#barking pumpkin

[sound-bombing]

Frank Zappa -  Make A Jazz Noise Here (Barking Pumpkin, 1991) Genre: Jazz-Rock, Jazz Fusion Artwork: Larry Grossman Link

[somethingvinyl]

Frank Zappa, You Are What You Is Like all 80’s Zappa, it’s got lots of lyrics that are cringingly, song-ruiningly awful, and it’s overproduced to within an inch of its life. But depending on what day you ask me, its virtues can make up for its faults. The anti-religion suite of The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing, Dumb All Over, and Heavenly Bank Account is especially outstanding.

[spaceykaseysartbook]

 Barking Pumpkin

[nowayhead]

1986

[whatisdereklisteningto]

Thing-Fish is a pretty good contender for the fucking weirdest thing Frank Zappa ever released, and one I’m having a hard time trying to describe for the purposes of this post. The three record (or two CD) “Original Cast Recording” with complete libretto is essentially a musical (part song/part dialogue) that’s part “government-backed spread of AIDS to eliminate undesirables” allegory, part satire about Broadway musicals and the people who go see them (I always had the feeling FZ was invited/forced to attend some 80′s Broadway production and found it so stupid and loathesome that he channeled some of his contempt into this thing, but that’s just a theory), part satire about male/female sexual and business roles in the 80′s, and part Conceptual Continuity run quite amok. None of the characters or storylines introduced come to any resolution or conclusion, just a bizarre fuck-off ending, and there’s songs (including some re-worked versions of older recordings) and themes and phrases and things that appear elsewhere in Zappa’s catalog. I certainly don’t think this is the “worst” Zappa album or anything (besides, it’s Francesco Zappa if anything, considering “the” FZ didn’t write any of it and it’s not all that stimulating for the ears), but this one is weirdly divisive and, in my experience, some people don’t like it. It also has it’s fans, and has a lot of weirdly funny and memorable parts. That said, I’m rarely ever in the mood to listen to the entire thing. There’s a handful of tracks I like to hear from time to time, but some of the long sections of dialogue kinda make the whole thing feel longer than it really is, as does the fact that it’s on three LPs but is only about two LPs long (for real, all six sides fit on a 90-minute tape). Of course, none of the above has stopped me from owning three copies of it, as I’ve bought it on CD twice before / in addition to having the three record box because [surprise] there are some differences between the LP and CD versions. 

[praguehead]

[whatisdereklisteningto]

Halloween was a DVD-Audio release of performances culled from Zappa’s legendary run of shows leading up to Halloween 1978 (six shows over five nights, with two shows each on the first two nights) mixed in 5.1 surround. While this disc is unfortunately pretty light on the kind of wild improvisations and rarely performed songs that characterized those shows (and is really both a disappointment and a missed opportunity in that sense), it’s still full of fun performances and some wild soloing, both by FZ on guitar and by guest violinist L. Shankar on a couple songs, including a long, out-there “Black Napkins”/”The Deathless Horsie” encore from Halloween night. Like Zappa’s other DVD-A release QuAUDIOPHILIAc, I 1) never got around to buying this at regular price when it was easy to do so, and now they both sell for double that or more online, and 2) have settled for burning a DVD-R copy and feeding the DVD player’s audio to my stereo receiver, since I have neither a DVD-A player, nor a DTS receiver, nor more than two speakers.

[itsgottobejazz]