Frank Zappa
Orchestral Favorites

THE REVIEW

I don't know, maybe it's because of the juicy pages of Riccardo or that dragon dancing in a dream to one of your dilapidated symphonies, but the mere "hot rats," "Uncle Meat," and "Grand Wazoo" are no longer enough.

Oh yes, dearest Uncle Frank, it's time to catch up.

I owe it to the absolute out-of-place look on your face. To Calliope's nasal retention, to the young dancing pumpkin.

To the cauldron where you put everything: scraps, nonsense, laughter, caustic soda.

To the concert I saw at twenty of which I remember nothing.

To the four or five ecstasies you gave me. To the cheerful madness.

To the sounds coming from Balthazar's machine or from the magic wand of Professor Scanagatti from Totò a colori.

To how you mixed high and low, mindful, I imagine, of the well-known and unsolvable dilemma of Aloysius Grunt that goes: "if a little mouse sticks its tongue out at an elephant, is a small thing bigger or is a big thing smaller?"

In the meantime, to show you I'm serious, I'll tell you that I bought your biography. But then, upon reaching page twenty-four, I stopped reading. Why? Because it's page twenty-four, where Barry Miles tells of your passion for explosives, that one gets to the essential.

That, apparently, you used to blow up ping pong balls by filling them with gunpowder. Or created holes in the garage floor playing little chemist. And, even if searching a thousand years, one couldn't find a more perfect analogy with your music.

And anyway "lumpy sauces," "ravenous weasels" and "charred sandwiches" to me!!! I am ready. "Freak out" "Absolutely free," here I am!!! I'm thirsty for masterpieces.

Only then, with a very zappian fancy, the wheel of fortune brings out this "Orchestral Favorites." Or rather, it's just that the review is missing on Debasio.

In short, an almost overlooked album.

Never mind, we settle. All the more since the symphony band master, that is, the one who doesn't need words to offer us music with a grin, is, perhaps, my favorite Frank. After all, the great sages laugh without explaining anything to us.

Where did I read (perhaps in an old Adelphi?) about those long-haired, moustached, and extremely thin elders who answered every philosophical/existential question with the most cheerful of laughs? Were you one of them, Frank?

Anyway, the orchestra, since the dawn of "Freak Out" has always been a pet subject of yours, and I would have liked to be there when, while recording it, you showed up in tails to the session musicians only to pull out the magic wand, "come on, don't tell me this freak has really composed music!!!"

But now I’ll give you a little bit of traco traco...three pieces out of five...because I still need to digest the other two...

(One)

"Strictly Genteel" is a wonderful fanfare of uncertainty. Everything is caught in a sort of sleepy grandiosity, in a poison that contains its own antidote. And it almost seems as if you can see that giant with an unsteady gait always on the verge of stumbling. Among little tunes, volatile sounds, and horrid orchestral attacks, there is a kind of amused suspense, as if to say "when, when will it all go to pieces?" But the giant, always about to fall, never falls, and Scanagatti and Von Karajan are still there arm-wrestling.

(Two)

"Duke of Prunes" is pure light gas and, again, the dragon dances and smiles. If someone could bottle its wonderful attack, it might be the elixir of life. The hypothesis of the jujube broth is also valid, albeit absolutely in an anti-sentimental key. That type of sound with just zero point one of strangeness, between the little tune and the cheerful madness. The problem is that one shouldn't write about it, one should whistle it. Do it.

(Three)

In "Bogus Pomp" everything really happens and I almost imagine you, Uncle Frank, while with the spade you feed the horrendous orchestra machine. I recommend listening to thirty seconds a day, no more. And still, especially from minute six onwards, there’s a fabulous struggle between serious avant-gardism and I don’t know what. Still Scanagatti vs Von Karajan? Yes...

Well, dear Frank, let's stop here. Also because you certainly weren't kind to those who rambled about your music. But it's your fault. You're the one who ignites the imagination. And, to justify myself, I'll tell you that I'm more on Jodorowsky's side than Wittgenstein's. "That which cannot be spoken of must be spoken of." Amen...