Frank Zappa: Ship Arriving Too Late To Save a Drowning Witch
By Michael Davis
FRANK ZAPPA
Ship Arriving Too Late To Save a Drowning Witch
(Barking Pumpkin)
WELL, this oughtta silence those tales about Zappa being a bizarre,
dirty old man for good. As his real fans know, Frank's a typical
family man in many respects and for this album's killer track, "Valley
Girl" he had his daughter, Moon Unit, improvise a series of upper
middle class teen consciousness conversations that are both accurate
and hilarious. What a brilliant move: if an artist is too old or
too well known to get the real poop on what "typical young people"
are like these days, just send the kids to find out. If you live
near one of the radio stations that's giving "Valley Girl" saturation
airtime, you're probably already sick of it so I won't mention it
again, except to note that its success is making this Zappa's most
popular album since Sheik Yerbouti. The other strong feature
here is the guitar playing. Neither "I Come From Nowhere" nor "Drowing
Witch" strike me as being among
Frank's most fabulous songs but once the words are out of the way,
look out. The extended improvisational section of "Witch" is particularly
impressive, both in the flurries of notes flying off Zappa's fretboard
and in the way his band maneuvers around to keep things interesting.
As guitar overload approaches, they quickly segue into "Envelopes"
– which sounds to me like Conlan Noncarrow meeting Spike Jones but
might sound to you like a harpsichord being eaten by a trash compacter
– then move into "Teen-Age Prostitute," which may hold the record
for most time changes in a 2½ minute tune.
Is that enough diversity for you? Hope so. There's also some tedious
stuff like the opening track, "No Not Now," but most of the album
works well. Nice that the prolific Mr. Z has a hit again and it's
also nice that he deigned to release a single LP for a change so
people can afford to buy it.
Read by OCR software. If you spot errors, let me know afka (at) afka.net