Zappa.com

The thread about Roland Kirk/FZ:<br><br>http://www.zappa.com/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=wishList;action=display;num=1062041055

zappa & shepp circa '67

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[quote author=gregk link=board=legends;num=1033427931;start=0#14 date=10/08/02 at 18:42:15]I'd go so far as to say that the sheer variations in the improvisations are enough to qualify much of Zappa's music as jazz. Listen to the many different guitar solos from Inca Roads which made it on the Guitar and shut up...records. That's jazz to me[/quote]<br><br>FZ's solos are most of the time very modal. He stays locked in a mode for a while, uses some "exotic" scales, plays nice melodies on the fly and that's it (and that's also what I like).<br>But this is just one way of improvising and only one kind of jazz that I would classify as modal jazz.<br>The are not much "chordal improvisations", solos that follow the chord changes, like what happens in most impros on jazz standards.<br>This is a very interesting topic for me actually and I would really like to be proven wrong on this. One case that I identify as "chordal impro" is the solo on "sleep dirt". Please, give me more names!!<br><br>tYpO

There was a similar discussion in another thread, probably one year ago or more (?).<br>I think that Frank, who admittedly did not love jazz (but I suspect that he did not like the attitudes of some jazzmen more than the music), gave important suggestions to jazz in the period 1972-1973.<br>Don't forget that almost 30 years ago jazz was living a real identity crisis after the free jazz revolution.<br>Grand Wazoo, Wakajawaka and other "jazzy" Zappa musics have left a real trace in the jazz of the decades after '70s.<br>I recognize these traces in many albums produced in the 90s and also now.<br>Recently I have been convinced of what I think because I received a gift by a friend of the Forum who sent me two CDs of the 1973 band. One is the video recorded in Stocholm in August 1973 (Oppapoppa) and the other is a musical CD of a concert recorded in May 1973 (unknown venue) where also Sal Marquez was in the bandstand. You really understand what Frank meant when he said in "Roxy & Elsewhere" (in Be-Bop Tango) "Jazz is not dead. It just smells funny". And he gave, at that time, an impulsion to jazz with his own ideas.<br>This is my feeling, of course you can disagree.

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I love monstermovies..and the cheaper they are the better they are.

My first post here...<br>This thread caught my eye immediately since the "jazzy" FZ always have been my favorite . Hot Rats was the album that got me hooked, was only 10 years old when I heard it for the first time.<br>Very interesting to read about the tempos / time signatures / subdivisions in Waka/Jawaka, thanks to Mattie & Disco boy for bringing this up.<br><br>One thing that has always amazed me in FZs music is his use of "Xenochronicity", where he mixes different music parts from different occations into new compositions. My favorite is the guitar solo part of Packard Goose, the timeing is certainly weird but it works and is most enjoyable!<br>But I would not try to transcribe that....

Jazz has been around for so long that I deem that the word jazz doesn't say anything...no intended insult to anyone who feels they have to play a version of it for a living...I guess all you could say is that there's ancient jazz, new jazz & then everything in between...I like what Steve Coleman says:he says: the music of so & so;/ In other words:the music of Charlie Parker.The music of Frank Zappa.The music of H.Wieniawski.The music of Robert Johnson.The music of Jimi Hendrix...//One thing I really favor in Zappa's pieces is his philosophy of time where any duration is as meaningful as any other.A fragment is regarded as much as a complete composition.Also the film-like cuts of one thing running into another.Just like if you recorded one thing on a tape then taping something else starting from the beginning but stopping somewhere in the middle of the tape-the rest of the tape of course is a different piece -but a remnant of it.It becomes something else by virtue of a different addition.Both things change because of the proximity of one to the other.

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louie louie

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WOW! A cool list of musicians! Did FZ really sit in with ALL of these guys at ONCE?

I just downloaded a show from 3.October 1968, Don Cherry sat in with the Mothers and they played some bad ass improv, Cherry first started out with some quiet recorder/bamboo flute solos, and then the band kicked in with a wicked 9/8 groove and they blasted away with Cherry's great trumpet improv juxtaposed against blissfully great sax work of Gardner and Underwood. This is better than the Archie Shepp collab on YCDTOSA4, even though i quite liked Shepp's solo on the latter too.

EDIT: wait, that pic has to be from that Amougies fest, right?

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There are groups that tend to dazzle a drug-stupefied audience into submission

Am I the only one who thinks his sax is out of tune with the band in that solo? I can't handle it.

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The way I see it Barry, this should be a very dynamite show.

haven't noticed that before.

but is it merely atonal, or is it even more egregiously off-key even if you are generally ok with free-jazz kind of stuff?

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There are groups that tend to dazzle a drug-stupefied audience into submission

I read somewhere that Mr. Shepp pretty much lost his tone due to a health-related issue. He would not even blow all that much at his own concerts. I do like the guest spot on the FZ record. It may be the saddest piece of music ever released by FZ.

This is what I call a most excellent thread!
Seems to me there really isn't anyplace that talks strictly music as in structure, tempos and such out there.
Sure, the lyrics, the tourdates, the setlists, the audience rec's, much history and what else are well documented. But not the music itself. Granted, the family wants to be able to sell official transcripts to those who would buy them. But nobody's keeping anybody from taking a more active approach with the structure of it all.

If I were in a perfect world the zappa forum would be the perfect spot to discuss the complexity and simplicity etc of the MUSIC, the tempo changes, the signatures, instrumentation and technical aspects as well as all the conceptual areas: themes, continuity, stories etc.
I'm guilty, I know, I can fall into 'fanzy' attitudes too when crusing around the forum, but to me that all gets far away from the MUSIC, the lore, the technical stuff, the good stuff.

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" . . . On the outside now . . ."

I guess that's very likely. That's a wicked photo. Too bad none of the tapes of FZ jamming with the BYG free jazz guys at that festival have turned up yet, all the available material is FZ sitting in with the rock bands.

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"When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again." -- Eric Dolphy

I can't help but wonder how FZ' guitar must've sounded in this pure jazz context with the dual drumkit and horns and double bass. The closest thing I can recall late sixties Zappa sitting in within the vaguely trad jazz context is the short guitar solo on "How Would You Like to Have a Head Like That" on Ponty's "King Kong" record. Even that had a distinct dirty and near-blasphemous Hot Rats sound. Even the free jazz workouts of the sixties MoI had some electric instruments such as Don Preston's organ. Or maybe FZ played clean guitar? Or maybe some of the jazz guys were already considering embracing Fusion?

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There are groups that tend to dazzle a drug-stupefied audience into submission

Simply love that track. Archie's solo is wonderful...

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Atonal or off-key wouldn't necessarily bother me, I meant out of tune literally as in any given note being fractionally off the correct frequency.

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The way I see it Barry, this should be a very dynamite show.

That's a question I've had about saxes for a long, long time: Has the structure of the sax changed over the years? Not that any of the older ones are out-of-tune, per se, but has the sax's tonality been changed to give a cleaner sound with more of the fundamental being sounded rather than louder "buzzing" and wilder harmonics heard? Listen to the differences between Archie Shepp's sax and Bobby Martin's sax on that YCDTOSA Vol. VI.
It's some kind of sonic quality I've noticed about saxes of recent manufacture and those made in the '50s, '60s & '70s.
That's one thing I noticed about the extended sax solo on Hot Rat's CD version of "The Gumbo Variations". The added sax seems to be from a more recently made sax than the one originally played by Ian Underwood.

--Bat

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<------PhotoArtWerk by debutante_daisy http://www.facebook.com/BatchainTheMovie

It's nothing to do with that, it's quite simply out of tune.

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The way I see it Barry, this should be a very dynamite show.

I don't understand Bat. Do you mean that some guy might've overdubbed another sax solo to Gumbo in 1980s or do you think Ian Underwood recorded two takes, one with his older sax and the other with some upgraded instrument he might had recently bought at the time and the take with new-ish sax was used for CD or what? it seems more likely that the sax track might've undergone some studio tinkering to make it sound "better" or "clearer" or whatever.

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There are groups that tend to dazzle a drug-stupefied audience into submission

Except for FZ and Philly Joe Jones, most of the guys on the photo were all recording artists for the BYG Actuel record label and played pretty hardcore free jazz. The Shepp albums from this era are pretty nice, in a skronky way of course.

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"When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again." -- Eric Dolphy

I know Louis Maholo worked with Elton Dean, he's even featured on the bonus tracks of Dean's first solo album.

Grachan Moncur III had a great record in 1963, called "Evolution", you dig it?

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There are groups that tend to dazzle a drug-stupefied audience into submission

Obviously, his asexual scrotal sacks are out of tune!!

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HAIL AMNERIKA!!