Thirteen Birds vs. The Record Desk

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” — an annoying, mostly meaningless quotation oft attributed to Frank Zappa

I do not care for this record. In general, I do not care for Frank Zappa. My favorite thing he ever did was telling Tipper Gore and the PMRC to shove it. Such straightforward admissions/dismissals are unpopular in rock criticism because they prevent the critic from maintaining a pose of omni-with-it-ness and complete openness. I suppose that it is easier to find some deficiency within a particular album than it is to admit to yourself that you just simply don’t like some whole thing because you are prudish/self-satisfied/unadventurous. But honestly, I find Zappa’s whole thing to be a bit too vulgar and a bit too pretentious to be worth my time. I like my entendres double or better. Also, I don’t have the ear to get off on the clever little musical gags and compositional elements that supposedly illustrate his greatness.

Actually, I only own this record because someone told me I should really give Zappa a shot and specifically recommended this album as a way to get into Zappa. I think I listened to it twice, pretended to like it, and then crammed it somewhere deep in the depths of the Record Desk until digging it out this morning.

Listening to it again with fresh ears, I’ve determined that this is a fabulously obnoxious, “wacky” record. Despite Zappa’s for-granted “genius,” this album has not provided me with nearly as much joy as the decidedly “ungenius” RamonesMania. Zappa is one of those things (like jazz or Springsteen or the Grateful Dead) that has inspired a whole legion of true-believer-type followers who not only cherish every live bootleg or interview snippet, but actively evangelize. They try to suck you in with their coded in-jokes and promises that if you *JUST* hear this one super-great concert recording you’ll be hooked. I think what makes the Zappa people particularly bad is that Frank was a quotable bastard, and his apostles therefore like to spout his witticisms (or their own versions thereof) as if they are argument enders. You know, “The GREAT ZAP has spoken. So it is written, so let it be done.”

Particularly trying is the Zappa people’s wholesale dismissal of rock criticism or attempts to articulate (in writing) any understanding of pop music and its attendant whathaveyou. Every record review or written opinion is met with something like this…

“Definition of rock journalism: People who can’t write, doing interviews with people who can’t think, in order to prepare articles for people who can’t read” — Zappa on rock criticism

It’s a cute Menkenism, sure – but it doesn’t help anyone get to that little lower layer. Surliness is fine. Heck, your intrepid author here is quite fond of noted crank Hunter S. Thompson. At some point, though, it becomes necessary to drop the act and get down to the business of expression – that is if you’re at all interested in communicating with other people, rather than simply holding court.

Zappa – because he is so quotable and so many of his brain droppings have been recorded – strikes me as a fellow who was quite secure in his “genius” and who felt he was uniquely equipped to tweak the establishment and freak out the squares. And I’m sure we can all agree that the “rock establishment” and their taste-making friends have, from time to time, shown themselves to be trend-hungry, gullible half-wits deserving of at least some ridicule.

Still, Zappa’s (and his acolytes’) very vocal objection to the very business of rock writing seems like – just maybe – it could be driven – just a little bit – by a suspicion that the great composer and satirist was not getting a fair shake from the puny minds who write record reviews and the simple barnyard types who read them.

Take for instance the “Dean of Rock Criticism” Robert Christgau’s take on the Zappa offering being considered –

The Mothers: Fillmore East, June 1971 [Bizarre, 1971]

The sexist adolescent drivel that hooks these moderne mannerisms should dispel any doubts as to where Big Mother finds his market–among adolescents and sexists of every age and gender (bet he gets more adults than females). It must tickle Frank that a couple of ex-Turtles are now doing his dirty work. Probably tickled him too to split the only decent piece of rock and roll (or music) here between two sides. C-

Christgau’s no prude. He’s a known fan of all manner of outsized punk shock. But his take on Zappa, well…let’s say he’s overall not taken in by the great composer’s charms.

Anytime you pick on something or someone with a devoted cult, folks are going to make with the pitchforks and torches. For instance, any criticism of Star Wars as being nothing more than a mishmash of Japanese movies and old film serials (with an increasing emphasis on a ponderous faux-religiosity as the series expanded) will be met with wails of “You bent my wookie!” as you are torn into shreds by hordes of weenies who believe that you’re an “elitist” who “thinks too much.” Surely some of Zappa’s followers fall into this Trekkie camp.

Beyond this easy dismissal of the terminally nerdy, we do need to grant that Zappa did know what he was doing as a jazz- and pop-influenced composer. He was no dummy. He’s an annoying bastard who made music that alternately bores and grates, but he knew his shit. As a comparison, I offer up Thomas Pynchon. Now I dig Pynchon. I dig the combination of big ideas and puerile nonsense all whipped up by snappy, slangy, breathless language that can be a bit hard to follow (or hard to stomach). V and Gravity’s Rainbow are self-consciously “smart” novels that wear their play on their sleeves.

Despite the obvious good stuff that Pynchon is vending, I’ve recently met two avid readers (one with designs on becoming a real, published novelist himself) who spit on Tom Pynchon. The convoluted, wacky “genius” of Pynchon’s overstuffed novels puts them off their lunch. True, these folks do unironically love them some Stephen King (which I’d be inclined to laugh at except that the late David Foster Wallace numbered The Stand among his very favorite novels). Heck, even my excruciatingly well-read wife found The Crying of Lot 49 to be obnoxiously “po-mo” and “too Sixties.” In short, Pynchon could very well be the Zappa of books.

I guess this all comes down to the trouble with accounting for taste. When you see criticism as mostly an attempt to account for and influence taste, it does seem like a doomed endeavor. But it seems over-simplistic to write critical evaluation of art and entertainment off as merely an attempt to control/influence taste. I think at its best, criticism is a discussion of what one likes and dislikes and what that means. It’s a dialogue about the sorts of cultural things that we devote so much of our time to consuming. There’s a tendency to view rock criticism in particular as simply the task of separating the “rocks” from the “sucks.” This type of criticism might sell/tank records, but I don’t think it satisfies the listeners’ need to understand and talk through the ideas that their listening presents. Good rock criticism is necessary because it provides additional ideas and perspectives that can help you understand how and why you listen to records.

This “what is the role of rock crit” concern was recently handled quite thoughtfully in the Pitchforkmedia.com-affiliated Poptimist blog.

Here’s a choice snippet that I think supports my understanding of the role of rock criticism.

So the role of criticism in the networked, free music era isn’t to act as an authority or arbiter, it’s to be one triangulation point among many so fans can better make their own, highly social, judgements about music. This is a humbler position to be in, for certain, and not an “elitist” one. But it’s important enough that even if fans are more candid about their own networked tastes, “pretending to like” will remain the ultimate critical sin.

So yeah, I don’t really dig this Zappa record. In fact, the best part of the album is hearing Flo and Eddie from the Turtles drop the filthy jabber and launch into “Happy Together” – here a real live pop song all but washes away all of the “smart” stuff Zappa is up to. I can’t pretend to like this record any longer.

Offer below is no longer valid. Album disposed of as of April 2009.

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Contact me (Thirteen Birds) c/o the Record Desk if you have anything interesting that you’d like to trade me for this album. No, I am not interested in a burrito covered in pickle sauce. Maybe we can find an appreciative home for this album.
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