Frank Zappa
Them Or Us (The Book)

As well as being a brilliant musician and composer, Frank Vincent Zappa (1940-1993) was a multifaceted and innovative artist. As a teenager, he cultivated an interest in abstract painting, even winning some local competitions, and his film experiments are well-known (the most famous of which is 200 Motels, the first film in cinematic history to be shot entirely on videotape, foreshadowing modern music video production techniques). It was only a matter of time, therefore, before our man made his entrance into the book market: however, not as one might expect with an autobiography (that would come a few years later) but with a true work of fiction. But let's proceed in order.

The year of our Lord 1984 shaped up to be one of the most prolific for the composer from Baltimore: Zappa embarked on what would be his last tour for some years and meanwhile flooded the music market with a series of releases. In August, The Perfect Stranger, an album created with Pierre Boulez, was released, which truly cemented Uncle Frank's status as a "serious" composer. In October, the double album Them Or Us followed, which gives its name to the work reviewed here. We then arrive at November 21, the day when his most controversial and maligned works hit store shelves: Francesco Zappa, which collects some pieces by an obscure Milanese composer of the 18th century appropriately re-executed on the synclavier, and the triple album Thing-Fish, a Broadway musical written over Christmas '83-'84 during which Our Man put in great effort, including television appearances to promote it and a dedicated photo shoot in "Hustler" (!), though never managing to bring it to the stage.

And it is in this context that Them Or Us (The Book) appears, self-published. Originally titled Christmas in New Jersey, written in his spare time and printed with a dot matrix printer using a delightfully '80s font, the volume presents itself as a 350-page film script (complete with cuts, zooms, camera angle changes, and crossfades) which summarizes all (or almost all) of the Baffled One's mythology. From the adventures of Billy the Mountain and Greggery Peccary to the tragicomic saga of Joe, the protagonist of Joe's Garage, to the stories of Harry and Rhonda and the Mammy Nuns of Thing-Fish, the book is the ultimate expression of the "Conceptual Continuity" concept so dear to the Sicilian-American composer. But the work is much more than a reinterpretation of Zappa's album lyrics: alongside them, we find a series of original stories, all set within a larger framework. The thread connecting one episode to another is often tenuous, and it's pointless to rack one's brains looking for connections and logical sense in the various events. Zappa develops a situation, fleshes it out as long as he pleases, then abruptly abandons it with a sudden scene change, perhaps to return to it later. All the reader needs to do is let themselves be entertained and be guided through the mad world of Frank Zappa, among ghosts, Sicilian elephant-men, porn-addicted housewives, boxing matches between Jesus (who in this book is gay) and the Devil, exorcisms, giant spiders, giant jellyfish, giant zombie dogs, Gaddafi in a BDSM outfit showering the aforementioned giant zombie dog with golden rain, and more, all spiced with a fierce satire of American society and the music industry in particular. Detailing the book's content is impossible and would mean distorting Uncle Frank's original intent, but those already familiar with his filmic musings, like the aforementioned 200 Motels, will have a reasonably clear idea. It is a book written to amuse and entertain, with no pretension of being a literary masterpiece, intended for the hardcore fans of the Baltimore Genius.

Essential for any self-respecting Zappa fan.