I’m getting ready to go to town, make the Wal-Mart run and that kind of jive. My beard trimmer went south on me. That’s the kind of thing that’ll piss you off. I don’t really want to spend an hour headed up and down the road to spend $40.00 or, something like that, on something as un-fun as a beard trimmer. But, what are you going to do? I guess I could just bag it and go for the Billy Gibbons look.
I was practicing guitar this morning, actually working on this song that I will be recording on Saturday. It’s one of those deals where you go over it again and again and then, when you get in studio, it’s a different groove and none of the clever things you worked up apply. And, really that’s how it’s supposed to be.
So, as I’m playing, I figure I’ll rip some music to the hard drive because I’ve got a few CDs laying around that I’ve been meaning to listen to and, for some reason the Windows Media Player is defaulted to rip any new disc and, I haven’t taken the time to figure out how to change it. One disc I have on my desk that I haven’t listened to in forever is “Tinseltown Rebellion” by Frank Zappa. I figure I’ll go ahead and rip that because I’ll listen to it at least a few times.
I got to the point where I had played every lick I knew and, I decided to listen to some of the Zappa while I check email and stuff. I did a search for “Tinseltown Rebellion Cover Art” because the cover is kind of a collage of different photos of people, kind of like “Sgt. Peppar” and I was wondering if anyone had ever done one of those deals where they identify everybody in the picture. Where they have a number on everybody’s face that corresponds with list of names, that sort of thing.
I couldn’t find anything like that so, I took the “Cover Art” off and did a “Tinseltown Rebellion” search to see if anybody had anything interesting to say about it. Not really much there either but, a couple of pages in to the search I found this site called The Thunes Effect. That’s kind of odd because Scott Thunes, who did play bass with Zappa for several years, isn’t on the record.
Anyway, I had to check this out because: 1. I always liked Scott Thunes’ playing and..2. Because I remembered hearing a long Zappa interview on the Larry King radio show, of all places, back in the 80s, where Zappa talked about how he was breaking up the band because they all came to him and said, “We don’t like the bass player” (meaning Thunes), like a bunch of junior high school kids. Zappa kept saying he wasn’t going to tour anymore, Larry was acting totally uninformed and baffled, as always and, callers kept asking Frank if he was going to come to Detroit or Portland on his next tour. It was hilarious.
So, I had to check out this site called The Thunes Effect. I don’t know what I thought it was going to be but, it isn’t what I thought it was going to be. There isn’t any personal info about the guy running the site other than his name, Steve. Now, what Steve is doing is transcribing all of Scott Thunes’ bass parts from his tenure with Zappa, which I believe was 1981-88. He’s doing full blown notated bass parts! I love stuff like this. That is a tremendous amount of work for a person to undertake. Why would somebody do that? Steve gives us a clue…
part of doing this is just because I like the look of sheet music, and you get more unusual occurrences per square inch in Zappa sheet music than any other rock musician.. I loved the Frank Zappa Guitar Book, because hardly anyone would ever be able to sight-read it, and it fitted in with the Zappa aesthetic (or ONE of the Zappa aesthetics), which was to give inconsequential minutae & trivia an EPIC and highly detailed treatment (Punky’s Whips (silly rock star), Montana (floss), The Radio Is Broken (a huge setup just for a ‘Your Anus’ joke), etc), and on the other hand to treat ’serious’ subjects with a dismissive flippancy… and I loved that a phrase of guitar playing that literally came out instantaneously over the course of 3 seconds or so, would produce 5-6 bars of polyrhythmic insanity that a person attempting to play would have to woodshed for a few hours, and probably have to spend a few years learning real music to understand properly the rhythmic stuff in there… all as a result of 2-3 seconds’ unconscious finger wiggling somewhere on a stage a few years ago…
anyway, so these transcriptions might not be any use or give insights to the creative processes behind the Thunes playing, but they’re not necessarily meant to…
Steve’s right they are fun to look at. I also had a copy of “The Frank Zappa Guitar Book” and, I actually did try to play some of that stuff but, I spent more time just looking at it. So, go take a look at The Thunes Effect, even if you aren’t a bass player. Just go to take a look see.
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Tags: Frank Zappa, Music, Scott Thunes, tinseltown rebellion
J wrote,
Ever see “Does Humor Belong in Music?”? If not, I gotta send you my copy. Scott takes this flying leap off the drum riser and lands briefly on his feet, then falls on his posterior. He never misses a beat!
Link | July 31st, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Pribek wrote,
No, I’ve never seen it, J. I need to check it out. Steve’s site had links to a couple of interviews with Thunes. He’s quite a character. He has a solid background in theory. Some interesting comments on the traditional, subservient role of the bass player in rock music.
Link | July 31st, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Pat Darnell and Friends wrote,
Yeah, I need a fishing break…
…is this part of the Jack Bald TNH Pub Party invitation?
Link | July 31st, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Pat Darnell and Friends wrote,
Marinell wants to know: Will that also include Thursday Girl’s Night out with these Guys?
Link | July 31st, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Pribek wrote,
I can’t see the singing fish guys lasting more than a few seconds with Marinell
Link | July 31st, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Sans Direction wrote,
It’s worse than that. At the end of the European tour, there was a big celebration, with a big cake with everyone’s name put in with icing. And one of the band members scraped off Thune’s name. That was the final straw, IIRC.
He was the musical director, I think, so it wasn’t just “hate on the bass player”.
Link | August 1st, 2008 at 3:15 am
Pribek wrote,
I wondered what the “cake incident” references were about. That’s funny. Here you have all these guys, presumably proficient musicians at the top of their games because they are playing this very evolved, technical music and, not only that, working for a composer that is good enough to recognize each one’s individual strengths and write music to feature those strengths and gives them room to express themselves freely and actually pays them. What do these guys do? Act like kids.
Link | August 1st, 2008 at 6:37 am