Credit for this featured CD : Jerjo
Based on a CD received from the collection bequeathed to Progressive Ears by the late Chris Buckley (Winkersnuff)
Jerjo's comments:
“If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.”
I’ll give this much to Zappa, Burnt Weenie Sandwich isn’t boring. First, a caveat. I’m not a Zappa fan. There was too much pointless buffoonery, his lyrics off had a truly puerile sense of humor. and just stop with the goddamn doowop tributes. And of course, this album starts and ends with doowop.
There’s a lot of nonsense going on before Frank gets down to business. The wobbly doowop cover, two short nonsensical nods to Stravinsky, and “Overture to a Holiday in Berlin” that does nothing but waste the listener’s time. Ditto for “Aybe Sea”. This is exactly the crap that assaults me every time I attempt to listen to Frank, and it definitely keeps me away.
The remaining instrumental pieces are quite good. There’s some spectacular playing and the compositions are well thought out. Some themes make me feel like I’m listening to a Hanna Barbera cartoon but most of it works. This is stuff I can return to now and then. The album ends with more bad doowop.
This is probably going to be blasphemy for Zappa fans but that’s where I stand. I’ve tried a few times to “get into” Frank and he just doesn’t work for me. I first heard “Don’t Eat Yellow Snow” when I was fifteen and my first thought was that this song would have really worked for me when I was nine. I’ve tried several times as an adult to try and capture what I’ve been supposedly missing and all I have determined is that it’s not just for me. But it’s all subjective, isn’t it?
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