. This is modern art you cannot approach the oldway.94

Contrary to Watson's view, Zappa's is a modern art that most certainlycan be approached "the old way," that is, in terms of musical form andprocess."The Black Page" is an interesting case to examine in this regard sinceit was especially susceptible to change. Zappa commercially released nine

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versions of this instrumental on six albums, indicating the ongoing trans-formation in the titles. I have written about its different realizations else-where,95 but to summarize, close attention should be paid to differencesin tempo, meter, and the bass line. Listeners can easily tell that "TheBlack Page #2" on Baby Snakes s unlike the slower, jazz-inflected "TheBlack Page (New Age Version)" on Make A Jazz Noise Here. Both differfrom the up-tempo "The Black Page (1984)" on YouCan't Do That OnStageAnymoreVol. 4, which more closely approximatesa bizarrereggaepolka with its off-beat treble rhythm guitar and roots-and-fifths bassline.96 The origins of the piece ultimately stem from a drum solo, per-formed by Terry Bozzio on Zappa In New rork. The variationalimplica-tions of such connections and transformations are obvious.It is, I believe, significant that one key to assessing Zappa's place as anAmerican composer and record producer, as well as discovering hisapproach to linking rock and twentieth-century art music, may be foundembedded deep within an early attempt at fusion that flopped. LumpyGravy, considered alongside two related recordings, Uncle Meat andBurnt WeenySandwich,represent Zappa's highest modernist aspirations:to expand listeners' consciousness beyond a limited appreciationof eclec-ticism's possibilities, and to present a far broader range of music to rockaudiences than otherwise offered. If his efforts to cross the boundariesseparating musical traditions fell short of commercial expectations andultimately failed, not unlike those of another forward-looking Americanmusician, Duke Ellington, at least we still have the recordings. Withthese, today's listeners can judge for themselves the value of his earlywork and confront criticism that threatens to relegate it, along with other"art"rock, to the trashheap of postmodern music history.

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NOTES

I wish to express my thanks to Sean Westergaard, Steve Whiting, andWalt Everett, who read this essay at different stages and made useful sug-gestions.1. "A Magic Science: Rock Music as Recording Art," Popular Music 3

(1983): 202. The score may serve as an acceptable tool of analysisforthe music of the Western art music tradition. "Songs made in the stu-dio, however, should be understood as considered auralcompositionsin which sounds are performed, recorded, treated and combinedtogether often with no necessity for any kind of visual mediationwhatsoever" (202). See also John Mowitt, "The Sound of Music inthe Era of Its Electronic Reproducibility," in Music and Society:ThePolitics of Composition,Performanceand Reception,ed. Richard Lep-pert and Susan McClary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1987), 173-97.2. Zappa's opinions on academic composition are plainly expressed inan address he delivered at the 1984 convention of the American Soci-

ety of University Composers, excerpted in Frank Zappa and PeterOcchiogrosso, The Real Frank Zappa Book (New York: PoseidonPress, 1989), 189-94.3. CarlDahlhaus, "On the Decline of the WorkConcept," in Schoenberg

and the New Music, trans. Derrick Puffett and Alfred Clayton (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 229.4. A central text is Theodor Adorno, "On Popular Music," Studies inPhilosophyand Social Sciences 9 (1941):17-48; reprinted in OnRecord: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word, ed. Simon Frith andAndrew Goodwin (New York:Pantheon Books, 1989), 301-14; andin Cultural Theoryand Popular Culture:A Reader, ed. John Storey(New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994), 202-14. See alsoDahlhaus, "On the Decline of the Work Concept," 228-30; andidem, Prisms, 1st MIT Press ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,1981). The ambivalent position of Adorno's criticism in the analysisof popular music is treated in Georgina Born, "Modern Music Cul-ture: On Shock, Pop and Synthesis," New Formations2 (1987): 56-7; and Susan McClary and Robert Walser, "Start Making Sense!Musicology Wrestles with Rock," in On Record, 284. See also IainChambers, "Some Critical Tracks," Popular Music 2 (1982): 23-7;

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and Max Paddison, "The Critique Criticized: Adorno and PopularMusic," PopularMusic 2 (1982): 201-18.5. The rigid distinctions between musical categories in the 1960s arediscussed in Born, "Modern Music Culture," 53-4. See also SusanMcClary, "TerminalPrestige: The Case of Avant-Garde Music Com-position," Cultural Critique 12 (1989): 57-81.6. Sontag's essay, "One Culture and the New Sensibility," appears in

expanded form in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (NewYork:Farrar,Straus & Giroux, 1966), 293-304. The relevantpassageis found on pages 296-7.7. Neil Slaven, Zappa: Electric Don Quixote (London: Omnibus Press,1996), 49. Clive Davis was the head of Columbia Records at thetime.8. Dahlhaus, "On the Decline of the Work Concept," 229.9. Zappa's formative experience in marketing and advertising, includinggraphic design, is discussed in Michael Gray, Mother! The FrankZappa Story,rev. ed. (London: Plexus, 1994), 37-8.10. These traits are listed in Peter Manuel, "Music as Symbol, Music asSimulacrum: Postmodern, Pre-modern and Modern Aesthetics inSubcultural Popular Musics," Popular Music 14 (1995): 227. Seealso Billy Bergman and RichardHorn, Recombinant Do Re Mi: Fron-tiers of the Rock Era (New York: Quill, 1985), 99-112; Alexander

Laski, "The Politics of Dancing-Gay Disco Music and Postmodern-ism," in The Last Post: Music After Modernism, ed. Simon Miller(Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1993), 110-31,particularly110-5; and Andrew Goodwin, "PopularMusic and Post-modern Theory," Cultural Studies 5 (1991): 174-88; reprinted inCultural Theoryand Popular Culture, 414-27.11. See Rockwell, "The Emergence of Art Rock," in TheRolling StoneIllustrated History of Rock and Roll, ed. Anthony DeCurtis et al.,new ed. (New York:Random House, 1992), 493-4.12. The impressions of listeners at the time are treated extensively in PaulE. Willis, Profane Culture (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,1978), 106-8, 154-69.13. "One Culture and the New Sensibility,"296.

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14. See Janell R. Duxbury, Rockin' the Classicsand Classicizin' theRock:A SelectivelyAnnotated Discography (Westport, Conn.: GreenwoodPress, 1985).15. Spector's contributions to rock are surveyed in Nik Cohn, "PhilSpector," in TheRolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll,177-88; Back to Mono is an anthology of his recordings from thisperiod. Spector was, of course, developing the "sound on sound"(overdubbing) recording technique that Les Paul and others hadpioneered in the 1950s. See Mary Alice Shaughnessy, LesPaul: AnAmerican Original (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1993),165, 180-2.16. Quoted in PatriciaRomanowski and Holly George-Warren,eds., TheNew Rolling StoneEncyclopediaof Rock & Roll, rev. ed. (New York:Fireside/Rolling Stone Press, 1995), s.v. "Spector, Phil" (p. 933).17. These include Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, who imitated

Spector's recordings, career, and life-style; his admiration extendedto his hiring Spector's sidemen for Pet Sounds.See Timothy White,The Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, and theSouthern California Experience (New York: Henry Holt and Co.,1994), 148, 166. Wilson is quoted on the subject in David Leaf, TheBeachBoys Philadelphia:Running Press, 1985), 113. See also DanielHarrison, "After Sundown: The Beach Boys' Experimental Music,"in Understanding Rock:Essays n Musical Analysis, ed. John Covachand Graeme M. Boone (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997),38 and 54, notes 6 and 11. The Beatles likewise respected Spector'swork. He produced their Let It Be (1969) as well as solo albums byJohn Lennon and George Harrison. Frank Zappa and Spector werecasual acquaintances (see, for example, Gray, Mother!, 56, 79-80).Given Zappa's professed passion for early rock'n'roll, Spector's pro-duction work would have been hard to miss. Moreover, among theNew Yorkstudio musicians who recorded Zappa's Lumpy Gravywasone of Spector's favorite session guitarists,Tommy Tedesco.18. Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper'sLonely HeartsClub Band (1967), and TheBeatles[The White Album] (1968). Fordiscussions of recording techniques used on these albums, see MarkLewisohn, The Beatles: Recording Sessions (New York: HarmonyBooks, 1988); George Martin, All YouNeed Is Ears (New York:St.Martin's Press, 1979); and George Martin and William Pearson,Summer of Love: The Making of Sgt. Pepper (London: Macmillan,1994). See also Ian MacDonald, Revolution in theHead: TheBeatles'

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Records and the Sixties (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1994).Because Martin was an experienced producer of comedy, he wasdoubtless familiar with American novelty records. These ofteninvolved quick-cut techniques, like those simulated in the forties bySpike Jones, as well as tape manipulation. Napoleon XIV's (JerrySamuel) "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!," for ex-ample, which used tape acceleration and reverbeffects, was a top-tenhit in the summer of 1966. See TheGuinnessEncyclopediaof PopularMusic, ed. Colin Larkin, 6 vols., 2d ed. (Enfield, Middlesex: Guin-ness Publishing Ltd., 1995), s.v. "Napoleon XIV," (4: 2986). The Bside of the original 45 r.p.m. single is the A side backward; he rever-sal extended to the label, which was printed backward.

19. "Third Stone from the Sun" (Are You Experienced, 1967) and"1983" (ElectricLadyland, 1968), in particular.20. Electronic sounds are prominent on their first two albums, VelvetUndergroundand Nico (1967) and WhiteLight, WhiteHeat (1967).On Warhol's involvement with the Velvet Underground, see JeremyReed, Waiting for the Man (London: Picador/Macmillan, 1994),31-4.21. This project, which Wilson called "a teenage symphony to God," isdiscussed in White, The Nearest Faraway Place, 271-5. NoteWilson's not-so-veiled reference to Spector's description of his ownwork.22. Brad Elliott, Surf's Up: The Beach Boyson Record 1961-1981 (AnnArbor: Popular Culture, Ink, 1991), 53, 57. According to White,TheNearest Faraway Place, 264-5, Wilson self consciously intendedthe complex arrangementsand stereo overdubbing of "Good Vibra-tions" to trump Spector's legendary "Wallof Sound" mono record-ings.23. The Mothers' line-up changed somewhat over the period under con-sideration. See Gray, Mother!, 56-8, 82, 89. The core includedZappa, Jimmy CarlBlack, Roy Estrada,and Ray Collins.24. The GarrickTheatre show, "Pigs and Repugnant/Absolutely Free,"as described in Zappa and Occhiogrosso,TheReal Frank Zappa Book,92-6. "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask"on WeaselsRipped My Flesh (originally released in August 1970;compact disc reissue, Rykodisc RCD 10163), recorded live at Lon-don's Festival Hall, gives a vague impression of the group's improvi-satory performing style.

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25. The source of this and other release dates (given in parentheses) isGray,Mother!,241-8.26. Charlesworth Chris Miles, Zappa: A Visual Documentary (London:Omnibus Press, 1993), 21. Song and album titles are given as theyappearon the albums, that is, with every word capitalized.27. Compare with "Steppin' Out" (1965), particularly he fade-out. TheRaiders, known for their energetic coordinated choreography and

powder-blue Revolutionary War-era outfits, were fronted by leadsinger and teen idol, Mark Lindsay.His closing rap and the group'strebly electric guitar timbre are the chief targets of Zappa's derision.For details of Dick Clark's broadcasting career, see The GuinnessEncyclopediaof Popular Music, s.v. "Clark,Dick" (1:826).28. Zappa's brief article in StereoReview (June 1971), "Edgard Varese,Idol of My Youth. A Reminiscence and Appreciation," is reprintedinDominique Chevalier, Viva! Zappa, trans. Matthew Screech (New

York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), 105-6. See also Gray,Mother!,137.By his own account, the fourteen-year-old Zappa first learned aboutVaresein an article about record dealer Sam Goody in Life magazine.He was intrigued by Goody's disparaging remarks about the com-poser's music and searched local record stores for recordings. SeeThe Real FrankZappa Book,31; and Miles, VisualDocumentary,7.29. For a photo of Zappa, Allen, and the bicycle, along with other earlypublicity material, see Gray,Mother!, 160 [h]. Zappa had also pro-

duced a few novelty 45s, along with surf music and R&B recordings.30. See the booklet accompanying Frank Zappa, The LostEpisodes, 24](Rykodisc RCD 40573).31. Donna 1378, re-released on Rare Meat: Early WorksOf FrankZappa, Del-Fi Records RNEP604; and Cucamonga, Del-Fi RecordsDFCD 71261. See Miles, Visual Documentary, 13; and Gray,Mother!,42. The snork sound effect on "The Idiot Bastard Son,"

We'reOnlyIn It For TheMoney, s firstheard on "How's Your Bird?"32. Words and music by Earl Edwards, Bernie Williams, and EugeneDixon.33. "Soft-Sell Conclusion" (1:24-1:31) and "Invocation and RitualDance of the Young Pumpkin" (0:08-0:25), respectively.34. On Zappa's self-perception, see Gray,Mother!,66. For lyrics to theseand other Zappa songs, as well as complete discographies, songlists,

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and reproductions of cover art, consult "St. Alphonso's PancakeHomepage" .35. Igor Stravinsky,Petrushka, ed. Charles Hamm, A Norton CriticalScore (New York:W.W.Norton, 1967), 24-31.36. A concert performance of an excerpt from Petrushkamay be foundon 'Tis The SeasonToBeJelly:Live in Sweden1967(FOO-EE/ RhinoRecords RZ 70542).37. Apocrypha Great Dane Records GDR 9405/ABCD).38. According to his widow, Gail Zappa, a considerable portion of theyoung couple's income went to purchasing records during theseyears (telephone conversation, 23 October 1995).39. Due to concerns over copyright infringement, the gatefold of We'reOnly In It For TheMoneywas the reverse of Sgt. Pepper.For repro-ductions of the album art, consult "St. Alphonso's Pancake

Homepage."40. Zappa may have been reacting to the group's emerging cynicism andparticularly hat of John Lennon. Commenting on the Beatles' musicnot long after the release of Sgt. Pepper, for example, Lennonremarked: "People think the Beatles know what's going on. Wedon't. We're just doing it.... [On "Being for the Benefit of Mr.Kite!" from Sgt. Pepper]I just shoved a lot of words together, thenshoved some noise on. I just did it. I didn't dig that song when Iwrote it. I didn't believe in it when I was doing it. But nobody willbelieve it. They don't want to. They want it to be important."Quoted in Hunter Davies, The Beatles (New York: McGraw Hill,1968), 284.41. The texts and musical settings of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"and "She's Leaving Home" are discussed in Wilfred Mellers, TheTwilightof the Gods:TheMusic of theBeatles(New York:Viking Press,1974), 89-93.42. The definition is Mellers's (ibid., 86-7). Zappa may have inventedthe concept album. No less an authority than Paul McCartneyacknowledged Freak Out! as a key inspiration for the later, but farmore commercially successful Sgt. Pepper.See Rockwell, "The Emer-gence of Art Rock," 496.43. On this point, see Tom Manoff, Music: A Living Language (NewYork:W.W.Norton, 1982), 292-3.

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44. Zappa and Occhiogrosso, TheReal FrankZappa Book,88.45. Zappa's undisguised hostility to drugs is discussed in Ben Watson,Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of PoodlePlay (New York:St.Martin's Press, 1993), 73-4. Hippies' preference for the uninter-rupted flow of progressive rock music over conventional three-minute pop songs is mentioned, among other places, in John Storey,Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture (Athens: Univer-sity of Georgia Press, 1996), 105.46. The ultimate irony of Zappa's early albums may be that hippies con-sidered them the ne plus ultra of their musical experience. On therecognition of Zappa's role in defining music in hippie subculture,see Willis, Profane Culture, 107-8.47. For a similar approach to the analysis of Stravinsky's music, seeEdward T. Cone, "Stravinsky:The Progress of Method," Perspectivesof New Music 1 (1962): 18-26. See also Jonathan D. Kramer,"Dis-

continuity and Proportion in the Music of Stravinsky," n Confront-ing Stravinsky: Man, Musician, and Modernist, ed. Jann Pasler(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 174-94. The kindof proportional relationships that Kramer finds in Stravinsky'smusicare not evident in Zappa's, as Examples 3-5 demonstrate.48. Gray,Mother!,61-2. On Wilson's role in the earlyMothers' record-ings, see William Ruhlman, "FrankZappa: The Present Day Com-poser," in TheFrankZappa Companion,6-7; and Slaven, Zappa,49-

53.49. The angular "Love Story" (Boulez Conducts Zappa, The PerfectStranger, August 1984), for example, "features an elderly Republi-can couple attempting sex while break-dancing." The distinctionbetween Zappa's rock and serious music emerged between 1969 and1971, around the times of The Mothers' breakup, the first LosAngeles Philharmonic performance in May 1970, and the release ofFillmoreEast and 200 Motels.Mass media critics recognized Zappa'searlier attempts to combine rock with what they too called seriousmusic. For example, Robert Shelton, writing in the New YorkTimesin December 1966, described The Mothers as "the first pop groupto successfully amalgamate rock'n'roll with the serious music ofStravinskyand others." Quoted in Gray,Mother!,84.50. Chevalier observes that the conversations were recorded after the

composition and recording of the instrumental sections. Viva!Zappa, 13. See also Slaven, Zappa, 76.

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51. The importance of style over meaning in hippie conversation isdescribed in Willis, Profane Culture, 103-6. Like the ones simulatedon Lumpy Gravy, "Conversations would turn on sudden interrup-tions, provocative statements, sudden denials, insolent questionings,apparent paradoxes. It was the mark of the strangeror acolyte that hewould try to express something directly or naively... It was greatlyappreciatedwhen a non sequitur, or enigmatic statement stopped aconversation, but in an appropriate way, or transformed what hadbeen said into something speciallyunderstood only by the head [hip-pie]" (103).

52. For the details of this dispute, see Gray,Mother!,90.53. David Walley,No Commercial Potential (New York:Outerbridge andLazard, 1972), 86-8; Gray,Mother!,90.54. According to Walley (No CommercialPotential, 86), Zappa learnedto operate the sophisticated studio equipment quicklyenough to cre-

ate tension with the more experienced technician, Kellgren. It is hewho threatens to erase Zappa's master tapes on We'reOnlyIn It ForTheMoney.55. Concerning Uncle Meat, Chevalier (Viva! Zappa, 13) writes that"while the group recorded one track Zappa sat in the sound engi-neer's room composing music for the next one." Charles Keil charac-terizes recording as a "classicizing" or perfecting act that divorcesperformance from real-life expectations, as well as informal and

improvisational aspects. Valuable as this observation is, it should beamended to take engineering and production into consideration. SeeCharles Keil and Steven Feld, Music Grooves:Essaysand Dialogues(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 157-9.

56. Remarks refer to the original U.S. vinyl issue, Verve V6-8741; theartwork for the compact disc reissues is not the same. Zappa hadalreadychanged his identity once: as Ruben Sano, leader of an imag-inary fifties R & B-pachuco group. Later Zappa had himself depictedas the mad scientist, Uncle Meat, on the inner sleeve of The GrandWazoo December 1972), an obvious pastiche of his and Varese's fea-tures: compare this with photos of Varese later in life. Zapparemarked that the composer looked like a "mad scientist" in TheReal FrankZappa Book,31.57. The type fonts for both compact disc reissues differ from the VerveLP release. Zappa later used the name ABNUCEALS EMUUKHAelectric SYMPHONY orchestra to identify an ensemble of thirty-

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seven musicians who performed his compositions on 17 and 18 Sep-tember 1975 at Royce Hall, UCLA. Some arrangementsperformedduring these concerts were released in May 1979 as OrchestralFavor-ites. Gray, Mother!, 165, 176. Ben Watson, usually dogged in hisattempts to apply his brand of hermeneutics to allusions in Zappa'slyrics, offers no hypothesis about the hidden meaning of this ensem-ble's name. He does, however, connect the title Lumpy GravywithZappa's remarks to the university composers in 1984, in whichZappa admits that composers have to eat, but "mostly what they eatis brown and lumpy." Negative Dialectics, 91.

58. Watson, Negative Dialectics, 90. Commenting further, he writes thatLumpyGravyhas been "relegated to the category of 'harmlessindul-gence'," perhaps because "the setting .. defies high-brow analysis."Ibid., 104, 91.59. Compare "Lumpy Gravy Part One" (4:47-5:17) to John Cage andDavid Tudor, Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumentaland Electronic Music (Folkways FT 3704), released in 1959. TheMothers had, of course, worked in New York and fashioned them-selves as rivals to the Velvet Underground, then under Warhol'stutelage. The dialogue is transcribedin Watson, Negative Dialectics,97-8.60. Watson, Negative Dialectics, 104.61. Reworked songs include "Chrome Plated Megaphone" (We'reOnly

In It For TheMoney), "King Kong" (Uncle Meat), "Oh No" (Wea-sels), and "Redneck Eats" (200 Motels). See Chevalier, Viva! Zappa,62.62. Timings correspond to the 1986 CD reissue, Rykodisc RCD 40024.63. Compare, for example, the 1961 recording, later entitled "TakeYourClothes off When You Dance" (TheLostEpisodes).64. This approach to harmonization, a hallmark of Zappa's style, waslater employed in instrumentals like "Little House I Used to LiveIn," "Big Swifty,"and "Echidna's Arf ofYou."65. See Hamm, ed., Norton CriticalScore, 52-6. The closing section ofthe refrain is repeated and used to introduce "The Orange CountyLumber Truck" on WeaselsRipped My Flesh. As early as 1969 (YouCan't Do That On StageAnymoreVol. 1 and later, MakeA Jazz NoiseHere) the repeated closing section of "Oh No" was transformedinto

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a head motive for a guitar solo; Zappa improvised over the two sup-porting chords (i-iv).66. See, for example, TheReal FrankZappaBook,34. "I loved Stravinskyalmost as much as Varese. The other composer who filled me withawe-I couldn't believe that anybody could write music like that-was Anton Webern."67. Originated as a cue for Zappa's 1963 film score for Run Home Slow,

available on the reissue The LostEpisodes,no. 11, "Run Home Cues,#2."68. Chevalier suggests that Zappa's original conception did not includespoken material. Viva!Zappa, 13.69. Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin, Film Techniqueand Film Acting,trans. and ed. Ivor Montagu, memorial edition (New York: GrovePress, 1976), 23. Zappa was reportedly at work on a movie calledUncle Meat in January1968, that is, while recording and editing thealbum of the same name. Chevalier, Viva!Zappa, 13. Barking Pump-kin/Honker Video released the movie Uncle Meat in 1989.70. In a 1972 radio interview with Martin Perlich, Zappa mentions own-ing the 1957 Columbia recording, The CompleteMusic [of] AntonWebern K4L-232 / KL 5019-5022). The text of the interview, tran-scribed by Georg Deppe, is available on the St. Alfonso's PancakeHomepage:

.Elsewhere he identified it as one of his favorite records. SeeChevalier, Viva!Zappa, 108.

71. For a brief analysis of the former work, see Eric Walter White,Stravinsky:TheComposer nd His Works, d ed. (Berkeley:Universityof California Press, 1979), 308-12. For analyses of SymphoniesofWindInstruments,refer to note 47, above.72. "Soft-Sell Conclusion," AbsolutelyFree; "Royal March from 'L'his-toire du soldat'," Make a Jazz Noise Here (Barking Pumpkin RecordsD2-74234 and Rykodisc 10557/58).

73. See Charles Hamm, Putting Popular Music in Its Place (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1995), 20-1; and Robert Walser,Run-ning with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy MetalMusic (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1993),

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58-9. Watson, Negative Dialectics, 129, extends the admonition tothe analysisof Zappa's music.74. Joseph Machlis and KristineForney, TheEnjoymentof Music, 7th ed.(New York:Norton, 1995), 547.75. TheReal FrankZappaBook,33. Linernotes and interviews are full ofreferences to twentieth-century compositions, composers, tech-niques, and studio paraphernalia.The gatefold of Uncle Meat, for

example, includes the following statement: "Things that sound like afull orchestra were carefullyassembled, trackby trackthrough a pro-cedure known as over-dubbing. The weird middle section of DOGBREATH (afterthe line, 'Ready to attack') has forty tracks built intoit. Things that sound like trumpets are actually clarinets playedthrough an electric device made by Maestro with a setting labeledOboe D'Amore and sped up a minor third with a V.S.O. (variablespeed oscillator). Other peculiar sounds were made on the Kalama-zoo electric organ."76. According to Walley, Zappa planned his earlyprojects as conceptualpairs. No CommercialPotential, 86.77. On Shenkel's contribution, see Miles, "The Grand Wazoo," Mojo(March 1974): 93-5. The artwork for these two albums is discussedin Watson, Negative Dialectics, 135-6 and 168-9, respectively.78. Zappa had previously borrowed from Holst on AbsolutelyFree (see

above). Ryko's compact disc re-issue (RCD 10506/07) connects theostinato-based passagewith the trackcontaining "The Legend of theGolden Arches." The LP, of course, had no rills;the original timingis as indicated in Example 4.79. In a paper delivered at the Sixty-FirstAnnual Meeting of the Ameri-can Musicological Society (1995), James Grier argued that "KingKong" was progressively "reconstructed" from its manifestations onside one ("The Mothers of Invention and Uncle Meat: Alienation,

Anachronism, and a Double Variation"). I would argue instead thatC1 and C2 reference a theme (stated unambiguously in C8) that hadbeen introduced on "Lumpy GravyPart Two." Side four of the orig-inal LP could be analyzed in syncreticterms, that is, as a combinationof variation and the familiar jazz technique of stating the headmotive at the beginning (C3) and the end (C8). Grier moreoverconstrued the album's form as a double, ratherthan triple, variation.I would add that the observations presented herein were developedindependent from my friend and colleague's research,of which I wasunaware.

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"King Kong," of course, refers to the giant gorilla from the movieof the same name, which Zappa may have considered a metaphor forhis instinctive approach to music and his difficulties with the recordindustry. He related the following to a Swedish concert audience in1967: "The name of this song is 'King Kong.' It's the story of a verylarge gorilla who lived in the jungle. And he was doing okay untilsome Americans came by and thought that they would take himhome with them. They took him to the United States and they madesome money by using the gorilla. Then they killed him." 'Tis TheSeason To Be Jelly: Live in Sweden 1967 (FOO-EE/Rhino RecordsRZ 70542).

80. Viva! Zappa, 14. Zappa himself characterized the Grand Wazooensemble, which replaced The Mothers in 1972, as "a new 20-pieceelectric symphony orchestra." See Gray,Mother!,150.81. Chevalier, Viva!Zappa, 14. Group members were paid $250 a weekout of the leader's pocket, whether they rehearsed or not. For detailsof the group's break-up,see Gray,Mother!,117-9.82. Gray,Mother!,119.83. Walley, No CommercialPotential, 127; see also Gray,Mother!, 117-8. On Zappa's penchant for holding recorded materialin reserve, seeGray,Mother!,97. UncleMeat and WeaselsRippedMyFleshwere alsoto have originally been part of a multi-record set.84. Chevalier, Viva!Zappa, 14.85. "WPLJ"was first released by the Four Deuces, "Valarie"by Jackieand the Starlights.Slaven, Zappa, 128.86. Portions of the score may be heard on Apocrypha,disc 4. The con-nection is discussed in Gray,Mother!,34.87. Booklet accompanying The Yellow Shark, [8] (Barking PumpkinRecords R2 7 1600/Rykodisc RCD/RAC 40560). A connection

between Weill and Zappa, though in a completely different context,is suggested in Paddison, "The Critique Criticized," 217.88. Mother!,113. The Berlin incident was reported (in German) on theback cover of the group's April 1969 anthology release, Motherma-nia (VerveV65068).89. He also used a brief bit of live tape. "Little House" concludes with asarcasticquip he made to an unruly London concert audience, alsoin 1968: "You're all wearing uniforms and don't kid yourselves."

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90. MGME/SE-3121; stereore-recording,MGM SE-3121 OC.91. Zappa's search for a successful money-making formula is discussed inWatson, Negative Dialectics, 177-95. It is significant that some ofthe first members added to the original Mothers, like Don Prestonand Bunk Gardner,were jazz players.See ibid., 75-8. Even after dis-banding the jazz-oriented Grand and Petite Wazoo groups of theearly seventies, Zappa's later bands included jazz musicians likeJean-Luc Ponty and George Duke. Ibid., 163-6.92. See "St. Alphonso's Pancake Homepage/Discography/Songlist.93. Walley,No CommercialPotential, 88.94. Negative Dialectics, 229.95. James Borders, "FrankZappa's 'The Black Page': A Case of Musical'Conceptual Continuity'," in Expressionn Pop-RockMusic:A Collec-

tion of Critical and Analytic Essays,ed. Walter Everett (New York:Garland Publishing, 2000), 137-56. In addition to commercialreleases, Zappa included a Synclavierversion of "The BlackPage #1"in the February 1987 issue of Keyboard.There are also more than adozen known bootleg recordings.96. Those who suspect Zappa incapable of such cross-breeding of popu-lar styles should listen to his reggae cover of the Johnny Cash hit,"Ring of Fire" (TheBest Band You Never Heard In YourLife).

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