Page 16 - the NOISE October 2015

zappa plays zappa and chats with the noise, too!
interview by mike williams
in the realm of avant-garde, ultra-progressive music, the name “Zappa” should stand forever. Frank Zappa was so far ahead of his time that he might have actually faded into obscurity had it not been for the hard work and dedication of his son, Dweezil Zappa. Realizing the raw creativity of his father’s work, he set out on a years long quest to get this music back into the ears of today, taking every necessary pain to recreate the songs, shows, and tones exactly as they sounded decades earlier. More than justifiably, Zappa Plays Zappa has been critically acclaimed wherever and whenever they play. Catch Dweezil and his ensemble at the Orpheum Theater on October 3 at 7PM and, for the musically inclined, Dweezil himself will be offering a master’s class at 2:30PM for students of all levels.
You were once fired from MTV for ripping on their terrible taste in videos. They’ve since pretty much quit playing music altogether, how does it feel to be right?
When I was a VJ, I never wanted it to be my career. I did about 12 weeks over a period of two years there and was never an official, all-the-time VJ. It wasn’t even something that I was that excited about doing because, at that time, the process of it was similar to radio. You’d do these “Top of the Hour” announcements then go into heavy rotation music videos. A video might be on three times in an hour! It was really bad stuff, like Lionel Ritchie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling.” There was just no way that I could say something nice ... What they really didn’t like was the comments I was making about the advertising. You had to do bumpers like, “This coming to you this hour, brought to you by 7UP! It feels so good coming down!” What does that even mean? I’d make jokes about videos and even had my dad come on one time, I can’t remember the name of it, but there’s people waiting to be hung at the gallows and people getting executed, and he said something like, “Kids don’t try this at home. Unless you’re Republican, then do it every day!” Ha! So, we got to do some stuff on there that would never be allowed now. It was subversive and I was, in a sense, the precursor to Beavis and Butthead by making comments about videos while they were on air. I remember this Lou Reed video, a live one, with this awful guitar solo. In the afterward, as a guitar player, I demanded an apology. Ha! They didn’t really like that, they just wanted everyone to wear a sweater and be happy all the time.
When can we see What The Hell Was I Thinking completed and who else are you looking to get recorded?
I got a start on that over 20 years ago and so much about that project has changed over time. Part of what has happened is that when I started, I incorporated a little bit of my dad’s music in it. Even then, there was this feeling that
guitar players my age and younger weren’t that familiar with some of his music. Years later, having done Zappa Plays Zappa, it took that aspect to whole other level, so, with What The Hell Was I Thinking, those aspects aren’t going to be in it. There’s no reason for them to be. The best way to look at that project is that it’s an audio-movie with scenes changing from moment to moment with guitar players that come in as special guest stars. As far as other guitarists that I’d like to get, there’s still Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Tony Iommi, and a couple others, but, right now, I’ve got about 35-40 other people already on it, including Eddie Van Halen, Brian May, Eric Johnson, Steve Vai, and Joe Walsh. Just a ton of well-known, big name players and bunch of great players that may be a little lesser known.
Zappa Plays Zappa has been acclaimed for its attention to tonal authenticity. What’s your tour gear looking like?
Basically, every tour I have to switch my gear around based on the songs that we play. Now, I’ve got a modular system, but, over the years, it has been a lot of different things. When I was using all analog stuff, amplifiers, speaker cabinets, effects; I used some of the same stuff my dad used, but not anymore. It’s thirty and forty years old, unreliable on the road, and it breaks. Then, you don’t have a show. I have a different kind of set-up, but it allows me to recreate all the same stuff from the different decades.
Sticking with gear questions, your first guitar got badly burned. What happened?
tour has me doing a guitar class before sound-check. It’s about a 90-minute immersion of some of the elements of the camp. I’ve also been getting into more online instruction, there’s some courses that I’ve designed on there, too. When I do bring the camp back, there will be a bit more to it, but I want to expand on what that could be with a tour of its own. Ideally, it’s targeting people that are guitar enthusiasts that want to learn different ways to visualize the guitar and other ways to break the creative stagnation that happens.
Beyond music, any hobbies in your downtime?
Before I had kids, it used to be golf. I got down to about a two handicap, but, my kids are seven and nine, so it’s been about eight years since I last played. I’d like to get back into it at some point ... To me, golf is the most like life, other than life. You have a ball that you have to send in a direction that you’re responsible for. So, basically, whatever you do, it’s your fault. Ha! It’s graded problem solving. When you’re playing golf, you’re only focused on that, and that’s the same as music in a lot of ways. But, these days, I just hang out with my wife and kids.
This set is going to be an homage to the iconic One Size Fits All album. What prompted your decision to do this specific one?
We’ve done a few tours where we’ve played a whole one and it’s really solidified people’s idea about what the show is before they see it because my dad’s music is so varied. This is a fan-favorite album that happens to be 40 years old this year. What I always try to tell people is that this is music that is not only current, modern, and ahead of anything that’s being made these days, but it’s also from the future. It’s not nostalgia music. Even though it’s forty years old, you will not hear anything like it. It’s still super-modern and fresh. That’s what’s amazing about the music that’s in my dad’s catalog.
What we can expect next?
There’s different possibilities. Next year is the 50th anniversary of dad’s first record Freakout, but he physically used the studio as an instrument, so there’s just so much manipulation and different things that make it, so you physically couldn’t exactly recreate the sound. So, I don’t know if that could be an album that could be played in its entirety like itself ... But we might do a celebration of early Mother’s stuff or, at least, there’s another 40-year anniversary album.
| Mike Williams strives to be ultra-regressive. He frequently succeeds. mike@thenoise.us
That guitar got worse than just burned.
Master, which was a cheap guitar in the day, but it was a shorter fret guitar, kind of what they have today as Duo- Sonic. When I got started playing, Eddie Van Halen was a top guitar player at the time, Randy Rhoads, too, and Eddie Van Halen was known for doing all kind things to his guitars. Like cutting them and stuff ... So that became the experimental guitar. It burned, sawed up, and turned into things that it was never intended to be. Different pick-ups, just all kinds of things, and then it wound up with a “Larry Flynt For President” sticker on it before it went to a Hard Rock somewhere.
We’ve interviewed several musicians who are actively involved in either charities or camps, like Steep Canyon Rangers and their partnership with Oskar Blues Brewery, which donates instruments to students. As public schools have continued making massive cuts in the music and art departments, where do you see Dweezilla in all of this?
Dweezilla is an immersive guitar camp that started as a three day event, but I haven’t been able to do it the last couple years since my touring schedule has been too busy. So, it’s been on hiatus. But, in the interim, every show on
It was a Music
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