You can tell a lot about people by what they listen to. If somebody is in to country you can bet they enjoy alcohol and misogyny. If an individual enjoys the punk rock they probably like either the idea or the practice of being an immature dickhead. Certain types of music attract certain types.
So it follows that there should be bands whose main following, their core audience, consist of douchebags, likely because the members of these bands are themselves huge douches. We have named a few here at the FSS already; King Crimson, Phish, Polvo (fuck you, Polvo) etc. None of this should come as a surprise, I’m sure everybody involved with the aforementioned bands realizes their levels of douchebaggery.
There are probably bands who display all or most of the signs of being a douchebag group, intense noodliness, annoyingly pretentious song titles (Court of the Crimson King, your mothers ass.), being way too good at your instruments and so on, without actually falling all the way into douchebag territory. I can actually only think of one group, though I’m pretty sure it was down to one man in the band. I’m talking about The Mothers of Invention and Frank Zappa.
Lemme explain something right off. I am not a Mothers or Zappa expert by a longshot. Growing up I used to throw on “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” to freak out and then crack up my sisters and brother. And 20 years later I haven’t really gotten any further into Zappa’s library. What attracted me first was the cover, the cartoonish takeoff of a razor ad showing a button down 1950’s cat holding an electric weasel tearing into his face. And he’s saying “RZZZ”. The guy, not the weasel. I’m sorry but that is comedy. Now the music. The whole first side I just don’t understand. I’d like to comment, I’m just not qualified. There is some bleatings and goings on, but, really, I can’t make head nor tail of it. Then there is side 2. More craziness that I don’t understand, then comes My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama, which broke me up something fierce when I was 9 and still does. Then Oh No, which I don’t know how to feel about. Then the album gets inexplicable again, then kinda pretty , then ends. Yup.
According to Wikipedia, Weasels is the live bookend to “Burnt Weeny Sandwich” and the both of them were comprised of old Mothers of Invention stuff released after they had broken up. Yeah, so that’s some informative shit right there, that makes this article worth it as far as actual, you know facts or whatever. But getting back to my original point about, you know, douchebags and such, is that really The Mothers, and Zappa in particular are the exception that proves the rule. Zappa made music that defied classification and most peoples taste. He experimented with weird time signatures, complicated orchestration and only, ONLY worked with the best musicians he could get. But, he did all this with a fuckin’ grin on. And with cartoon weasels. So suck it, Polvo.
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