Frank Zappa Discography - The Steve Vai Period

Teen-age Wind
Harder Than Your Husband
Doreen
Goblin Girl
Theme From The 3rd Movement
---of Sinister Footwear
Society Pages
I'm A Beautiful Guy
Beauty Knows No Pain
Charlie's Enormous Mouth

Any Downers?
Conehead
You Are What You Is
Mudd Club
The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing
Dumb All Over
Heavenly Bank Account
Suicide Chump
Jumbo Go Away
If only She Woulda
Drafted Again

You Are What You Is is a very noisy album. If you don't realize that going in, you'll probably leave with a headache. My impression is that Frank was trying to see how many tracks he could pile up on each tune. I'm talking about serious amounts of vocal harmony, full ensemble, sound effects galore, and Steve Vai noises everywhere. Each song segues to the next, so expect a thorough cerebral cortex workout if you make it all the way through to the end.

That said, this album has some great tunes. Though primarily a vocal offering (plenty of Ike and Ray), there are some interesting examples of shifting meters (I'm A Beautiful Guy), as well as virtuoso playing.

Check out The Sinister Footwear excerpt, featuring both Steve and Ed doubling Frank's solo note for note.

The careful listener will also pick up a few references to 200 Motels and Thing Fish.

No Not Now

Valley Girl

I Come From Nowhere

Drowning Witch

Envelopes

Teen-Age Prostitute

Picking up where You Are What You Is left off (minus Ike Willis and Denny Wally and introducing the distinctive stylings of Scott Thunes on bass and Chad Wackerman on drums), Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch starts off with three multitrack extravaganzas, but after an intense guitar strangling by Frank, on I Come From Nowhere, we're treated to the title track which is arguably the hardest piece ever written for a rock band. "Impossible guitar parts" abound, as well as some great flanged tones from Frank.

I was given this album as a Christmas present when I was 17. I was thoroughly disappointed. At the time, I wanted to hear Frank's comedy stuff. I kept listening to it, however. I was becoming a Steve Vai fan, and he was listed in the credits. After repeated listenings, the album really started to grow on me - especially as I came to crave Zappa's composing in it's own right.

This is not one of my favorites, but the irony of Valley Girl starting a fad that every kid in high school, at the time, latched onto, gives the album a twisted sort of significance.

I searched for quite a while before I was finally able to find this album. It was worth the wait. By the time I bought The Man From Utopia, I was hooked on Zappa for life. Consequently, this is another of my favorites.

Much cleaner sounding than the previous two, this album has an equal balance of vocal and instrumental offerings. There's even a couple examples of what Frank called "meltdown", a sort-of-twisted-half-talking-half-singing mixture that is sure to drive anyone looking for a nice little melody to suicide.

This album is important to Steve Vai fans as the starting point of his talking guitar concept. (check out The Jazz Discharge Party Hats)

If anyone out there knows what "the botchino" means, please e-mail me. I've been looking for this one for a long time.

There's a lot of "bang for the buck" on this album. With everything from great vocals to complicated instrumentals and good comedy, Them Or Us is probably the most "well rounded" album in the Zappa catalog.

The additions of Johnny "Guitar" Watson's vocals on In France and a young Dweezil's guitar solo on Stevie's Spanking are a real treat.

When Frank "insinuates", "I'll make you wear red shoes" during Be In My Video I'm convinced I've heard the quintessential Zappa delivery.

I could go on and on about this one, so why don't you just go buy it?