VLVL2 Beatles to Zappa to Zoyd

[pynchonoid]

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, in the work of
Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa, Art Rock
appropriated the modernist strands of Surrealism and
Dadaism. However, Beefheart or Zappa, who of them
really was the Surrealist and who the Dadaist? For an
answer to that question, Marco Maurizi argues, one has
to delve deeper into the strategies of both these
forms of anti-Art, as Surrealism was fighting Reason
from behind, laughing at its back, while Dadaism
preferred to battle Logic by turning its own weapons
against it.

Surrealism, Dada and Rock. One of the most famous
critiques of Freak Out! (1966) describes the tracks of
the album as "Surrealistic paintings in music". A
common hermeneutic cliché about Beefheart talks of
"Dada Rock". I think that if one delves deeper into
the real influences of Dada and Surrealism on rock
music, these opinions not only seem inadequate, but
should be completely overturned: while the Mothers of
Invention worked out a true Dadaist set, Beefheart's
relation with Surrealism not only operates at the
level of his lyrics but affects his whole concept of
music.
 
We should understand what kind of influence we are
talking about first, and then, if we recognise some
sort of ongoing modernist heritage in rock music, our
analysis should enable us to grasp the difference
between, say, "Call Any Vegetable" (1967) and "I Am
The Walrus" (1967). Or, for instance, it should offer
some clues to help us understand why We're Only in It
for the Money (1968) parodies Sgt. Pepper's (1967) or
why Beefheart wrote "Beatle Bones 'n' Smokin' Stones"
(1968). [...]

Kurt Schwitters claimed that the original material of
poetry is sound rather than words. This theory was at
the heart of his Ursonate and Hugo Ball's Gaji Beri
Bimba. As Ben Watson argues these kinds of experiments
had an internationalist value in the age of European
Imperialism. [4] Experiments like these treated the
onomatopoeia as catching the human language statu
nascendi. By uttering onomatopoeia the voice was
thought to produce an unstructured sound, a sound not
yet become "word". It can't be denied that there are
some elements of a regressive attitude in this
"proto-logic of origin", as in any research into the
unity of expression and meaning beyond History. But
alongside this regressive element there's also the
idea, that the use of voice as pure sound can support
transcendent ideals and unhistorical conceptions of
human nature. Thus, expressing the body rather than
the spirit, vocal noises at the same time symbolise
the original material the spirit is made of.

This ambivalent primitivism can be traced back to
Italian Futurism: with their theorisation of "abstract
onomatopoeia", Filippo Marinetti and Luigi Russolo
encouraged the use of meaningless syllables as a fine
instrument in the hands of the Artist to describe the
inner movements of his Soul. [5] We even can date the
concept back as far as St. Augustine who rejected the
use of words in sacred music because he believed in
the superior function of pure voice. In this respect
the saintly bishop of Hippo pointed at the typical
prolongation of the ending vocals of the psalm, the
Alleluia where the human voice seems to unchain itself
and hover in the sky. Thus, according to this
"proto-logic of origin", we can explain the role
played by many onomatopoeia both in High Art and Rock
'n' Roll as regressive whenever the vocals express the
urge of the repressed body against the cage of
affirmative culture. However, they also can aim at a
spiritual freedom when they state the superiority of
Spirit within the limits of language. This
distinction, for instance, sets the difference between
Poulenc's Rapsodie Negre and Stockhausen's Stimmung.
[...] 

from:
Dadaist strategies and instinct in Zappa and Beefheart
(1966-1970)
by Marco Maurizi
...read it all and check the Zoydesque Beatles tribute
costume in the photo at:
http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME04/No_foolin.html

...and just for fun: 

"The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on
February 9, 1964,[4] and the direct influence of that
event is still being felt in new ways. In 1961,
Senator John Kerry played bass guitar in a band called
the Electras. The band rehearsed in the halls of St.
Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire; they cut a
record and described their music as "early surf." Tony
Blair's band was called Ugly Rumours; he played guitar
and sang. Only the other day, on a tour of China, a
group of students asked the British prime minister to
sing a Beatles song. He blushed and looked at his
wife, Cherie, who picked up the microphone and gave a
rather croaky rendition of "When I'm Sixty-Four." John
Edwards plays the saxophone and "admires" the Beatles.
Former Governor Howard Dean plays the harmonica and
the guitar and his favorite Beatle is George Harrison.
Wesley Clark's favorite album of all time is Yellow
Submarine (Kerry's is Abbey Road; Dennis Kucinich's is
The White Album). Who can forget Bill Clinton's
saxophone solo on Arsenio Hall? "There was not only a
new sound," said Al Gore, speaking about the Beatles
to the editor of Rolling Stone. "There was something
else that was new with the Beatles. A new
sensibility...that incredible gestalt they had." The
great exception to all this is George W. Bush. He was
at Yale from 1964 to 1968, and liked some of the
Beatles first records. "Then they got a bit weird," he
has said. "I didn't like all that later stuff when
they got strange." Bush also told Oprah Winfrey his
favorite song is the Everly Brothers' "Wake Up Little
Susie" (1957), but overall he says he prefers country
music. [...] 

...from:
Back in the US of A'
By Andrew O'Hagan
review of
Magic Circles: The Beatles in Dream and History
by Devin McKinney
Harvard University Press, 420 pp., $27.95
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17112



	
		
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