THING-FISH: AN OPERA

In 1983 Zappa was again debating with his record company, now CBS, about sales figures and their unwillingness to distribute "Thing-Fish". He switched CBS for EMI and "Thing-Fish" got released at the fall of 1984. It's a theater piece in the form of an opera, with the libretto added to the CD, but musically more remindful of a broadway musical. The 22 pieces are made up of dialogue sections with basic accompaniment, the reusing of earlier material, adapted for the opera, and seven new songs. These new songs give "Thing-Fish" musically it's theatre appearance, like the three following examples, most specifically "Wistful wit a fist-full". The last piece is a joyful musical closing number, sung almost unrecognizably by Napoleon Murphy Brock, appearing as the evil prince. Its set up is quite difficult with varying meters, scales and tempi, as the transcribed part indicates:
- The figure in the 4/8 bar sounds modernistic. The notes don't form a traditional chord and in combination with C and D sharp a G sharp is more common than a G natural. From bar 14 onwards this exact figure is played minor second lower. In bars 25-29 this theme ends with a little coda.
- In bar 25 the tempo gets slower. The music transforms from modern to a musical style in 4/4, played rubato.
- In bar 38 the meter moves to 12/8. It goes a bit slower, but sounds as an acceleration because the main time unit in the accompaniment goes from a half note to three eighth notes.
- Bars 43-44 are two joyful exclamatory bars, typical of musicals.
The entire show is hosted by the mammy nun "Thing-Fish", a part sung by Ike Willis, who first appeared as Joe on "Joe's garage" and continued working with Zappa through the last tour of 1988. The mammy nuns introduce themselves and the show in the choir singing of the second song.

The mammy nuns, 2:29 till 2:45 (midi file)
Wistful wit a fistful, section (midi file)

The mammy nuns, 2:29 till 2:45 (transcription).
Wistful wit a fistful, section (transcription).

Right: FZ and Ike Willis singing "He's so gay" (Does humor belong in music DVD). Ike helped creating Thing-Fish's old southern accent and sings more than half of the libretto.
Below: Still from one of FZ 's appearances at the David Letterman show, talking about his upcoming Thing-Fish project. CBS Television, 1983.

The libretto deals with several topics taken from actuality as:
- the spreading of aids,
- the fact that it had become known that the U.S. government had experimented with virusses upon it's own population in the fifties beyond their knowledge,
- the women's liberation movement,
- the popularity of gay pop groups as The village people.
These subjects are combined into a weird piece of fiction that, just as in "Joe's garage", shows several aspects of more-sidedness. In it the idea is uttered that the government could have caused the deaths among it's gay population by spreading virusses as well as that it is sponsoring gay life, because it halts population growth. Apparently Zappa liked toying with divers ideas and considered their consistence irrelavant. He had developped a kind of distrust towards governmental institutions in his younger years, helped by the fact that he got busted in a set up in 1965 and his difficulties at schools. In fact he had some sort of paranoid attitude towards anything institutionalised, including churches, unions and schools. All designed to dumb people down in his opinion. He attacked them frequently in his lyrics and a scent of paranoia runs all through "Joe's garage" and "Thingfish". "Freak out!" opened with an attack upon American schools and how real this was came out in the eighties, when he wouldn't pay scholarships for his children himself. They could go to college, but on their own expense. Dweezil was indeed making enough money at the age of sixteen to do so if he wanted to. As children of a rock star Zappa's children got drawn into adult life rather fast. Moon and Dweezil were in their mid-teens when they got into the spotlight via "Valley girl" and the 1984 tour.

The 'torchum' never stops, Evil prince aria (midi file)

The 'torchum' never stops, Evil prince aria (transcription).

In "The 'torchum' never stops" the evil virus experimenting prince sings a lengthy aria, also released as an individual piece "The evil prince" on "You can't do that on stage, vol. IV". He curses gay people and everybody creative. While the evil prince sections seem to be sympathetic of the gay community, most of "Thing-Fish" is quite opposite. Gay people are ridiculed as men unable to deal with liberated women. It culminates in Rhonda's severe feminist monologue in "Drop dead". A play as "Thing-Fish" doesn't stand by itself in Zappa's oeuvre. On various occasions he was busy writing plays and movie scripts as there are:
- "I was a teenage maltshop". This idea for a mini opera stems from 1964. It didn't get any further than a demo, but can be reconstructed about halfway. See the Mystery disc #2 section.
- "Captain Beefheart versus the Grunt people". A science fiction movie script, existing as an unpublished 90 page text from 1969 and photos of card board backdrops from 1965.
- "Uncle meat". A movie project completed in three phases. Because of budgettary problems and people withdrawing themselves, Zappa almost had to rewrite the script at an instance.
- "200 Motels". Only a third of the 100 pages of script got actually filmed, again due to the limited budget and people leaving the set.
- "Hunchentoot". A science fiction musical Zappa wrote in 1972. No budget could be raised; most music would be used on later albums, most notably "Sleep dirt", that today also has the original lyrics.
- "Joe's garage". This triple album/double CD follows the outlines of a play.
- "Them or us", the book. This writing has the set up of screenplay, revisiting the earlier pieces and "Thing-Fish".
In the case of "Thing-Fish" Zappa typed out the blueprint during the Christmas days of 1982. Though an actual performance of "Thing-Fish" couldn't be brought together, this time Zappa had the means and contractual freedom to get the whole piece on album exactly as he wished. It's unlikely that "Thing-Fish" will ever be performed on theatre stage on a commercial basis. For that its content is too much far fetched and musically it has little news to offer. Imagine how absurdistic stage directions as "Opal rides the bull while Francesco gives her an enema" should be executed. The opera has become much more palatable by its re-release on CD. Now you can select the new musical songs far more easily, listen to the textual pieces once in a while and include the recycled pieces when you're in the mood for them.
One of the reused songs is "No not now" from "Ship arriving too late to save a drowing witch". Zappa is using original tracks unaltered with new tracks added to them. Here we get Thing-Fish doing all the comments instead of Zappa. The original "Drowning witch" version goes as:

No not now, 0:21 till 1:28 (midi file)

No not now, 0:21 till 1:28 (transcription).

"No not now" is using three themes. The set up with the starting times on the CD is:
- 0:00     Intro, theme A instrumentally.
- 0:21     "No not now", theme B.
- 0:36     "Maybe later", theme C.
- 0:43     "She say I'm free", theme B.
- 0:58     "But I like her sister", theme C.
- 1:05     "She can't decide...", first variation upon theme A with lyrics.
- 1:33     "She changed her mind", theme B.
- 1:48     "And I don't blame her", theme C.
- 1:56     "No not now", theme B.
- 2:10     "Maybe later", theme C.
- 2:17     "Giddy-up...", second variation upon theme A with lyrics.
- 2:42     "The big old hat...", theme B.
- 2:57     "String beans to Utah", theme C.
- 3:05     "Ah the wife...", theme B.
- 3:19     "String beans to Utah", theme C.
- 3:26     "Deliver string beans...", second variation upon theme A with lyrics.
- 3:54     "No not now", theme B.
- 4:09     "Maybe later", theme C.
- 4:17     "She changed her mind", theme B.
- 4:32     "And I don't blame her", theme C.
- 4:41     "She sorta wild...", first variation upon theme A with lyrics.
- 5:07     "There she goes...", theme B.
- 5:50     End.

The closing song of "Thing-Fish", "Won ton on", is using the vocal "No not now" tracks played backwards. The song has a rhythm section of its own. If you play the three themes of the above "No not now" score backwards you get the following:

Won ton on, themes (midi file)

Won ton on, themes (transcription).

This example has the backward themes in the following order A (bars 1-7), C (bars 8-11) and B (bars 12-17). The sound of the midi file misses to a degree the effect of the reverse fade outs of the notes, but it's good enough to reckognize the melodies. See the transcription for details about the backward fade out. The "No not now" vocal tracks in "Won ton on" start at 0:18 on the CD, corresponding with 5:37 on the original "Drowning witch" CD and than going backwards.

The "Won ton on" following order is:
- 0:18     Theme B.
- 0:48     Theme A.
- 1:11     Theme C.
- 1:19     Theme B.
- 1:33     Theme C.
- 1:42     Theme B.
- 1:56     Theme C.
- 2:23     Theme A.
- 2:31     Theme C.
- 2:46     Theme B.
- 2:53     Theme C.
- 3:08     Thingfish's epilogue.
- 3:39     Theme B.
- 3:55     Theme C.
- 4:02     Theme B.
- 4:18     End.