Frank Zappa: Sleep Dirt
By Blair Jackson
Sleep Dirt
Frank Zappa
(Warner Bros.)
From the way both Warner Brothers Records and Frank Zappa's management are treating this record, "you might suspect that the industry has produced its first "Plague Disc." Zappa's camp practically refuses to acknowledge Sleep Dirt's existence at all, they are looking ahead to Sheik Yerbouti, Zappa's upcoming first LP with a new record company. Warners released this record against Zappa's will to close out the artist's commitment to the label. There's been a lot of nasty behavior on both sides in this long and complicated legal boxing match, and as usual, everyone has come out a loser – Zappa cannot control his material and Warners gets no cooperation from Zappa. And because the promotional budget at Warners for this LP comes to about $1.69 at the max., chances are the album will be buried by retailers, ignored by radio programmers, and thus "lost" to the public. This one has "Tax write-off" etched into every groove.
Much as Warners and Zappa would probably like this record to die a quiet death in the record racks of the world (assuming, of course, that it gets that far), I cannot remain silent. No, as incredible as it may seem, I think Sleep Dirt is easily among the best albums Frank Zappa has ever made. From a purely aesthetic standpoint, the music is as pleasing as any I've heard from Zappa since his Hot Rats days. Sure, there have been some scattered tracks over the years that were musically awesome (the Roxy and Elsewhere LP has some killer instrumentals on it, for example), but when is the last time you heard a Frank Zappa album that was completely satisfying from beginning to end?
My strong feelings about this album do point to a particular bias of mine – I prefer his instrumental music to his vocally-oriented songs, 99 percent of which I have found to be redundant, uninspired, and utterly puerile. Like my colleague Edward Hutchinson, who was viciously keel-hauled by scores of hardcore Zappanatics after he attacked Zappa in these pages a few months ago, I found Zappa's last album, Studio Tan, an unredeemable failure. My feeling was, "C'mon Frank, why bother? Chipmunk voices don't cut it in 1978." But Sleep Dirt is entirely instrumental, and as both Zappaphiles and the five or six of the rest of you who may have made it all the way through a Zappa album – whether under heavy sedation or outright coercion – know, the man is a brilliant composer and practically unrivalled as a guitarist. Believe me, if this were a John McLaughlin LP, if the typically hideous graphics didn't scream "Frank Zappa," critics would be going bananas over this album.
The complete absence of information about who plays on the album, and where and when it was recorded is maddening to say the least, and makes an intelligent discussion of specifics difficult. Zappa's management knows, but isn't telling. Warners doesn't know and can't tell. The educated guess going around, however, is that both Sleep Dirt and Studio Tan were intended to be part of Zappa's epic, never-released four-record Lather, and that the musicians involved are basically the same ones who were touring with Zappa during late '76 – folks like guitarist Adrian Belew, keyboardists Tommy Mars and Peter Wolf, bassist Patrick O'Hearn, and drummer Terry Bozzio.
Like most of Zappa's albums, Sleep Dirt presents us with a stylistically diverse collection of tunes. Carefully structured progressions sit side by side with loose rock jamming. Zappa explores literally dozens of different tone and mood shadings through his guitar playing alone: there is furious fingering, dextrous acoustic work, electronically distorted ramblings, and sustain; I can't recall a Zappa studio album that shows off his virtuosity to this degree.
The album's opener, for example, "Filthy Habits," is a loosely structured seven minutes of Zappa going wild on guitar. On the other hand, "Spider of Destiny" and "Time is Money" seem heavily written, though no less vehicles for Zappa's relentless fuzzed guitar. The title cut is a genuinely lovely (egads!) and magnificently played acoustic guitar piece that reveals a sensitivity that will probably even surprise some of Zappa's long-time fans.
But the real showpiece of the album is the 13½ minute closing track, "The Ocean is the Ultimate Solution." The first half of the song mixes a jazzy, almost Brazilian-sounding acoustic guitar with some incredible bass work and drumming. Perhaps it was on the basis of this track that Warner Brothers decided to ship this album to critics and radio stations sandwiched between a slew of releases by obscure ECM jazz artists. I hear echoes of ECM guitarists like Ralph Towner, Egberto Gismonti, and even Pat Metheny on this song. (It's doubtful Zappa has been influenced by these artists, but his approach is, at times, similar.) At mid-song, Zappa enters on frantic electric guitar which dominates a fast and exciting jam for the next several minutes until the song seems to literally burn itself out.
This is the kind of music Zappa and very few others can pull off effectively, and it's the kind of music I wish Zappa would attempt more often. At any rate, I sincerely hope that Sheik Yerbouti is not going to be the sort of moronic, guitar-less prattle Zappa introduced on Saturday Night Live a while back. And if it is disappointing, so what else is new? Just remember that there is a great Frank Zappa album that no one wants you to hear.
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