Frank Zappa's prophecy

Frank Zappa, yesterday's prophet (as well as today's)

DAN COREN

The other day an old friend unexpectedly sent me a CD of his musical favorites, all of them unidentified. It was a wonderful present.

There were only eight cuts on the disc, most of which I had never heard before, but it felt like much more: “Night Train” by Guns ‘N’ Roses; some flamenco; an eerie cut from Weill’s Threepenny Opera; a recently discovered recording of Coltrane and Monk in a live concert; Philly’s own Joey DiFrancesco, the world’s jolliest musician, in a virtuoso display of harmonium pyrotechnics; Supertramp’s “The Logical Song"; Sinatra singing “Chicago”; and, perhaps my favorite cut, a gospel number featuring Dorothy Love Coates and the Original Gospel Harmonettes singing “(I’ve got Jesus and) That’s Enough.”

After about ten minutes of ritualistically berating myself for all the time I’ve squandered not keeping up with all this wonderful music, I fired back a sampling of my favorites, among them: James Hunter singing “No Smoke Without Fire”; Lucinda Williams’s “2 Kool 2 Be 4-gotten” (a new album is in the works!); “Toothbrush and My Table,” by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals; Katie Melua singing “Shy Boy” (will she ever come out with a new album?); and perhaps my second favorite jazz cut of all time, Cannonball Adderley and Milt Jackson doing the title track of the album “Things Are Getting Better.” (My first favorite is Oliver Nelson’s “Stolen Moments” from the album “Blues and the Abstract Truth,” which includes Bill Evans playing the best piano solo in the history of jazz.)

I’d long needed this kind of musical kick in the pants. It stimulated me to look up one of the great cultural landmarks of the 1960s, a song that had lurked in the back of my mind for some time: Frank Zappa’s very early “Trouble Comin’ Every Day,” from his first album, “Freak Out” (1966).

So as I prepare to go on vacation and ponder how to explain the mysteries of Classical harmony, here are your music columnist’s recommendations of the month.

Sample some of the numbers I’ve mentioned above and rejoice in the vitality and variety of American (and British) music. But then read Matt Bai’s “Is Obama the End of Black Politics?” from the New York Times Magazine of August 10. Read Ryan Lizza’s article on Obama in the notorious July 21 issue of the New Yorker. Read Robert Zaller’s article in Broad Street Review on the presidential campaign and our contemporary ills. Then, go to this site for Zappa’s lyrics, and listen to “Trouble Comin’ Every Day.”

I submit that there is no better artifact of the Watts Riots of 1965 than this song. (To my consternation, “Trouble” hasn’t found its way yet onto iTunes, although “The Mothers of Invention Freak Out” has been reissued and is available from Amazon.)

It’s easy, I suppose, to congratulate ourselves on how far we’ve come from those days. But, aside from a reference to a Brownie camera and The Great Society, there is hardly an anachronism in Zappa’s lyrics. Local nightly news has become almost a parody of what Zappa describes, and it’s all too easy to imagine North Philadelphia exploding today the way Watts did in August, 1965. Zappa’s anger is as eloquent and germane today as it was more than 40 years ago.



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