More Music

After Woodstock, I returned home to otherwise idyllic Arlington, otherwise meaning besides my woman problems. I had just been dumped for a ninth-grader by my first steady girlfriend. It wasn't so much that we had anything in common, it was just the overwhelming pressure of it all for my tender young teenage emotions to handle. I'd be returning to ninth grade soon enough, and I'd have to deal with seeing HER again. The humiliation I felt was horrible. But meanwhile I had my music.

Abbey Road came out in September of that year, and as always a new Beatles album proved to be an inspiration on Fox Street. That's where my cousin and I lived. I grew up there and he had lived there since I was around 10 or so. He was my original Beatles influence for when my dad would take us over to my Uncle Ralph's and Aunt Suzanne's when they lived in DC I would always hang out with my cousin John. He was older by three years and played guitar and always had the latest Beatles album. So when he moved in across us on Fox Street it was like being able to visit Santa Claus whenever I wanted.

John's favorite Beatle was John, while mine was Paul, and a psychiatrist would probably be able to tell you reams about us armed with that fact, but perhaps it was just because I was the mild-mannered boy while John was the wild one. When Abbey Road came out we would all listen to it in my parents living room as I had the best stereo thanks to my dad. All meaning me, John and his girlfriend Chris. It was safe to say that on any given day that previous summer we would all be hanging out listening to something or another.

The Laurel Pop Festival exposed me to Frank Zappa's music as played by The Mothers of Invention. After hearing them that year, I searched the Hecht Company's record bins for their music but only found one album. It was called "Uncle Meat," and it was a combination of music some quite strange and other rather intriguing. All in all, it took me a while for it to grow on me, but in the meantime I acquired some of his earlier stuff such as "Freak Out," "Absolutely Free" and "We're Only in It for the Money." I could be contradicted on this, but I think it's safe to say one of the greatest songs of his earlier stuff was his seven at half minute opus "Brown Shoes Don't Make It."

It wasn't so much a song as it was a compilation or suite if you will of numerous very short little pieces. I remember Chris was fond of quoting the line, "... only 13 and she knows how to nasty." It was full of sexual innuendos as well as more blatant sexual commentary, but it had a deeper meaning besides being fun to listen to as a young teenager, though I didn't know it at the time. It cut at the fabric of American suburban life and city politics with satirical lyrics that run a gamut of social situations. You got to hear it.

After the school year started, my best friend David Keninitz and I followed Frank Zappa's music closely, and we were quite taken with his first true jazz album "Hot Rats." It features Captain Beefheart (longtime friend of Zappa) on vocals and Jean-Luc Ponty on electric violin on the track "Willie the Pimp." There's some nice saxophone -- if you like the squeaky kind -- on "The Gumbo Variations," but his most well-known piece is the opening track "Peaches En Regalia." To put you in the timeframe, I had it on eight track.

One of the great things about Frank Zappa's music is that it is very progressive especially in the case of time signatures. I learned more about figuring out the particular beat of a song by listening to his stuff than from any other composer. He uses components of three-time and two-time together to form say for instance what Paul Desmond did with "Take Five" as performed by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. That particular piece is in 5/4 time. Zappa does that and more with such time signatures as 7/4 and 11/4 as well as using conventional time signatures.

More than any other "rock" composer, if you can call him that, Zappa writes (or should say wrote) in 3/4 or triple time, my favorite time signature. There's something about three-time that makes a song sound unique, a cut above your mundane 2/4 (the majority of rock songs are written in this). For those of you who are not musically inclined, three-time is what a waltz is in. Two-time and four-time are what everything else is with some exceptions. The Beatles were very clever when it came to writing songs with interesting time signatures. In fact, "All You Need Is Love" is deceptively complex in that it is written in 7/4 time.

Well boys and girls it's time for me to get some sleep. But first I'm going to try to finish watching the movie I fell asleep on last night: Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman in "Wanted." I knew I was going to like this movie when it warned of "Strong bloody violence throughout..."

PS I just happened to glance over one of my previous posts, 17,500 mph, and I saw in horror a terrible typo. If you say it instead of typing it is it still a typo? Anyway, such is the dangers of voice-recognition: if the mic is on when you think it's off and you say something and don't carefully proofread your material, you might end up with something as crazy as "mad Money's Jim Cramer" in your text. A word to the wise...