I am 'eh' about Zappa. I recognize his huge role in various wacky subcultures and rock history, but I can't really listen to a lot of his work.

t tangent I have a ticket for the May 9th Rasputina show! Tomorrow morning I'm buying my ticket for the May 23rd Peter Murphy show! Now I just need Placebo to tour the states ...

t /tangent

I don't exactly know who Charlie Haden is

He's a white guy with a country background, who played in (I think) country or western swing groups before he hooked up with Ornette

Charlie Haden. He was part of his family's radio show (they were the Missouri equivalent to the Carter Family) from very early childhood, long before he picked up a bass. There's a great picture of him onstage in his cowboy get up when he was about five, but a quick search didn't turn it up.

[Zappa] said that he only writes lyrics because he needs to sing something. He only really cares about the music.

For me Zappa's whole endeavor is poisoned by that attitude. And it's not because I love lyrics (I often ignore them) and take offense at what he said. It's that there's this whole air of contempt permeating everything he did that I find it hard to get past. I have a lot of friends whose opinions I trust who swear it's worth getting beyond that reaction, but it's a really visceral revulsion for me. No doubt he was a smart guy & a really talented musician, and the way he conducted himself (no pun intended) was quite admirable in a lot of ways, but his apparent delight in looking down that Roman nose of his at, well... everything, just rubs me the wrong way. Not to speak ill of the dead or anything.

There was a big fannish write-up about Zappa in the latest Rolling Stone, which is why I was thinking abouthim. The BF is a big fan, but I think that's mostly nostalgic love left over from when he was 13 and discovered his work and played it obsessively.

I think Mr. H is a Zappa fan, but I'll have to tear him away from the PSP to get him to tell me why, and that's become nigh unpossible since he got it Wednesday.

I just tried him and got nothin'

As far as Zappa goes, for what he was trying to do, I'm with Hayden in preferring Beefheart.

I also think Robert Fripp in his various incarnations did a lot of the things Zappa was trying to do without being condescending about it (probably muy pretentious and stuffy at times, but in his case I find it kind of charming because there always seemed to be a certain bone-dry wit about it, and he never seemed to be a snob about it).

do any of the Charlie Haden/Ornette Coleman albums you guys are talking about have singers?

Offhand I can't think of any Ornette with singers, but he's been recording for fifty years, and started in R&B bands, so I wouldn't be shocked. He doesn't record much as a sideman either, and I can't think of any sessions backing a singer.

Haden, on the other hand, leads a lot of sessions, but like every bass player not named Charles Mingus the lion's share of his discography is as part of the rhythm section for a bandleader. He did a series of albums with Abbey Lincoln in the early nineties. I love them, but Abbey's singing is more than a bit, oh, eccentric. A lot of people find it off-putting. Try the Quartet West disc I referenced above, Haunted Heart. It's central conceit is that it's a soundtrack to a non-existent film. Haden really loves old film and film scores, especially from the noir era. His romantic streak gets a real workout. The other distinctive thing about it is that on about half the tracks he incorporates older recordings by Jo Stafford, Jeri Southern and Billie Holiday. The Quartet West play intros which meld (very successfully in my opinion) into the old records. Holiday's "Deep Song" and Southern's "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" are gorgeous. Some people found it too gimmicky. But they were wrong.

Almost forgot... the band I used to manage did a cover of Zappa's "Cosmik Debris" that was really great. I was thinking they did it as medley with Funkadelic's "Cosmic Slop" (which was also in the repertoire), but now that I think about it I'm conflating it with the dual cover called "Loose Rider," a combo of Funkadelic's "Loose Booty" and the Dead's "I Know You Rider". I'm blanking on what the Zappa was mixed with, one of the band's originals maybe. Anyway, I do like "Cosmik Debris". Of course, Zappa's basically to blame for the Wild Man Fischer covers that the boys liked to do that were guaranteed to clear out any crowd. Miss Jennifer Jones is lying dead... On my porch

find it kind of charming because there always seemed to be a certain bone-dry wit about it, and he never seemed to be a snob about it

Exactomundo.

Offhand I can't think of any Ornette with singers, but he's been recording for fifty years, and started in R&B bands, so I wouldn't be shocked. He doesn't record much as a sideman either, and I can't think of any sessions backing a singer.

There's singers on The Science Fiction Sessions, but the tracks with singers are almost uniformly well nigh unto impossible to listen to, sort of like when Ornette plays violin and puts his 10-yr-old on drums, only more so.

Did I mention that I finally saw Jandek on Corwood? 'Cause that movie goes a long way towards making Jandek sound like someone you could listen to at parties. Admittedly, they would be very depressing parties, and no one who came would ever speak to you again.

Anyway, it ends with parts of a phone interview between Jandek and a guy who wrote for Spin in the mid 80s, and damn if Jandek doesn't sound just like some regular ol' Texas dude. If you heard the interview, you'd never know that guy is responsible for some of the most whacked-out space blues from Hell ever recorded, and I'm using the word "recorded" liberally.

Huh. Jandek on Corwood is on Netflix. It has been queued!

Excellent! FWIW, the makers of that movie agree with me that Blue Corpse is Jandek's bellweather album.

(Or perhaps, I agree with them. They made the movie before I wrote the review, even though I haven't seen it until now.)