Frank Zappa - "Lumpy Gravy" (1967)

Sometimes referred to as his “favorite album,” this perplexing but always fascinating album (technically his first “solo” album) came out briefly in 1967 on Capital Records in 4-track cartridge tape form. Zappa’s label at the time, MGM, threatened legal action and it was pulled. The 4-track cartridge system was an early competitor to the more successful 8-track tape format. According to Zappa himself, the Capitol 4-track of Lumpy Gravy is one of the rarest official Zappa releases - if not the rarest. Capitol had also begun preparation of the vinyl LP record as well as a 7″ single from the album (”Sink Trap” b/w “Gypsy Airs”) but these did not get past the test pressing stage.

The MGM/Verve version of the album was released on LP record and 4-track cartridge in May 1968 and later in an 8-track cartridge version also.

This review comes from issue #13 of Rolling Stone (June 22, 1968) by Jim Miller. This album, then as now, has always divided listeners.

I just read that Frank’s widow Gail said a 40-year anniversary deluxe edition is supposed to come out very soon… 

 

Lumpy Gravy is the most curious album Frank Zappa has been involved in to date, and in many ways the music just doesn’t make it; as it says on the cover, “a curiously inconsistent piece which started out to be a ballet but probably didn’t make it.” The record was recorded in February of 1967, and Zappa conducts the “Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra and Chorus,” which is made of stray Mothers and some of Hollywood’s top studio musicians. On the back of the album we are asked by Zappa, “Is this phase 2 of We’re Only In It for the Money?” but Lumpy Gravy is hardly a sequel in quality or kind to Money, although it does share some thematic material with the later Mothers’ group.

Lumpy Gravy carries to an extreme the protean, fragmented musical approach that Zappa favors, but on the whole the work is rather inert. The composition is liberally garnished with dialogues about everything from living in drums to pigs with wings, but most of these spoken sections seem rather artificially forced. There are several jabs at surfing music, and the record closes with an instrumental version of “Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance” that could have been arranged by the Ventures. In contrast some sections of Lumpy Gravy are so extremely chromatic that they verge on “atonality;” these passages are usually scored for strings and/or woodwinds, although towards the end of the second side an atonal passage for wind instruments is incongruously accompanied by a studio drummer.

Parts of Lumpy Gravy break down into cliched lush string writing, while other parts abound in burps and bits of electronic music not unlike sections of “The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny.”

Yet in spite of its varied tricks, Lumpy Gravy does not come to life; it is a strangely sterile recording, as though all the studio musicians reading their music could not do what a batch of well-rehearsed Mothers can do. Missing are the songs and the energy of the Mothers, with all their casually tossed off mistakes vocally and brilliance instrumentally; furthermore what Zappa has lost by not using the smaller Mothers he has not really gained back by using a huge orchestra. The texture of the music (and the scoring of the instruments, for that matter) is surprisingly conventional and even boring, especially if one is familiar with Zappa’s love of burps, aimless dialogue and certain kinds of electronic music.

Nevertheless Lumpy Gravy is an important album, if only because Frank Zappa is one of rock’s foremost minds. This album, recorded well over a year ago, demonstrates the problems that serious rock as a whole faces, as well as the compositional limitations (as of a year and a half ago) of one of serious rock’s leading voices. Lumpy Gravy can hardly be called successful, yet it points the way towards more integrated, formal protean compositions such as Zappa’s masterpiece We’re Only In It for the Money. It might be said that Zappa makes mistakes other rock composers would be proud to call their own best music; Lumpy Gravy is an idiosyncratic musical faux pas that is worth listening to for that reason alone. 

 

Jim Miller

Another attack

This is frightening…

Another very large group of gay activists (not the radical group “Bash Back” this time) assaulted a group of Christians who were doing some street evangelism in the Castro district in San Fancisco.  Now I’ve seen the local gay community organize many protests and parades here in Florida, and they seem to think that nobody has any right to prevent their gathering and protesting/advocating.  And then something like this happens…watch the video footage (NOTE: there is strong language in the video):

So this is the action from those advocating “tolerance”?  The Christians here were definitely doing something risky, but they should not have been attacked for exercising the same right that the gays have been exercising excessively for quite a while now.  I know there are people out there saying “well this isn’t how all the gays feel”, but I have a feeling that we’re going to be seeing this more and more frequently until something truly horrific happens (and considering the generally passive nature of many Christians, I’m fearing that a group of gay activists are going to either severely beat or kill a group of Christians).  What kind of society is this, where people who stand for “tolerance” are rioting and attacking those who differ in opinion?  It is clear that by “tolerance”, they really mean “agree with us or shut up”.

Here is the testimony of one of the Christians in the group (this can be found in the description of the video on YouTube):

“I went to the Castro (the homosexual district of San Francisco) like we usually do on Friday nights.

Normally, we sit on 18th and Castro, and someone plays the guitar, and we all worship God.

Sometimes a person will yell at us, or maybe a few. Sometimes people will ignore us. Sometimes people will let us pray with them.

This time was not a normal night. It was the first time we’d been back in the Castro to do our normal outreach since California Proposition 8, which defined marriage as “one man with one woman” was passed. We played the guitar and sang together and worshiped the Lord. After just singing and worshiping God for a while, Roger decided that we should all hold hands in a circle and continue singing. So we did.

Someone (Actually a person who came up and hugged and kissed some of us who he knew from the past) convinced some people that we were there to protest against the no on 8 campaign.

Then some guy who was dressed up like one of the sisters (The sisters of perpetual indulgence is a group of men who dress up like nuns and call themselves the spiritual authority of the Castro.) took a curtain-type thing (Which I think they use to curse people) and wrapped it around us.

Then a crowd started gathering. We began to sing “Amazing Grace”, and basically sang that song the whole night. (At some points we also sang “Nothing but the Blood of Jesus” and “Oh the Blood of Jesus”.) At first, they just shouted at us, using crude, rude, and foul language and calling us names like “haters” and “bigots”. Since it was a long night, I can’t even begin to remember all of the things that were shouted and/or chanted at us. Then, they started throwing hot coffee, soda and alcohol on us and spitting (and maybe even peeing) on us. Then, a group of guys surrounded us with whistles, and blasted them inches away from our ears continually. Then, they started getting violent and started shoving us. At one point a man tried to steal one of our Bibles. Chrisdene noticed, so she walked up to him and said “Hey, that’s not yours, can you please give it back?”. He responded by hitting her on the head with the Bible, shoving her to the ground, and kicking her. I called the cops, and when they got there, they pulled her out of the circle and asked her if she wanted to press charges. She said “No, tell him I forgive him.” Afterwards, she didn’t rejoin us in the circle, but she made friends with one of the people in the crowd, and really connected heart to heart. Roger got death threats. As the leader of our group, people looked him in the eyes and said “I am going to kill you.”, and they were serious. A cop heard one of them, and confronted him. (This part is kinda graphic, so you should skip the paragraph if you don’t want to be offended.) It wasn’t long before the violence turned to perversion. They were touching and grabbing me, and trying to shove things in my butt, and even trying to take off my pants - basically trying to molest me. I used one hand to hold my pants up, while I used the other arm to hold one of the girls. The guys huddled around all the girls, and protected them. Soon after, the cops came and stood between us and the mob. When it was getting more heated, the cops were like “You guys should leave.” and Roger said “We want to stay.” Someone tried to steal my backpack, but I tapped a cop on the shoulder, and said “Hey, that’s my bag.” and he got it from him and gave it to me. Others weren’t so lucky. Probably half our team got their jackets stolen. Eventually, as the crowd was getting more and more uncontrollable, the cops were afraid for our lives, so they escorted us to our van. (The cops were very nice to us from start to finish.) Our van was parked pretty far because it was hard to find parking that day. As the cops escorted us, the mob followed us, until the cops formed a line, and held off the people so we could drive away. We took the long way home, just in case anyone tried to follow us. When we got home, we prayed and sang more, and then prayed over each-other. Please know my heart. All of what we do is for the Love of Jesus Christ, and the love for those in the Castro. The Bible says to love God, and then love people. We can only love because He loved us first. We can’t hate the people because they are just broken and blinded by the spirit of this age. Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against Principalities and Powers. It’s not a political thing, we just love the people. This is the raw footage of the walk from 18th and Castro Street to our car. It was only the very tail end of the night and says that we were all about prop8… when in reality we had nothing to do with prop 8 this night.:”

And here is a comment that I think sums up the hatred of Christians fairly well:

“im not gay but man i ****ing hate christians…ive been to christian school and you ****ers are the reason the world is collapsing on itself.**** you christians…way to have an open mind…do society a favor and ****ing DIEEEEE.” (censoring mine)

Isn’t it amazing that the Christians are hated so ferociously?  The scary thing is, the comment above sounds what a nazi probably sounded like when refering to the Jews…and that is why I fear that the gay activists will get more militant and continue these attacks until Christians start getting killed.  I’m hoping that things chill out before it gets to that point, but things are happening very quickly.  Furthermore, Christians are steadfast in their conviction (in general) and faith, and the gay community is also firmly rooted in their beliefs…and since Christians typically avoid attacking other people physically, it is only obvious to assume that the gay activists (who clearly have no hesitancy in using force against law-abiding citizens) will eventually attack any Christians who would have the audacity to question their lifestyle.

I pray that I never have to deal with a situation like this.

 

Perth International Airport

As distinct from Perth domestic airport, which is another story entirely.

So for a start, the international terminal in Perth (Australia, not Scotland), is not really anywhere near the domestic terminal.  It’s about another 15 minute drive from there.  Getting a taxi to the international terminal from the centre of town will cost roughly AU$40 if you don’t hit traffic, about AU$55 if you hit peak hour traffic.

The good?  Uhhh…I’m struggling to think of anything nice to say really.  Oh!  Immigration queues and quarantine queues are relatively short!  That is if you don’t land straight after the flights in from Bali and get stuck behind the 500 people who all brought back wood carvings that have to clear quarantine inspection.

The not so good?  Where to start? Getting a taxi.  You land at the airport after having travelled for the last 24+ hours.  You’re jetlagged.  You’re pissed off.  You just want to get home and crash.  So you go out to the taxi rank after clearing immigration and customs…Only to find there’s no taxis.  Which is so totally useful when 3 full flights just landed.  So then you spend the next 90 minutes waiting in a queue only to find your taxi driver doesn’t know where they’re going (despite the in car GPS).  So you can’t even have a nap in the taxi since you’re having to give the driver directions.  Though how the hell a taxi driver doesn’t know how to get to Subiaco from the airport is truly beyond me.  And unless you’re going to the CBD, there’s no airport shuttles or anything.  The taxi problem I suppose can largely be blamed on the taxi company.  But the complete lack of alternative transport (train/shuttle buses/public transport/other) is really a problem that Perth Airport needs to address as a matter of urgency.

Then lets go with the airport lounges.  I’m a Qantas FF who has Qantas Lounge access.  It would be nice if the lounge had more extended opening hours rather than simply opening it 2 hours before the next Qantas (OneWorld) flight leaves.  Honestly, I’d rather go over to the domestic terminal and use the lounge in there than use the one in the international terminal.  It is pathetically sub-standard.  This is a Qantas issue, but you would think that the airport would do something to get them to improve the situation.

Airport shopping?  Almost non-existant.  Pre-security screening there’s a few shops.  Mostly Australiana, a few food outlets, a newsagent and a tacky costume jewellery shop.  Post-security in the departure area?  Woefully inadequate.  Perth is in the strange situation that quite a few flights depart between midnight and 2am.  Apparently most of the shops figure that they don’t need to open at this time of night.  Despite flights leaving for Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore…So seriously, be thankful to the shopping Gods if anything is open at that time of night other than the newsagent.  The newsagent/bookstore is ok, if not understocked.  It’s pretty small, so don’t expect much more than the current bestsellers and a few other popular titles.  They sell magazines and the usual snacks.

The coffee shop is the only place in the departure area to get food (unless you have airline lounge access, but then see my rant above about the Qantas lounge).  But be grateful if it’s open, or staffed.  There is a mini Eagle Boys (pizza place, compare with Pizza Hut) next to the coffee shop, but in all the times I’ve been through Perth airport, I’ve never once seen it open or staffed.  So I don’t know if it’s actually operating.  Other than that there are no food places in the departure lounge.

There’s Australiana type shops that sell the usual tacky souveneirs.  There’s a Rip Curl shop.  There’s a jewellery shop that sells the usual tourist souveneirs like opals and such.  There’s a duty free alcohol shop.  There’s duty free electronics shop (which I might point out has a seriously limited range of stock).  I wanted a spare battery for my DSLR, and lo and behold, they didn’t have any.  Don’t rely on them having what you want unless you call them beforehand to make sure they have it.  There’s duty free beauty stuff like perfume and makeup.  Though I wouldn’t buy it in Perth to be honest.  Buy it in Singapore.  Even with the current exchange rate, you’ll still get a much better deal in Asia.

And there’s no luxury goods store!  No Gucci!  No Louis Vuitton!  No Prada!  No nothing!  Ok, I realise that Perth isn’t a huge airport and couldn’t support standalone stores for all the usual suspects.  But would it be too much trouble to have even one sort of luxury goods store that sold any of that kind of thing?  That’s the kind of thing that people have some interest in buying duty free because of the sheer cost of it otherwise.  But to have nothing?

Lets just say that Perth international airport is in a pretty sad state of affairs.  It’s my understanding that they’re currently in the process of shifting the domestic terminal over to the international terminal.  Maybe with the increased number of passengers going through the future combined airport, the whole situation will improve.  But as it stands, I hate Perth international.  It’s a pain in the ass to get to.  It has sub-standard facilities.  It’s a pain in the ass to get a taxi home.  Right now I seriously struggle to say anything nice about it.

Perth Airport (Day 1)

A Lion Among Men

Review

Given that my speciality is postmodernism, it probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise that I am drawn to retellings and reimaginings of classic stories. I read Gregory Maguire’s suberb Wizard of Oz interpretation Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West shortly after release, and while I skipped over the first sequel Son of a Witch, I picked up the series once more with the third installment, A Lion Among Men. Ostensibly about the Cowardly Lion - here named Brrr - the only honestly interesting major character that emerges from the novel is Maguire’s original character Yackle, a delightfully cracked “walking cadaver” (24) of an oracle who first made her appearance in Wicked. After imbuing the previously one-dimensional Wicked Witch of the West with genuine pathos, sympathy, and motivation, my expectations going into A Lion Among Men were ultimately disappointed in his depiction of Brrr.

Maguire’s prose is lofty and distinguished, flowing with a silky elegance uncommon to most contemporary literature. Unfortunately, the loveliness of his language is not enough to make up for the largely uninteresting portrayal of the titular feline. Given Brrr’s iconic timidity, Maguire was given plenty to work with in terms of characterization. What frustrates me the most is that the last two pages offer more potential to compellingly flesh out his role as a cognizant, self-aware lion living amongst humans than the entirety of his presence in the rest of the novel combined. Though Maguire grants him a detailed and generous backstory, Brrr lacks the depth of character expected from one who has faced so much adversity. His portrayal as a sophisticated, aloof socialite melds well with L. Frank Baum’s original intentions, but I found it flat and with little lustre. Much could have been done with this premise, but Maguire elects to play it safe rather than experiment with the same - and successful - risks he took with the far superior Wicked. Brrr sadly ends up resigned to an undeserved fate comprised of nothing but story with minimal substance to accompany it.

I would also recommend reading the previous two installments of the series prior to picking up A Lion Among Men. Having not read Son of a Witch, I found myself lacking in understanding of Oz and all the nuances of its sociopolitical structure. Events in previous novels certainly have an impact on the overall plot of the third novel - I admit I made a mistake thinking I could enter back into the series at any given point and still make sense of everything that transpires. Maguire can certainly spin a complicated and intriguing yarn into an intriguing and adventurous plot, which is probably his greatest strength alongside the fluidity and sensuality of the writing itself. Had his characterization of Brrr consisted of significantly more complexity and volume, Maguire could have easily penned a classic amongst revisionist fairy tales. Instead, A Lion Among Men stands as a forgettable sequel to one of the best examples of the genre.

Bibliographical Information

Maguire, Gregory. A Lion Among Men. Boston: William Morrow & Company, 2008.

Further Reading

As mentioned numerous times in the review, the original volume in Gregory Maguire’s return to Oz, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West stands on its own as a worthy, humanizing successor to L. Frank Baum’s essential allegorical fantasy The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I would recommend reading the latter first, obviously, before moving on to Maguire’s interpretation. Both encompass imaginative casts engaged in considerable action and emotion, and wrapped up nicely in prose that piques interest and moves the stories along at an agreeable pace. Fans of revisionist or postmodernist interpretations of popular and classic childrens’ folk tales will greatly enjoy James Finn Garner’s cheeky and greatly enjoyable Politically Correct Fairy Tales series. Some snaps of dialogue and descriptions from Maguire’s books recall Garner’s satirical, mischevious commentary.

~Riot

Gregory Maguire & A Lion Among Men

Deaths uncounted in China's tainted milk scandal

Published: 8 hours ago, 14:06 EST, November 15, 2008

By CHARLES HUTZLER , Associated Press Writer, Medicine & Health / Health