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.