Zappa is a god!
Apr. 16th, 2004 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsHow the hell did I get all the way to being 37 without ever listening to Frank Zappa? I mean, sure, I'd heard Zappa before, a couple of tracks now and then. I've had Sheik Yerbouti on my shelf for years, an impulse buy back when everyone else in college was listening to it back in the late 1980's, but I almost never listened to it. After hearing Bobby Brown Goes Down and Jewish Princess, I kinda thought of him as an intellectual Weird Al, but I never quite grokked what others saw in him.
So this week I've been listening to You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, a live album, and realizing that I've completely missed out on the Zappa experience. He was unimaginably talented personally and his band had such talent, such integration. Listening to him you realize that only Dave Matthews has managedtos put together a popular band quite so good, but Zappa's so clearly have fun, joshing with the audience, feeding their expectations and giving every inch. There isn't a moment of hesitation on the whole CD. When his band gives him a false start he starts laughing and says, "You can't start like that! Try again!" and he's still having fun, and so is the band.
Live Zappa is like good sex. The band came to play; the audience came to listen. Both sides knew what they were there for and there are no illusions, no grandstanding, no superstar tantrums. Zappa knew he was good; he knew his band was quality; the audience knows it too. There's enormous respect on all sides, and I just admire a man and a band that respects its audience so well, instead of being there for the cash and the promotion, which is so clearly the case with most talent.
So this week I've been listening to You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, a live album, and realizing that I've completely missed out on the Zappa experience. He was unimaginably talented personally and his band had such talent, such integration. Listening to him you realize that only Dave Matthews has managedtos put together a popular band quite so good, but Zappa's so clearly have fun, joshing with the audience, feeding their expectations and giving every inch. There isn't a moment of hesitation on the whole CD. When his band gives him a false start he starts laughing and says, "You can't start like that! Try again!" and he's still having fun, and so is the band.
Live Zappa is like good sex. The band came to play; the audience came to listen. Both sides knew what they were there for and there are no illusions, no grandstanding, no superstar tantrums. Zappa knew he was good; he knew his band was quality; the audience knows it too. There's enormous respect on all sides, and I just admire a man and a band that respects its audience so well, instead of being there for the cash and the promotion, which is so clearly the case with most talent.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-16 10:26 am (UTC)Some 24 years ago or so, I had the opportunity to see Frank Zappa in concert at the Berkeley Community Theatre. He played two shows in one night. I had a ticket to the first show. The second show hadn't sold all that well, so he invited all the folks who came for the first show to stay for the second.
The two shows were *completely* different. Not one song was repeated.
It was amazing. That was the only time I ever got to see Zappa; it was a good one, and my, that was a tight band. It was one (well, two) of the best shows I've ever seen in my life, and given that I worked at concerts for 15 years, going to well over a hundred shows every year, that's saying something.