Ola! Sneakers! Ian and Dave are alone again…naturally…this week, but they still have plenty to talk about. This week they talk masks; have a mystery solved; discuss the best Peanut dance; celebrate pies; anticipate Canadian Thanksgiving and dream about stuffing; watch Love It or List It; bemoan disappearing things; confess to a fear of corner stores; love The Muppets; talk about victimized hands; help a stranger move; watch The Wrecking Crew; listen to Frank Zappa; get some bad news; and recommend that comics get their act together.
From the Department of Corections:
The problem with talking off the top of your head for a hour or so is that everything you know is not immediately at the tip of your tongue. With that in mind, Dave apologizes for confusing Zappa mainstay Bunk Gardner with his trumpeter brother Buzz (who also briefly performed with the band), and also knows that “Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus” is a song on the Zappa album The Grand Wazoo.
Thanks for listening.
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Good Muppets talk! Great Zappa talk!
I agree with the majority of the points that David made. We really seem to appreciate the same aspects and accomplishments of Frank Zappa. (Although, Dave seems to have an excessively high standard for “genious” if Zappa doesn’t count haha).
My personal top five Zappa albums:
1. “Freak Out!” (Indispensable observations from Uncle Frank’s COUNTER counter-culture. The humor is so dry and nuanced that I still notice new jokes).
2. “The Grand Wazoo” (Among the trilogy of Zappa’s Big Band/Jazz Fusion records, “Grand Wazoo” contains the strongest compositions, the least amount of wanky improv crap, and is therefore the most satisfying of the three).
3. “Burnt Weeny Sandwich” (For all the reasons David mentioned. Delightful Neo-Classical sandwiched between two Doo Wop buns).
4. “You are What You Is” (Amidst Zappa’s early 80’s onslaught of Classical, Avant Garde, spacey Improv, and terrible Broadway parodies, he decided to drop this album of actual SONGS. And they’re freaking great songs!)
5. “Does Humour Belong In Music?” (Ditch all of Frank’s “Guitar” series albums and check this one instead. To me this is the most convincing example of Zappa the noodly, noodly “Guitar God”).
You’re definitely right about Frank’s assembly line nature and the decline in quality during his later periods. But even his worst albums have at least one or two moments of breathtaking musical innovation.
Great chat! Ian and Dave make music history fun!
P.S.
I hatttteeee “Zoot Allures”. It’s very easily my least favorite Zappa album. He’s never more repetitive and pointless than on that record.
#Sneakydragon4lyfe!
I guess I feel the same way about the word “genius” as I feel about encores and automatic standing ovations. Tired. I’m just trying to reclaim the word!
My Top 5 Zappa would all hover around the Sixties:
1) Best of all: Burnt Weenie Sandwich – the mix of modern Twentieth century composition, jazz, avant-rock and classic doo wop and also some of Zappa’s strongest compositions.
2) Uncle Meat – Ian Underwood is all over this mofo. Once again, a typical late Sixties Zappa mix of doo wop stylings, avant-garde compositional techniques and jazz – particularly the side long “King Kong” suite – which is so great, part of it is played by ice cream trucks. (Too bad the CD reissue of this sucked so bad.)
3) Absolutely Free – the beginning of the real Mothers, in my opinion. Freak Out is okay, but some of the songs are more interesting as pastiches than real songs, and the avant-garde selections are once again more interesting than entertaining for the most part. Not that it’s terrible, but I prefer the longer, meaner songs on Absolutely Free. Plus the new members, Don Preston and Bunk Gardner, really let the band open up – particularly on “Invocation & Ritual Dance of the Young Pumpkin”. Brilliant stuff and, despite Zappa’s claims, some of it was ad libbed by really good musicians who blossomed under Zappa’s tyranny.
4) 200 Motels – Particularly the second disc – I know I dissed the groupie “humour” and this album is full of it, but somehow buried in the songs rather than as interminable skits I can take it. Zappa’s last interesting use of an orchestra, some great songs – “Magic Fingers”, “Mystery Roach” “Daddy Daddy Daddy” – and some complicated songs that FINALLY make use of Howard Kaylan’s and Mark Volman’s great singing. This album was my friend on many long, early morning drives in the Nineties.
5) Weasels Ripped My Flesh – Great title, great album image, great scrapings from the bottom of the Mother’s barrel. Love, love, love the final run of songs as “Oh No” (finally we get to hear the lyrics) turns into “Orange County Lumber Truck” turns into “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” – which, with The Stooges “LA Blues”, is one of the greatest “fuck you” endings to an LP ever. Plus some more Don “Sugarcane” Harris who was great in small doses.
Bubbling under:
6) The Ark – from Zappa’s Beat the Boots series – a soundboard recording of the Sixties Mothers whipping it out in Boston in 1969. The only drawback is the tape runs out 23 minutes into the “Uncle Meat/King Kong” medley.
I agree. #sneakydragon4lyfe!
Great list! I’ll have to give 200 Motels another listen. Uncle Meat is like Frank’s musical resume of styles.
Although not a huge fan of the Muppets, I did enjoy the premiere episode of the new show and actually laughed out loud a couple of times. It’s meta enough to appeal to a more sophisticated audience (although there’s still silliness and slapstick). It felt like the old Muppet Show meets The Office meets Larry Sanders. The only beef I have (or should that be pork?) is with Kermit’s new love interest. She’s obviously being set up as Miss Piggy’s younger, slimmer, sweeter replacement in Kermit’s affections…which is totally in keeping with Hollywood…but hopefully they’ll do something with her character so she’s more than just a pretty face.
We’re three episodes in and I think they’re doing a great job with this show, but then I liked Muppets Tonight too.
I liked “Muppets Tonight” a lot because it felt like a new level of weirdness, but with the classic Muppet Show humor. Conversely, I haven’t seen anyone get eaten or blown up yet on this new Muppets thing.
I enjoyed Dave talking about Zappa. I think I heard him mention The Beatles once. Would love to hear Dave discuss them on an episode, please.
I’m not an EI expert, but it took a couple of months for me to start getting my benefits last year; I was let go at the end of October and only started to get paid in January, I think. There’s a minimum two-week period right off the hop, and if you get a vacation/severance/settlement payout that can also push back your start date or reduce your initial amount you receive. It also doesn’t help if your termination was protracted or messy and requires making updates to your claim which will need to be reviewed again… or so I’ve heard.
That said, I have no complaints about how I was treated by the EI people; they were patient, understanding, and because I was a long-tenured employee, did not pressure me to get off the teat prematurely and let me reactivate my claim with zero hassle after two dead-end jobs I took didn’t pan out (But there was a bit of a wait both times while they reviewed my claim). My advice to anyone in this situation would be to not jump into whatever job comes along, and to get a service centre rep to break down the benefit process for long-tenured employees in person. Actually, I do have one complaint: whenever I called and was put on hold, they music was always Kind of Blue. Damn your jazzy soul to hell, Miles Davis!
PS. Congrats and thanks for Totally Tintin, guys! It was fantastic, and sorry I asked so many questions! (Yeah, I’m the Layne Vee from Facebook who likes things but never says nothin’. And I’m too lazy to click over to the TT post.)
PPS. You guys haven’t announced the secret project you’re working on yet, have you? Ian said something about Scholastic in this episode, I think… will it/has it been formally announced at the 200th spectacular?
Oh, yous.
Dave Sim hammered (belabored, even) the point about issuing books monthly as the most surefire methodology for success during that long push to evangelize self-publishing in the late-90s, but he was always quick to add that it was more important to be regular (cue fiber supplement jokes, everybody). So, whatever schedule creators set for their work, if it wasn’t published reliably on-time, every time, growth was far more difficult, because retailers gravitated to the steady and dependable and quality was secondary. We tried to take it to heart, but our style wasn’t well-suited to even bi-monthly production. Still good and mostly accurate advice, I think.