Search - Frank Zappa :: Ships Arriving Too Late to Save Drowing

Excellent

William R. Nicholas | Mahwah, NJ USA | 12/18/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is out of print--wow. And no reviews. Well, let me do my civic duty.



By the time this came out in the mid-1980s, kids filling arena's to see Zappa had no idea about the origional Mothers Of Invention or albums like Uncle Meat or We're Only in It for the Money. For them, Zappa was a comic guitar hero, not the 60s dadaist.



So the music on Ship is big and guitar oriented, and sees Zappa truely starting to implament the chrystalized digital sound that marked all his later work.



The best known track here is "Valley Girl" which Frank did with daughter, Moon Unit. But for me,the highlight is "I Come From Nowhere." Zappa takes a guitar solo from a totally unrelated song and lets it bounce around in this track. The timings are off, but the wierd shapes the superimposition forms are amazing.



Zappa said the engineer thought he was nuts, but of course Frank, being Frank, made it work."