quote:

---

Originally posted by Mr. Blues Singer

To Lemonade Kid:
Bryan Maclean actually mentions Zappa in the psychedelic Sounds interview:
When did you start hanging out with Zappa?

BM: Probably during the Grass Roots period before we hooked upwith Elektra. He wouldn´t have asked me to be in his band if I was signed. He wouldn´t have lured me away from a record deal.

How did you happen to bump into Zappa?

BM: "I went to huge Holywood party where they invited people from the street in order to film it. Zappa was in a band called the mothers and they were from El Monte. I stood near the band in rapture for the entire evening. I couldn´t believe my eyes. I thought he was the greatest. I think the Mothers were doing 50s and 60s music. I don´t remember how we beecame friends, but Jim Morrison and I were great friends around this time...."

Fascinating....

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by lemonade kid

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mr. Blues Singer

To Lemonade Kid:
Bryan Maclean actually mentions Zappa in the psychedelic Sounds interview:
When did you start hanging out with Zappa?

BM: Probably during the Grass Roots period before we hooked upwith Elektra. He wouldn´t have asked me to be in his band if I was signed. He wouldn´t have lured me away from a record deal.

How did you happen to bump into Zappa?

BM: "I went to huge Holywood party where they invited people from the street in order to film it. Zappa was in a band called the mothers and they were from El Monte. I stood near the band in rapture for the entire evening. I couldn´t believe my eyes. I thought he was the greatest. I think the Mothers were doing 50s and 60s music. I don´t remember how we beecame friends, but Jim Morrison and I were great friends around this time...."

Fascinating....

---

Thanks, MBS. I haven't seen this interview....great to read.
I do believe that Zappa had some influence on many, maybe even Bryan, in some subconscious way. As I believe LoVE had an influence on Frank Z. How could they NOT....LoVE and co. were THE group of the Strip.

_____________________________________________
Sometimes I have good luck...
& write better than I can.
-Hemmingway

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by lemonade kid

"While in his teens (1950's), ZAPPA acquired a taste for percussion-based avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse and 1950s rhythm and blues music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands; he later switched to electric guitar. He was a self-taught composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often impossible to categorize. His 1966 debut album with The Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was one of rock, jazz or classical. He wrote the lyrics to all his songs, which—often humorously—reflected his iconoclastic view of established social and political processes, structures and movements. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship...."

And he played the bicycle on Steve Allen in 1963! That predates the Grass roots!



Zappa and Allen 1963
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9P2V0_p6vE

And yes, Zappa can play guitar!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IELy5frbFeQ&feature=related




_____________________________________________
Don't you know there ain't no devil,
There's just god when he's drunk.

-Tom Waits

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by lemonade kid

But they were acquaintances and sometimes you can be inspired by someone, their talent and their passion, without being directly derivative or influenced in your music.

I think it probably worked that way with Bryan and Zappa with much of the music that inspired them....from Lerner & Lowe to Edgard Varese.

Edgard Varese: The Idol of My Youth

By Frank Zappa

Article taken from Stereo Review, June 1971. pp 61-62.

I have been asked to write about Edgard Varese. I am in no way qualified to. I can't even pronounce his name right. The only reason I have agreed to is because I love his music very much, and if by some chance this article can influence more people to hear his works, it will have been worthwhile.

I was about thirteen when I read an article in Look about Sam Goody's Record Store in New York. My memory is not too clear on the details, but I recall it was praising the store's exceptional record merchandising ability. One example of brilliant salesmanship described how, through some mysterious trickery, the store actually managed to sell an album called "Ionization" (the real name of the album was "The Complete Works of Edgard Varese, Volume One"). The article described the record as a weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds.

i dashed off to my local record store and asked for it. Nobody ever heard of it. I told the guy in the store what it was like. He turned away, repulsed, and mumbled solemnly, "I probably wouldn't stock it anyway... nobody here in San Diego would buy it."

I didn't give up. i was so hot to get that record I couldn't even believe it. In those days I was a rhythm-and-blues fanatic. I saved any money I could get (sometimes as much as $2 a week) so that every Friday and Saturday I could rummage through piles of old records at the Juke Box Used Record Dump (or whatever they called it) in the Maryland Hotel or the dusty corners of little record stores where they'd keep the crappy records nobody wanted to buy.

One day I was passing a hi-fi store in La Mesa. A little sign in the window announced a sale on 45's. After shuffling through their singles rack and finding a couple of Joe Houston records, I walked toward the cash register. On my way, I happened to glance into the LP bin. Sitting in the front, just a little bent at the corners, was a strange-looking black-and-white album cover. On it there was a picture of a man with gray frizzy hair. He looked like a mad scientist. I thought it was great that somebody had finally made a record of a mad scientist. i picked it up. I nearly (this is true, ladies and gentlemen) peed in my pants... THERE IT WAS! EMS 401, The Complete Works of Edgard Varese Volume I... Integrales, Density 21.5, ionization, Octandre... Rene Le Roy, the N. Y. Wind Ensemble, the Juilliard Percussion Orchestra, Frederic Waidman Conducting... liner notes by Sidney Finkelstein! WOW!

I ran over to the singles box and stuffed the Joe Houston records back in it. I fumbled around in my pocket to see how much money I had (about $3.80). I knew I had to have a lot of money to buy an album. Only old people had enough money to buy albums. I'd never bought an album before. I sneaked over to the guy at the cash register and asked him how much EMS 401 cost. "That gray one in the box? $5.95 - "

I had searched for that album for over a year, and now... disaster. I told the guy I only had $3.80. He scratched his neck. "We use that record to demonstrate the hi-fi's with, but nobody ever buys one when we use it... you can have it for $3.80 if you want it that bad."

I couldn't imagine what he meant by "demonstrating hi-fi's with it." I'd never heard a hi-fi. I only knew that old people bought them. I had a genuine lo-fi... it was a little box about 4 inches deep with imitation wrought-iron legs at each corner (sort of brass-plated) which elevated it from the table top because the speaker was in the bottom. My mother kept it near the ironing board. She used to listen to a 78 of The Little Shoemaker on it. I took off the 78 of The Little Shoemaker and, carefully moving the speed lever to 33 1/3 (it had never been there before), turned the volume all the way up and placed the all-purpose Osmium-tip needle in the lead-in spiral to Ionization. I have a nice Catholic mother who likes Roller Derby. Edgard Varese does not get her off, even to this very day. I was forbidden to play that record in the living room ever again.

In order to listen to The Album, I had to stay in my room. I would sit there every night and play it two or three times and read the liner notes over and over. I didn't understand them at all. I didn't know what timbre was. I never heard of polyphony. I just liked the music because it sounded good to me. I would force anybody who came over to listen to it. (I had heard someplace that in radio stations the guys would make chalk marks on records so they could find an exact spot, so I did the same thing to EMS 401... marked all the hot items so my friends wouldn't get bored in the quiet parts.)

I went to the library and tried to find a book about Mr. Varese. There wasn't any. The librarian told me he probably wasn't a Major Composer. She suggested I look in books about new or unpopular composers. I found a book that had a little blurb in it (with a picture of Mr. Varese as a young man, staring into the camera very seriously) saying that he would be just as happy growing grapes as being a composer.

On my fifteenth birthday my mother said she'd give me $5. I told her I would rather make a long-distance phone call. I figured Mr. Varese lived in New York because the record was made in new York (and because he was so weird, he would live in Greenwich Village). I got New York Information, and sure enough, he was in the phone book.

His wife answered. She was very nice and told me he was in Europe and to call back in a few weeks. I did. I don't remember what I said to him exactly, but it was something like: "I really dig your music." he told me he was working on a new piece called Deserts. This thrilled me quite a bit since I was living in Lancaster, California then. When you're fifteen and living in the Mojave Desert and find out that the world's greatest composer, somewhere in a secret Greenwich Village laboratory, is working on a song about your "home town" you can get pretty excited. It seemed a great tragedy that nobody in Palmdale or Rosamond would care if they ever heard it. I still think Deserts is about Lancaster, even if the liner notes on the Columbia LP say it's something more philosophical.

All through high school I searched for information about Varese and his music. One of the most exiting discoveries was in the school library in Lancaster. I found an orchestration book that had score examples in the back, and included was an excerpt from Offrandes with a lot of harp notes (and you know how groovy harp notes look). I remember fetishing the book for several weeks.

When I was eighteen I got a chance to go to the East Coast to visit my Aunt Mary in Baltimore. I had been composing for about four years then but had not heard any of it played. Aunt Mary was going to introduce me to some friend of hers (an italian gentleman) who was connected with the symphony there. I had planned on making a side trip to mysterious Greenwich Village. During my birthday telephone conversation, Mr. Varese had casually mentioned the possibility of a visit if I was ever in the area. I wrote him a letter when I got to Baltimore, just to let him know I was in the area.

I waited. My aunt introduced me to the symphony guy. She said, "This is Frankie. He writes orchestra music." The guy said, "Really? Tell me, sonny boy, what's the lowest note on a bassoon?" I said, "B flat... and also it says in the book you can get 'em up to a C or something in the treble clef." He said, "Really? You know about violin harmonics?" I said, "What's that?" He said, "See me again in a few years."

I waited some more. The letter came. I couldn't believe it. A real handwritten letter from Edgard Varese! I still have it in a little frame. In very tiny scientific-looking script it says:


VII 12th/57

Dear Mr. Zappa

I am sorry not to be able to grant your request. I am leaving for Europe next week and will be gone until next spring. I am hoping however to see you on my return. With best wishes.
Sincerely
Edgard Varese


I never got to meet Mr. Varese. But I kept looking for records of his music. When he got to be about eighty I guess a few companies gave in and recorded some of his stuff. Sort of a gesture, I imagine. I always wondered who bought them besides me. It was about seven years from the time I first heard his music till I met someone else who even knew he existed. That person was a film student at USC. He had the Columbia LP with Poeme Electronique on it. He thought it would make groovy sound effects.

I can't give you any structural insights or academic suppositions about how his music works or why I think it sounds so good. His music is completely unique. If you haven't heard it yet, go hear it. If you've already heard it and think it might make groovy sound effects, listen again. i would recommend the Chicago Symphony recording of Arcana on RCA (at full volume) or the Utah Symphony recording of Ameriques on Vanguard. Also, there is a biography by Fernand Oulette, and miniature scores are available for most of his works, published by G. Ricordi.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

The way I see it is this, WB.....music is a sonic/love thing. A combination of notes or sounds that are assembled in a way that turns you on. Discussions about what is good, or what or who is genius, is pointless and cannot be proven anyway.

Whatever gets you through the night (and day!)....but it's pointless to look down on a certain artist's music. Don't listen to it. Don't think about it. Enjoy what gets us off, not what pisses us off. Life's too short.

If what turns me on, doesn't turn you on, or visa versa, that's cool. No worry...as Georgie Beatle said, "It's just stuff."

_____________________________________________
Don't you know there ain't no devil,
There's just god when he's drunk.

-Tom Waits

---