The Zappathon Day 2
The Zappathon Day 2
Today I listened to “Absolutely Free”. I had never really listened to
this album before today, and frankly i don’t like it much. I don’t like
Frank’s pre-1970 music much. I listened to it, tho, in the name of
Science. In the first half of the album, he has some kind of fruit and
vegetable thing goin on, with “The Duke of prunes”, followed a couple
songs later by “the Duke regains his props”.. more of the duke of
prunes, followed by “Call any Vegetable”, then the very jazz
instrumental called “Invocation and ritual dance of the young pumpkin”,
finally “Soft-sell conclusion” ends the vegetable theme. Gotta mention
the use of the theme from Holsts’s “Jupiter the bringer of jollity” at
the beginning. Side two of the record opens with the “original” studio
version of “Big Leg Emma”. I’ve never heard this verion, and I like the
one on “Live in New York” much better, horns really hlp. This album has
the first example of “conceptual continuity”, where he has themes, song
licks, and songlines that appear in several different albums. We were
intrudued to Suzy Creamcheese in “Freak Out!” Other examples of
conceptual continuity are characters like Quentin Robert DeNameland and
the poncho line “is that a real poncho, i mean is that a real poncho or
a Sears poncho?”. “Brown shoes don’t make it” is an extended song that
tells a whole story, of sorts, and was done in a couple other ways on
other albums. Like “Big Leg Emma”, the original doesn’t hold a candle to
later versios where full instrumentation (like a horn section) wsa
available. This isn’t my favoite album. I’d only have gotten it to have
The Whole Set, but now that i’ve listened and spoken, I’ll move on to
“We’re Only in it For the Money” tomorrow.