Frank Zappa
(arrangements Walter Boudreau)
The Black Page No 1
Zomby Woof
Frank Zappa (1940-1993)
Renowned guitarist and composer Frank Zappa was amongst the most influential, innovative, and controversial artists of the past twenty years. His music grew from a variety of musical sources, including rock, jazz, blues, and the classical repertoire. An admirer of Edgar Varèse, Igor Stravinsky, and Anton Webern, Zappa initiated many of his listeners to sounds generally associated with "serious," twentieth-century music such as dissonant harmony, complex rhythms, and novel instrumentation. He consistently treated these aspects of music with a sense of humour and shaped them through a predilection for the absurd. Zappa composed symphonic works that were performed and recorded by various orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Ensemble Inter-Contemporain (conducted by Pierre Boulez).
The Black Page (1976)
Version for saxophone quartet
"The Black Page," which first appeared on Zappa in New York (recorded live in 1976), took its name from a comment of a band member to the effect that his chart contained so many notes that the page was black.
The work is in fact two distinct pieces ("The Black Page" #1 and #2). Both are notoriously difficult to perform (though the second is somewhat less so), and #1 served on occasion as a test piece for Zappa's grueling auditions--he once instructed guitarist Steve Vai to memorize it and play it "as fast as he could," and on another occasion required the drummer Vinnie Colaiuta to sight read the daunting solo percussion prelude.
Andrew Deruchie
Zomby Woof (1984)
Version for saxophone quartet
Over-Nite Sensation, released in the fall of 1973, was one of the records that lifted Frank Zappa out of cult status. It was his first gold album, and while most of the songs retain the musician’s characteristic eccentrically satirical tone, they have a greater degree of popular appeal than most of Zappa’s previous work. Among the highlights of the album is “Zomby Woof.” The song is particularly complicated, and freely mixes the sounds of heavy metal, jazz, 1970s pop electronica, and horn parts that would not be out of place in a Chicago song. As Kelly Fisher Lowe has observed, the lyrics (“I might snatch you up screamin’ through the window all nekkid/An’ do it to you on the roof, don’t mess with the/ZOMBY WOOF”) reflect Zappa’s “obsession with cheesy fifties horror film references … neatly juxtaposing them with a story of morning-after regret.”
A Deruchie |
