The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, by Kelly Fisher Lowe

I am about a third of the way through Kelly Fisher Lowe's ambitious book. Unfortunately it really seems as if he is attempting to bite off more than he can chew. Maybe I misunderstood him, but he seems to promise a much more interesting and in-depth analysis than he appears capable of delivering, at least in this relatively short volume. In trying to cover so much ground (he attempts to say something about nearly every song on the 40 or so albums he's chosen to write about), he has no choice but to maintain a rather brisk pace throughout, which makes for some fairly shallow readings of Zappa's songs.

That in itself wouldn't be so bad if the book were not also as riddled with errors as any other Zappa book. This is a continual problem that seems to plague everyone who writes about Zappa and/or his music. Apparently, despite the fact that all the correct information is easily available online, it is impossible to publish a Zappa book without an enormous number of factual errors as well as typos.

Typos certainly happen in almost any published book, especially first editions, but why do so many extremely conspicuous ones seem to get by in these Zappa books? The case in point here is that in Lowe's book, the VERY FIRST PAGE has a glaring typo: he refers to a "Stratocaster and a Fender Camp" from the song Joe's Garage.

Excuse me?? Fender fucking Camp?!? Listen, if there's anybody out there writing a book on Zappa right now, please hear my plea: hire me as your proofreader, PLEASE. I promise you, by the time I am done with your manuscript, there will be no such typographical mistakes lurking within its pages.

On the other hand, is it possible mistakes like that are introduced later on, after the author is already done with his manuscript and the process of publishing has begun? I really don't know this process or how it works, so maybe there are weird things like infinite numbers of monkeys locked away in rooms retyping manuscripts for some arcane reason and this introduces these sorts of typos. I DON'T KNOW.

But what I do know is, my copy of Frank's autobiography (admittedly a trade paperback and therefore possibly not a first edition) does not have these kind of typos. In fact, although I admit I haven't gone over every page as carefully as I could, I don't recall seeing ANY typos at all in The Real Frank Zappa Book.

Anyway, moving on to more serious mistakes. There are the usual, by now expected, simple factual errors throughout the book. Disappointing as these may be for the Zappa fan, we are certainly not surprised to encounter such erroneous information in a Zappa book. However, what particularly irks me is not these sorts of errors which, as inexcusable as they are, at least can be looked up and easily corrected (for example, how hard is it to remember that the album, Does Humor Belong In Music? actually documents Zappa's touring unit in 1984, NOT 1982 -- two VERY different bands that any serious Zappa fan would be able to tell apart by ear almost instantly).

What gets me is that Lowe, admittedly not a musicologist (and presumably not a musician), nevertheless bandies about technical music terms that have very specific meanings and, not surprisingly, uses them incorrectly a number of times. He refers to the song "Mr. Green Genes" as a "half-time waltz" for example, which it is clearly not (at the bare minimum a waltz has to be in 3/4). Similarly, he asserts that "Who Needs the Peace Corps?" starts off as "a basic shuffle," which it does not. There is not a single second of shuffle rhythm in that song. It is much more akin to a march, an attribute that is accentuated on the 1988 live arrangement as heard on The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life.

In fact, almost every time Lowe writes about the music rather than the lyrics, he either gets it wrong or writes a description so generic as to be interchangeable. For example, here is the rest of his description of "Peace Corps":

As the song develops, you find Zappa working in his usual vein of odd and varying time signatures [actually the entire song is in 4/4]. The song starts and stops and segues quite unexpectedly. It finally ends up with a marvelous light jazz outro with Zappa speaking over it.

What purpose do these kind of descriptions serve? For those of us who know the songs as well (or better than) Lowe, it doesn't advance our understanding of the music. For those who don't know the song, it certainly isn't specific enough to give one much of an idea of what it sounds like -- and the parts that are specific are either misleading or downright inaccurate.

Every book I have read on Zappa has contained musical descriptions of this sort and they are usually laughable at best. Ben Watson, whose book Lowe highly recommends in the bibliographic essay in the back, is probably more guilty than most of coming up with page after page of these ludicrous descriptive passages. They might provide the author and certain readers with some enjoyment, but their informational content is close to zero.

Maybe the thing I like the most about this book is that it makes me want to write a much better book on Zappa's music. I think I could do a lot better job than anybody else published so far. It would be nice if there were a book out there besides Frank's autobiography that wasn't totally fucked up in one way or another.