The Bizarre World of Frank Zappa – 15/5/2019 – London Palladium

Towards the back of ‘The Real Frank Zappa Book’ (dictated by the man himself in the late 80’s) is a chapter named “Failure”. It contains a section on a proposed holographic projection system to…
“Generate free-standing 3-D images, in any size (on your coffee table at home on a larger scale for theatrical use), ‘folded out’ from any two-dimensional source by predicting and synthesizing the missing third dimension.” (p.334)
That 3-page section is the rationalisation for The Bizarre World of Frank Zappa.

Over a year in the making, the production promised a hologram Frank Zappa based on “unseen” early 70’s concert footage, backed up with a band comprised of members of the 80’s touring bands. Meanwhile the fan-base went into meltdown on social media. Some cited the book, and the quality of the band and the idea that nay FZ music played live is a good thing; others described it as the end of civilisation, grave-digging, and hurled invective at Ahmet Zappa – the current manager of the Zappa Family Trust. There was also the matter of the legal battle with Dweezil Zappa over performing Frank’s music, and the branding and merchandise sold while doing so.
Personally, I was in the ‘bloody hell – it’s the core of the ’88 band live on stage!’ contingent and duly bought a ticket.

Walking into the Palladium, we were presented with a very high stage upon which was a giant screen with a cave in the middle. The band members were pushed to the sides of the stage – three players on either end. At my end was the rhythm section of Joe Travers (the only non-original player) on drums and Scott Thunes on bass, with Mike Kenneally on lead guitar. At the far end were Robert Martin on keyboards, Ed Mann on percussion and Ray White on rhythm guitar.

Lights down and on came the band, launching into ‘Cosmik Debris’. This is one of the comedy songs, about a guy trying to sell drugs to Zappa; known to be staunchly anti-drugs, while chain-smoking cigarettes. The screen lit up and treated us to crazed animation based on the old album art, and trippy clichés and it was really quite fabulous. The face of Zappa materialised out of a starscape and began to sing. So far so good, but then we came to the guitar solo and it was time for the hologram…

30-years on from the book, and it still belongs in the “Failure” chapter. The technicalities of the hologram (I don’t know how this particular brand works) mean that it’s situated in the rectangular cave and looks set back from the edge of the stage by several metres. This is disconcerting, but from where I was I could see well enough – for people upstairs it meant they couldn’t see the head. The 3D-ness was surprisingly good. There was a section of one song where FZ was shown flying in circles on a fat maroon sofa, and there was a definite sense of depth. Even the figure standing still had some depth, but the representation of Frank was terrible. The skin was the colour and texture of a brown beer bottle, while the face seemed to be all nose. Now, I never saw Zappa perform live, so maybe he really did look like that, but I just saw a caricature.

But beyond the hologram, the animation was great fun. ‘Montana’ was animated with just a piece of dental floss twisting into shapes, there was a Ken doll FZ singing ‘Dynamo Hum’, a claymation orchestra and other really funny/stupid ideas brought to life. A musical and visual highlight was ‘Trouble Every Day’, presented as a newspaper article and linking the Watts Riots of ’68 with current violence and stupidity. It was interesting that the footage of FX used for that song was 2D and appeared to be known footage, unless he wore the same shirt every time he shot a video in those days.

Then we got to ‘Penguin in Bondage’ – a relatively quiet and jazzy piece – I realised I couldn’t hear anything from the other end of the stage. Scott Thunes had an amp on stage, turned up to ridiculously loud and that was drowning out anything quiet. This was fine in the rock material but for the subtle stuff it was ridiculous. I’d never heard Ed Mann, Robert Martin or Ray White perform before, and I still haven’t. They were utterly drowned out. With modern concert sound that’s unacceptable and in hindsight I should have gone to the back of the venue and accepted the bad view in exchange for better sound (and maybe the chance to shout at the sound guy). Thunes’ bass amp ruined most of the gig for me.

For a large part of the second set, there was no Zappa hologram and the band got to play, with occasional claymation assistance. They were fantastic. Kenneally is an amazing guitarist and the other musicians can play whatever they’re asked to (you just can’t hear it). There was a new orchestral piece and a resurrected tune from the 70’s which Kenneally explained had been chopped up and use elsewhere by Zappa. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make sense of them because of the bass. One irritation for these songs was that if there wasn’t an prepared animation, we go treated to bizarrely angled shots of the performers, splatted across the screen. This was probably supposed to be very artistic, but one off the points of these screens is to be able to see what’s going on on-stage. Mainly what we saw was Robert Martin’s back. Solos would come and go without any glimpse of the performer, which is really frustrating.

The final bafflement was the encore, where Ahmet turned up and sang a song for no good reason and generally farted around with his sister Diva. The audience mostly sat there and glared at them.

There was nothing wrong with the pre-recorded FZ guitar solos and with the vocals from this mythical 70’s performance, indeed it was good to hear Zappa singing some of the songs with an enthusiasm he lost quite quickly. So my big question was why bother with the hologram?
Why not send this gob-smackingly good band out on the road with the quite mad 2D animations and still drop in the FZ moments as 2D projections? There’d have been far less angst from the fan-base and thus more tickets sold. The band could have been arranged across the stage more normally and people would have been able to see better.

If the tour comes around again I’ll probably go – the band are good enough to be worth the admission without the hologram, but I’ll pick my seat with care.