Zappa Plays Zappa

A week before Glastonbury I spent two very rewarding evenings in the company of Dweezil Zappa (The late Frank's eldest son) and the band of (mostly) young musicians with whom he has been touring the world intermittently for the last three years or so.

When Frank died, the "Official Communique" from the Zappa Family Trust was that those who loved the man's work should ensure that it kept being played. Vested interest there, as they stood to claim royalties, but a wise enough principle. Aside from recordings, there were numerous tribute/covers bands all over the world. There still are, but the initial enthusiasm was dampened somewhat last year when the ZFT tried to prevent Germany's annual Zappanale going ahead as it was in breach of copyright i.e. not paying them the financial dues they wanted.

Frank died in 1993. Zappa Plays Zappa has been on the road since 2006. Had it not been for The Muffin Men and others in the U.K., and like-minded fanatics throughout Europe, South America and beyond, interest in Zappa would have dwindled significantly more than it had done in the intervening 13 years. Those musicians (good ones too - the music's mostly too complicated for the casual slouch to master) who made anything from their "piracy" of the man's work are unlikely to have made a fortune. Few would have been able to support themselves on the back of tribute gigs alone and they were generally semi-pro at best.

Now that the ZFT has its own project for playing the music - Zappa Plays Zappa - the goodwill appears to have evaporated and the tributes that had been tacitly condoned have been challenged in the courts. Happily the German court where the challenge was made threw it out and Zappanale took place and will do so again this August. I'm not quite brave enough to attempt attending, as the language barrier on top of all the drawbacks of festival existence and foreign travel are a bit much, but it's good to know it's there. A bad taste lingers, though.

Anyway, I digress.

I first saw Zappa Plays Zappa at Shepherds Bush Empire in 2007. At that stage, while slickly rehearsed and blessed with a better sound system than Frank would have enjoyed for most of his career, they were still using a "party trick" to get noticed. A video clip of FZ would appear on a couple of occasions during the set and FZ's guitar solo would slot into the song the band was playing live. Similar to the Elvis Live! show, I'd imagine, and probably the Michael Jackson rehearsal footage-dressed-up-as-a-live-show that we have to look forward to somewhere down the road. The effect was eerie, professional but a bit too exploitative for my taste, and detracted from the monumental achievement the band had made in learning many of the most problematic songs from the catalogue, weird time signatures and so on. A better feature was the presence for much of the set of former FZ sideman Ray White, who looked and sounded like he was genuinely having fun.

For 2009, the band was slightly smaller, a largely redundant second keyboard player was missing, redundant because the remaining one (Scheila Gonzalez) can play keyboards and saxophone simultaneously if the mood takes her! There were no "special guests" from the numerous ranks of former FZ band members either, but the need has clearly dissipated

The first night, at Birmingham Symphony Hall, while a good show, suffered because of the venue and some technical problems with in-ear monitors which delayed the start by 30 minutes. The Symphony Hall is a very plush venue, but its oval shape places many audience members a long way from the stage, and only when "forced" to stand by the threat of an abbreviated performance did it come to life, and then just in the stalls. By contrast, the audience at Bristol Colston Hall the following night was so rabidly "up for it" that it had trouble staying in the seats! As with the Old Man's shows, the set list was substantially varied between the two nights, just as I had hoped. The Symphony Hall pretty much demanded a nod to the highbrow element of FZ's work, which it got, while the Colston enjoyed a rockier show which trod the line between polish and anarchy very well. FZ should be proud.