PARLIAMENT - Tear The Roof Off (Casablanca)

Recommended to me by someone who thought they'd make a good next step from Zappa. I was intrigued, particularly since I wouldn't have guessed it.

The liner notes repeat the Zappa thing, and I can kind of hear it, so there's that. But I think, depressingly, that I just don't like the basic funk beat, that slooooooow monster. I have a feeling the momentum which is supposed to shake my ass just feels plodding.

I wouldn't even think twice about this if it weren't music that discusses in great detail what's wrong with people who don't like it. Hate second-guessing myself; powerless to stop.

[music] FRANK ZAPPA - Tinseltown Rebellion (Ryko)

The title track misreads punk so badly that it offers some insight into just how Zappa got so far off course when it came to watching his contemporaries. What it doesn't illuminate is where he got his painful aesthetic hypocrisy on the issue from: his line on punk is that it's "dumb". Whereas his own music is "stupid" -- is there so much of a difference?

(These concert recordings also feature multiple examples of a weird Zappa-as-light-unto-the-masses performance tic he had: interjecting "that's right!" after an unkind lyric, as though maybe audience members not otherwise convinced of his sincerity might come around.)

But OTHERWISE, the live Zappa release I've enjoyed most, if memory serves. "The Blue Light" has the feel of an old Mothers track, and isn't afflicted with Zappa's latter-day lyrical smugness (or at least not obviously). Now that I've had a few weeks to breathe I kind of want to go back to some records I know I gave short shrift to, like The Grand Wazoo.