Originally published in Village Voice, 17 February 1988

If I may be so crass as to adjudge a rock icon by his fans, I’d say Frank Zappa might have a demographics problem. Admittedly, the lines to the gentlemen’s lounges were incredibly long last Thursday at the Beacon, where he performed one of his first shows after a four-year never-going-to-tour-again hiatus. But all those greasy dudes whipping out their dicks and pissing into the sinks while discussing Grateful Dead bootlegs made Morton Downey Jr.’s audience look like gene splicers by comparison.

Zappa, in fact, reminded me of a libertarian-Democrat Downey variation himself, mining evangelical right-wing extremism for easy entertainment value. Our “evening with” Frank included politically-flavored comedy pop, a voter-registration drive (”If you don’t register, you can’t vote, and if you don’t vote, democracy doesn’t work”), and two-bit political analysis: “To be honest, ladies and gentlemen, the Republican Party today is divided in half. You’ve got the enterprisers on one side and the moralizers on the other side. The enterprisers, they’re okay; it’s those moralizers you’ve got to worry about.”

To be frank, Frank: (1) an enterpriser’s only a moralizer whose moolah does his repressing for him; (2) the Democrats aren’t exactly worth writing home about either; (3) democracy sort of doesn’t work in the United States; and (4) if these sink stainers are the future electorate, I may do some abstaining myself. Zappa, of course—like pornographers and me too—has a vested interest in First Amendment upkeep. But at least give him credit for taking a vocal stand on an issue.

Zappa’s ongoing allure has always had something to do with the way he combines the enterpriser with the moralizer. You’ve got to be more than a jerk-off to produce 45 records in 22 years. It’s a long aesthetic haul from the jazzbo perfection of Hot Rats to the sheer tedium of his Broadway-targeted musical Thing-Fish (which only made it as far as a Hustler spread). What infuriates many of his longtime fans, I think, is the way Zappa oscillates between unbearably adolescent public performances and unbearably serious compositional aspirations. It’s taken him years to progress beyond works that combined various harmonic and rhythmic tics gleaned from Bartok, Stravinsky, Varese, and others. With 1983’s London Symphony Orchestra, however, and Boulez Conducts Zappa a year later, something clicked, and his “serious” work (or whatever you want to call it) now sounds less derivative and more assured, inventive, personal, and other classics-crit adjectives.

The major developments, however, are heard in his dazzling new electronic work, both on Boulez Conducts Zappa and last year’s Jazz From Hell (Barking Pumpkin/Rykodisc). The operative factor is control. With Synclavier DMS (on which Jazz was performed), the composer needn’t worry about human ineptitude, a longtime Zappa bugaboo. And while much of the Synclavier-generated music on Jazz (a great record and even better CD) sounds skittish, brittle, even “inhuman,” the instrument was used to startling effect in “Porn Wars” on Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention. During this rich and vicious 12-minute epic, congressional testimony and choice readings (e.g., “bend over and smell my anal vapors”) by Tipper Gore, Zappa, and various democratically elected representatives is electronically altered, then laced throughout a torture-chamber threnody. Zappa cranked up his Synclavier at the Beacon and performed a live mix of “Porn Wars” that made everything else sound tame.

Touring with an 11-piece band that includes a five-man horn section, Zappa’s latest revue kicked off with a “Republican-retrospective medley” that lampooned political pachyderms past (”Dicky’s Such an Asshole”), present (”When the Lie’s So Big”), and potential (”Jesus Thinks You’re a Jerk”). And why waste time justifying Andrew Lloyd Webber? Zappa’s equally capable of slapping together a little light opera here, some heavy metal over there, funny voices, a Laurie Anderson parody, patriotic songs deranged, and interpretative dance. Props—panties and a pumpkin—were provided by the fans.

With guitarist Ike Willis side kicking, the chuckles never stopped. At its most hackneyed, the production resembled political humorist Mark Russell as backed by the Saturday Night Live band. We’re talking rampant jazz-rock professionalism here in tricky time signatures, with a snappy horn section containing trumpeter Bruce Fowler and his trombonist brother Walt, long-time associate Ed Mann on percussion, and several other extremely competent musicians apparently devoid of the personality aberrations that made the original Mothers of Invention so intrinsic to the emotional and intellectual maturation of me and my chums.

The worst thing about FZ: No gurls allowed.

The post-intermission set was less superficially ideological. The biggest surprise was the group’s faithful, virtually non-ironic rendition (homages, in fact) of “Whipping Post” (bleh), “I Am the Walrus” (yay), and—weirdest of all—“Stairway to Heaven”, complete with a Supersaxy horn transcription of Jimmy Page’s guitar solo. Sounded great, too. (Who says you can’t judge a schnook by his cover versions?) Finally, “Turning Again”, from Mothers of Prevention, was Zappa’s “Touch of Grey”—a hummable, backhanded appreciation of the late ’60s.

Zappa’s frustration over the years has frequently struck me as the price paid by a digital dude trapped in an imprecise universe. That’s why I’ve been smacking my lips for the past several months over Rykodisc’s ongoing release of Mothers of Invention and Zappa on CDs, which range in quality from the very decent to the superb. The best of the lot so far is Hot Rats, which is not only digitally remixed to bring out layers of instrumentation you’ve never heard before, but also includes several extra minutes of “Gumbo Variations.” Cruising With Ruben & the Jets and We’re Only in It for the Money have also been remixed, with new bass and drum lines replacing originals damaged in MGM’s vault. Unfortunately, Zappa’s alterations to Ruben & and the Jets also included removing the atmospheric pops and clicks he originally inserted to give the record its distressed charm.

On other CDs, his revisionism is less rampant. Uncle Meat, for example, contains an extra 40 (worthless) minutes of audio garbage from Uncle Meat the film (soon to be released on videotape, they say). London Symphony Orchestra and Mothers of Prevention, however, also include extra bonus material. No other artist is engaging in as much musical revisionism via the CD. Only here it’s thoughtful, entertaining, sometimes politically relevant music—the kind real men like.

Watch: Zappa performing “I’m the Slime” [at youtube.com]

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