Zappamania
One Yellow Rabbit's Michael Green organizes a post-Dada vaudeville freak-out
PREVIEW
WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY
Shiny Beast and the Whip It Out Ensemble
September 19 to 21
Big Secret Theatre
Oh, what a serendipitous convergence: the chutzpah and witty irreverence of One Yellow Rabbit meet the cynicism and cutting virtuosity of early Frank Zappa and
the Mothers of Invention.
Michael Green, artistic director of OYR, has been pondering the concept of a Frank Zappa project for many years. He came up with the idea of creating a multi-disciplinary biography about the man and his music, a "musical" about Zappa's life and work, named for the Mothers’ 1968 album, We're Only In It for the Money, the cover of which is a takeoff (and dig at) the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The genesis of this project came one afternoon last spring as Green was bopping around his house, washing dishes and listening to We're Only In It For The Money. Halfway through the album, he was struck by a number of things.
"The album is a hilarious tour of prevailing attitudes during the summer of love (1967) seen, not through the kaleidoscope eyes of 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,' but with a frightening prescience," Green says.
"Zappa foresaw that the bongo-playing hippies would become the Yuppies of the ’80s, he foretold of girls stuffing flowers into rifle barrels being shot down at Kent State. He knew that drugs are no substitute for passion, drive and intelligence. He knew that romanticizing youth was never going to succeed over the organized scheming of secret governments, the rise of the industrial-military complex and the human propensity to sell out for the right price."
The album fiercely but humorously lampoons plastic hippies in songs like "Are You Hung Up?", "Who Needs The Peace Corps?" and "Flower Punk." Green makes the point that Zappa’s own subversive vision of personal resistance and fiercely uncompromising integrity proved to be a far more effective tool for counterculture than any number of earnest, doe-faced hippie crooners.
"Best of all, he was never afraid of wielding the one weapon his enemies feared most – humour. He made fun of everyone equally, including himself. We're Only In It For The Money makes this all clear."
The choice of this album as the vehicle for a Zappa piece is perfect for Green and his musical collaborators (The Whip It Out Ensemble) on a few levels. First of all, it is a seminal album for Zappa’s group – as Green says, one of the "earliest expressions of ‘Mother’-hood." We're Only In It For The Money features glimpses of obsessions and themes that would be expounded upon later in his career.
Secondly, its scope is realistic. While the Alberta Foundation for the Arts did grant $10,000 to help develop the biographical project, this was not nearly enough to write, rehearse and perform a work of the dimensions originally imagined.
"In all my years of imagining and creating theatre, I have never had such a hard time imagining how this project was to develop," Green says. "This is partly because of my suspicion that this might be my only chance to work with Zappa's material, and I was determined that the creative team eventually choose a project that would be within our capabilities – financially, musically, theatrically, etc. That way all parties would be guaranteed the greatest likelihood of fun and success.
"Fun is important. If this project is not fun, then we've failed. So I was nervous about committing to an idea that might prove to be less than 100 per cent satisfying for all involved – including the audience."
Thirdly, most musicians are terrified by the prospect of having to learn and perform Zappa's and the Mothers' highly demanding music, but since the album is from early in the band’s career, the music is not as difficult as music on later Zappa albums.
"The original Mothers of Invention were wonderful performers, but not the world's most sophisticated musicians," Green says. "Most of them couldn't read music. So his compositions reflect a sort of musical naiveté that was less threatening to our group of highly accomplished musicians. We can actually learn to play this music in the time we have allotted for ourselves. And it's going to sound great."
The Whip It Out Ensemble is an 11-piece "full-tilt boogie" orchestra fronted by three singers – Ty Semaka of the Plaid Tongued Devils and OYR regulars Andy Curtis (a Zappa freak who can sing all of the albums by heart) and Onalea Gilbertson (who also has a pops show that is making the rounds with Canadian orchestras). In addition, there will be assorted makers of mayhem lurking in the background.
In 1967, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention were the resident performers at a rat hole called The Garrick Theater in New York's East Village. Before that, they instigated "freak-outs" in L.A.
"These post-Dada vaudeville free-for-alls involved a lot of flying vegetables, dismembered baby dolls and uninhibited frugging," Green says. "Oh, and audience participation. I don't think we're going to be doing too much of that stuff. But expect an old fashioned freak-out nonetheless." |
