Introduction
I am a Zappa obsessive, I love his music, in fact until recently I loved only his music. My two favorite Zappa albums are 'Thing Fish' and 'Civilization Phaze III'. The former of these two is the subject of what I hope will be a stream of blogs.
Why though? Well 'Thing Fish' is one of Zappa's more impenetrable works, not because it is particularly disruptive in a musical sense (he has plenty of music more dissonant and 'difficult'), but because it delivers its music in a way that initially leaves the listener feeling cheated, mainly through using rehashed songs seemingly cobbled together by the loose ramblings of a wildly offensive and obscene story line.
This however is a mistaken feeling, the listener in this case has approached the record with the attitude they would any other artists record, hoping that the music will happen to them without much effort on their part, Thing Fish however requires work on the listeners part, they are required to enter an edifice much like that of an initiation religion all the time learning the language and symbolism of a new world.
Am I being over the top? Reading too much into what idiots describe as dross Zappa? Maybe. But wouldn't you prefer to have that album that is sitting on your shelf, that Zappa himself described as 'an important work', presenting a meaningful key to the project/object rather than an irritation that cost too much.
I ought at this point to say a little about how I arrived at this idea. Several years ago I undertook a masters degree in music, and for my final dissertation I decided to write 17000 words on Zappa's song 'The Blue Light'.
Click here to read the dissertation.
I wanted to add aspects of Thing Fish to this, but the scope had to be narrowed down (as I latter realized Zappa's work can hurt you, don't bite off more than you can chew). The analysis was a semiotic one, not because that is what floats my boat, but because when you encounter the academic world you have to justify what you do academically. This analysis alerted me to the rich depth of meaning not just in the lyrics of Zappa's songs, but contained with in the music itself. I desperately wanted to apply some of this to Thing Fish, but to do that in an academic setting would have been too draining, Thing Fish doesn't need rigorous cross referencing it needs a sense of fun and dare I say it; a lot of conjecture!
As a warning to the reader (I don't anticipate many/any) the analysis will touch on subject matter that is often seemingly perverse and offensive (at least to some). And unapologeticly I am quite literal in my interpretations, this is just how I am made, not because of ignorance.
Let's get started - What is so great about Thing Fish?
In Thing Fish Zappa seems to find useful application for some of his grand ideas, for example the idea of time being one continuous blob all happening at once, which surfaces in the 'Them or Us' book, becomes a useful device in creating a sociological and psychological analysis of the plot's protagonists (if I were one of the Mammies in the Lobby with an MBA I might even say paradigm, fortunately I am not). The protagonists themselves are stereotypes that tie together the far reaches of Zappa's work, helping Zappa to attach numerous concepts to them, much like a drama therapy session, except the patient here is civilization (primarily that of the western variety).
Thing Fish in a sense finds a way of breaking the barrier between music and listener forcing the willing fan to participate in a process of actively gathering sources from within the Zappa catalogue and more importantly attaching to things outside. These outside referents that get caught up in the gears of Thing Fish cling to signs and objects that are within as if they were meant to have been there all the time. Its as if Zappa has engineered a piece so sprawling and massive it has its own gravity warping space time and squashing everything in its grasp into conceptual continuity.
How to Proceed?
I am going to proceed by creating a series of blogs under different headings that will address the various concepts and aspects of Thing Fish that interest me. To wet your appetite these are some of the titles I had in mind (titles ready to read are underlined in blue just click on them);
- Artificial Rhonda to Briefcase Fucker - Polar Opposites
- Brecht in the Mix
- McClary and The Torture Never Stops
- Heavy Metal and the Mammies
- Plagues and Moses
See you soon.
