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Zapped!

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The purpose is not, and never was, simply to sink the boot in to journalistic poseurs who can neither write nor know enough about music to convey anything more than a vague feeling of either approbation or odium — although sinking the toecap in to a thoroughly deserving underbelly can be immensely satisfying. The purpose is to encourage an appreciation of music writing, a very particular type of written artifact, and, moreover, to encourage the writers thereof to do a better job, guv.

So, with no more ado, it is my pleasure to draw attention to a piece from The Age Online that is, apart from a few verbal boo-boos, is well written, lively and informative.

The piece is an interview with musician Dweezil Zappa, son of the famous Frank, who is bringing his father’s music to concert halls around the world.

Zappa senior - music and facial hair innovator.

The verbal boo-boos have to do with journalistic tics that, really, are as inevitable as they are interesting; that is, they should be cut out, they are dross.

The first two come in the opening sentence (crikey!): “To begin to understand Frank Zappa's gravity in the rock`n’roll universe, a substantive distinction needs to be made.” Gravity! Gravity? Could he be more specific? Does he mean, perhaps, “importance” or “significance”? A little overuse of the old thesaurus betrays itself in the selection of the word “gravity” in this place.

And, then comes that awful, pointless scattering of letters “substantive” that, for all its intrusive pretentiousness, seems to roll off the lips or from the keyboards of journalists everywhere without the slightest intention of meaning anything more than, at best, “real”. Take the word out; see what’s missing? Right. Nothing. Please, writers, kill that instinct; it disfigures the most elegant of phrases.

Then comes this beauty. I quote: “As always, it sounds best with the maestro’s own pithy turn of phrase. ‘Composers may write songs, but it is very seldom that a songwriter will do a composition,’ Zappa told interviewer Paul Zollo 20 years ago. ‘If you compare it to architecture, it’s the difference between building a cathedral and building a Taco Bell.’”

I don’t deny that Zappa makes his point here very well in an apt simile; but, turn of phrase? What turn of phrase? What phrase gets turned here? Which part of this comment resounds so much of Frank Zappa that anyone who knows the man at all could only smile and say, “yeah, only Zappa could have said that”? Come on, gimme a break. It is most emphatically not a “turn of phrase”; it is a statement that conveys a meaning; perhaps that is what put Dwyer off; that a musician could say something that actually meant more than the mere sound of the words that composed it.

And “pithy”? Oh, prithee, whence this petite, verbal molecule? From the flexidex of journalese each reporter keeps on his desk, I wot.

I draw attention to one final solecism that betrays the typical journalistic weakness of seeing the language in blocks, as a reader may and must do, but that mars the enjoyment of the piece because of its easily correctable nature.

“Before Dweezil began to assemble his current band of 10 death-defying musos, he was obliged to bunker down and study his father's records and manuscripts for two years.”

“Hunker” is the word you’re looking for, Mr Dwyer. Dweezil may hunker in a bunker, but where anyone can “bunker” down is anyone’s guess.

These are, however, minor blots, especially given the overall fine quality of the piece.

A greater blot is the failure to take up a suggestive comment relating to the “disparity” between Frank Zappa’s preoccupation in his song with sleaze and “degenerates” and the way he lived his own private life. Dwyer writes: “The narcotic tone and outright degeneracy of much of Zappa's subject matter also spelt out the greatest misconception about his life. Contrary to his preoccupations as a writer, Frank was a clean-cut family man who did not tolerate drugs in his life, or in his band. He was married to Gail Zappa from 1967 until his death, and while he gave his kids funny names — Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen — he was a devoted and available father.”

Yet Dwyer disparages the one source that might, and indeed does, shed some light on the subject: Ray White, who sang with Zappa in his heyday.

Dwyer writes: “Don’t ask White, a God-fearing preacher’s son with five minister brothers. He’s the kind of gent who says “BS” instead of “bullshit”, but he’s gleefully participated in some the most offensive titles known to rock, from The Legend of the Illinois Enema Bandit to I Promise Not to Come In Your Mouth.

“‘I really don’t know,” White says. “But I tell you what: when I examine the songs I can see where, if I were Frank, I would question certain things in existence, certain behaviours in the world. Most people won’t look at things like that. If you blow it up to the point where they can’t dismiss it, they have to really look at it, you know? I’m thinking that’s a good thing.’”

Frank Zapperly, that sounds eerily like at least part of an answer to me; so, why not ask White? Because he’s a “God-fearing preacher’s son with five minister brothers”? Gimme a break, pinhead.

Just one final comment, on a personal note: Viva Zappa!

Read Michael Dwyer's original review in The Age Online.

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