This article will contain plenty of foul language and bizarre themes. Zappa’s music was intentionally crass at times, and what Wesley Willis spewed out in front of the mic is a whole different ballgame. So just for this one time I won’t be able to keep it PG – you’ve been served.
Frank Zappa (left) and Wesley Willis (right).
If you’ve ever heard of Zappa or Willis, or at least Frank Zappa, you may be disagreeing with the idea of Frank being somehow a pariah, having been quite successful to the point where new records are consistently released each year though his family trust, even decades after his death. I beg to differ though; Zappa was an outcast of sorts. His business model (one forged out of bitter confrontation with major labels trying to fudgepack him financially) reeked of very specific practices tailored to his own design, as well as complex musical shit that required the coordination of dozens of people, some of which weren’t the least bit amused to be bossed around by Frank (Scott Thunes comes to mind, on his liner notes to The Torture Never Stops).
Number 1. I’m gonna do this song again.
Number 2. I’m gonna do this song again all the way up your ass.
Number 3. I’m gonna fuck your ass up like in a car crash.
Number 4. I’m gonna fuck you up like a goddamn accident.
Number 5. Jesus is the answer!-Wesley Willis
But the really amazing thing – and cutting to the chase – beyond the pomp of his sheer compositional genius, is the fact that Frank was never afraid to embrace that which made silly popular music what it is. He was aware that, for whatever reason, people favoured human voices attached to the instruments. Zappa was all about practicing proper balance: when his harmonic/rhythmic passages would spiral into ungodly clusterfucks he’d counteract with simple, approachable lyrics. He had no fear of combining genres, instruments, or writing about that which genuinely interested him, but deep down he was still somewhat mindful of the audience he was catering to.
Bottom line though, none of these considerations deterred him from doing exactly what he wanted, which was arguably concocting one of the most eclectic catalogues of the 20th century. Any real Zappa fan knows how obscure and hard-to-digest his music could get. In his own words, “all the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.” And you’re allowed to have hit-or-misses with that kind of street cred, after all, not everyone tells Steve Vai that his guitar tone sounds like an electrical ham sandwich and gets away with it.
Casper was fucked in the ass by fifty Muslims,
He was fucked twenty-five times on top,
He was also fucked thirty-seven times bent over a wheelbarrow,
And eleven more times at the bank,
He was fucked at night in the ass,
His ass was a bit ruptured.-Wesley Willis
Dat Jazz.
My first serious attempt at music came in the form of a 4-track EP for a project named Duchamp Jazz Unit, which was canned with underwhelming, trite “jazz”. The bitter truth is that the idea sucked from the get-go. There’s no money in jazz, and in Zappa’s wisdom, jazz “just smells funny”. Seriously though, there was just no room or manoeuvring for me to get a message across with my very limited instrumental songwriting skills – forcing myself to write ‘jazz’ when I barely knew what a 7th chord was is a dumb idea (albeit unknowingly and somehow I obliged to the genre). And even more so when it’s clearly difficult to convey ‘I’m happy, sad, sleepy, hungry, horny, interested in purchasing this equity at 0% APR‘ with an instrument alone – unless you’re Hiromi Uehara.
Once upon a time,
I was cursing in Morning Star Baptist Church,
I called the evangelist a stupid crucifuck,
Reverend Richard Price preached about my vulgar language,
He told the congregation in the sanctuary
That I got a nasty filthy mouth.-Wesley Willis
Many people have questioned my ludicrously high regard for Wesley Willis, especially Cazzo Vecchio – a.k.a. Milli in the Milli Vanilli Equation. After many nights of getting our asses hammered I was somewhat able to extract and lay on the table objectively some of the very powerful traits his musical DNA had. Wesley had so much elite shit going on for him: shock factor, consistency, profound political incorrectness – aided and abetted by schizophrenia, and strict, unequivocal abiding of his “success formula”. Even his vocals were technically up to par with a notable parlando, and that’s not shit I’m making up.
His song themes, according to Wikipedia, were “full of bizarre, tense, and often obscene rants about crime, fast food, cultural trends, bus routes, violent confrontations with superheroes, commands for his “demons” to engage in bestiality, and praise for his favorite actors, friends (both platonic and romantic), politicians, and hip-hop and rock artists.” This alone in the modern musician universe is pretty smart, knowing that whenever you typed ‘Dave Grohl’ or ‘Kurt Cobain’ as search terms in Google/Spotify/you-name-it will somehow and in some way yield his songs as a result. It was also inadvertently determining at the time I decided to use the term Walmart Etude, which is a handle I plan on using for the last two tracks of my upcoming records.
Every Wesley Willis song ended with two things: the phrase “Rock Over London, Rock On Chicago” which I believe was drawn from a famous radio show in the Chicago area [citation needed], followed by the name and slogan of a brand, such as Napa: It’s The Parts Store, hoping that connecting it to a corporate campaign would be mirrored off in his commercial endeavour. Even if this had turned into a case of copyright infringement, I would reckon any publicity is good publicity in his case.
‘It’s the parts store.’
Last but not least, he had a specific length range for his songs. Someone once told him that the ideal duration of a track for steamy radio success was around the 2:50 mark. Since many of his songs were lyrically not fit to fill this mark, he would create filler bridges using the autochord function on his keyboard. Most people find this annoying – I’m reminded of my Casiotone childhood, so it’s a win situation for me.
All these antics that were to pave a way for commercial rock success earned him, at the very least, a solid cult following – of which I proudly belong. Remember those times when you’d open good ol’ Winamp and it would go “WINAMP – IT REALLY WHIPS THE LLAMA’S ASS”. That’s actually some Wesley Willis legacy right there seeping into popular culture.
This is how I got to eventually embrace lyrics such as
Wet bitches,
Fake bitches around me,
Out of control.
Wet bitches,
And their nipples harden,
Hollowing souls.
Lousy crowd,
United We Stand Proud.-Jolly Doomsday’s La Cocotte Moist
knowing that they would commit to my own convictions more so than instrumental songs – not that there’s anything wrong with that.
There’s a tragedy of a different nature, completely unrelated to what has been discussed in this article, and it’s the part where you don’t tell your mom and dad that you love them because they’re alive and it’s an embarrassing thing to say for many. We revere the dead because their legacy can’t be possibly tampered with – unless there’s some funky, unlikely unearthing that nobody was ever aware of.
Frank Zappa and Wesley Willis are both gone, and that makes me nostalgic and appreciative at some level, but the truth is that several artists out there who are alive and kicking, such as Hiromi Uehara (the person who I dedicated A Minute A Day A Year to) and Mattias ‘IA’ Eklundh (probably the source of direct inspiration for 70% of my music) are people who have all my sincere praise and gratitude. Look’em up and tap your feet to their musical genius.
Mattias ‘IA’ Eklundh (left) and Hiromi Uehara (right).
Brief Tenderloin 