THE BEST BAND YOU NEVER HEARD IN YOUR LIFE - MAKE A JAZZ NOISE HERE: LIVE COMPILATIONS #2

In 1987 preparations were made for Zappa's biggest tour effort. At first the rock band section rehearsed, afterwards a brass section joined in, bringing the band's magnitude up to twelve members. In total it took four months of practicing for a program of five hours, enough for two completely different shows. Touring started in the east of the U.S., next Europe. The U.S. west and south coast, planned for the autumn, had to be cancelled however. Tensions within the band had become too big to continue. Zappa let everybody vote whether they could move on with bass player Scott Thunes and the general opinion was no, so in Zappa's words the band self-destructed. The financial loss was compensated by releasing as good as all material on CD. "Broadway the hard way" was dealt with in the previous section. Here we continue with three examples from the two double CDs that ensued from the tapes.

Right: Part of the original CD cover for "Make a jazz noise here" by Larry Grossman/Art Attack featuring a night club in a desert landscape (copyright Barking Pumpkin Records). Today's copies have a drawing by Cal Schenkel. I don't have a clue why it got replaced.

The 1988 "Heavy duty judy" version opens "The best band you never heard in your life". It only overlaps with its predecessor from "Shut up 'n play yer guitar" in reusing the vamp in 12/8, otherwise it's a new composition. The brass section is used for creating an opening theme around the vamp. After up to two minutes Zappa falls in with a sharp solo (in the midi file below some bars with repetitions are skipped).

Heavy duty judy (1988), opening (midi file)

Heavy duty judy (1988), opening (transcription).

Next is another variant upon "The black page #2" from "Make a jazz noise here", taking this composition a step further regarding tempo changes, instrumentation and soloing. This "new age" version opens in a very slow relaxed tempo with percussion embellishments, but later on everybody accelerates to the original tempo. What used to be a quintuplet within a bar now gets spread out over four bars. After conducting the band, Zappa again falls in with a strong solo.

The black page (new age version), opening (midi file)

The black page (new age version), opening (transcription).

For the 1988 tour Zappa took the synclavier with him on stage. "Make a jazz noise here" contains three larger pieces with combinations of written themes, solo improvisations and synclavier sections. You could see Zappa typing in the parameters to set off stored music and modulate sampled sounds via the pc keyboard and the keys of the synclavier keyboard. The results are bizarre collages. "When yuppies go to hell" has a synclavier theme made up of a 5th chord sequence of held notes. The plain notes of the theme itself are rather simple. They get their special character by sound effects in the catalogue of the machine, like (de-)crescendo, moving a sound from one type to another and various sampled emotional outbursts of the human voice. The synclavier theme gets interrupted by written bars for the band with some irregular counterpoint figures, before it's played again in another meter. Then you get to the weird sounds collages, solos and little stored composed parts. Next is the opening theme:

When yuppies go to hell, theme (midi file)

When yuppies go to hell, theme (transcription).

The Barcelona concert of May 1988 got filmed for television and broadcasted several times by the Spanish TV entity RTVE. Below is an announcement from their 2006 program. It says: "Live from Barcelona the concert given by the composer and guitar player Frank Zappa, May 1988, as part of his last tour as a rock musician. Frank Vincent Zappa (U.S.A., 1940-1993) founded the group The Mothers of Invention in 1964, till he dissolved it in 1969, when he started a long solo career. In 1973 he triumphed commercially with his records "Apostrophe (')" and "Overnite sensation". Apart from being a musician Zappa also was a composer, who had himself influenced by doo-wop, rhythm and blues and contemporary modern music, thus his compositions include all modern styles: classic, rock, jazz, reggae, blues. His music is characterised by the intensive use of instruments that are unconventional for a rock band, like the marimba or the violin."