Frank Zappa was a genius. No one will dispute that whether you can grasp his music or not. The man was years ahead of anyone else when it came to cerebral experimentation on a musical instrument. How his brain functioned must have been a cross between a carnival ride, a circus act and Mozart. His music not only stands the test of time, it is still waiting for time to catch up to it.
But as new generations scroll through the newsfeed of musical history, they tend to stop at the Zappa who stood up for musical freedom by fighting the PMRC. He is a figurehead in a suit with tame hair and confident testimony: “It is my understanding that, in law, First Amendment Issues are decided with a preference for the least restrictive alternative,” stated Zappa during a hearing before Congress in 1985. “In this context, the PMRC’s demands are the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation.”
Zappa never shied away from using his mind. He took his creativity to the outer limits of it’s capacity and never showed signs of self-doubt. He turned phrases around to his benefit, played instrumentals that baffled the brain patterns and never settled for mediocrity. And a good example of this is on display in the recently released DVD, Roxy: The Movie. Originally filmed over three nights in December 1973, Zappa put on a show intermingling jazz, blues, cerebellum ingenuity, humor, bohemian freedom and biting wit towards political tomfoolery. To those wearing suits and displaying tame haircuts, Zappa would appear as the propagator of Armageddon for the world that they so steadfastly held onto, the bringer of doom to their offspring, the conjurer of sex, drugs, rebellion and freedom that was so foreign to their very existence. Excise the rules and the Garden of Eden would take over. And they couldn’t have that, not on their watch.
But Zappa was strong enough, educated and smart enough to ignore them and before his death in 1993 from prostate cancer at the age of fifty-two, he would be the one considered the genius and the milquetoast suits forgotten. Almost like this film, what with all the problems it encountered from the get go. As Gail Zappa wrote in the liner notes: “We had always viewed the film components as sub-standard and too expensive to fix in that era … Before now, the only place anyone could experience the madness, the mayhem and the music of these concerts was in the memories of those who were actually in attendance.”
Four cameras were used to record the shows and all the musicians wore the same outfits so that a cohesion could be achieved when splicing to form a full film. But as John Albarian writes in the liner notes, “The audio device suffered an internal malfunction within two minutes of the very first show,” making it difficult to synchronize sound to video. “It took a herculean effort to bring it to life,” Zappa’s son Ahmet stated upon the DVD’s release. Those efforts do indeed pay off. The show, though not perfect, is fun, original, at times mindboggling, at times quite magical, thanks in large part to Zappa’s band: George Duke, Chester Thompson, Napoleon Murphy Brock, Ralph Humphrey and the Fowler brothers, Tom and Bruce. They rock and scat through such pieces as “I’m The Slime,” “Cosmik Debris” and “Inca Roads.”
For Zappa alter worshippers, this should appease even the hardcore fans who know and have everything. For us ordinary fans, light up an incense candle and prepare to be bowled over.
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Ruth Underwood on mallet percussion!