The first time I saw Frank Zappa was on a poster. He would come out sitting on the toilet and look at the camera with the placidity of someone who knows what he is doing. The poster was hanging on the wall of a record store that no longer exists; the same one that was in the Cuatro Caminos market, near home.
I used to spend the afternoons there, looking at records and telling the clerk: “hey, play me this record, let’s see how it goes, hey, play me this other one, let’s see if…”. In that plan, I was discovering music that until then was unknown to me. Frank Zappa’s music was one of them. The first album I heard of his was Tinseltown Rebellion. The cover was a declaration of dirty intentions; a colorful collage in the style of Sgt. Pepper’s but in a punk style and with the letters of the title scribbled by hand. The figure of Frank Zappa appeared in the center, so small that you had to look closely to see it. He wore a tuxedo and played the guitar.
The first cut was a cabaret style reggae. Until then I had not heard anything like it; a rare mix of styles where punk mixed with blues and contemporary music, all taken to the point of hooliganism. I got it. Then the others followed. I remember the day I got Joe’s Garagea rock opera where Zappa takes pieces of his other compositions and cuts and pastes them in the style of a collage. I called a friend who knew English to translate the songs for me as they were playing. The thing was about groupies and making fun of everything, from religions to garage bands. But above all else, Joe’s Garage It was a criticism of puritanism that censors everything by system. After this madness, I caught myself Sheikh Yerbouti double album that was marked by the controversy of its lyrics.
It was then, with the help of a dictionary, when I began to understand the meaning of all those songs that the magazines of that time –Popular 1, common salt, Vibrations– they pointed out as transgressive and irreverent. Today, thanks to Libros del Kultrum, I can get to know them in depth; They have just been published in large format with translation into Spanish by Manuel de la Fuente, who is also preparing the edition of this Complete lyrical work; This is how the volume is titled.
The satire. The joke; the jocular and hilarious attitude of one of the great musicians in history capable of demonstrating that music does not understand genres or classifications. And all that is exposed on each of its pages. Because it’s never too late to listen to Zappa; In their albums we can appreciate how the styles fit together in adequate harmony; ska with Italian opera or reggae with classical music, as I had the opportunity to see for myself, live.
It was during his memorable Madrid concert, at the end of the 80s, when he turned his back to the audience and took the baton to direct his musicians, orchestrating the Bolero by Maurice Ravel in Jamaican style. It still resonates in my head.
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