36 years ago, musician releases "stupid little story about the gov't doing away with music"
By Michael Gallucci September 17, 2015 12:15 PM
Frank Zappa once referred to Joe’s Garage as a ”stupid little story about how the government is going to do away with music.” In other words, it was another Frank Zappa album.
By the time Zappa released Joe’s Garage, Act I in September 1979 (Acts II and III would follow as a double-record set in November), he had plenty of ”stupid little [stories] about how the government is going to do away with music” in his catalog. This epic rock opera was merely longer than most of them and updated for the late ’70s.
Narrated by a character named Central Scrutinizer, the albums tell the story of Joe, who forms a garage-rock band and gets on with the muddle of a pretty typical life: girlfriend problems, religious entanglement, political persecution, imprisonment and, finally, a breakdown. The way Zappa saw it, that was life in the ’70s — par for the course.
Along the way, Zappa hit his usual targets — government, religion, morality police, thought patrol — with his usual arsenal of weapons, including a wide-ranging musical landscape that takes in everything from avant-jazz to doo-wop to classic rock. Like most of Zappa’s work, it’s not an easy listen, but it is an entertaining one if you know what to look out for.
http://ultimateclassicrock.com/frank-zappa-joes-garage-act-i/
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The solo is poignant on its own merits, but the three additional elements that made it such a sledgehammer back in the day are:
1). It's an imaginary solo...they've already taken away Joe's means of playing real music,
2). It's his last solo...he won't even be imagining solos after this, and
3). The Central Scrutinizer's obvious glee that Joe has been beaten and broken.
Zappa really understood politics...whether they came from Washington or behind closed doors in a record company.
I remember reading an interview with Zappa at the time of the Part II & III release, and he played "Watermelon" for the writer conducting the interview. At the end of the track, he was obviously pleased with his work and made a comment to that effect, a very rare statement from a man who seldom, if ever, "rated" his own efforts. He just put them out into the marketplace. But with "Watermelon," he knew he'd hit a new level.
I found his music at a time when I was splintering off from the world as I knew it. I was moving to California with my family from Massachusetts, I'd discovered Neil Young & Crazy Horse and songs like "Down By The River," everything just started opening up wide, and there were the Mothers. All of a sudden, every senseless bit of my life made perfect sense.
