Frank Zappa
Trance-Fusion
If you ever fancy a good laugh in an idle moment, Google up ‘Best Ever Guitar Solo’s’ or a similar phrase. You will be knee-deep in heated exchanges from fanatics making a case for their heroes – and this often means the rabid championing of Vai, Satriani, Rhoads, Van Halen etc etc. All fine players in their way, but of course there cannot be a Best Guitarist, any more than there can be a Best Drink or a Best Magazine. Enthusiasm for almost anything is laudable, of course. But the more variety you import into your tastes in listening or reading, the better off you will be in the long run. When you meet these ‘heroes’ you usually find that they themselves have much wider tastes than their adherents. Peter Green for example shakes his head sadly at the notion that he has ever been any kind of God ; Chris Rea would much rather talk about Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal than himself ; Jack Bruce will happily talk about Bach, Mingus and Monk as opposed to his own work.
Having seen almost all The Greats ( Beck, Jimi, Page, VH, Carlos, Clapton, Vai etc etc) I have many personal favourites – especially Vernon Reid, Gypie Mayo, Randy California RIP, Roy Buchanan, Danny Gatton, the MC5 guys, Bonnie Raitt and so on. BUT…every time I saw Frank Zappa play he took my breath away. I interviewed his family a while back and he clearly left them all with a sense of creativity and respect for creators as well as a scathing contempt for hucksters, in every field. And yes, especially Politics. On every Zappa album there are moments of dazzling feel, drive and expression in which the guitar sings and talks dirty. Not only that, but there are endless different keys and time signatures and all powered by fabulous rhythm sections. Maybe I should list a few favourite tracks some time but among the Zappa works are a few albums extracting guitar solo’s for those who dig them and this is one such, released not long ago.
‘ Trance-Fusion’ also has a little of son Dweezil at the start and finish of the programme. Usually Dad has a more measured and compressed tone so it ain’t hard to tell them apart. These 15 tracks feature various Zappa band lineups and I think any drummer would just LOVE this selection – here you will find Vinnie Colaiuta and Terry Bozzio plus the masterful Chad Wackerman, who I got to meet last year thanks to my amigo Jim Haslip of The Yellowjackets. Frank demanded a lot of his drummers and throughout these burning axe workouts the percussive patterns are forceful and colourful, as are the basslines.
Worth acquiring for opener ‘Chunga’s Revenge’ alone, this album is engineered to perfection by Bob Ludwig to flow from one mood to the next. You don’t know what’s coming next and that was the flavour of every Zappa live show. What you miss here are the dry chats to the crowd that Frank threw in at each performance (by the way, if you’re a performer and can’t be bothered to talk to your audience during your shows or connect verbally, please get out of the business or just make records) HOWEVER there are plenty of live Zappa albums if the playing here whets your appetite.
Some favourite elements of this set : the dancing figures on ‘A Cold Dark Matter’, the busy-tempo’d ‘Scratch & Sniff’ with its swooping fluid vamping, the almost-reggae tread of
‘ Diplodocus’ setting off siren-like runs against the loping bass and snappy snare, the bluesy opening of ‘After Dinner Smoker’, strangely laid-back and tense at the same time. Zappa’s other-worldly dextrous guitar work draws the listener in and he isn’t afraid to use space either. A master at work
Pete Sargeant www.fairhearing.co.uk
