Oct. 7, 1977 review: Frank Zappa in Memorial Auditorium
Any time Frank Zappa comes to town in the 1970s, I am invariably right there.
Oct. 7, 1977 review
Nihilism
in Rock
Is Old Hat to Zappa
When Frank Zappa’s got an inspiration,
the clues aren’t hard to spot. A year ago, there were the disco clothes and the
big beat of “Bionic Funk.” This time around he has a black T-shirt with no
sleeves and greased-back hair.
As he opens his two-hour concert
Thursday night in Memorial Auditorium before about 8,000 rowdy,
fireworks-popping fans, he veers off from the daffy “Peaches En Regalia” and
settles on the most hideous number from last year’s show – “The Torture Never
Stops,” a grisly saga inspired by political developments in South America.
Yes, this is the night of the iron
sausage. The New Wave is old hat to Zappa. He’s been making his own rules and
thumbing his nose at convention ever since his first album, “The Mothers of
Invention Freak Out,” in the mid-1960s.
Even so, it’s hard to know whether to
laugh, grimace or call suicide prevention when drummer Terry Bozzio screams out
the lyrics to the next hot and heavy anthem to frustrated teenhood: “I Wanta Be
Dead.”
* *
*
BOZZIO,
a carry-over from the Bionic Funk band, is the most colorful member of Zappa’s
current sextet of refugees from the middle class. He pounds the tom toms as if
he were a blacksmith straightening an axle, his frizzy heap of hair leaping at
every beat.
Zappa, meantime, sits cross-legged
with his guitar, smoking a cigarette and nodding abstractly to the rhythm.
After Bozzio, everybody gets a turn. Bassist Patrick O’Hearn, the only other
Bionic Funk alumnus, turns his solo from a loose, beguiling doodle to a
forceful double-string stomp.
Most unlikely member is clean-cut
guitarist Adrian Belew. In his baggy parachute suit, he looks like he’s AWOL
from the Air Force Chorus. As an apprentice to Zappa, he’s still learning how
to swing his guitar.
Belew may be a bit awkward, but he’s
got talent. His imitation of harmonica-toting Bob Dylan is a scream. He’s also
an aggressive purveyor of special effects in his guitar solos. When he
overloads his creative flight and it falters in the middle of “Disco Boy,” the
rest of the band kicks up the tempo and supports him until he regains his
equilibrium.
* *
*
KEYBOARDMAN
Tommy Mars, with his googly goggle, scat-sings so skillfully he sounds like a
flute. “Percussoid” Ed Mann ranges around his collection of noisemakers like a
mad surfer in striped knee-pants and socks, whacking the xylophone in twinkling
unison with the band’s malevolent machine-gun ensemble riffs.
Zappa, as usual, can’t resist infusing
his gross-outs with a little serious high-brow music. “Disco Boy,” that
sneering X-rated diatribe, uses atonality so dramatically that Stravinsky would
envy it.
Zappy figures, rightly, that if the
denimed teenage drinkers and tokers out there get enough of the crude and the ridiculous,
they’ll sit still while he slips them some Good Music. As a punk-rocker,
though, he drops most of his lampooning and goes straight for the outrageous.
In one tune, he argues with the Devil
(Bozzio in a horned mask), who has taken his woman and his beer. In another, he
sings about the Phlegs, a breed of Southern Californian who don’t know the
first thing about their jobs.
* *
*
“THE
PLUMBERS don’t know anything about pipes,” he explains, “the TV men don’t know
anything about electricity and the mechanics don’t know anything about cars.
You go in and ask them: ‘Where’s my motor?’ They say it was eaten by snakes.”
But occasionally the show drags. One
reason is because Zappa does quite a bit of sitting and cigarette smoking.
Another is because the compact sound system doesn’t deliver the vocals and the
nuances of the ensemble playing to anyone sitting further away than the
soundman.
The lengthy double encore is like
dessert after a naked lunch. Zappa unlocks his hair from its ponytail, puts on
a New York Yankees baseball cap and recounts those sleazy amorous tales of his
past – “Dynah-Moe Humm” and (with one last Dylan imitation) “Camarillo Brillo.”
Zappa’s reward comes in the form of a
strawberry blonde young thing named Judy. She climbs on stage for the finale,
throws a righteous hug on the master and gives him the kind of look the girls
are always giving Fonzie. Zappa may wind up being the Fonz of the ‘70s.
* *
* * *
IN
THE PHOTO: Poster for the Halloween 1977 show in
* *
* * *
FOOTNOTE:
Zappateers.com has recordings of many of the shows on this tour, but not
Intro
Peaches
En Regalia
The
Torture Never Stops
Tryin’
to Grow a Chin
City
of Tiny Lights
Pound
for a Brown
Conehead
Flakes
Big
Leg Emma
Envelopes
Disco
Boy
I
Promise Not to Come in Your Mouth
Wild
Love
Titties
‘N Beer
The
Black Page
Jones
Crusher
Broken
Hearts Are for Assholes
Punky’s
Whips
Dinah-Moe
Humm
Black Napkins
The
setlist.fm song report for
The
band is captured for once and for all on “Halloween 77,” a three CD box set
containing 158 tracks from shows at the Palladium in New York City over
Halloween weekend. The personnel list for those dates includes a few names that
weren’t mentioned in my review – Roy Estrada on gas mask and vocals, Phil
Kaufman, “human trombone,” Thomas Nordegg, “some magic tricks,” and Peter Wolf
on keyboards. Four of the six Palladium shows also were filmed for his movie project “Baby Snakes.”
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