Why Zappa still matters

There was a period in my life when I spent large amounts of time listening to Zappa's music - a peculiar concatenation of circumstances: irregular employment, the release of his back catalogue on CD, loneliness, many hours to fill, a room in an empty house ... The music entered the blood stream via the ears and pores. It is no exaggeration to say Zappa's music provided the rhythm to my days.

These days it is different. I listen to less music. What I do listen to tends to be snatched during solo car journeys or else through headphones between 9-11pm. Zappa's CDs stand on the shelf but don't draw me in quite the same way. New releases are no longer a major event: tired compilations in a desperate effort to pique the curiosity of iTune-dependent teens.

Which is why I avoided 'Trance Fusion' up until now. In fact it is much, much better than I had assumed.

However, I'm not going to do a Wire-style review. Instead, suggest two issues concerning Zappa's music.

First, that it is 'pure product' and yet 'not-product'. Second, that there is no 'one' album.

By which I mean, no one thought more clearly and thoroughly about the conditions (internal & external) of the record or CD than Zappa. The very title of an early issue - 'We're Only In It For The Money' - made it abundantly obvious that Zappa knew what rock music meant in terms of audience, marketing and sales figures. Yet, at the very moment Zappa worked within the given consumer logic of recording-packaging-distribution he found ways to 'skew' the system. Thus, his own labels, mail order business, ironic strategies in cover art, cover statements, dialogue and insinuations ("we've gotta come up with some new shit!").

And then, to take the second point, there is no 'one' album or - more stupid still - Best Of or Greatest Hits. The Project Object - Zappa's ongoing work-in-progress (aka 'Conceptual Continuity') denied any such submission to commodification. Any one song might be mutated across albums, live vs studio takes and then further re-assembled and 'tweezed'. Since I've been reading Spicer recently - another West Coast 'Voice' - it's hard not to make the jump from his poetics to Zappa's rock aesthetics. Just as there is no single poem, so there is no single song. (And I'm not so sure but there are other very interesting affinities between the two figures - let's take the radio for a start).

Which is a roundabout way to explain why I bother to post a review on Amazon about this new CD. It's irrelevant whether it is/is not one of Zappa's best CDs. What matters is to get within the Project Object. Be carried (away) by the music. Hear one glorious chord and search for the 'original' track - which is probably a composite of drum/bass/guitar/vocal parts from different occasions with further meddling - and delight in discovering it occurs on this and this and this album which in turn turns you on to the tracks segued just before and after ... and so on. And before you know it, you'll be devoting every waking hour (and your dreams) to this fabulous music.

Who was it that said the present day composer refused to die?