Classic album: Frank Zappa – Joe’s Garage

Frank Zappa is one of those artists whose output is so large as to be almost completely daunting. In my case I was lucky to have been handed Joe’s Garage by a friend and told to listen to it (and not just because I have the same name as the titular protagonist). Having now listened to a great deal more of his music, I now know that the album, as well as being an excellent listen in its own right, is a pretty good Zappa album to start with. Although no album can be truly representative, Joe’s Garage does showcase many of the things that made Frank Zappa such an inspiring and interesting character and musician.

Always extremely prolific, the two volumes of Joe’s Garage (Act I and double album Acts II & III) were released only two months apart in 1979, the year Zappa’s contract with Warner Brothers expired, and thus he was free to release as much music as he liked (Joe’s Garage accounted for three out of the seven LPs worth of material released in that year alone).

The album takes the form of a rock opera, dealing with a world in which music has been made illegal. The Central Scrutinizer, the mysterious law enforcer of this world and the album’s narrator (whose job it is to enforce all laws that haven’t been passed yet), presents a cautionary tale concerning Joe, an aspiring musician whose tragic life seems to be a direct result of this law. This is the basic plot, but along the way many interesting and absurd characters and ideas are introduced, so much so that the album sort of ends up as a comedy musical version of a Philip K. Dick novel – and I mean that in the best possible way.

A serious problem one can have when writing about Zappa is that it’s easy to misrepresent him as a ridiculous sexist, who made a lot of silly sex-obsessed songs and, taken on a surface level, Joe’s Garage certainly seems to fit this interpretation. One may point to the run of ‘Catholic Girls’, ‘Crew Slut’ and ‘Fembot In A Wet T-Shirt’ as evidence of the misogyny and ‘Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?’ as an example of the scatology.

But a side of Zappa that’s not explored often enough for my liking is his wickedly scornful satirical side, and the deeply critical eye he cast over current events. I suppose the best example of this is seen in the liner notes. Here Zappa states that, although the idea of The Central Scrutinizer seems silly, there are many countries in the world where music is severely restricted or, in the case of Iran, completely illegal. One can also read the whole album as a commentary on how laws are passed, and what function they serve. Plus, on top of that, there’s a hilarious piss-take of Scientology (’A Token of My Extreme’), some reflections on human sexuality and a damning criticism of music writing, in the shape of ‘The Packard Goose’ (this coming from the man who likened it to “dancing about architecture” – sorry Frank). Even ‘Crew Slut’ seems to be a morality tale on the dangers of being a groupie, and how bands mistreat them.

So we’ve established it’s not all sex jokes and venereal disease. What of the music? Like all good rock operas Joe’s Garage works just as well as a collection of songs without the need for a detailed reading of the lyric sheet (which, incidentally, does provide some insight into the more intricate details of the plot). Musically, the album is a pretty intoxicating mix of funk, soft rock and soul that typifies Zappa’s more “song-based” output of the 1970s. If that sounds like a terrible mix, you’ve obviously not heard how meticulously crafted Zappa songs can be: the first CD flies past whilst barely putting a note wrong, keeping the intensity constant even during the slower numbers. If that also sounds musically safe then fear not: there are more than a few ridiculous time signatures and extensive use is made of a technique Zappa invented called Xenochrony, whereby an instrumental part from an existing song is added to a completely different song, to create a curious interplay between the two. In other words almost all of the guitar solos on Joe’s Garage are lifted from previous Zappa recordings and plonked in with no regard for key, tempo etc. It’s done well enough to not sound really obvious unless you listen for it, but it makes for an interesting, and musically adventurous, effect.

The second CD is not as instantly listenable as the first, but it does have some wonderful Xenochronic sections, where shifting, liquid guitar solos stretch on indefinitely, drawing the listener into a hypnotic state similar to the one Joe finds himself in by this stage in the story. It also contains ‘Watermelon In Easter Hay’, one the most poignant, beautiful guitar solos Zappa ever committed to tape. If nothing else, the album is worth it for this outstanding piece of playing that really showcases how great a guitarist the man really was. As one of the most interesting, eccentric and brilliant musicians of the 20th Century Frank Zappa really is one of those people one always means to get in to (I know I was). But don’t feel too daunted by his enormous output: give Joe’s Garage a listen, and then we’ll discuss where to go next…