817 Frank Zappa - Chunga's Revenge (1970)

Mostly Studio Album - Mixed Rock

About the Act:

It’s hard to know what to say about Frank Zappa. There has been a lot written about him and it would be easy to parrot a lot of that. If you want to dig into his history, there’s plenty to go at.

He was prolific. Between 1966 and his death in 1993 he released 62 albums. Since then, 50 more albums have been released. Oh, he was American, I guess that’s relevant. He had a band in the early days, The Mothers of Invention. Soma albums are credited to "The Mothers of Invention" some to "Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention" and after the band was disbanded, they were just credited to him.

He is musically hard to describe, some of his output could be classified as Prog, some as Jazz-Rock, some as Avant-Garde Classical, and often it owes more to German Cabaret than anything. It can be complex, and he was an amazing guitarist, who surrounded himself with amazing musicians. He apparently got frustrated with orchestras for hire because they couldn’t play what he wanted them to. Later in life he was starting to embrace cutting-edge synths and sequencing.

So sometimes, the music is front and centre, but often it is the backdrop to his songs. Subject matter: social satire, often disguised as songs about banal things, but then he seems to take just as seriously songs that truly are about banal things. It would not be safe to put one of his albums on at work, or in front of the kids, if you didn’t already know the content, as it is often very adult. And that includes the spoken stuff on live albums. Be prepared for explicit sexual content, political commentary and anti-religious sentiment, all of which is mixed up with a peculiar absurdist humour.

He has a cult following. Presumably some people have bought all 100+ albums. I have listened to a good number of them and am still undecided about him. 

About the Album:

This was Frank's third solo album, (i.e. since The Mothers of Invention disbanded). Tracks seem to have been collected from a variety of sessions including a live track.

My History with this Album:

I acquired a large collection of Frank Zappa albums a while back, all at the same time, and as a consequence, although I've listened to some of them, they all blur into one. I don't particularly remember this one.

Review:

I'm going to do something a little different for this album, because it is so diverse, I am going to do mini-reviews of each track. That's 10. Don't say you don't get your money's worth.

Transylvania Boogie is an instrumental jam, pretty much on one chord. It's ragged, as you would expect a random jam to be. It's mostly based on one chord and features drum, bass, organ and Frank on Guitar. It's pretty indulgent - they are obvously competent musicians, but these days you would expect more polish even to something like this. It doesn't really have a direction or a point, unless you particularly want to hear Frank Zappa noodling on a guitar. 6/10

Road Ladies is a song about groupies, which starts with a Gospel-style introduction. Frank Zappa has a habit of doing songs which are some kind of parody/comedy, and this is signalled mostly by either taking some element of the music and pushing it into the realm of caricature, or by using voices/delivery which are obviously sardonic, (sometimes singing very low or very high) or more likely, both. If there is a defining feature of Frank Zappa, it is that he combines this overly signalled comic delivery with some excellent musicianship. This song does that with the gospel intro and then settles into an R&B 12-bar blues. The song is about how being on the road is good because there are groupies, musically it is good and overall I enjoy it. 7/10

Twenty Small Cigars is an instrumental which is probably best described as Jazz, partly because it uses drums with brushes and a double bass. It also features another common theme of Frank Zappa's in that the "tune" (for want of a better word) is played on two instruments at once, I think guitar and harpsichord. He more often does this with a xylophone. It gives the impression of it being planned, and maybe it is, but as on this recording he is (probably) playing both lines, it culd have been improvised the first time. The harmonic content is curious, the chor sequence seeming almost random, and the time signature is quite fluid too. Well done, but feels more intellectual, and so appeals differently to most rock. Well it's not rock. Actually it's quite similar to the "classical" stuff Frank has done. 6.5/10

The Nancy and Mary Music is a long track taken from a live performance by the Mothers of Invention which starts with discordant chaos, then a drum solo, then into a kind of jazz-rock improvisation. It changes feel several times, it goes into another drum solo, and involves vocals that are kind of scatting, maybe almost yodelling at points. It is heavy on the live feel and is full of energy. There's a lot of stuff going on, and it sounds like it would have been a lot of fun to listen to live. It is probably my favourite track on the album. 7.8/10

Tell Me You Love Me is a rocky song that almost sounds like a normal rock band, except that there is still a little of the parody to it. It's almost glam rock. It does have a tendency to have odd-length bars interspersed in the general rock shenanigans. It actually has quite a lot of repetition. Again it has a frantic energy to it that feels quite live. I guess because of the complexity it could be deemed to be prog rock. 7/10

Would You Go All The Way is a doo-wop/soul song where the vocals are pushed into parody. It's about a character from the USO (a kind of support service for the armed services in the USA). It's ragged at the edges, loose in delivery and kind of frantic and pushes the comic effect by using a trombone.  6.5/10

Chunga's Revenge is an instrumental with short rocky sections and then improvised noodling on a wah-wah effected guitar. It's kind of slow rock/jazz I guess. It's undisciplined but skilled. 6.2/10

The Clap is a percussion instrumental performed entirely by Frank, and so presumably multi-tracked. It has some interesting sounds but the bits of rhythm hardly interplay at all. 6/10

Rudy Wants To Buy Yez A Drink is a song about a Musicians Union Rep. The style is mixed, deliberately, but kind of almost 50s greaser. The comic effect is pushed to the extreme here with innuendo, trombone and other wavering instruments, and over-done elements all over the place. I guess it's OK but it's this side of Frank Zappa that I am less drawn to. 5.8/10

Finally, Sharleena, is kind of like a 70s soul song, a bit like that one where the individual singers tell you their astrological signs (Float On by The Floaters). The parody elements are most subtle here, and given how silly some songs in the genre got, it hardly feels like parody at all. Again, not so impressed by this track. 6.2/10

And that's it. As an album it's either an interesting collection of stuff from a genius, or it's a mess. It mildly holds together. Quite a few of the tracks fade out in weird places, or jump straight from one to the next. To be honest it feels rushed together with a lack of organisation. It doesn't even feel like it starts or finishes right.

Anyway, the average score is 6.5/10 and I guess I feel that that is quite fair.

6.5/10

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/5s6JIqQl2AjuKK7kGUu7xV

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA2-nXsHvm3LkVgZcz8QWuIa51sfJqTHn

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunga%27s_Revenge