GTO's
Permanent Damage

This time, friends, I will talk little about music, but about what surrounds or is behind it. History, news, or nothing. I venture on this occasion to outline some general concepts that are seemingly unrelated or distant from each other, aware that with this, I risk potential misunderstandings; however, some might also find them interesting. But this is a gamble, and it amuses me.

Music, as art, has in its innermost nature the necessity to be reproduced for its temporal diffusion; when the "original" event is absent, the surrogate replay becomes vital. As the "good" Walter Benjamin said in his masterful "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," it loses its "aura" when the object, its uniqueness, is lacking and reappears in the mirrored reflections of its replicas. We say that "the aura" is absent and present at the same time, explained in the medium that contains it. The metonymic factor becomes as fundamental as the metaphorical one; the container and the content contribute to renewing the "consumption," its fruition. How do we attribute value to Marcel Duchamp's "urinal" without the Metropolitan Museum that contains it? And how do we do without Piero Manzoni's "Artist's Shit" without its sealed can that defines it? And what about the "4'33" of silence for any instrument" by John Cage, without the environment that hosts and counts it? The acoustic document of a musical absence is music, indeed!

And what about "Freak Out!" without the matrix for the first vinyl that brought it here today, also in the form of MP3? If by art (or music), we only mean the effect of the "final act," aligned and accepted by our cultural apparatus, which subjectively determines its aesthetic quality (what is commonly defined as "the beautiful"), as an inescapable principle, then don't ask me if GTO's "Permanent Damage" from 1969, produced (and not only) by Frank Zappa, is art or music or merely a document, or if it has its intrinsic aesthetic value. The "value" in this case, I tell you right away, is given by its transfer onto a "signed" medium; performative acts, silly songs, and bland tunes, chosen and grouped by a genius like Zappa who guarantees its legitimacy. The "sound matter" joins the "historical matter," to the sociological phenomenon. Besides, the luminous sign of "if the form disappears, its root is eternal" by Mario Merz at the gardens of the Guggenheim Museum in Venice, establishes that the exteriority of the concept (root) survives the disintegration of the "thing" (sounds, music) in continuous invo/evolution; in "Permanent Damage" we are facing a fading act, which Zappa had started and thought of long before with "Freak Out!", reaching a tautological self-referential scenicity. Who were the GTO's from Chicago? "Girls Together Outrageously", creative "groupies" led by Pamela Des Barres, practically five ladies, in this case "in costume," who worked to create this unique socio-iconoclastic experiment, to fulfill the conceptual needs of the "genius from Baltimore."

Among others, we find Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart, and the "Mothers of Invention": Ian Anderwood, Don Preston, Roy Estrada, in the line-up. Some of you also know that the "groupies" (generous girls), a kind of travel psycho-geishas, followed rock stars at their various concerts, with the sole purpose of satisfying every need of theirs. Of this "glorious" group, also capable of carrying out "epic" feats, we cannot fail to mention the legendary Cynthia Plaster Caster, creator of the most astonishing porn-poetic happening ever conducted, holder of the most important and mysterious relic in the history of rock, the "Sacred Phallus", none other than the plaster cast of Jimi Hendrix's erect penis, constructed by her (currently the only example). The happening consisted of inducing the "Divine" to undergo (so to speak) a powerful fellatio by a specialized colleague, with the consequent spreading of the negative mass on the organ (it's a shame it wasn't filmed). The prestigious "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" has asked her to place the "precious artifact" in an exclusively appointed protected section; it would become a true "work of art" if this happened. And here we wish Cynthia Plaster Caster (quoting the "good" Walter Benjamin again) to have the "phallus of God" replicated in silicone, to be marketed for the joy of the many fans spread worldwide. Then the analogical identity can be verified when the dimensions (certainly a "gigantic beast" in the collective imagination), the morphology, and the vein pattern, attest to its relevance to the "Divine" only in comparison with the "first print," if, as promised, it will be displayed. Imagine that the work of art in question, in another context would become a mere "pleasure tool," what a wonder! While returning to albums like "Permanent Damage," where banality rises to an artistic object, intended as a historical document of a race on the verge of extinction, it falls into the category of works where the signifier/signified binomial is indispensable, indeed fundamental.

What would have remained of the ridiculous verbal annotations and the flimsy musical frames, without the authoritative seal of Frank Zappa and "Straight Records"? Nothing. But documents like this undoubtedly belong to the rock music world, serve as an appendix to our knowledge of the historical phenomenon. Today the "groupie race" (money and marriage procurers) is still present, but much more bourgeois and less organized than it once was. On the horizon, there is no Zappa or Hendrix, capable of producing timeless dreams and cohorts of naive girls. I recommend the original vinyl to all connoisseurs and collectors of rarities and those studying the rock phenomenon in all its facets, not dismissing the apparent banality on impulse; for all others, YouTube is sufficient. Excuse the inevitable extension of the review, have patience.