Modernism in Zappa

Form and the Concept Album: Aspects of Modernism in Frank Zappa's Early Releases
Author(s): James Borders

Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Winter, 2001), pp. 118-160
Published by: Perspectives of New Music
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/833535
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FORM AND THE CONCEPT ALBUM:
ASPECTS OF MODERNISM IN
FRANK ZAPPA'S EARLY RELEASES
JAMES BORDERS
Record industry executives need to find out what it is they're selling

because, see, they don't know how important pop music is today. All they
know is that that's what's making money this month. They really don't
know what a revolution it is in terms of music history because there are a lot
of people working in pop music today who are doing things that are artistic,
and actually mean 'em that way! ... I think it's living serious music!
-Frank Zappa, The Frank Zappa Companion: Four Decades of
Commentary
THE IMMEDIATE AIM of this essay is to analyze the content and form
of three early albums by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Inven-
tion-Lumpy Gravy, Uncle Meat, and Burnt Weeny Sandwich-and
demonstrate their affinity with certain works by Igor Stravinsky. It also
Form and the Concept Album 1 19
seeks to advance a critical approach that views rock as a recorded art, and
rock recordings as aural artifacts. Such analysis, according to a leading
proponent, Paul Clarke, is based "on the complex of created relation-
ships between sounds as they act on us through time."1 The unusually
wide range of musical sources and techniques Zappa incorporated into
his recordings at this stage of his career raises a prior question: how did
these albums figure into the cultural dialogue between rock and the
changing experience of modernity in America in the 1960s? Let us
address this question before turning to the analysis to place it into proper
historical context.
The short answer is that by juxtaposing different musical genres,
Zappa, who considered himself a composer foremost, was attacking the
entrenched critical and academic establishments whose members distin-
guished categorically between art and popular music, particularly as
regards structural and tonal complexity.2 To paraphrase Carl Dahlhaus,
Zappa's was a music directed against the esoteric quality of art.3 Popular
music intended not for thoughtless consumption but careful listening
also strained against the repetitiveness and standardization of Theodor
Adorno's "consumer music."4 By contrasting broadly different
approaches to composition, moreover, Zappa was implicitly rejecting the
kind of hairsplitting that set the "modernist" music of composers like
Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez apart from more accessible
"avant-garde" works by John Cage and other so-called experimentalists.5
Zappa was not alone in striving for this kind of pluralistic synthesis.
Indeed a number of self-styled modernists were welcoming the eclecti-
cism of contemporary art in sixties popular media. Susan Sontag, for
example, waxed enthusiastic about the lowering of barriers that had for-
merly separated high from low, past from present in an essay first pub-
lished in Mademoiselle.6 Although Zappa probably held a similar opinion,
he could not help giving it a satirical twist, drawing upon sources dispar-
ate and sometimes vulgar enough to exceed the bounds of even the most
broad-minded critic's good taste.
Unlike Sontag, Zappa's intent was hardly theoretical. Neither did he
seek to create a truly unpopular music with "no commercial potential," a
label a Columbia Records executive once hung on his work to which he
often referred.7 Rather, as he repeatedly stated, his albums were market
products designed to appeal to record buyers searching for the newest
sound, the latest protest music, the most outrageous novelty. So he bal-
anced his instrumental music with songs, the lyrics of which mostly sati-
rized the manufactured fads and fashions of contemporary America.
Never mind Zappa's serious and well-known involvement in all phases of
record production, marketing, and promotion, or professed willingness
120 Perspectives of New Music
to reap whatever profits came along-We're Only In It For The Money is

the title of one of Zappa's early albums. That was part of the put-on.
Zappa's early recordings were indeed "music about music,"8 but they
were also parodic popular critiques of the mass media, advertising, and
the consumer culture that sustained them all, designed to sell in volume.9
With respect to the place of Zappa's early recorded output in theoreti-
cal discourse, it should be obvious that his musical borrowings and uses
of collage and quick-cut techniques were never ambivalent-they always
had a point. Thus since Zappa's early work in no way anticipates the ahis-
toricity, ironic detachment, and playful depthlessness characteristic of
postmodernist quotation, it could be classed as modernist.0l There is
more to support this label than mere wordplay, as I shall argue below.
Indeed, careful listening reveals an attention to form-the organization
of recorded sound in time-that places the three albums discussed in this
essay uneasily (and perhaps consciously so) into the tradition of
twentieth-century musical modernism. Before examining this hypothesis,
Zappa's early work needs to be put into the larger context of sixties rock
and its connections with modernism.
Perhaps because genres closely associated with postmodern intertextu-
ality, like punk, rap, and new wave, had already emerged by the time of
their writing, some rock critics-most notably John Rockwell11-have
placed particular emphasis on the tendency of late sixties rock to borrow
melodies, harmonies, and instrumentation from "classical" music. This is
nowhere as prevalent as in discussions of progressive rock, exemplified by
British bands like Pink Floyd, Yes, King Crimson, and Emerson, Lake &
Palmer. Critical discussions during and shortly after the peak of progres-
sive rock's popularity, however, focused not on any indebtedness to the
classics per se, but on its eclecticism.12 The best uses of borrowed
genres-jazz, blues, folk, non-Western music, as well as the classics-
were not then viewed as reflections of artists' social or intellectual preten-
sions, as Rockwell would have it. Rather they were part and parcel of the
modern condition that Sontag described: a shifting between traditions
and ideas that made listeners aware of the confined conceptual spaces
they occupied. "Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for
modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility," she
wrote.13 With modernist notions like this spilling off the pages of Made-
moiselle, it is easy to understand how the quest for an expanded con-
sciousness could be transformed into a consumer item, like a rock album.
Complexity was another trait of rock that listeners identified at the
time. This was not so much the complexity of contemporary art music-
indeed many quoted works are "chestnuts"14-or the extended chords
and forms of jazz, or the almost competitive virtuosity of the performers.
IL
Form and the Concept Album
ather, I would argue, it had primarily

he aesthetic of modernism, with its
ius reached into the very mode of the
The roots of this aesthetic reach ba
pector's "Wall of Sound" recordings
:adily detects the expertly crafte
lassical-sounding arrangements that
eate outside a recording studio. Spect
iere, by the then-prevailing standar
astruments like the timpani and cas
ounding strings, woodwinds, and br
vhat he called "little symphonies fo
cored them in a "classical" manner. Str
ypically heard in short bursts withi
[racing the classical orientation of
ndustry and Spector, rather than t
hemselves, makes sense given the es
*ock musicians held his work.'7 Thus q
md technical sophistication figured pr
;ixties on.
Yet rock of the mid-sixties through e
work in that it sometimes drew heavil
of the European avant-garde. The list o
ings are noteworthy for introducin
niques to a broad audience is short, b
The Beatles and their producer Geor
accelerated playback, multi-tracking
released between 1965 and 1968.18 J
with feedback effects around the sam
incorporated electronic noise into its s
due in part to Andy Warhol's influe
Beach Boys, used tape manipulat
released on Smiley Smile, part of a
experimental album set, Smile;21 bef
to the instrumentation for "I Just
1966) and "Good Vibrations" (O
brought sophisticated music synthesis
Topping the list of artists inspired b
pean avant-garde is Frank Zappa, wh
Mothers of Invention from 1964 th
ances at the Whiskey A Go-Go and
the Garrick Theatre in New York
decades.24 Their first record, the double LP Freak Out! (July 1966),25
includes the large group improvisation "Help, I'm a Rock," which was
conceived live at an L.A. nightclub called The Trip.26 Other nods in the
direction of experimentalism include "Who Are the Brain Police?" which
involves extensive tape manipulation, and "The Return of the Son of
Monster Magnet," a twelve-minute, free-form electronic and voice piece.
"It Can't Happen Here" alternates between Sprechstimme, instrumental
chamber music, contemporary jazz, and tape effects.
Freak Out! was not only an avant-rock album but a satire on the rela-
tively new concept of "life-style"-"straight" and "hip" alike. In deliver-
ing their message of the injustice, chaos, and stupidity of contemporary
American society, The Mothers were not beyond ridiculing their listeners
in feigned Mexican- or African-American accents. But the satirical
weapon of choice was music. The forms, chord changes, vocal harmo-
nies, and timbres of doo-wop and R & B ballads were lampooned ("I
Ain't Got No Heart," "Go Cry on Somebody Else's Shoulder," "How
Could I Be Such a Fool," "You Didn't Try to Call Me," and "I'm Not
Satisfied"), as were some of rock's newer cliches. The riff underlying
"Hungry Freaks, Daddy" originates in the Rolling Stones' 1965 smash
hit, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." The sound of "Motherly Love"
mimics that of the proto-Bubblegum band, Paul Revere and the Raiders,
who regularly headlined Dick Clark's afternoon television show "Where
the Action Is," aimed at a newly identified demographic: teeny-
boppers.27 "Who Are the Brain Police?" with its aural effects and para-
noid lyrics, reflects the dark side of psychedelia.
In addition to the unpredictable shifts among musical styles and text
meaning, Freak Out! sends other conflicting signals. The cutting-edge
psychedelic cover art evokes West Coast Flower Power at its zenith, yet
the liner notes remark condescendingly on listeners' emotional and intel-
lectual limitations. Concerning "Any Way the Wind Blows," for example,
we read that:
[This] is a song I wrote about three years ago when I was consider-
ing divorce. If I had never gotten divorced, this piece of trivial non-
sense would never have been recorded. It is included in this
collection because, in a nutshell, kids, it is ... how shall I say i
it is intellectually and emotionally ACCESSIBLE for you. H
Maybe it is even right down your alley.
False acknowledgments of pop icons who "contributed materially

album-Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and Brian Epstein, among
appear alongside names of twentieth-century composers whom
Form and the Concept Album 123
considered truly important influences: Stravinsky, Anton Webern, Arnold

Schoenberg, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. The jackets of this and later
Mothers albums echo a sentiment first expressed by a defiant Edgard
Varese, idol of Zappa's youth: "The present-day composer refuses to
die!",28
Any concern that The Mothers would be considered just another nov-
elty act may have troubled Zappa, but probably only as he imagined him-
self on his way to the bank. Before founding the group, in fact, he had
recognized the possibility of making a living by combining avant-garde
music and humor. Billing himself as a contemporary composer, for
instance, he had appeared playing an upturned bicycle on a 1963 broad-
cast of "The Steve Allen Show," a late-night television celebrity
interview/comedy program.29 Whereas most academic composers of the
day would likely have shunned such publicity, Zappa relished it. Accord-
ing to a friend at the time, Paul Buff, the appearance "in part ... con-
vinced him of the viability of producing the kind of music he ended up
producing."30 Zappa even tried to cash in on his connection with the
Allen show, incorporating the comedian's shtick into an early single. He
dubbed a pre-Mothers group "Baby Ray & The Ferns" and entitled the
A-side of their only single "How's Your Bird?"31 (Allen often dropped
the words "bird" and "fern" into conversations with his guests as poten-
tially embarrassing, if humorous, hip double entendre for male and female
genitalia respectively. "How's your bird?"-a frequently asked question
on the show-seems innocent compared with the sexual allusions on
Zappa's recordings of the seventies and eighties.)
Freak Out! was followed in May 1967 by Absolutely Free, an album
which like its predecessor connects rock, avant-garde music, and satirical
social commentary. Its targets are the southern California life-style and
American consumer culture-note the double-edged irony of the
album's title, a pleonasm commonly used in sixties advertising that could
just as easily have originated in the counterculture. Featured is "Brown
Shoes Don't Make It," a seven-and-a-half-minute assault on twisted
middle-class aspirations that shifts musical ensembles and styles from ato-
nality and Sprechstimme to blues-based rock in almost stream of con-
sciousness fashion. Eclecticism is the norm for the album and quick cuts
are ubiquitous. A short, mostly instrumental number, "Amnesia Vivace,"
for example, shifts from Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps and L'Oiseau
de feu to Gene Chandler's "Duke of Earl" (1962).31 Other "classical"
sources include Stravinsky's Histoire du soldat and Gustav Holst's "Jupi-
ter" from the Planets suite.33
A look into the background of a song on the album, "Status Back
Baby," suggests how fervently Zappa sought to introduce listeners not
just to his brand of satire, but to twentieth-century concert music.34

Besides borrowing from the first tableau of Stravinsky's Petrushka35
(compare rehearsal numbers 2 through 5 with "Status Back Baby," 1:27-
2:07), it features a paraphrase of the opening measures of Claude
Debussy's "La fille au cheveux de lin" (Preludes, book 1) in the triplet
countermelody played on the soprano saxophone (albeit transposed from
G6 to G Major).36 Meanwhile the lead singer laments his loss of popular-
ity at the high school. Comparing "Status Back Baby" with a bootleg
release of an earlier version37-a song from a rock musical Zappa and
Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) conceived, entitled I Was a Teenage
Maltshop-it becomes clear that the "classical" material was incorporated
relatively late in the evolution of the piece. As shown in Example 1 the
original accompaniment was a rock'n'roll commonplace lacking in "Sta-
tus Back Baby." This and other comparisons of preliminary and released
versions of songs suggest how much Zappa was learning about
twentieth-century music during the mid-to-late sixties.38
PF F ; F f i F II
EXAMPLE 1: FRANK ZAPPA, "I WAS A TEENAGE
(APOCRYPHA, GREAT DANE RECORDS, GDR 94
ACCOMPANIMENT, TRANSCRIPTION, MEASU
In January 1968 Verve Records released the thi

We're Only In It For The Money, a send-up of Sg
begins with the album's visual presentation: instead o
Victorian-era brass band, artist Cal Shenkel's cove
group in drag with "MOTHERS" spelled out in ve
watermelon in the foreground, and a collage of f
people in the back. The gatefold picture on a brig
and the printed lyric sheet on red complete the visua
and arrangements of some songs were similarly
what Zappa evidently saw as the Beatles' glib psyched
example, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" with
We're Only In It For The Money. Zappa skewered J
natory lyrics, using nonsense rhymes and quoting
reindeer from "'Twas the Night Before Christmas.
sichord accompaniment where George Martin h
effect with the harpsichord stop on a Lowrey el
authentic thus replaces the phony. "Bow Tie Daddy," "Lonely Little
Girl," and "Mom And Dad" contrast with Paul McCartney's more con-
ventional view of the alienation middle-class youth in "She's Leaving
Home."41 Yet despite its many visual, timbral, stylistic, and textual allu-
sions to Sgt. Pepper, Money is still an extension of Absolutely Free in its
free-wheeling combination of satire-the main target this time is the hip-
pie life-style-and musical experimentation, particularly atonality ("The
Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny") and electronic composition in
the style of Stockhausen's Kontakte ("Nasal Retentive Calliope Music,"
"The Idiot Bastard Son").
Zappa's quotation of twentieth-century art music and incorporation of
electronic and tape sounds are two indices of his early efforts to fuse rock
and contemporary art music, but by the late sixties these were becoming
rock commonplaces as experimentation spread throughout the recording
industry. Meanwhile, the sequence of related songs that became known
as the "concept album" had revealed itself a literary rather than a musical
form.42 Considered in these terms, Freak Out! could be considered a
song cycle with a unifying sociological theme: the Los Angeles scene of
the mid-sixties, with its freak counterculture and racial tensions. Similar
statements could be made about Absolutely Free, We're Only In It For The
Money, and most other concept albums for that matter.43 The musical
traits that distinguished The Mothers' extended live performances-
asymmetrical rhythms and unpredictable shifts from one sound, style, or
song excerpt to another-had been difficult to bring across on record,
hence the reliance upon songs with satirical lyrics. But how many more
send-ups of hippies and the middle class could the group get away with
before committing commercial suicide by so obviously repeating them-
selves? Besides, Zappa's contempt for lyrics was by then becoming well
known.
The Mothers did subsequently release an album of doo-wop songs

along the lines explored on their previous records-Cruising With Ruben
And TheJets (November 1968)-but Zappa thought even of this project
in modernist terms:
I conceived that album along the same lines as the compositions in

Stravinsky's neoclassical period. If he could take the forms and cli-
ches of the classical era and pervert them, why not do the same for
the rules and regulations that applied to doo-wop in the fifties?44
Before Cruising, it turns out that Zappa had struck even further down
the path of musical modernism. In contrast with the extended forms of
emerging progressive rock, which had been inspired by and in turn
inspired drug use that he had publicly rejected,45 Zappa opted for tightly
organized musical structures that would reveal themselves only through
careful, presumably unimpaired listening.46
Beginning with Lumpy Gravy (May 1968), the first album-length
record he produced on his own, Zappa took the concept album to the
next stage in its modernist development-a stage that reflected his grow-
ing familiarity with musical models outside rock. Side one ("Lumpy
Gravy Part One") is organized according to principles of repetition and
variation borrowed from Stravinsky's works;47 also noteworthy is the
progress from quotation to paraphrase of contemporary styles. Following
Lumpy Gravy, as we shall see, Zappa employed the variation-rondo idea
to organize music for two more albums: Uncle Meat (April 1969) and
Burnt Weeny Sandwich (February 1970). Although he abandoned this
approach to form after these releases, and for a time shelved his dream of
fusing rock and contemporary art music, he nonetheless retained a trans-
formational approach to repetition throughout his career as a key aspect
of what he called "Conceptual Continuity."
Early in 1967 Zappa pitched a "solo" album to Capitol Records-ear-
lier Mothers albums for Verve were produced by Tom Wilson, MGM/
Verve's young East Coast Director of Arrangement and Repertoire
whose credits included Bob Dylan's first "electric" albums.48 What
Zappa apparently sought at this stage was artistic control over what he
later called his "serious music," a term he used, ironically at times, to
describe chamber and orchestral works in which contrasting and/or
simultaneous layers of atonal and tonal music vie for attention with
humorous titles, programs, or ballet scenarios.49 Lumpy Gravy, recorded
over an eleven-day stretch at New York's Apostolic Studios in February
1967, involved a pick-up ensemble of fifty-one musicians including one
of The Mothers (saxophonist Bunk Gardner); added later were other
members of the group plus assorted hangers-on who held disjointed con-
versations on topics Zappa suggested as they sat under a heavily draped
grand piano with the sostenuto pedal depressed.50 In their final edited
form these seem to have been aimed satirically at hippies.51
Besides the contractual disputes that plagued the project-MGM/
Verve quashed the deal with Capitol and released Lumpy Gravy in May
196852-the condition of the session tapes delivered to Zappa caused
considerable delay. Individual tracks, recorded on separate lengths of
audio tape, were spliced unpredictably one after another; some tape was
reportedly unusable.53 All these materials had to be evaluated, sorted,
catalogued, edited, and mixed, a laborious process that Zappa and engi-
neer Gary Kellgren completed at a different studio.54 The fact that this
took six months reflects not just the poor state of the tapes, but also
Zappa's meticulous attention to organizing the instrumental and spoken

sections into a coherent, album-length form. His reputation for musical
perfectionism thus goes back to his first large-scale production work and
an unfortunate necessity-that of cleaning up a mess. The experience
nonetheless suggested to Zappa a new avenue of invention: the studio
editing process as the crucial stage of composition. Source recordings
might be hastily done or even captured live; what mattered most was
post-recording production and, ultimately, the organization of sound.55
Despite its serious intent, Lumpy Gravy was, like earlier Mothers'
releases, parodic. The target of the packaging, for instance, was the mar-
keting of classical music. Before removing the jacket's protective cello-
phane the buyer confronted Zappa's two personae, each representing a
different side of his professional aspirations.56 The front cover features a
serious-looking Zappa wearing a two-tone, short-sleeve T-shirt of the
type then worn by amateur softball players, emblazoned with the
corporate-sounding word, "PIPCO." He wears dark pants and suspend-
ers with sprigs of red flowers and a red button. Accompanying his trade-
mark mustache and long straggly black hair is a day's growth of beard.
Unexpectedly, though, he stands on a conductor's podium, albeit in ten-
nis shoes without socks. On the back cover leered Zappa's alter ego: the
composer and conductor, dressed in top hat, white tie and tails, holding
white kid gloves. His face is still stubbled, but now he is smiling broadly,
if a bit menacingly.
The album cover sends other mixed marketing signals. The performing
ensemble is identified as ABNUCEALS EMUUKHA electric SYM-
PHONY orchestra & CHORUS, with "& CHORUS" scrawled at a
angle below the neatly printed name.57 Moreover, as with many cl
music albums, the conductor is billed before the project: "FRAN
VINCENT ZAPPA CONDUCTS LUMPY GRAVY a curiously inco
tent piece which started out as a BALLET but probably didn't mak
Buyers must have wondered what kind of record this was, describ
failed project that had yet to reach fruition. Let us, though, exp
another intentional miscue: Zappa's throwing them off track by ch
terizing the work as "inconsistent."
Removing the vinyl from the record jacket created the next confusi
of identities: unlike earlier rock LPs except We're Only In It For
Money, Lumpy Gravy has continuous sides-there are no rills to sep
individual bands. The impact of this novelty, considered in light of ow
ers' repeated physical involvement with their albums at approxim
twenty-minute intervals as they played them, cannot be stressed enou
in this era of compact discs and programmable players, capable of stor
and playing hundreds of recordings for many hours, completely u
and untouched. The inspiration for the material form of the record's
sides may have been Zappa's albums of Stravinsky, Varese, or other classi-
cal music. It is certain, however, that as a composer of recorded music
Zappa intended the sides of Lumpy Gravy to be heard as one would a
concert, that is, without interruption or excerpt and in order. This is
clearly indicated in the gatefold: "NOTE: listen to side one first"; under-
neath is scrawled "AND TURN IT ALL THE WAY UP! !" The discipline
of the classical concert hall was demanded, if simultaneously lampooned.
Critical reaction to Lumpy Gravy has been mixed at best. Zappa devo-
tee Ben Watson, for instance, called it "a provocative and puzzling record
[that] . . . refuses to 'add up'."58 Except perhaps for a brief, esoteric dig
at the New York arts scene-the monotonous voice in the dialogue about
darkness, paranoia, and Kansas is a cross between Andy Warhol's and
John Cage's59-the album wasn't even funny. Nor did it enjoy commer-
cial success; it peaked at number 159 in the U.S. charts for one week.60
Yet, as has also been noted elsewhere, Lumpy Gravy was a mine for songs
Zappa would rework for later release, as well as a tribute to the European
musical avant-garde.61 So far, however, neither the form and its origins in
contemporary art music, nor the consequences for his later releases have
been recognized.
The original vinyl sides give the first clue to the large-scale form of the
work, dividing Lumpy Gravy into "Part One" and "Part Two." "Part
One" in particular bears witness to a structural sense that synthesizes
contemporary music and rock. It may be described as a rondo, but one
whose refrain is the second, rather than the first element: A B1 C B2 D
B3 + coda. Here the traditional rondo pattern is, so to speak, turned
inside-out, perhaps as a nod in the direction of commercial viability given
the resemblance between this structure and the verse-chorus pattern of
the pop song. The repetition is only apparent, however, because the
refrain is varied with each recurrence so that one may speak of a
variation-rondo form. Rather than attempting to reconstruct further a
musical score that never completely existed given the nature of the
medium, I have set out a time-line description of the recording in Exam-
ple 3.62 (Timings of subdivided sections of music are given in parenthe-
ses.)
The first statement of the refrain, B1 (the melody of which is tran-
scribed in Example 2), reveals an affinity to pop and light jazz numbers
Zappa recorded before forming the Mothers.63 The ensemble includes
instruments typically heard on late fifties and early sixties instrumentals:
vibraphone, piano, electric guitar, Fender bass, and drum kit. The
emphasis is on the melody, which is accompanied by closely-spaced block
chords played in relatively slow harmonic rhythm. But things soon veer
6# r r- - j3 ^ -- - - -
^jjSr ri-- 3 --r --
9
~ r - J I r fr' i r l' - '- -lz' r dJ i

14
.r r_Cr J-, 1 ' x$Ir . j I1 j

18
20
22? ~ ci ' r 11
EXAMPLE 2: FRANK ZAPPA, "LUMPY GRAVY PART ONE,'

RONDO THEME, TRANSCRIPTION, MEASURES 1-23
Form Timing Index Title or Description Prominent Instruments; C
A 0:00-2:07
(0:00-0:04) [1. "The Way I See It, Barry"] Spoken
(0:05-1:37) [2. "Duodenum"] Instrumental theme Lead and rhythm
bass, and drum kit
(1:37-1:46) Stravinskiana (cf. Le Sacre du printemps, Winds, vibrap
"Rondes Printanieres")
(1:47-2:07) 4 swing vamp Piano, vibraphone, bass, dr
B1 2:07-3:41 [3. "Oh No"] Rondo theme Piano, vibraphone, guitar, ba
C 3:41-7:11
(3:41-3:44) [4. "Bit of Nostalgia"] Raspberry, then spoken m
(3:45-3:47) Surf music Guitar
(3:47-3:58) Collage Manipulated voices, flute, bass c
(3:58-4:46) Women's conversation Spoken
(4:47-5:17) Men's conversation Spoken
EXAMPLE 3: VARIATION-RONDO FORM OF "LUM
Form Timing Index Title or Description Prominent Instruments; Co
(5:18-5:44) Traditional jazz parody Accelerated, with scratch an
of a 78 r.p.m. recordi
(5:45-6:17) [6. "Bored Out 90 Over"] Jim (Motorhead) Sherwood
Collage manipulated
(6:17-6:18) Short pentatonic melody Guitar, bass, drum kit
with surf beat
(6:19-6:20) [7. "Almost Chinese"] Conversation Spoken
about the preceding snippet of music
(6:20-6:27) Collage Motorhead's manipulated vo
other taped and
(6:27-6:35) Reprise ofpentatonic melody Guitar, b
(6:35-6:41) Collage Percussion ensemble with c
plus manipulate
(6:42-6:52) [8. "Switching Girls"] Spoken
(6:53-6:56) Varesiana Flute, piano, percussion en
(6:56-7:11) Instrumental introduction to "Oh No" Orches
closes in 8 meter
EXAMPLE 3 (CONT.)
Form Timing Index Title or Description Prominent Instruments;
B2 7:11-9:16 [9. "Oh No Again"] with short Light jazz combo with stri
transition and snare drum, with added or
8:23-9:16 Stravinskiana (cf. Petrushka, First
Tableau) with the last four measures
of the rondo theme plus extension
D 9:17-13:46
(9:17-11:04) Voice (Motorhead), interrup
by "Louie Louie" (9:24-9:25); add
percussion in different meters
(11:05-11:27) [11. "Another Pickup"] Blues
(11:27-11:39) Collage Percussion ensemble plus ce
manipulated
(11:40-11:57) Tape effect with piano sounds Ac
manipulated
(11:58-13:04) Varesiana Winds, brass, and percu
(13:05-13:07) Conversations among studio musician
ends with [12. "I Don't Know if I Can
Go through This Again"]
EXAMPLE 3 (CONT.)
Form Timing Index Title or Description Prominent Instruments; Commen
(13:08-13:46) Orchestral excerpt From We're Only In It For The Mon
2:24)
B3 13:46-14:06 "Oh No" / Rondo refrain Accelerated, backward, and dissected
E 14:06-15:51
(14:06-14:18) Tape effects Percussion ensemble
(14:19-14:45) Varesiana Percussion ensemble
(14:46-14-48) Stravinskiana Woodwinds
(14:48-15:51) Weberniana Piano, strings, woodwinds, solo h
EXAMPLE 3 (CONT.)
out of control. Unexpectedly a trumpet and trombone blare out the

verse the third time it is heard (measures 16-19), after which the
ensemble instruments are accelerated through tape manipulation. The
form, which at first seemed to conform to the standard pop template of
two verses plus chorus plus verse (AABA), truncates the return of the A
section (in measures 17-19) and closes with a four-measure section
(measures 20-23) that leads nowhere. Yet by far the most incongruous
features of the refrain melody, later furnished with lyrics and entitled "Oh
No" (Weasels Ripped My Flesh, August 1970), are its asymmetrical meter
and the polyrhythms produced by the quarter-note triplets played against
a steady rock beat. These confirm one's impression that this is a pop tune
by way of Petrushka's Shrovetide Fair.
The second statement of the refrain (B2 at 7:11) involves changes in
instrumentation, arrangement, harmonization, and form. Strings, wood-
winds, marimba, and snare drum are added to the light jazz combo; the
extra instruments are multi-tracked and, at times, accelerated electroni-
cally. Sometimes the string accompaniment seems oddly out of sync.
Careful listening reveals that the articulation is reversed in places, though
the correct melody and accompaniment are heard (at 7:48-7:56, 8:00-
8:03, and 8:13-8:22). Zappa presumably asked the session musicians to
play these passages backward, having in mind the aural effect of reverse
playback. Beyond these changes, the melody of B2 is accompanied by
parallel triads, a harmonic strategy that Zappa probably borrowed from
doo-wop.64 A new extension combines the closing, and now repeated,
four-bar phrase (see Example 2, measures 20-23) with an accompani-
ment paraphrasing the First Tableau of Petrushka (compare rehearsal
numbers 26 to 29 to "Part One," 8:23-9:16).65 The final statement of
the refrain (B3 at 13:46) involves not so much conventional variation
procedures as editing and manipulation of the tape recording of B2. The
refrain is dissected and the resulting fragments sped up and played back-
wards. Avant-garde and rock techniques thus intersect once again with
modernist eclecticism.
The different "episodes" (A, C, D, and the coda, E) are pastiches of
spoken text, tape collages, and allusions to contemporary concert music
(underlined in Example 3). The musical allusions, to say the least, reflect
Zappa's sense of humor as well as his experience as a musician, record
producer, and listener. Half relate to various styles of pop music, from
hot jazz to surf music. Indeed two surf snippets are so West Coast as to
be Far East, hence the tongue-in-cheek comment "Almost Chinese,
huh?" (6:17-6:18 and 6:27-6:35). The remaining allusions are to the
styles of three composers whom Zappa identified (in the liner notes to
Freak Out! and elsewhere)66 as personal favorites: Stravinsky, Varese, and
Webern (hence the designations Stravinskiana, Varesiana, and

Weberniana in the table; I have not indicated the indebtedness of the
electronic music sections to Stockhausen's Kontakte, though this is prob-
able). Among the styles referenced are those of Petrushka, Varese's
Deserts and Hyperprism, and Webern's Variationen, op. 30. In a figura-
tive sense, these admired styles and composers have the last word, for
"Part One" is brought to a semblance of closure by a longish coda
(14:19-15:51) in which stylistic references to all three succeed each other
without any intervening spoken or electronic material.68
Thinking about the organization of the concept album led Zappa to
explore different ways of connecting the musical and narrative threads.
Working with visual media, particularly collage and film, clearly influ-
enced his approach and reliance on editorial creativity, as if he were bor-
rowing a page from Soviet director V. I. Pudovkin's book: "The
foundation of film art is editing."69 Yet Zappa's experience and professed
enthusiasm for the movies and avant-garde art should not keep us from
looking for primary inspiration in twentieth-century music. That he was
conscious of the abstract musical form of "Lumpy Gravy Part One," and
kept it in mind some decades after the album's release, is confirmed by
the titles of indexes for a compact disc re-issue (Rykodisc RCD 10504),
which Zappa wrote himself. (These are given in square brackets in Exam-
ple 3.) The first two presentations of the refrain (B1, B2) are identified as
"Oh No"; the third (B3) is called "I Don't Know if I Can Go through
This Again," referring to a remark that a session musician mumbled,
apparently immediately before playing the third statement.
If the above analysis of "Part One" be granted, one might be forgiven
for speculating about a model. Zappa doubtless recognized the alterna-
tion of instrumental and electronic sounds that forms the basic outline of
Varese's Deserts. Webern's Variationen would also seem a possible inspi-
ration.70 Yet given the clearly recognizable relationship among state-
ments of the "Oh No" refrain a more likely point of departure is
Stravinsky's music. The second movement of the Octet or Symphonies of
Wind Instruments, either of which could be construed as a variation-
rondo, are possibilities.71 Yet it would be uncharacteristic of Zappa never
to have mentioned or quoted an admired work-to my knowledge there
are no musical references to either piece in all his recorded output. Con-
sidering this evidence, a more likely source is the Suite from Histoire du
soldat, with its recurring "Soldier's March." Not only did The Mothers
and their successors perform excerpts from this work,72 but Zappa used a
similar instrumentation for "Igor's Boogie" on Burnt Weeny Sandwich,
discussed below.
Admonitions that rock should not be analyzed with the tools created
for concert music, let alone with an ear to references that would lead
away from its "authentic" roots,73 might lead us to question this search
for "classical" inspiration were it not for Zappa himself pointing us in
that direction. Indeed he invited analysis of his recordings and was genu-
inely disappointed at his fans' lack of perception. A widely used music-
appreciation textbook quotes Zappa on his frustrations at the time:
"These things are so carefully constructed that it breaks my heart when
people don't dig into them and see all the levels that I put into them."74
For all his palpable affection for doo-wop and rhythm and blues, which
he admired as much for the music as their humor, twentieth-century
compositions are credited for their intellectual sophistication. Listening
to them was, in Zappa's apparent paraphrase of Charles Ives, "the ulti-
mate test of... intelligence."75
The visual, musical, and textual connections that link early Mothers'
albums likewise invite analysis along lines of recurrence and variation.76
Accompanying Zappa's photos on Lumpy Gravy and We're Only In It For
The Money are cartoon balloons reading, respectively, "IS THIS PHASE
2 OF: WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY?" and "IS THIS
PHASE ONE OF LUMPY GRAVY?" Cal Shenkel's collages
objects also put a common visual stamp on the album art, par
Uncle Meat and Burnt Weeny Sandwich.77 The Mothers'
groupie, Suzy Creamcheese, is mentioned on Freak Out!, Absolutel
and Uncle Meat. The character Uncle Meat plays a role in Crui
Ruben And The Jets, Uncle Meat, and The Grand Wazoo. With
rock parody, "Lumpy Gravy Part One" and Uncle Meat both
archetypal garage-band song "Louie, Louie" as a point of r
(Uncle Meat, side I, cut 7; see below, Example 4), as do the par
"Plastic People" (Absolutely Free) and "Ruthie-Ruthie" (comm
released for the first time on Tou Can't Do That On Stage Any
1). Zappa also used lyrics to connect his projects. The invocati
my Plea," for example, may be heard on Cruising With Rube
Jets and Uncle Meat ("Dog Breath, In the Year of the Plague").
"Absolutely Free," which is the title of The Mothers' second
found on its third release, We're Only In It For The Money.
Along the same lines, "Lumpy Gravy Part One" was the point of
cal departure for two subsequent albums. In the double LP Un
the vinyl format again influenced listeners' perception of structu
are no rills. Like Lumpy Gravy, the continuous sides were int
totalities to be heard from start to finish, forcing the record bu
the work of structural listening. Besides this, there is an obvious
connection: "King Kong" on Uncle Meat originated in "Lump
Part Two." For our purposes however the most interesting link is a for-
mal one.
The variation-rondo of Uncle Meat, though similar to "Lumpy Gravy
Part One," is more complex, in part because it involves three of the four
original vinyl sides (one, two, and four; note below the use of Roman
numerals for record side, Arabic for cut); side three alternates between
vocal and instrumental songs in the manner of We're Only In It For The
Money. As shown in Example 4, the themes (labeled A, B, and C) are
interwoven throughout and generally identified respectively as "Uncle
Meat," "Dog Breath," and "King Kong." There is another important
development in Uncle Meat: despite the importance of spoken and elec-
tronically manipulated material and purely instrumental music-the liner
notes state, "Basically this is an instrumental album"-songs with lyrics
figure into the variation-rondo form:
Al VA2 B1 A3 WB2 XA4Y Cl Z B3 C2 ... C3-8
Despite the freedom with which Zappa interwove the themes and
respective variations into the complex fabric of Uncle Meat, he em
various devices both to connect related material and to differentiate it
from other music. Mallet percussion, harpsichord, and woodwinds figure
prominently in all four realizations of "Uncle Meat" (I.1, 4, 6, 11); in
close proximity to all but the first variation (namely A2, in which the
music of Al is dissected, accelerated, and played backward) are Suzy
Creamcheese's deadpan monologues (labeled "sc" in the example).
"Dog Breath, In the Year of the Plague" (B1) concludes with a quartal
ostinato in 7 time (probably inspired by Holst, "Jupiter," Planets suite),
which in turn resembles that undergirding "A Pound for a Brown"
(B3).78 Ian Underwood's saxophone solo (C2, 11.8) is performed over
the same Eb modal accompaniment as "King Kong Itself' (C3, IV.1).
Zappa also used brief electronic or other taped sounds to distinguish one
piece from another on sides one and two. While searching for musical
clues to the album's organization, we should not overlook the obvious
references to variation and multi-movement form in the titles: "The Dog
Breath Variations" (1.8); "The Uncle Meat Variations" (11.3); and "Pre-
lude to King Kong" (11.5). It is also clear from the titles that the fourth
side involves jazz-style improvisations on the "King Kong" theme as per-
formed by featured members of the group.79
Uncle Meat, arguably the avant-rock triumph of Zappa's early career,
broke fresh ground not just by moving away from Flower Power psyche-
delia with which The Mothers had been associated, but also from their
brand of guerrilla theater and toward what Dominique Chevalier calls
Form CD LP Title Timing Prominent Instruments
Side:Cut
Al 1 1 .1 "Uncle Meat: Main Title Theme" 1:54 Vibraphone, harpsich
snare drum
accelerated
sc 2 1.2 "The Voice of Cheese" 0:27 Spoken by Suzy Cr
V 3 1.3 "Nine Types of Industrial Pollution" 5:56 Guitars, electric pian
overdubbe
A2 4 1.4 "Zolar Czakl" 0:57 Material from "Main Them
acceler
B 1 5 1.5 "Dog Breath, In the Year of the Plague" 5:51
(0:00-3:00) [Vocal] V
opera sopr
(3:00-4:00) Manipula
woodwind
overdubs
(4:00-5:48) Celesta, harp
kit; 7 ostinat
(5:48-5:51) Vocal sounds (
A3 6 1.6 "The Legend of the Golden Arches" 1:24
(0:00-1:20) Celesta,
EXAMPLE 4: VARIATION-RONDO FORM OF UNCLE M
Form CD LP Title Timing Prominent Instrument
Side:Cut
Z 14 11.6 "God Bless America (Live at the Whisky 1:22 [Vocal]
a Go Go)"
B3 15 11.7 "A Pound for a Brown on the Bus" 1:29 Organ, wood
C2 16 II.8 "Ian Underwood Whips It Out (Live on 5:08 Remarks b
Stage in Copenhagen)" solo with rock ensem
accompa
17 III.1 "Mr. Green Genes" 3:10 [Vocal] R & B p
18 111.2 "We Can Shoot You" 1:48 Percussion ensemble/e
woodwi
19 111.3 "If We'd All Been Living in California.
20 111.4 "The Air" 2:57 [Vocal] Doo-wop p
21 III.5 "Project X" 4:47 Organ, piano, mallet per
guitar,
22 111.6 "Cruising for Burgers" 2:19 [Vocal]
23 (CD only) "Uncle Meat Film Excerpt, Part 1" 37:34
24 (CD only) "Tengo Na Minchia Tanta" 3:46
25 (CD only) "Uncle Meat Film Excerpt, Part 2" 3:50
EXAMPLE 4 (CONT.)
Side:Cut
sc [no title] (1:20-1:33) Spoken by Suzy Crea
W 7 1.7 "Louie Louie (At the Royal Albert Hall 2:28 Parody of the song
in London)" a pipe organ/saxoph
B2 8 1.8 "The Dog Breath Variations" 1:36 Organ (accelerated),
marimba
timpani,
X 9 11.1 "Sleeping in a Jar" 0:49 [Vocal]
sc 10 11.2 "Our Bizarre Relationship" 1:05 Spoken by Suzy C
A4 11 11.3 "The Uncle Meat Variations" 4:40 Harpsichord, organ,
drum kit
gongs/ v
accompa
Y 12 11.4 "Electric Aunt Jemima" 1:53 [Vocal] Voice track
C1 13 11.5 "Prelude to King Kong" 3:24 Saxophones (overdubb
meter/ t
EXAMPLE 4 (CONT.)
Side:Cut
C3 26 IV.1 "King Kong Itself (as Played by the 0:53 Rock group; h
Mothers in a Studio)"
C4 27 IV.2 "King Kong (it's [sic] Magnificence as 1:15 Electric pian
Interpreted by Dom De Wild)"
C5 28 IV.3 "King Kong (as Motorhead 1:44 Tenor saxophone so
Explains It)"
C6 29 IV.4 "King Kong (the Gardner Varieties)" 6:17 Modified wood
C7 30 IV.5 "King Kong (as Played by 3 Deranged 0:29 Overdubbed mod
Good Humor Trucks)" keyboards
C8 31 IV.6 "King Kong (Live on a Flatbed Diesel in the 7:22
Middle of a Racetrack at a Miami Pop
Festival ... the Underwood Ramifications)"
(0:00-6:19) Saxophone
with roc
(6:19-7:22) Final state
two saxo
tape loop
EXAMPLE 4 (CONT.)
electric chamber music.80 Yet the financial downside of sustaining a nine-

member band signaled trouble ahead. Indeed, this is the subject of a
spoken interlude on Uncle Meat, "If We'd All Been Living in
California...." Making matters worse, MGM delayed paying the group
its royalties on the first four albums and censored lyrics on later pressings,
which led Zappa to file suit and form his own production and record
companies. Creating tensions of a different kind were the increasing
technical demands of Zappa's new music, which required lengthy
rehearsals and reportedly exceeded the abilities of some original Moth-
ers.81 These and other factors led Zappa to disband the group in October
1969. In a press release announcing the break-up he wrote: "It is possi-
ble that, at a later date, when audiences have properly assimilated the
recorded work of the group, a reformation might take place."82
Zappa seems never to have been without recorded material, however,
and was soon planning to issue a ten- or twelve-record set by the dis-
banded group, but negotiations with a record company fell through.83
Adjusting his aims to prevailing commercial realities, he released some of
this material in February 1970 as a single LP, Burnt Weeny Sandwich. If
his press statement about the break-up were not enough, the structure of
this album-based once again on the variation principle (see Example
5)-proves that Zappa had not yet exhausted his attempts to cross-
pollinate rock and contemporary art music. Burnt Weeny Sandwich has
been described as "complex instrumental music sandwiched between two
chirpy pop songs" and an attempt to introduce the public to music more
like Stravinsky than The Doors.84 In fact, like his two previous releases it
has a tightly organized structure involving six cuts on a rilled side one as
well as connections between side one and an extended piece on side two.
Perhaps it was nostalgia for happier times-namely those of Freak Out!
and Cruising With Ruben And The Jets-that led Zappa to frame his
album with two rhythm and blues covers, "WPLJ" and "Valarie," songs
that stand apart from the others and relate to them formally only in so far
as they loosely connect the beginning and end of the album.85 (Given the
similarity of style, though not theme or harmonic structure, they are
labeled X and Y in Example 5.) The relationship between the album's
sides truly manifests itself in musical connections of a type we have
encountered before: a tape-accelerated reprise of "Aybe Sea" (I.D1)
brings the music for "Little House I Used to Live In" to a close (II.D2).
This nearly nineteen-minute uninterrupted counterpoise to side one
involves five sections of instrumental music, including two (F1 and F2)
that were reversed and grafted together in subsequent live performances,
such as that heard on Fillmore East-June 1971. The pastiche-like charac-
ter of this cut is confirmed by the inclusion of a violin solo by Sugar Cane
Side:Cut
X 1 I.1 "WPLJ" 2:52 R & B cover
Al 2 1.2 "Igor's Boogie, Phase One" 0:37 Clarinets, comet, drum

toire
B1 3 1.3 "Overture to a Holiday in Berlin" 1:27 Harpsichord, flute, c

dubbed), c
and drum
C1 4 1.4 "Theme from Burnt Weeny Sandwich" 4:32 Two-chord ost
A2 5 1.5 "Igor's Boogie, Phase Two" 0:37 Clarinets, comet, b
B2 6 1.6 "Holiday in Berlin, Full-Blown" 6:23 Organ, piano, harpsicho

bass, clari
marimba,
"Holiday in Berlin, Full-Blown" (0:00-2:56)

C2 [no title] (2:57-6:23) Two-chord ostin
D1 7 1.7 "Aybe Sea" 2:46 Piano, harpsichord, electric

(overdu
EXAMPLE 5: VARIATION-RONDO FORM OF BURN
Side:Cut
8 II.1 "Little House I Used to Live In" 18:42
E (0:00-1:42) Piano solo
Fl (1:43-4:17) The original Moth
G (4:18-13:34) Guitar, violin, and pia
F2 (13:34-14:53) Chamber ensem
D2 (14:54-17:12) D1 accelerated (tape manipu

organ solo
(17:12-18:41) Applause and
Y 9 11.2 "Valarie" 3:14 R & B cover
EXAMPLE 5
Harris (G), who performed with Zappa after The Mothers' break-up but
was not with the group that recorded the "Little House" themes. (The
album's liner notes fail to identify all the musicians who performed,
though some are pictured. Mothers fans would have known that the
original group did not include a violinist.)
Following "WPLJ," side one is organized into the pattern Al B1 C1
A2 B2 C2. As on Uncle Meat, related material is connected in various
ways. Besides sharing the same Stravinskian harmonic language, the
instrumentation of "Igor's Boogie, Phase One" (Al)-clarinet, cornet,
drum set-is the same as "Igor's Boogie, Phase Two" (A2). Both obvi-
ously derive from Histoire du soldat, as mentioned above. Cuts three and
six, "Overture to a Holiday in Berlin" (B1) and "Holiday in Berlin, Full-
Blown" (B2) are self-parodies of a 3 melody that Zappa had composed
in 1961 as part of a score for a film called The World's Greatest Sinner.86
The off-key treatment of both cuts, complete with boozy saxophone
solos, evokes Kurt Weill's Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny. Since
by his own admission Zappa was not a fan of Weill's music,87 his choice
of a cabaret style associated with the Weimar Republic may reflect
unpleasant memories of his encounters with radical German youths in
1968. Of a particular incident on this tour Michael Gray has written:
The audience at Zappa's Berlin concert demanded that he make

some public declaration of intention to bring down capitalism.
Zappa refused. The audience screamed "Fascist!" at him and
chanted "Mothers of Reaction! Mothers of Reaction!,88
Zappa once again used music to lampoon what he saw as the conformity
underlying the European youth revolt.89 He might also have been seek-
ing to hitch his record to the surprising commercial star of Weill's
Weimar-era pieces. The Doors had recorded the "Alabama Song" from
Mahagonny on their debut album (1967) and Zappa's first record com-
pany, MGM, had released a Broadway cast recording of The Threepenny
Opera.90 In a related development, Joe Masteroff's musical, Cabaret
(music by Jon Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb), which is set during the same
era, had opened at New York's Broadhurst Theatre in November 1966,
though it had yet to be adapted to film (1972).
The third varied component of Burnt Weeny Sandwich, side one,
involves Zappa's blues-oriented guitar solos over two-chord ostinatos,
both evidently recorded live. The second of these, which is not given a
separate title or cut on the LP, overlaps the closing three-and-a-half min-
utes of "Holiday in Berlin, Full-Blown" without rill. Finally, the enig-
matic title of the closing number on side one, "Aybe Sea," provides a
tantalizing clue that may tip Zappa's structural hand: it concisely summa-
rizes the form of the preceding six numbers, that is, A-B-C.
After releasing Burnt Weeny Sandwich, Zappa abandoned the idea of
organizing his albums along abstract formal lines, and with it his ideal of
fusing modern music with rock. He opted instead for a more commer-
cially viable combination of virtuoso jazz-rock instrumentals and humor-
ous stage antics provided by frontmen/singers Mark Volman and
Howard Kaylan, both late of the Turtles.91 Nonetheless the principle of
varied repetition left a considerable imprint on Zappa's later recordings.
A glance at his song list92 reveals that quite a number of songs, especially
instrumentals, were released several times and with significant changes.
These typically involve the variation techniques described above, though
their place is in a form that spans a far longer timeframe than a single
release.
Let me suggest that this tendency toward repetition and variation is

the musical embodiment of what Zappa called "Conceptual Continuity."
Zappa himself once remarked that all the recordings he made over his
career were interconnected like the bands of an enormous LP.93 Indeed
this idea emerged around the time that Lumpy Gravy was released. Many
Zappa fans, however, concentrating on visual and textual clues, have
missed these musical relationships, just as they overlooked the variation
forms of his early albums. Ben Watson, for instance, strains credibility in
drawing a connection to modernist literature.
"Conceptual continuity" may well serve as a term for an underlying

substratum of associations that anyone uses over the years in order
to express themselves-the network of meaning revealed, say, in
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's notebooks, which show irrational attach-
ment to words that appear at key points in his poems-but what
makes Zappa's use of it modernist is that he brings this substratum
to consciousness. You cannot approach Zappa as you would Andre
Gide or Sting, absorbing their art and imagining some rounded
human personality. You must deal with it as you would Finnegans
Wake, actively tracing images and connections as they emerge on the
material surface. This is modern art you cannot approach the old
way.94
Contrary to Watson's view, Zappa's is a modern art that most certainly

can be approached "the old way," that is, in terms of musical form and
process.
"The Black Page" is an interesting case to examine in this regard since
it was especially susceptible to change. Zappa commercially released nine
versions of this instrumental on six albums, indicating the ongoing trans-

formation in the titles. I have written about its different realizations else-
where,95 but to summarize, close attention should be paid to differences
in tempo, meter, and the bass line. Listeners can easily tell that "The
Black Page #2" on Baby Snakes is unlike the slower, jazz-inflected "The
Black Page (New Age Version)" on Make A Jazz Noise Here. Both differ
from the up-tempo "The Black Page (1984)" on You Can't Do That On
Stage Anymore Vol. 4, which more closely approximates a bizarre reggae
polka with its off-beat treble rhythm guitar and roots-and-fifths bass
line.96 The origins of the piece ultimately stem from a drum solo, per-
formed by Terry Bozzio on Zappa In New rork. The variational implica-
tions of such connections and transformations are obvious.
It is, I believe, significant that one key to assessing Zappa's place as an
American composer and record producer, as well as discovering his
approach to linking rock and twentieth-century art music, may be found
embedded deep within an early attempt at fusion that flopped. Lumpy
Gravy, considered alongside two related recordings, Uncle Meat and
Burnt Weeny Sandwich, represent Zappa's highest modernist aspirations:
to expand listeners' consciousness beyond a limited appreciation of eclec-
ticism's possibilities, and to present a far broader range of music to rock
audiences than otherwise offered. If his efforts to cross the boundaries
separating musical traditions fell short of commercial expectations and
ultimately failed, not unlike those of another forward-looking American
musician, Duke Ellington, at least we still have the recordings. With
these, today's listeners can judge for themselves the value of his early
work and confront criticism that threatens to relegate it, along with other
"art" rock, to the trash heap of postmodern music history.
NOTES
I wish to express my thanks to Sean Westergaard, Steve Whiting, and

Walt Everett, who read this essay at different stages and made useful sug-
gestions.
1. "A Magic Science: Rock Music as Recording Art," Popular Music 3

(1983): 202. The score may serve as an acceptable tool of analysis for
the music of the Western art music tradition. "Songs made in the stu-
dio, however, should be understood as considered aural composition
in which sounds are performed, recorded, treated and combined
together often with no necessity for any kind of visual mediation
whatsoever" (202). See also John Mowitt, "The Sound of Music in
the Era of Its Electronic Reproducibility," in Music and Society: Th
Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception, ed. Richard Lep-
pert and Susan McClary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1987), 173-97.
2. Zappa's opinions on academic composition are plainly expressed in
an address he delivered at the 1984 convention of the American Soci-
ety of University Composers, excerpted in Frank Zappa and Peter
Occhiogrosso, The Real Frank Zappa Book (New York: Poseidon
Press, 1989), 189-94.
3. Carl Dahlhaus, "On the Decline of the Work Concept," in Schoenberg

and the New Music, trans. Derrick Puffett and Alfred Clayton (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 229.
4. A central text is Theodor Adorno, "On Popular Music," Studies in

Philosophy and Social Sciences 9 (1941):17-48; reprinted in On
Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word, ed. Simon Frith and
Andrew Goodwin (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), 301-14; and
in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, ed. John Storey
(New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994), 202-14. See also
Dahlhaus, "On the Decline of the Work Concept," 228-30; and
idem, Prisms, 1st MIT Press ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1981). The ambivalent position of Adorno's criticism in the analysis
of popular music is treated in Georgina Born, "Modern Music Cul-
ture: On Shock, Pop and Synthesis," New Formations 2 (1987): 56-
7; and Susan McClary and Robert Walser, "Start Making Sense!
Musicology Wrestles with Rock," in On Record, 284. See also Iain
Chambers, "Some Critical Tracks," Popular Music 2 (1982): 23-7;
and Max Paddison, "The Critique Criticized: Adorno and Popular

Music," Popular Music 2 (1982): 201-18.
5. The rigid distinctions between musical categories in the 1960s are
discussed in Born, "Modern Music Culture," 53-4. See also Susan
McClary, "Terminal Prestige: The Case of Avant-Garde Music Com-
position," Cultural Critique 12 (1989): 57-81.
6. Sontag's essay, "One Culture and the New Sensibility," appears in
expanded form in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New
York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966), 293-304. The relevant passage
is found on pages 296-7.
7. Neil Slaven, Zappa: Electric Don Quixote (London: Omnibus Press,

1996), 49. Clive Davis was the head of Columbia Records at the
time.
8. Dahlhaus, "On the Decline of the Work Concept," 229.
9. Zappa's formative experience in marketing and advertising, including

graphic design, is discussed in Michael Gray, Mother! The Frank
Zappa Story, rev. ed. (London: Plexus, 1994), 37-8.
10. These traits are listed in Peter Manuel, "Music as Symbol, Music as
Simulacrum: Postmodern, Pre-modern and Modern Aesthetics in
Subcultural Popular Musics," Popular Music 14 (1995): 227. See
also Billy Bergman and Richard Horn, Recombinant Do Re Mi: Fron-
tiers of the Rock Era (New York: Quill, 1985), 99-112; Alexander
Laski, "The Politics of Dancing-Gay Disco Music and Postmodern-
ism," in The Last Post: Music After Modernism, ed. Simon Miller
(Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1993), 110-31,
particularly 110-5; and Andrew Goodwin, "Popular Music and Post-
modern Theory," Cultural Studies 5 (1991): 174-88; reprinted in
Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, 414-27.
11. See Rockwell, "The Emergence of Art Rock," in The Rolling Stone
Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, ed. Anthony DeCurtis et al.,
new ed. (New York: Random House, 1992), 493-4.
12. The impressions of listeners at the time are treated extensively in Paul
E. Willis, Profane Culture (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1978), 106-8, 154-69.
13. "One Culture and the New Sensibility," 296.
14. See Janell R. Duxbury, Rockin' the Classics and Classicizin' the Rock:
A Selectively Annotated Discography (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 1985).
15. Spector's contributions to rock are surveyed in Nik Cohn, "Phil

Spector," in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll,
177-88; Back to Mono is an anthology of his recordings from this
period. Spector was, of course, developing the "sound on sound"
(overdubbing) recording technique that Les Paul and others had
pioneered in the 1950s. See Mary Alice Shaughnessy, Les Paul: An
American Original (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1993),
165, 180-2.
16. Quoted in Patricia Romanowski and Holly George-Warren, eds., The

New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, rev. ed. (New York:
Fireside/Rolling Stone Press, 1995), s.v. "Spector, Phil" (p. 933).
17. These include Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, who imitated
Spector's recordings, career, and life-style; his admiration extended
to his hiring Spector's sidemen for Pet Sounds. See Timothy White,
The Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, and the
Southern California Experience (New York: Henry Holt and Co.,
1994), 148, 166. Wilson is quoted on the subject in David Leaf, The
Beach Boys (Philadelphia: Running Press, 1985), 113. See also Daniel
Harrison, "After Sundown: The Beach Boys' Experimental Music,"
in Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis, ed. John Covach
and Graeme M. Boone (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997),
38 and 54, notes 6 and 11. The Beatles likewise respected Spector's
work. He produced their Let It Be (1969) as well as solo albums by
John Lennon and George Harrison. Frank Zappa and Spector were
casual acquaintances (see, for example, Gray, Mother!, 56, 79-80).
Given Zappa's professed passion for early rock'n'roll, Spector's pro-
duction work would have been hard to miss. Moreover, among the
New York studio musicians who recorded Zappa's Lumpy Gravy was
one of Spector's favorite session guitarists, Tommy Tedesco.
18. Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts
Club Band (1967), and The Beatles [The White Album] (1968). For
discussions of recording techniques used on these albums, see Mark
Lewisohn, The Beatles: Recording Sessions (New York: Harmony
Books, 1988); George Martin, All You Need Is Ears (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1979); and George Martin and William Pearson,
Summer of Love: The Making of Sgt. Pepper (London: Macmillan,
1994). See also Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles'
Records and the Sixties (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1994).
Because Martin was an experienced producer of comedy, he was
doubtless familiar with American novelty records. These often
involved quick-cut techniques, like those simulated in the forties by
Spike Jones, as well as tape manipulation. Napoleon XIV's (Jerry
Samuel) "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!," for ex-
ample, which used tape acceleration and reverb effects, was a top-ten
hit in the summer of 1966. See The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular
Music, ed. Colin Larkin, 6 vols., 2d ed. (Enfield, Middlesex: Guin-
ness Publishing Ltd., 1995), s.v. "Napoleon XIV," (4: 2986). The B
side of the original 45 r.p.m. single is the A side backward; the rever-
sal extended to the label, which was printed backward.
19. "Third Stone from the Sun" (Are You Experienced, 1967) and
"1983" (Electric Ladyland, 1968), in particular.
20. Electronic sounds are prominent on their first two albums, Velvet
Underground and Nico (1967) and White Light, White Heat (1967).
On Warhol's involvement with the Velvet Underground, see Jeremy
Reed, Waiting for the Man (London: Picador/Macmillan, 1994),
31-4.
21. This project, which Wilson called "a teenage symphony to God," is
discussed in White, The Nearest Faraway Place, 271-5. Note
Wilson's not-so-veiled reference to Spector's description of his own
work.
22. Brad Elliott, Surf's Up: The Beach Boys on Record 1961-1981 (Ann
Arbor: Popular Culture, Ink, 1991), 53, 57. According to White,
The Nearest Faraway Place, 264-5, Wilson self consciously intended
the complex arrangements and stereo overdubbing of "Good Vibra-
tions" to trump Spector's legendary "Wall of Sound" mono record-
ings.
23. The Mothers' line-up changed somewhat over the period under con-
sideration. See Gray, Mother!, 56-8, 82, 89. The core included
Zappa, Jimmy Carl Black, Roy Estrada, and Ray Collins.
24. The Garrick Theatre show, "Pigs and Repugnant/Absolutely Free,"

as described in Zappa and Occhiogrosso, The Real Frank Zappa Book,
92-6. "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask"
on Weasels Ripped My Flesh (originally released in August 1970;
compact disc reissue, Rykodisc RCD 10163), recorded live at Lon-
don's Festival Hall, gives a vague impression of the group's improvi-
satory performing style.
25. The source of this and other release dates (given in parentheses) is
Gray, Mother!, 241-8.
26. Charlesworth Chris Miles, Zappa: A Visual Documentary (London:

Omnibus Press, 1993), 21. Song and album titles are given as they
appear on the albums, that is, with every word capitalized.
27. Compare with "Steppin' Out" (1965), particularly the fade-out. The
Raiders, known for their energetic coordinated choreography and
powder-blue Revolutionary War-era outfits, were fronted by lead
singer and teen idol, Mark Lindsay. His closing rap and the group's
trebly electric guitar timbre are the chief targets of Zappa's derision.
For details of Dick Clark's broadcasting career, see The Guinness
Encyclopedia of Popular Music, s.v. "Clark, Dick" (1:826).
28. Zappa's brief article in Stereo Review (June 1971), "Edgard Varese,
Idol of My Youth. A Reminiscence and Appreciation," is reprinted in
Dominique Chevalier, Viva! Zappa, trans. Matthew Screech (New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), 105-6. See also Gray, Mother!, 137.
By his own account, the fourteen-year-old Zappa first learned about
Varese in an article about record dealer Sam Goody in Life magazine.
He was intrigued by Goody's disparaging remarks about the com-
poser's music and searched local record stores for recordings. See
The Real Frank Zappa Book, 31; and Miles, Visual Documentary, 7.
29. For a photo of Zappa, Allen, and the bicycle, along with other early
publicity material, see Gray, Mother!, 160 [h]. Zappa had also pro-
duced a few novelty 45s, along with surf music and R&B recordings.
30. See the booklet accompanying Frank Zappa, The Lost Episodes, [24]
(Rykodisc RCD 40573).
31. Donna 1378, re-released on Rare Meat: Early Works Of Frank
Zappa, Del-Fi Records RNEP604; and Cucamonga, Del-Fi Records
DFCD 71261. See Miles, Visual Documentary, 13; and Gray,
Mother!, 42. The snork sound effect on "The Idiot Bastard Son,"
We're Only In It For The Money, is first heard on "How's Your Bird?"
32. Words and music by Earl Edwards, Bernie Williams, and Eugene
Dixon.
33. "Soft-Sell Conclusion" (1:24-1:31) and "Invocation and Ritua

Dance of the Young Pumpkin" (0:08-0:25), respectively.
34. On Zappa's self-perception, see Gray, Mother!, 66. For lyrics to the
and other Zappa songs, as well as complete discographies, songlist
and reproductions of cover art, consult "St. Alphonso's Pancake

Homepage" <http://www.fwi.uva.nl/-heederik/zappa/>.
35. Igor Stravinsky, Petrushka, ed. Charles Hamm, A Norton Critical
Score (New York: W.W. Norton, 1967), 24-31.
36. A concert performance of an excerpt from Petrushka may be found

on 'Tis The Season To Be Jelly: Live in Sweden 1967(FOO-EE/ Rhino
Records RZ 70542).
37. Apocrypha (Great Dane Records GDR 9405/ABCD).
38. According to his widow, Gail Zappa, a considerable portion of the
young couple's income went to purchasing records during these
years (telephone conversation, 23 October 1995).
39. Due to concerns over copyright infringement, the gatefold of We're

Only In It For The Money was the reverse of Sgt. Pepper. For repro-
ductions of the album art, consult "St. Alphonso's Pancake
Homepage."
40. Zappa may have been reacting to the group's emerging cynicism and
particularly that of John Lennon. Commenting on the Beatles' music
not long after the release of Sgt. Pepper, for example, Lennon
remarked: "People think the Beatles know what's going on. We
don't. We're just doing it.... [On "Being for the Benefit of Mr.
Kite!" from Sgt. Pepper] I just shoved a lot of words together, then
shoved some noise on. I just did it. I didn't dig that song when I
wrote it. I didn't believe in it when I was doing it. But nobody will
believe it. They don't want to. They want it to be important."
Quoted in Hunter Davies, The Beatles (New York: McGraw Hill,
1968), 284.
41. The texts and musical settings of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"
and "She's Leaving Home" are discussed in Wilfred Mellers, The
Twilight of the Gods: The Music of the Beatles (New York: Viking Press,
1974), 89-93.
42. The definition is Mellers's (ibid., 86-7). Zappa may have invented
the concept album. No less an authority than Paul McCartney
acknowledged Freak Out! as a key inspiration for the later, but far
more commercially successful Sgt. Pepper. See Rockwell, "The Emer-
gence of Art Rock," 496.
43. On this point, see Tom Manoff, Music: A Living Language (New
York: W.W. Norton, 1982), 292-3.
44. Zappa and Occhiogrosso, The Real Frank Zappa Book, 88.
45. Zappa's undisguised hostility to drugs is discussed in Ben Watson,

Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1993), 73-4. Hippies' preference for the uninter-
rupted flow of progressive rock music over conventional three-
minute pop songs is mentioned, among other places, in John Storey,
Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture (Athens: Univer-
sity of Georgia Press, 1996), 105.
46. The ultimate irony of Zappa's early albums may be that hippies con-
sidered them the ne plus ultra of their musical experience. On the
recognition of Zappa's role in defining music in hippie subculture,
see Willis, Profane Culture, 107-8.
47. For a similar approach to the analysis of Stravinsky's music, see

Edward T. Cone, "Stravinsky: The Progress of Method," Perspectives
of New Music 1 (1962): 18-26. See also Jonathan D. Kramer, "Dis-
continuity and Proportion in the Music of Stravinsky," in Confront-
ing Stravinsky: Man, Musician, and Modernist, ed. Jann Pasler
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 174-94. The kind
of proportional relationships that Kramer finds in Stravinsky's music
are not evident in Zappa's, as Examples 3-5 demonstrate.
48. Gray, Mother!, 61-2. On Wilson's role in the early Mothers' record-
ings, see William Ruhlman, "Frank Zappa: The Present Day Com-
poser," in The Frank Zappa Companion, 6-7; and Slaven, Zappa, 49-
53.
49. The angular "Love Story" (Boulez Conducts Zappa, The Perfect
Stranger, August 1984), for example, "features an elderly Republi-
can couple attempting sex while break-dancing." The distinction
between Zappa's rock and serious music emerged between 1969 and
1971, around the times of The Mothers' breakup, the first Los
Angeles Philharmonic performance in May 1970, and the release of
Fillmore East and 200 Motels. Mass media critics recognized Zappa's
earlier attempts to combine rock with what they too called serious
music. For example, Robert Shelton, writing in the New York Times
in December 1966, described The Mothers as "the first pop group
to successfully amalgamate rock'n'roll with the serious music of
Stravinsky and others." Quoted in Gray, Mother!, 84.
50. Chevalier observes that the conversations were recorded after the
composition and recording of the instrumental sections. Viva!
Zappa, 13. See also Slaven, Zappa, 76.
51. The importance of style over meaning in hippie conversation is

described in Willis, Profane Culture, 103-6. Like the ones simulated
on Lumpy Gravy, "Conversations would turn on sudden interrup-
tions, provocative statements, sudden denials, insolent questionings,
apparent paradoxes. It was the mark of the stranger or acolyte that he
would try to express something directly or naively... It was greatly
appreciated when a non sequitur, or enigmatic statement stopped a
conversation, but in an appropriate way, or transformed what had
been said into something specially understood only by the head [hip-
pie]" (103).
52. For the details of this dispute, see Gray, Mother!, 90.
53. David Walley, No Commercial Potential (New York: Outerbridge and

Lazard, 1972), 86-8; Gray, Mother!, 90.
54. According to Walley (No Commercial Potential, 86), Zappa learned

to operate the sophisticated studio equipment quickly enough to cre-
ate tension with the more experienced technician, Kellgren. It is he
who threatens to erase Zappa's master tapes on We're Only In It For
The Money.
55. Concerning Uncle Meat, Chevalier (Viva! Zappa, 13) writes that
"while the group recorded one track Zappa sat in the sound engi-
neer's room composing music for the next one." Charles Keil charac-
terizes recording as a "classicizing" or perfecting act that divorces
performance from real-life expectations, as well as informal and
improvisational aspects. Valuable as this observation is, it should be
amended to take engineering and production into consideration. See
Charles Keil and Steven Feld, Music Grooves: Essays and Dialogues
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 157-9.
56. Remarks refer to the original U.S. vinyl issue, Verve V6-8741; the
artwork for the compact disc reissues is not the same. Zappa had
already changed his identity once: as Ruben Sano, leader of an imag-
inary fifties R & B-pachuco group. Later Zappa had himself depicted
as the mad scientist, Uncle Meat, on the inner sleeve of The Grand
Wazoo (December 1972), an obvious pastiche of his and Varese's fea-
tures: compare this with photos of Varese later in life. Zappa
remarked that the composer looked like a "mad scientist" in The
Real Frank Zappa Book, 31.
57. The type fonts for both compact disc reissues differ from the Verve
LP release. Zappa later used the name ABNUCEALS EMUUKHA
electric SYMPHONY orchestra to identify an ensemble of thirty-
seven musicians who performed his compositions on 17 and 18 Sep-

tember 1975 at Royce Hall, UCLA. Some arrangements performed
during these concerts were released in May 1979 as Orchestral Favor-
ites. Gray, Mother!, 165, 176. Ben Watson, usually dogged in his
attempts to apply his brand of hermeneutics to allusions in Zappa's
lyrics, offers no hypothesis about the hidden meaning of this ensem-
ble's name. He does, however, connect the title Lumpy Gravy with
Zappa's remarks to the university composers in 1984, in which
Zappa admits that composers have to eat, but "mostly what they eat
is brown and lumpy." Negative Dialectics, 91.
58. Watson, Negative Dialectics, 90. Commenting further, he writes that

Lumpy Gravy has been "relegated to the category of 'harmless indul-
gence'," perhaps because "the setting .. defies high-brow analysis."
Ibid., 104, 91.
59. Compare "Lumpy Gravy Part One" (4:47-5:17) to John Cage and
David Tudor, Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental
and Electronic Music (Folkways FT 3704), released in 1959. The
Mothers had, of course, worked in New York and fashioned them-
selves as rivals to the Velvet Underground, then under Warhol's
tutelage. The dialogue is transcribed in Watson, Negative Dialectics,
97-8.
60. Watson, Negative Dialectics, 104.
61. Reworked songs include "Chrome Plated Megaphone" (We're Onl

In It For The Money), "King Kong" (Uncle Meat), "Oh No" (Wea-
sels), and "Redneck Eats" (200 Motels). See Chevalier, Viva! Zappa
62.
62. Timings correspond to the 1986 CD reissue, Rykodisc RCD 40024
63. Compare, for example, the 1961 recording, later entitled "Take Yo
Clothes off When You Dance" ( The Lost Episodes).
64. This approach to harmonization, a hallmark of Zappa's style, wa

later employed in instrumentals like "Little House I Used to Liv
In," "Big Swifty," and "Echidna's Arf ofYou."
65. See Hamm, ed., Norton Critical Score, 52-6. The closing section
the refrain is repeated and used to introduce "The Orange County
Lumber Truck" on Weasels Ripped My Flesh. As early as 1969 (Yo
Can't Do That On Stage Anymore Vol. 1 and later, Make A Jazz Noise
Here) the repeated closing section of "Oh No" was transformed in
a head motive for a guitar solo; Zappa improvised over the two sup-
porting chords (i-iv).
66. See, for example, The Real Frank Zappa Book, 34. "I loved Stravinsky
almost as much as Varese. The other composer who filled me with
awe-I couldn't believe that anybody could write music like that-
was Anton Webern."
67. Originated as a cue for Zappa's 1963 film score for Run Home Slow,
available on the reissue The Lost Episodes, no. 11, "Run Home Cues,
#2."
68. Chevalier suggests that Zappa's original conception did not include
spoken material. Viva! Zappa, 13.
69. Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin, Film Technique and Film Acting,

trans. and ed. Ivor Montagu, memorial edition (New York: Grove
Press, 1976), 23. Zappa was reportedly at work on a movie called
Uncle Meat in January 1968, that is, while recording and editing the
album of the same name. Chevalier, Viva! Zappa, 13. Barking Pump-
kin/Honker Video released the movie Uncle Meat in 1989.
70. In a 1972 radio interview with Martin Perlich, Zappa mentions own-
ing the 1957 Columbia recording, The Complete Music [of] Anton
Webern (K4L-232 / KL 5019-5022). The text of the interview, tran-
scribed by Georg Deppe, is available on the St. Alfonso's Pancake
Homepage:
<http://www.fwi.uva.nl/-heederik/zappa/interviews/
martin_perlich.html>.
Elsewhere he identified it as one of his favorite records. See
Chevalier, Viva! Zappa, 108.
71. For a brief analysis of the former work, see Eric Walter Whi
Stravinsky: The Composer and His Works, 2d ed. (Berkeley: Univers
of California Press, 1979), 308-12. For analyses of Symphonies
Wind Instruments, refer to note 47, above.
72. "Soft-Sell Conclusion," Absolutely Free; "Royal March from 'L

toire du soldat'," Make a Jazz Noise Here (Barking Pumpkin Reco
D2-74234 and Rykodisc 10557/58).
73. See Charles Hamm, Putting Popular Music in Its Place (Cambri
Cambridge University Press, 1995), 20-1; and Robert Walser, Ru
ning with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy M
Music (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 19
58-9. Watson, Negative Dialectics, 129, extends the admonition to

the analysis of Zappa's music.
74. Joseph Machlis and Kristine Forney, The Enjoyment of Music, 7th ed.
(New York: Norton, 1995), 547.
75. The Real Frank Zappa Book, 33. Liner notes and interviews are full of
references to twentieth-century compositions, composers, tech-
niques, and studio paraphernalia. The gatefold of Uncle Meat, for
example, includes the following statement: "Things that sound like a
full orchestra were carefully assembled, track by track through a pro-
cedure known as over-dubbing. The weird middle section of DOG
BREATH (after the line, 'Ready to attack') has forty tracks built into
it. Things that sound like trumpets are actually clarinets played
through an electric device made by Maestro with a setting labeled
Oboe D'Amore and sped up a minor third with a V.S.O. (variable
speed oscillator). Other peculiar sounds were made on the Kalama-
zoo electric organ."
76. According to Walley, Zappa planned his early projects as conceptual

pairs. No Commercial Potential, 86.
77. On Shenkel's contribution, see Miles, "The Grand Wazoo," Mojo

(March 1974): 93-5. The artwork for these two albums is discussed
in Watson, Negative Dialectics, 135-6 and 168-9, respectively.
78. Zappa had previously borrowed from Holst on Absolutely Free (see
above). Ryko's compact disc re-issue (RCD 10506/07) connects the
ostinato-based passage with the track containing "The Legend of the
Golden Arches." The LP, of course, had no rills; the original timing
is as indicated in Example 4.
79. In a paper delivered at the Sixty-First Annual Meeting of the Ameri-

can Musicological Society (1995), James Grier argued that "King
Kong" was progressively "reconstructed" from its manifestations on
side one ("The Mothers of Invention and Uncle Meat: Alienation,
Anachronism, and a Double Variation"). I would argue instead that
C1 and C2 reference a theme (stated unambiguously in C8) that had
been introduced on "Lumpy Gravy Part Two." Side four of the orig-
inal LP could be analyzed in syncretic terms, that is, as a combination
of variation and the familiar jazz technique of stating the head
motive at the beginning (C3) and the end (C8). Grier moreover
construed the album's form as a double, rather than triple, variation.
I would add that the observations presented herein were developed
independent from my friend and colleague's research, of which I was
unaware.
"King Kong," of course, refers to the giant gorilla from the movie
of the same name, which Zappa may have considered a metaphor for
his instinctive approach to music and his difficulties with the record
industry. He related the following to a Swedish concert audience in
1967: "The name of this song is 'King Kong.' It's the story of a very
large gorilla who lived in the jungle. And he was doing okay until
some Americans came by and thought that they would take him
home with them. They took him to the United States and they made
some money by using the gorilla. Then they killed him." 'Tis The
Season To Be Jelly: Live in Sweden 1967 (FOO-EE/Rhino Records
RZ 70542).
80. Viva! Zappa, 14. Zappa himself characterized the Grand Wazoo
ensemble, which replaced The Mothers in 1972, as "a new 20-piece
electric symphony orchestra." See Gray, Mother!, 150.
81. Chevalier, Viva! Zappa, 14. Group members were paid $250 a week
out of the leader's pocket, whether they rehearsed or not. For details
of the group's break-up, see Gray, Mother!, 117-9.
82. Gray, Mother!, 119.
83. Walley, No Commercial Potential, 127; see also Gray, Mother!, 117-
8. On Zappa's penchant for holding recorded material in reserve, see
Gray, Mother!, 97. Uncle Meat and Weasels Ripped My Flesh were also
to have originally been part of a multi-record set.
84. Chevalier, Viva! Zappa, 14.
85. "WPLJ" was first released by the Four Deuces, "Valarie" by Jackie
and the Starlights. Slaven, Zappa, 128.
86. Portions of the score may be heard on Apocrypha, disc 4. The con-
nection is discussed in Gray, Mother!, 34.
87. Booklet accompanying The Yellow Shark, [8] (Barking Pumpkin

Records R2 7 1600/Rykodisc RCD/RAC 40560). A connection
between Weill and Zappa, though in a completely different context,
is suggested in Paddison, "The Critique Criticized," 217.
88. Mother!, 113. The Berlin incident was reported (in German) on the
back cover of the group's April 1969 anthology release, Motherma-
nia (Verve V65068).
89. He also used a brief bit of live tape. "Little House" concludes with a
sarcastic quip he made to an unruly London concert audience, also
in 1968: "You're all wearing uniforms and don't kid yourselves."

Modernism in Zappa

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Form and the Concept Album: Aspects of Modernism in Frank Zappa's Early Releases

Author(s): James Borders

Record industry executives need to find out what it is they're selling

to reap whatever profits came along-We're Only In It For The Money is

ather, I would argue, it had primarily

False acknowledgments of pop icons who "contributed materially

considered truly important influences: Stravinsky, Anton Webern, Arnold

just to his brand of satire, but to twentieth-century concert music.34

In January 1968 Verve Records released the thi

The Mothers did subsequently release an album of doo-wop songs

I conceived that album along the same lines as the compositions in

Zappa's meticulous attention to organizing the instrumental and spoken

~ r - J I r fr' i r l' - '- -lz' r dJ i

.r r_Cr J-, 1 ' x$Ir . j I1 j

EXAMPLE 2: FRANK ZAPPA, "LUMPY GRAVY PART ONE,'

out of control. Unexpectedly a trumpet and trombone blare out the

Webern (hence the designations Stravinskiana, Varesiana, and

Al VA2 B1 A3 WB2 XA4Y Cl Z B3 C2 ... C3-8

electric chamber music.80 Yet the financial downside of sustaining a nine-

X 1 I.1 "WPLJ" 2:52 R & B cover

Al 2 1.2 "Igor's Boogie, Phase One" 0:37 Clarinets, comet, drum

B1 3 1.3 "Overture to a Holiday in Berlin" 1:27 Harpsichord, flute, c

C1 4 1.4 "Theme from Burnt Weeny Sandwich" 4:32 Two-chord ost

A2 5 1.5 "Igor's Boogie, Phase Two" 0:37 Clarinets, comet, b

B2 6 1.6 "Holiday in Berlin, Full-Blown" 6:23 Organ, piano, harpsicho

"Holiday in Berlin, Full-Blown" (0:00-2:56)

D1 7 1.7 "Aybe Sea" 2:46 Piano, harpsichord, electric

EXAMPLE 5: VARIATION-RONDO FORM OF BURN

8 II.1 "Little House I Used to Live In" 18:42

E (0:00-1:42) Piano solo

Fl (1:43-4:17) The original Moth

G (4:18-13:34) Guitar, violin, and pia

F2 (13:34-14:53) Chamber ensem

D2 (14:54-17:12) D1 accelerated (tape manipu

Y 9 11.2 "Valarie" 3:14 R & B cover

The audience at Zappa's Berlin concert demanded that he make

Let me suggest that this tendency toward repetition and variation is

"Conceptual continuity" may well serve as a term for an underlying

Contrary to Watson's view, Zappa's is a modern art that most certainly

versions of this instrumental on six albums, indicating the ongoing trans-

I wish to express my thanks to Sean Westergaard, Steve Whiting, and

1. "A Magic Science: Rock Music as Recording Art," Popular Music 3

3. Carl Dahlhaus, "On the Decline of the Work Concept," in Schoenberg

4. A central text is Theodor Adorno, "On Popular Music," Studies in

and Max Paddison, "The Critique Criticized: Adorno and Popular

7. Neil Slaven, Zappa: Electric Don Quixote (London: Omnibus Press,

8. Dahlhaus, "On the Decline of the Work Concept," 229.

9. Zappa's formative experience in marketing and advertising, including

13. "One Culture and the New Sensibility," 296.

15. Spector's contributions to rock are surveyed in Nik Cohn, "Phil

16. Quoted in Patricia Romanowski and Holly George-Warren, eds., The

24. The Garrick Theatre show, "Pigs and Repugnant/Absolutely Free,"

26. Charlesworth Chris Miles, Zappa: A Visual Documentary (London:

33. "Soft-Sell Conclusion" (1:24-1:31) and "Invocation and Ritua

and reproductions of cover art, consult "St. Alphonso's Pancake

36. A concert performance of an excerpt from Petrushka may be found

39. Due to concerns over copyright infringement, the gatefold of We're

45. Zappa's undisguised hostility to drugs is discussed in Ben Watson,

47. For a similar approach to the analysis of Stravinsky's music, see

51. The importance of style over meaning in hippie conversation is

53. David Walley, No Commercial Potential (New York: Outerbridge and

54. According to Walley (No Commercial Potential, 86), Zappa learned

seven musicians who performed his compositions on 17 and 18 Sep-