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Frank Zappa wasn’t the first to pivot off Ayn Rand and put her anti-communist warnings to rock music – RUSH blazed that trail with 2112 (1976). Nonetheless, Joe’s Garage (1979) is completely unique, if it’s not redundant to describe a Zappa work as such. The triple album is two hours of tragi-comic railing against music censorship (as well as organized religion and music critics) as experienced by the garage band protagonist, Joe, and as narrated by the Central Scrutinizer, the purveyor even “of laws that have not been passed yet,” particularly the ban against playing music.

Joe, your typical California suburban kid looking to learn guitar to get chicks, starts a garage band, gets the girl, hits the road with the band, gets more girls, whereupon the Central Scrutinizer arrests him and puts him in jail, is released after the usual abuses, and leaves us in the end decorating pastries while still playing music in his imagination. The tale is told with Zappa’s astonishingly clever viewpoints and characteristic bathroom humor. As he narrates through the voice of the Central Scrutinizer, one of the better production decisions was too allow the tape to roll while Zappa frequently breaks up laughing, and to leave the gaffs in the final mix.

As with all Frank Zappa’s work though, he doesn’t rely by any stretch on his cleverness, though of that he has plenty. Often the listener will still be chuckling from the Scrutinizer’s last bit of cozmik debris, only to stop and realize that, hey, that is one really well-done bit of jazz (“On the Bus”), or that is an epic hunk of guitar solo (“Watermelon in Easter Hay”). The music is well played and marvelously recorded, produced and mixed.

As an example of Zappa’s performing virtuosity (on this album with guitar), Joe’s Garage is an equal with the Grammy winning Jazz From Hell (1986), in which he skillfully plays the synclavier and highlights the then-unknown prodigy Steve Vai on guitar. Let go of your justified impression of Zappa’s weirdness for a bit and give Joe’s Garage a spin. It’s a splendid work worth the two hours of your time.

This entry was posted on October 25, 2012 at 10:11 pm and is filed under Music with tags central scrutinizer, frank zappa, jazz from hell, joe's garage, on the bus, steve via, watermelon in easter hay. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.