The Creator Has A Master Plan

"There was a time...when peace was on the Earth...and joy...and happiness did reign...and each man knew his worth..."

If Leon Thomas were alive today I'd like to ask him which time in history he was referring to when he wrote this lyric, 'cuz it ain't in my history books.

To be fair, this sort of fantasy-based romanticism, particularly relating to pre-colonial Africa, was common among the dashiki-wearing set in the '60's and '70's and I can live with the historical delusions as long as the music they inspired is good.

In a perfect world, we shouldn't need sheet music for a two-chord, modal jam like this, but in the admittedly provincial, B-market musical circles in which I travel, no one has ever heard of this song.

Here is a nice version from India Arie

Chunga's Revenge

"A Gypsy mutant industrial vacuum cleaner dances about a mysterious night time camp fire.
Festoons. Dozens of imported castanets, clutched by the horrible suction of its heavy duty hose, waving with marginal erotic abandon in the midnight autumn air".


The title track from Frank Zappa's 1970 album, it's a nice litlle modal riff to jam on.
I don't like any of the versions on Youtube, the album version is my favorite.

King Kong

" The name of this song, is King Kong.

It's a story of a very large gorilla who lived in the jungle. And he was doing OK until some Americans came by and thought they would take him home with them.

They took him to the United States, and they made some money by using the gorilla...then they killed him."

... Zappa's introduction to King Kong at a show in Sweden in 1967

(Zappa was a bit of a misanthrope).

This simple, sort-of modal jazz waltz was a regular inclusion in Zappa shows throughout his career, I have dozens of recorded versions of it and they are all different.

What was fun about this song was that once the band got through the head, they would be free to take the song in any direction and most versions are very long, with extended solos and group improv wank-outs.

I performed this in a theatrical show which was a redux of 'We're Only In It For The Money", one of Zappa's great concept albums.

We did King Kong as an encore.

I added the extra chords for variety and because our rock oriented band didn't have the finesse to do long, one-chord stretches without losing the beat or sounding repetitive.

I really like these chords but if you want to do it Zappa's way than only play the bracketed ones.

Here is a video of the original Mothers doing King Kong for the BBC in 1968, enjoy.

Frank Zappa and the Real Book

When I purchased my first Real Book in the late 80's I was a dumb high school kid who cared about two things, sex and Frank Zappa.

My obsession with him and his work was all-encompassing, I had accumulated almost all of his major releases and a few obscure bootlegs and unauthorized biographies. His autobiography, The Real Frank Zappa Book, was my bible.

It seemed like destiny that my shiny new copy of the Real Book contained three Zappa charts.

These songs provide another example of how weird the Real Book was, not because Zappa doesn't have jazz cred, (he does), and not because he hasn't written jazzy material, (he has), but of the three Zappa-penned songs included in the book, only one has any business being included in a jazz fake book.

That song was 'Blessed Relief', from the Grand Wazoo album, and it is a very nice jazz waltz, I play it often.

Next came 'Peaches en Regalia' from Hot Rats, an instrumental tour de force which few musicians have the chops to sight read ,(I doubt I would ever be able to play it) , it's my belief that the person who transcribed this was merely showing off.

Thirdly came 'Son of Mr. Green Genes' from Hot Rats, a simple rock song which is easy to play, but it's about as jazzy as 'Louie Louie', why they wasted space adding these songs at the expense of other, better ones by Zappa or anyone else is yet another mystery that may never be solved.

The newer versions of the Real Book, which are published by Hal Leonard and therefore legal, don't have these songs in them.

Maybe they decided that Zappa tunes didn't belong in a jazz book and took them out, but it's far more likely that they couldn't get permission to publish the charts from the Zappa Family Trust, which has a bit of a reputation for being over-vigilant in their defence of Zappa's huge body of work.

It's unclear to me whether or not Zappa would've approved of the constant crackdowns on blogs and Youtube and such.

He did despise bootlegging, he was rightfully resentful of people who made money on shoddy reproductions of his work.

But that's a far cry from coming down on fans posting video montages on Youtube for free, or musicians doing covers.

These sorts of actions are futile in the long run and alienate those who are eager to celebrate his work.

Interestingly, in a prophetic moment near the end of his autobiography,(which was written over 20 years ago), Zappa predicts the first great musical innovation of the 21st century: music downloading.

He wonders why we spend so much time and energy manufacturing and shipping records when we could just offer a service where subscribers hook up a cassette recorder to a specialty cable TV channel, which would broadcast new releases while displaying the cover art and liner notes on the screen. Sounds like a primitive itunes to me.

Stay tuned for some Zappa charts.

Note Bleu

This song, by Medeski, Martin and Wood, is from their 2000 album 'The Dropper', and is very conventional by their standards.
A simple minor blues in F, with a sexy, slow-latin groove and featuring a novel AABA solo section,.
One day, I'll offer some not-humble opinion on what I think of those in the jazz community who consider MM&W to be over-rated, but not today.
I'll save that bit of withering scorn for when I have a notion that people actually read this blog.
Youtube won't let me embed the video for Note Bleu for some reason, here is a link to the page.
In the meantime, here is some live footage from 2007.

Quiet Dawn

This is the last song on Archie Shepp's 1972 soul jazz masterpiece 'Attica Blues'.

It's difficult to think of another jazz album that ends on a stranger note,(Sorcerer by Miles Davis comes to mind).

Written by composer/trumpeter Cal Massey, it features Massey's nearly tone deaf seven year old daughter on vocals.

Whether her inclusion on the recording was an act of madness or genius is still up for debate but for me, it works.

If you don't have the whole record, Orgy In Rhythm posted it a few years ago and the link is still active.

Summer Sun

In anticipation of the coming warmer weather, here is another song that has emerged from the 'loungetronica' era still sounding good.

From Swedish duo Koop, off of their 2003 release 'Waltz For Koop", this song features a very young Yukimi Nagano on vocals.

I am evangelistic about Yukimi Nagano, she is one of my favorite vocalists in the world, and her current band Little Dragon, is one of the great pop bands working today.
Check out Yukimi's blog here

You will definately need bongos to make this song work the way it should.

And drop me a comment, let me know how these charts work out, suggest some new songs and tell your musician friends.