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Son Dweezil Zappa to introduce songs to new generation in Cleveland show
By Malcolm X Abram
Beacon Journal music writer
Published on Thursday, Jul 02, 2009
Frank Zappa's music is not for the faint of heart or the humor impaired.
The singer/songwriter/composer is probably best known by the masses for minor novelty hits such as the early 1980s tune Valley Girl, featuring his then-teenage daughter Moon Unit, Don't Eat the Yellow Snow or the disco sendup Dancin' Fool, which occasionally get played on classic rock radio.
But for Zappa fans, the novelty tunes are not the crux of the Zappa musical biscuit. Rather, it's the knotty, complex songs and instrumentals that keep them studying the recordings.
Before and since Zappa's death in 1993, there have been many tribute and cover bands. Some included Zappa's former band members but didn't have the blessing of the Zappa Family Trust guarded by Zappa's widow and business manager Gail.
But in 2006, Zappa's eldest son, Dweezil, decided that if anyone was going to play his father's music, it should be him. Thus Zappa Plays Zappa, performing at the House of Blues Cleveland on Friday, was born to keep his father's music alive and introduce it to a new and hopefully younger audience.
''The real goal of the tour is to expose the music to a newer audience,'' Dweezil, 39, told the Daily Yomiuri while touring in Tokyo this spring. ''If we're going to expose it and expand the audience, they should hear a broad spectrum, because many people have the wrong impression. They think it's comedy music . . .
''So, I distanced myself from certain compositions that would seem obvious.
''We dig deeper and learn more complex things, and that has given us more respect from the fans,'' he said.
To properly play his father's music, the younger Zappa spent two years relearning how to play guitar, shedding his own Eddie Van Halen/1980s guitar shredder-influenced style for his father's unique mutated blues and odd rhythmic phrasing. He spent a few more years gathering and rehearsing a band that could play Zappa's music confidently and correctly while having fun, always an important component of Zappa's concerts.
For the first ZPZ tour, Dweezil enlisted a few of his father's former band members — drummer Terry Bozzio, guitarist Steve Vai, singer/reed player Napoleon Murphy Brock and more recently singer/guitarist Ray White — to re-create some of their parts on Zappa recordings. But for the current tour, it will just be the core ZPZ septet.
The band focuses on material from the younger Zappa's favorite period of his father's music — roughly 1970 to 1981 — with a few gems from the 1960s Mothers of Invention era. While this period includes many of Zappa's humorous and/or controversial songs such as the ripped-from-the-headlines The Illinois Enema Bandit and Don't Eat the Yellow Snow, it also features fan favorites such as Inca Roads, Cosmic Debris and Peaches En Regalia — a version of which garnered ZPZ a 2009 Grammy for best rock instrumental performance.
''It was like, wait a minute, was that a mistake?'' Dweezil told the Prague Post a few days after his emotional acceptance speech at the ceremony.
In Dweezil's quest to introduce his father's music to a new generation, the band has recently started taking opening spots for popular bands such as the prog rock band Dream Theater and played a set at Bonnaroo, the annual neo-hippie/jam band gathering in Tennessee where the band has begun gaining new fans among the jam band devotees.
The irony, of course, is that Zappa the elder consistently made fun of hippies, devoting much of the Mothers of Invention's classic We're Only in It for the Money to deriding both the hippie scenes and the establishment as conformist.
''The two are distantly related,'' Dweezil said in the Daily Yomiuri piece. ''People equate lengthy guitar solos as jam band stuff, but much of it can be meandering. Whereas Frank's stuff has a direction to it at all times. The dichotomy is that the jam bands are these hippie types and Frank made fun of the hippies. So it's like they don't get the joke.''
Nevertheless, Dweezil realizes that any audience that wants to hear his father's music, particularly one that doesn't have any of the preconceived notions of Zappa as some wild and crazy contrarian, is a welcome audience.
''The whole point of doing this was to introduce my dad's music to a new generation of fans,'' he said in December in an article in the Vancouver (British Columbia) Sun. ''The younger generation doesn't know all that much about the music, other than stealing it off the Internet.
''It's nice to give them an introduction to it in the live situation, because that's where it becomes the most inspirational,'' he continued. ''In this day and age when people are so used to people going on stage and lip-synching and faking everything, this gives them a shot in the arm.''
Malcolm X Abram can be reached at mabram@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3758.
Frank Zappa's music is not for the faint of heart or the humor impaired.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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Akron, Oh
Posted 09:00 AM, 07/02/2009
Should be a great show..Dweezil can jam..
