Frank Zappa – The Freak-Out List (2009)
Ian Underwood, George Duke, Don Preston, music historian David Nicholls, biographers of Zappa and Varese, etc.
Studio: Sexy Intellectual Production SIDVD555 [Distr. by Naxos]
Video: 4:3 B&W & color
Audio: PCM stereo
All Regions
Extras: Extended interviews, “Frank Zappa’s Record Collection,” Contributor bios, radio spots, more
Length: 88 minutes
Rating: ****
A most interesting documentary, but not really a documentary on versatile musician Frank Zappa. The film’s subtitle comes from the Mothers of Invention LP titled Freak Out, which on the inside cover carried a list of 66 names of people in music and otherwise whom Zappa felt like naming as influences. Of course all 66 couldn’t be covered, but the film’s producers do a yeoman job of concentrating on information about a handful of those on the list. In fact sometimes one sort of forgets that Zappa is supposed to be the subject of the documentary, since there is so much fascinating information and footage on a subject such as do wop music.
I certainly never expected a layman’s introduction to 20th century music in general, nor the details about obscure blues guitarists and various vocal groups such as The Cadillacs – even interviews with some of the past members. The fantastic variety of music that inspired Zappa is quite amazing. He started out in avant classical circles with Schoenberg and Stravinsky, and towards the end of his life returned to that, creating extended works which began to be performed by legitimate new music ensembles and even symphony orchestras. Perhaps his major model in classical music was Edgar Varese; he even directed live performances of some Varese works such as the all-percussion (with a siren) Ionization.
Zappa mixed together in all his music – whether disguised as rock or classical – a bewildering and anarchic variety of genres, and usually in a mosaic-like way – jumping from, say, rhythm n’ blues to 12-tone classical, to do wop, to free jazz. Stravinsky was his model for a sort of cut-and-paste approach to composition. He had various favorite genres at different times in this life. For example, I didn’t know that his The Grand Wazoo was a jazz big-band-flavored album. As he re-invented himself as a classical composer and gave up on performing with his band, he depended more on creating his music on his Synclavier and printing it out automatically. He said he couldn’t depend on live musicians to properly grasp what he was trying to do. He even used a pseudo-harpsichord sound on his Synclavier to record Baroque sonatas by an obscure name-sake of his also named Zappa (who was not an ancestor however).
The video and film footage of Zappa himself in action has mostly been seen before in DVD productions, but the talking head sections are quite interesting. Least effective is the lengthy exploration of 20th century music and composers offered by Nicholls, who delivers his grad-student seminar with an Alfred Hitchcock-like approach and appearance.
– John Sunier
