"Please Hear My Plea"

So imagine you're a label (Rykodisc, say) and you have the work of a prolific but still late musician (oh, let's go with: Frank Zappa) as a part of your catalog. You've issued all that artist's material - in many cases, twice - and though his estate has a wealth of studio and concert tapes, the artist's widow for whatever reasons (quality, personal cussedness) is holding onto 'em. S'been something like eight years since the release of "new" Zappa product - two or three lifetimes in the pop world - so how you gonna keep folks interested in the stuff you've still got?

Zappa Picks: you get some current, cultish pop guy to put together their own "mix tape" of favored Zappa cuts - then you package it in hope of snagging some of that pop guy's fans. First up: collections by Jon Fishman of Phish and Larry LaLonde of Primus.

They're two logical choices (you can imagine the average Primus fan actually getting off on the material chosen by the band's guitarist), though I wish the selection had been a bit more adventurous. Wouldn't you like to know what, oh, Willy Nelson's favorite Zappa tracks are? Or, moving outside of music, how about someone like Al Gore? On Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention you can hear him telling Frank he's a fan, after all.

I'll leave it to Phish or Primus fans as to whether their respective Zappa Picks collections add to listeners' understanding of the bands: only disc of either group I own is Pork Soda, and I haven't played it ages. It's clear both musicians came to Zappa and his musicians at around the same time: the early Mothers of Invention era material is scantly repped (the amusical freak-out "It Can't Happen Here" pops up on Fishman's disc), while seventies era stuff like Overnite Sensation, Roxy and Elsewhere or Joe's Garage are all over the place. Two cuts show up on both collections: the live Flo & Eddie version of "Dog Breath" and the classically silly classical number "Sofa No. 2." I can see the second cut, but the first choice puzzles me: to these ears, the original MOI version from Uncle Meat is the more solid and inventive performance.

Each collection has its share of "dirty" Zappa numbers, of course. I'm one of those who believes that Zappa's over-reliance on smut-themed material was a lyrical dead-end. It may've increased his popularity, but it weakened his eyes for the bigger-themed satirical targets. When the best you can do by the end of your career is bitch-slap sexually hypocritical evangelists, you've definitely reduced your satiric range.

Article Author: Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman is the Comics & Graphic Novels review editor for Blogcritics. With his lovely wife Rebecca Fox, he has recently co-authored a sudsy size acceptance novel entitled Measure By Measure.

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