Frank Zappa
Chunga's Revenge

All Frank Zappa's albums from '66 to '75 aren't worth less than 8/10, and therefore the good "Chunga's Revenge" is no exception.

Let's say that what I prefer about Frank is that even his so-called "minor" albums contain at least a handful of brilliant ideas, there's no escaping that. Well, this album contains at least three times that. Scattered gems here and there, ready to delight anyone who comes across them. Of course, it's futile to explain what kind of music we're dealing with: with Zappa, this is already known. However, in some cases, it is possible to notice a greater presence of certain sounds rather than others.

In the case of "Chunga's Revenge," I would say that the most evident aroma is that of blues, both in typical tracks like "Road Ladies" and in pieces that are seemingly more musically distant. But I hasten to say that it's not as simple as it seems. Well then.....

The album opens with the stratospheric "Transylvania Boogie", lively and rhythmic, with at least three different "voices" of guitar taking turns with truly imperious energy. Better than this...... But particularly, it's the quartet of initial songs that already makes this album magnificent. The already mentioned "Road Ladies" is a fine and entertaining pure blues, taken from a live performance, with a beautiful Zappian solo thrown in somewhere to cheer us up. But masterpieces like "Twenty Small Cigars" or "The Nancy & Mary Music" are hard to explain. The former is a track in which the jazz and classical hints, never absent in Zappa (even imperceptibly), return, and it's very short (2:17). But it's a small gem of instrumental melody, with Zappa's sweet guitar walking hand in hand with Duke and Underwood's keyboards and winds. This piece had already been arranged for Ponty's "King Kong," and the otherworldly atmospheres, somewhat noir and somewhat playful that it creates are truly indescribable.

Imagine Frank there scribbling something on a music staff with a box next to him containing about twenty small brown cigars (toscanelli? The origins are also Italian, so why not?.....) ready for use. Or some already smoked cigarettes placed in an ashtray, with a few wisps of smoke still lingering in the room..... A little Zappian must, in short. "The Nancy & Mary Music" is another snippet of live, and the nearly animalistic energy it releases makes it another album peak. Frank's guitar alternates with Duke's electric keyboards and the winds; everything is set over an excellent and colorful rhythmic carpet named Dunbar/Guerin. And the finale is soaked with energy, with the great voices of Kaylan and Wolman (ex-Turtles at that time "welcomed" by Zappa) almost going crazy, voices reminiscent of KingKong and the Mothers, for those who understand me. It's not easy to explain, you just have to listen to it......

But the two vocalists are also present in more pleasant "pop" and doo-wop tracks, never banal and with included trumpets, like "Rudy Wants to Buy Yetz a. . . ." and "Would you go all the way?", where the small nuances typical of the mustache with a fly make the difference. In short, everything is at high levels. It’s all so splendidly fresh and full of inventiveness, with even very different tracks fitting together remarkably simply and perfectly. So here, gentlemen, music is really at home. To further cite the splendid title track: a kind of free-rock/jazz piece that opens lightly (reminding me a bit of the sped-up intro of "So what" by Miles Davis, what do you think?:D) but with guitar jabs always peeking out. And then the artist's touch: a solo starts, which could have easily been winds or guitar. It's winds, but Zappa's head is constantly spinning around, searching for the "new" and the "original." So why not push the trusty Underwood to interpret a beautiful sax solo with a wah-wah pedal? Well, let's push him. And let's write a new line in Frank's fantastic notebook. You see, it's also these small details that make an artist worthy of being called "master." This happens when music sneaks in in an unexpected way. Really well done, master. And well done also the follow-up to this track, the brief "The Clap" (1:23), which attaches to the previous one, introducing a beautiful overlap of different colored soul percussions; all very pleasant and unique..... Finally, noteworthy is the fun rock of "Tell me you love me", and the warm and beautiful closing piece "Sharleena", a sort of atmospherically impeccable blues musically and oriented as lyrics towards that crazy romanticism already present in Zappa in the past.

What else to say? When I arrived at Debaser, reviews on Zappa were a couple, now we have exceeded twenty. This perhaps indicates the growing interest towards this unmissable artist, or that the group of true Zappa fans on the site (much less small than at the beginning) is always there at the window for a chat about the mustache. Whatever the answer, the certain thing is that this artist has entered the lives of many people and perhaps changed them inside, or made them better understand themselves. And this can be demonstrated by both this unpretentious review and all his other reviews on DeBaser, as well as the music of dozens of artists, from Residents to Elii.

And don't be surprised if Zappa has been dedicated things most disparate and especially unusual and strange, he would probably have preferred it that way. Yeah yeah yeah.......

2 asteroids: 3834 Zappafrank and 16745 Zappa

A jellyfish: Phialella Zappai

A fish: Zappa Confluentus

A spider: Pachygnatha Zappa (with an abdominal marking reminiscent of his mustache)

An Intel motherboard

A street in Agropoli (SA)

'Na canzuncella: "Smoke on the water"

And even a gene: ZapA, from the microbe Proteus Mirabilis. A biologist friend of mine told me that 'this microbe is really a hoot!.....