col_tom
02-02-2009, 09:49 AM
http://www.nypost.com/seven/02012009/entertainment/music/zappa_to_it_153035.htm
http://www.nypost.com/seven/02012009/photos/044a.jpg
By SPORT MURPHY
February 1, 2009
Gail Zappa frequently speaks in the present tense about her late husband, composer Frank Zappa. "His definition of music," she says, "is, 'Sound organized for the purpose of decorating time.' He's interested in sound, and he doesn't care what it's generated by."
The proof is all over "Lumpy Money," a new three-CD release of his conceptually and musically interwoven '60s classics "Lumpy Gravy" and the Mothers of Invention's "We're Only in It for the Money," with outtakes and loose ends.
Among these delights are the original orchestral versions of the former and of the "Lonely Little Girl" single from the latter, a virtuoso collage that makes The Beatles and Brian Wilson's own beatific sound-constructs seem timid by comparison.
As per Zappa, styles shift dizzyingly, with further dislocations from thousands of razor-on-tape edits. Such shenanigans - the stuff of today's mash-ups - were then unheard of outside the work of John Cage and Andre Popp, and nobody then or now has used them so torrentially, so integrally, to produce music of such breathtaking wit and beauty.
Zappa's anti-groupthink satire is at its sharpest here, but the inspired melodies and playfulness are what stick to your ribs. With a genuine sense of warmth and joy pervading the surrealist recitations, skronk and sarcasm, the work remains mind-blowing, but also impossibly catchy.
"Frank's masterwork is 'Lumpy Gravy,' 'We're Only in It for the Money' and 'Civilization Phaze III' - they all belong together," Gail Zappa says, referring to the final album Zappa completed before his death in 1993. The collection completed a triptych he considered his most "fully realized" accomplishment.
Of this 40-year commemoration, Gail says, "It's not really about it being 'the greatest record ever made' or anything like that. It's just that the influence that this kind of work had on everybody's work is unprecedented."
http://www.nypost.com/seven/02012009/photos/044a.jpg
By SPORT MURPHY
February 1, 2009
Gail Zappa frequently speaks in the present tense about her late husband, composer Frank Zappa. "His definition of music," she says, "is, 'Sound organized for the purpose of decorating time.' He's interested in sound, and he doesn't care what it's generated by."
The proof is all over "Lumpy Money," a new three-CD release of his conceptually and musically interwoven '60s classics "Lumpy Gravy" and the Mothers of Invention's "We're Only in It for the Money," with outtakes and loose ends.
Among these delights are the original orchestral versions of the former and of the "Lonely Little Girl" single from the latter, a virtuoso collage that makes The Beatles and Brian Wilson's own beatific sound-constructs seem timid by comparison.
As per Zappa, styles shift dizzyingly, with further dislocations from thousands of razor-on-tape edits. Such shenanigans - the stuff of today's mash-ups - were then unheard of outside the work of John Cage and Andre Popp, and nobody then or now has used them so torrentially, so integrally, to produce music of such breathtaking wit and beauty.
Zappa's anti-groupthink satire is at its sharpest here, but the inspired melodies and playfulness are what stick to your ribs. With a genuine sense of warmth and joy pervading the surrealist recitations, skronk and sarcasm, the work remains mind-blowing, but also impossibly catchy.
"Frank's masterwork is 'Lumpy Gravy,' 'We're Only in It for the Money' and 'Civilization Phaze III' - they all belong together," Gail Zappa says, referring to the final album Zappa completed before his death in 1993. The collection completed a triptych he considered his most "fully realized" accomplishment.
Of this 40-year commemoration, Gail says, "It's not really about it being 'the greatest record ever made' or anything like that. It's just that the influence that this kind of work had on everybody's work is unprecedented."