Released May 1968 · Verve Records
An album review by The Village Critic
There are two kinds of artists in this world: those who wish to be understood and those who consider understanding an unfortunate concession to the public. Frank Zappa, I suspect, belongs firmly to the latter category.
With Lumpy Gravy, Mr. Zappa has presented us with a work that appears to have been assembled by a committee of lunatics who accidentally wandered into a conservatory, stole the orchestra, and subsequently became distracted by a conversation about pigs.
Naturally, I found myself listening twice.
The music itself is frequently quite marvelous. Zappa possesses a genuine gift for orchestral color, unexpected transitions, and the sort of musical mischief that makes a conventional composer reach for the smelling salts. Strings swell, brass intrudes, rhythms stumble into one another, and fragments of melody appear to have escaped from a more respectable composition. There is an intelligence behind the apparent disorder, which is rather irritating. It would be so much easier to dismiss the man if he were simply incompetent.
But Zappa has committed the additional offense of being interesting.
The album's most controversial feature is its incorporation of bizarre spoken conversations, snatches of sound, and abrupt edits. These interruptions are either a brilliant dissection of the American mind or an elaborate practical joke played upon anyone who paid good money for a record. I have not entirely decided which. Perhaps the distinction is meaningless to Mr. Zappa.
One hears the echoes of the avant-garde, of composers who abandoned the comfortable conventions of musical form long before the average rock musician discovered that a guitar could be played badly on purpose. Yet Zappa is no mere imitator of the European experimentalists. He has a distinctly American vulgarity, a distrust of solemnity, and an almost pathological desire to puncture anything that takes itself too seriously.
This, I admit reluctantly, is refreshing.
The trouble is that Lumpy Gravy occasionally mistakes interruption for revelation. Some passages feel as though they have been cut short just as they were becoming interesting, while others linger long enough to make one wonder whether the tape machine has broken. The spoken material can be amusing, but it can also feel like being trapped at a cocktail party where every guest believes himself to be the most fascinating person in the room.
I know the feeling. I have attended gallery openings.
And yet, beneath the absurdity, there is a curious sincerity. Zappa seems genuinely fascinated by the sounds people make, the nonsense they speak, and the strange relationship between organized culture and the disorderly creatures who produce it. He is not merely mocking the establishment. He is mocking the very idea that art must behave itself in order to qualify as art.
That is a more interesting proposition than most of the manifestos currently circulating among the Village's black-turtlenecked revolutionaries. Half of them would like to destroy tradition, provided somebody first hangs their work in a prestigious gallery.
Zappa, at least, appears willing to make a mess.
I should point out that I have heard rumors of his other musical activities, and I am told that this record is somehow related to the Mothers of Invention's We're Only in It for the Money. If so, the gentleman seems to be constructing a private universe in which the boundaries between popular music, orchestral composition, social satire, and outright nonsense have been deliberately removed. Whether the resulting universe is habitable remains an open question.
But I find myself returning to the music.
And that, regrettably, is the most damning criticism I can offer of my own critical instincts.
Verdict: Lumpy Gravy is an uneven, exasperating, occasionally brilliant work of experimental composition. It is not always successful, but its failures are often more interesting than the triumphs of safer musicians. Zappa has produced something that refuses to sit quietly in the corner, and for once I am inclined to forgive the disturbance.
Do I like it? That is a vulgar question.
Would I listen to it again? Unfortunately, yes.
Rating: 8/10 — A splendidly ill-mannered assault on musical good taste.
The Village Critic's final note: "One hopes Mr. Zappa will eventually learn to edit himself. One also hopes he never does."
Historical note: This review concerns the familiar 1968 version of Lumpy Gravy, which combines orchestral passages with experimental editing and spoken-word fragments. Zappa's original 1967 orchestral-only version was a substantially different work.
