TINSEL TOWN REBELLION - BUFFALO: FASHIONS

With the title track of "Tinsel town rebellion" (spring 1981) Zappa took a stand against the recent trends in pop music, that he mostly considered empty and phoney (see also below). Much of the new styles in pop music since the late seventies till now have to do with sound and not with the structure of the songs. Zappa apperently wasn't interested in having things as a disco beat all through his albums, screaming punk and roaring heavy metal singers, grungy guitars etc. And he could afford not to do so, because his name was by now well enough established to go his own way. Zappa became as unpredictable as ever, coming up with guitar solo collections, modern orchestral music and synclavier albums. Also some material out of his personal interest appeared on CD as the "Uncle meat movie excerpts", "Francesco Zappa" and "Thingfish".
The integration of pop styles however, as far as they have to do with song structuring, also continued on his albums. One of the characteristics of Zappa is that he can use all styles without any problem and add unusual extensions to them if he wanted to. "Tinsel town rebellion", for instance, opens with a reggae tune "Fine girl", the only studio track of this album. The "Panty rap" has a reggae vamp of four bars with two alternating chords. It's an amusing example of how Zappa could entertain his audiance by addressing little speaches to them. The word "rap" is used here as a kind of a joke, but "Trouble every day" from 1966 is genuine rap long before it got popular at the end of the eighties. See "Promiscuous" in this study for more about rap. The rap is here about collecting panties and brassieres for making a quilt. It took the artist Emily James more then a year to construct the quilt. There are some pictures of it on the net like at http://www.arf.ru/Misc/Quilt.

Fine girl, opening (midi file).
Panty rap, opening bars (midi file).

Fine girl, opening (transcription).
Panty rap, opening (transcription).

In Zappa! he commented about reggae: "I like to play it more than I like to listen to it. Reggae is a ventilated rhythm. If you're going to play a solo with a lot of notes in it and your rhythm accompaniment has a lot of notes in it, then it neutralizes it. I find it more intriguing to play to a reggae backgroud with jagged pulses and big holes in it - there's blank space, whereas the least comfortable thing for me to play to would be a James Brown band" (Zappa!, page 60). Examples of reggae as a vamp in more complex compositions are for instance the 1984 version of "The black page" and "Orrin hatch on skis" on "Guitar" (1987). The opening of the first one is included in the "You can't do that on stage anymore" section of this study.

Easy meat, opening (midi file).

Easy meat, opening (transcription).

Till "Baby snakes" Zappa mostly made up a live album - or film in this case - from tapes from the same place. With "Sheik Yerbouti" this policy changed to combining the best performances from various concert dates and adding overdubs to them in the studio. Technically he could make use of a velocity regulator, the chances that two seperate recordings are in pace together are nil. The advantage is the degree of perfection that can be found on this album, the disadvantage is that it is giving away the idea of being present at a specific concert. With "Tinsel town rebellion" his attitude was again changing in the sense that the number of overdubs was turned down. The second song on "Tinsel town rebellion", "Easy meat", had been on the concert program for two years and shows how well the manipulating of tracks can work out. The album piece is made up of two different concert recordings and has heavy overdubbing on the keyboard sequence. "Ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch" from 1982 is another example of a heavily manipulated album in this positive sense. For most of his live CDs to come - and that is a lot - Zappa kept combining the best tracks from different occasions, but mostly refrained from overdubbing.
How "Easy meat" was build up in three steps can be followed quite extensively via the different channels in which versions of this song have become available, being nine in total today. All versions have larger guitar solos in them, so it's not an overcopious exhibition.
1978 tour:
- BTB: At the circus. Here the opening of the main melody is the central element of the song. It's present in bars 4-6 of the transcription above, with the line "This girl is easy meat, I've seen her on the street". These bars are used for the introduction as well as as a vamp for the guitar solo. Nor the 1981 opening vamp, nor the instrumental sequence existed in this phase.
- BTB: Saarbrücken. This one goes the same, it's from the same European tour, visiting cities in Germany. There's only a few days gap between this one and the previous one.
- ZFT: Halloween. The same set up from the U.S. leg of the 1978 tour.
1979 tour:
- BTB: Any way the wind blows. Now the characteristic Easy meat riff turns up, as transcribed in bar 1 above. This riff becomes the vamp for the 1979 guitar solos.
- Trance-fusion, Ask dr. Stupid. A guitar solo over this Easy meat riff, so quite obviously it stems from an Easy meat performance.
1980-82 tours:
- Tinsel town rebellion. Easy meat full blown. A "classic" keyboard sequence got added to the song. The guitar solo for these tours has become a pedal note solo instead of the earlier solos over a vamp. Over the introduction with the Easy meat riff a highly syncopic melody is played, as transcribed in bars 2-3 above.
- ZFT: Buffalo. There's only a few days between this version and the Tinsel town rebellion version, the latter combining two performances from the same U.S. tour. On this occasion the syncopic melody is absent. Special for the guitar solo is that Zappa starts a chord progression half way (6:29), that is used by the bass as a vamp for the remainder of this solo.
- The dub room special. The set up in this case is identical to the Tinsel town rebellion version from a year before, the little syncopic melody thus included again. Available on DVD and CD.
- YCDTOSA V. A version from the 1982 European tour, again with the same basic set up, though with some detail differences in the way the main riff is played.

To the left a screenshot of the 1981 "Talking with Frank Zappa" interview by Chuck Ash of the Pennsylvania State Police about his anti-drugs stand. A sample from it below regarding punk and new wave:
- Q. What do you think of the punk and the new wave type of music, you're personal opinion of that.
- A. Well, the same truth as of all types of music, there are good examples and bad examples. There are some songs in punk and new wave I enjoy listening to, and there's even a few country and western songs that I enjoy listening to. But generally I'm not a consumer for pop music.
- Q. Do you think that the styles of punk and new wave will last, do you think it will continue.
- A. It will last as long as somebody in the media thinks they can make money of it by perpetuating the myth that it is actually new.

In 2006 the ZFT released the whole 1980 Buffalo concert as a double CD, complementary to "Tinsel town rebbelion". It offers 26 tracks, all including to a more or lesser extent alternative bars. Some songs are more basic versions , like "You are what you is" without the vocal overdubs. Others can be quite interesting variations upon the original as the "Honey, don't you want a man like me" version (see the YCDTOSA section in this study). It's remarkable to see that many differences between the "Buffalo" and the "Tinsel town rebellion" version of "Pick me, I'm clean", because they are both from the U.S. fall tour. Some of the differences are:
- The "Tinsel town rebellion" version has an instrumental intro with a little theme entirely of its own. The "Buffalo" intro is made up of an instrumental execution of the opening theme of the song , followed by two transitory bars.
- The "Buffalo" version goes much faster than the "Tinsel town rebellion" version.
- The bass during the opening theme on "Buffalo" plays parallel with this theme, whereas on "Tinsel town rebellion" it plays a little riff of its own.
- Both executions have a fine C Lydian solo in them. The "Buffalo" solo is much longer and wouldn't have been misplaced on the "Shut up 'n play yer guitar" collection. The bass in both solos starts out alternating C and D. At various points they are moving more freely. On "Buffalo" for instance at 7:00 takes over a guitar motif and starts varying this motif in 3/4.

Pick me, I'm clean. Tinsel town rebellion, opening (midi file).
Pick me, I'm clean. Buffalo, section (midi file).

Pick me, I'm clean, sections (transcription).

There are also some differences in sound quality and production techniques etc. Zappa isn't there anymore to select the best parts of a tour and apply his knowledge as a producer. I know too little about recording techniques to know what might cause this, lesser equipment available at a specific concert or studio editing and mixing. You can for instance notice that the solo on "Buffalo" isn't double channeled. The temporary setback at 4:57 to a two track recording appears to have been caused by a hiss on the multitrack tape. Better solve it this way than miss the solo.