{"id":16161,"date":"2019-02-27T05:30:36","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T10:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=16161"},"modified":"2023-06-13T12:57:33","modified_gmt":"2023-06-13T16:57:33","slug":"frank-is-sleeping-zappas-the-yellow-shark-at-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/02\/27\/frank-is-sleeping-zappas-the-yellow-shark-at-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Frank is Sleeping: Zappa\u2019s \u2018The Yellow Shark\u2019 at 25"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"By the time The Yellow Shark<\/i> appeared on record store shelves in November 1993, fans knew that the end was very near for Frank Zappa. The iconoclastic composer-musician who often quoted the words of one of his heroes, Edgard Var\u00e8se (\u201cThe present-day composer refuses to die!\u201d) would succumb to prostate cancer a mere month after the album\u2019s release. Famously non-religious, Zappa nonetheless seemed to come to a kind of peace with his fate. Shortly before his passing at age 52, Zappa told friend, confidante and musical associate Ike Willis, \u201cPlay my music.\u201d The cottage industry of Zappa tribute acts that sprang up in his absence \u2013 not to mention the efforts of his (highly controversial) Zappa Family Trust \u2013 have helped keep his name in popular culture. But one could reasonably argue that his fame and acclaim would have endured regardless.<\/p>\n

The Yellow Shark<\/i> was Zappa\u2019s 62nd<\/sup> album, and one of very few on which he did not appear as a musician. Zappa did compose the music, oversee the performances and produce the recording featuring Ensemble Modern, a Frankfurt, German based classical assemblage. Though quite ill by this time, Zappa managed to conduct the ensemble on a few of The Yellow Shark<\/i>\u2019s tracks.<\/p>\n

Most of the albums that appeared under Zappa\u2019s name in the years leading up to The Yellow Shark<\/i>\u2019s release were archival releases; the You Can\u2019t Do That on Stage Anymore<\/i> series was the centerpiece of his final spate of releases; other live collections (Broadway the Hard Way, Make a Jazz Noise Here<\/i>) documented contemporary concerts. The Yellow Shark<\/em> is more of a piece with the latter; in a way it can be seen as the final installment in a live trilogy exploring late-period Zappa live in different musical idioms: comedy\/rock (Broadway<\/i>), jazz (Jazz Noise<\/i>) and classical. (If one discards the trilogy idea, there exists a fourth, The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life<\/i>, a characteristically bizarre covers collection.)<\/p>\n

Fans who appreciated Zappa\u2019s brand of humor might initially have been scared off when learning of The Yellow Shark<\/i>\u2019s classical nature. Answering his own question posed in the title of his 45th<\/sup> release (1986\u2019s Does Humor Belong in Music?<\/i>) with a more tentative \u201cyes,\u201d Zappa delivers his trademark humor both within the music itself and via the spoken commentary that sometimes punctuates it. But he does so only occasionally on The Yellow Shark<\/i>; overall it\u2019s among the most serious of his releases.<\/p>\n

Zappa introduces the concert in his inimitable style; there\u2019s barely a hint of weariness in his voice as he acknowledges that the audience has come to see \u201creally fine<\/i> musical performances by a really fine<\/i> modern music ensemble.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ensemble Modern consisted of more than two dozen musicians under the direction of conductor\/violinist Peter Rundel. And while The Yellow Shark<\/i> features a wealth of previously-unheard material, so too does it include modern classical arrangements of Zappa works from throughout his career. The Ensemble reaches way back to the late 1960s for an abbreviated reading of \u201cUncle Meat\u201d (from the album of the same name, itself the soundtrack to a film that wouldn\u2019t appear until many decades later), and tackles a couple of other compositions from that 1969 double LP. Zappa\u2019s progressive\/fusion phase is represented by \u201cBe-Bop Tango,\u201d and his late-period work \u2013 much of which was initially realized on the Synclavier rather than through classical instrumentation \u2013 is represented by the inclusion of \u201cG-Spot Tornado.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a haunting, majestic feel to the newer compositions. The title of \u201cOutrage at Valdez\u201d refers to an oil tanker disaster off the Alaskan coast; here Zappa creates a work of breathtaking scope. Zappa often worked in odd meter (by rock standards, that means most anything outside 4\/4), and the compositions here continue in that vein. But a beat \u2013 customary in rock and other pop music forms \u2013 is often not a major component of these performances. In fact only two of the 25 or so musicians in Ensemble Modern play percussion.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Keening, near atonal violin screeches are at the center of the brief \u201cIII Revised.\u201d The composition wouldn\u2019t have been out of place within the extended Lumpy Gravy<\/i> piece, the soundtrack of 200 Motels<\/i> or the late 1970s sessions eventually recompiled as Lather<\/i>. The odd bits of dialogue that were a feature of much of Zappa\u2019s modern-classical work appear only occasionally here, most notably in the spoken-recital pieces \u201cFood Gathering in Post-industrial America, 1992\u201d and \u201cWelcome to the United States,\u201d a pair of compositions that resonate even more so in the sadly post-Zappa, Trump-centered world.<\/p>\n

Acclaimed at the time of its release, today The Yellow Shark<\/i> remains a compelling work; it\u2019s perhaps the most successful of Zappa\u2019s classical endeavors. That doesn\u2019t mean, however, that it will appeal at all to fans whose idea of Zappa music focuses on \u201cDon\u2019t Eat the Yellow Snow,\u201d Valley Girl\u201d and Joe\u2019s Garage<\/i>. Neither is it likely to impress listeners whose concept of classical music beings and ends with Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. It\u2019s a knotty, difficult work, one that demands active listening. But for those who appreciate Frank Zappa\u2019s body of work \u2013 and especially those who subscribe to the Project\/Object philosophy holding that all of Zappa\u2019s output is part of a single larger work \u2013 it\u2019s simply essential.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By the time The Yellow Shark appeared on record store shelves in November 1993, fans knew that the end was very near for Frank Zappa. The iconoclastic composer-musician who often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,17,65],"tags":[861,3731],"class_list":["post-16161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-avant-garde","category-classical","category-review","tag-frank-zappa","tag-yellow-shark","cat-7-id","cat-17-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16161"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25479,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16161\/revisions\/25479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}