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| Dweezil Zappa and ensemble at the Boulder Theater last night. No, I didn't get any closer. I could hear just fine where I was. |
How many recordings of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony are there?
Thousands. Why? Haven’t they gotten it right yet?
When Dweezil Zappa hit the stage with his cover of his
father Frank’s 1975 One Size Fits All
album (the 10th and last official Mothers of Invention product –
Zappa went solo after) at the Boulder Theater last night, it was standing room
only – with a fairly large contingent of people my age and older,
grandparent-y-looking freaks in disguise. When the house lights went down, a
Trinity Site-size- and –shaped mushroom cloud of dope smoke ascended, rolling
and roiling, breaking in silent tsunami against the lofty Art Deco ceiling.
It got loud fast. We stayed well back on the left, but got
to observe all kinds of aisle action – security going after the blatant
smokers, trippers waving their fingers in our faces. It got hot.
Zappa was an affable, laid-back host, a gentle curator who
slayed it, playing the seemingly unlearnable solos his father composed and
played. He was backed by an amazing quintet – Kurt Morgan on bass, Chris Norton
on keyboards, Joe Travers on drums, Ben Thomas on trumpet, trombone, harmonica,
guitar, and what else comes to hand; and the ball of fire Scheila Gonzales, who
worked the keyboards, and flute, and sax, ripping out an amazing horn solo on a
cover of “The Grand Wazoo” later in the evening.
Ben Thomas handled the lead vocals, too. (The vocal mix got
blown out, and was pretty incomprehensible. I had to go back to the lyrics
sheet later to refamiliarize myself.) It seemed odd that Dweezil would relegate
this duty – but maybe not. It must be odd to play your dad’s albums for
screaming crowds.
Or not. This definitely wasn’t the kind of note-for-note
replication that bands such as Dark Star Orchestra perform. And is that what we
want? The Eagles reportedly strove to make every concert “sound like the
record.” Dweezil and Company kept substantially to the songs, but opened them
out as well, developed them, extended them through their own experience and
understanding.
And maybe that’s the best way to keep this music alive. Like
Mercer Ellington and Sue Mingus, Dweezil Zappa has a mountain of material to
work with – Zappa released 62 albums in his lifetime, sometimes five a year – a
confounding mix of juvenile comedy, rock, soul, jazz, orchestral, R & B
(who doesn’t love Cruisin’ with Ruben
and the Jets?), collage, experimental pieces, all jammed together in an
ever-exploding matrix of Weird.
Dweezil gets that and makes it work for him, demonstrating
that the work has a much longer half-life than most people think it does. Frank
Zappa was a notorious perfectionist, but even music as challenging and
idiosyncratic as his will only survive if people take it, play it, and by
playing change it. As the Borges story “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” story illustrated, even the most
rigorous attempt to recreate a creative experience is doomed and blessed to be
something new and different.
We accrete cultural layers everywhere we go. We track our
past, our mind, our style in with us, always, like mud on our shoes. Even when
playing the unplayable, or bringing the unreproducible back to life, we are
keeping it alive, and adding a little of our DNA to it as well. It’s Dweezil
Zappa’s unique privilege to point out some gems to us and put new luster on
them.
