So Long, and thanks for all the fish (Editorial from MM # 7/2006)
by Gunnar E Olsson
What could be more fitting than to end with one of Douglas Adams’ book titles. The title comes from his fourth book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide quintology. It also constitutes the message that Earth’s dolphins tried to send to humanity just before they decided to abandon the Earth that was hurtling toward annihilation. The dolphins have, as everyone knows, tried in vain to make contact with the people and understand their language, or to make us understand theirs… A bit like the feeling you get as a editorial writer sometimes, by the way.
In addition to being a highly entertaining writer, Adams was also an accomplished musician and home studio enthusiast. A report from his studio would have been a dream report to end my career as editor-in-chief with. It’s time to change the editor-in-chief now – this issue is the last one where you can enjoy my well-found wording and biting comments (grumpy ranting, of course some think…).
But some things have to be complained about – like, for example, the highly hyped concert tour that went under the name Zappa plays Zappa.
The idea was to gather a number of Frank Zappa’s old fellow musicians and together with them have the son, Dweezil, play a selection of his father’s best songs. Now it became something completely different. In traditional PR fashion, they had not wanted to reveal the band’s line-up in advance – they wanted to surprise, they said. At the same time, nothing was done to stop the rumors that the audience could expect to hear both Fluorescent Leech and Eddie, Mats and Morgan and a whole bunch of other top musicians.
Instead of the brilliant singers Ray White and Ike Willis, we got to see a fat clown Napoleon Murphy Brooks strut around. Incidentally, he was the only one of the “old gang” I managed to identify. The rest consisted of young promising, but profileless musicians. Then it didn’t get any better as Dweezil didn’t have the ability to give the concert the luminosity that a Zappa concert deserves. Dweezil is a good guitarist, but he definitely lacks his father’s charisma.
It wasn’t enough to bring in Steve Vai to play a few songs at the end, when you already “zabbotaged” everything by letting the extremely tired drummer Terry Bozzio whine through four hysterical songs in a row. Bozzio was allowed to act as a prankster in Frank’s band with his vocal numbers at the time, but to let him take such a big place in a concert shows extremely poor judgement. It’s a bit like having Ringo perform twenty songs in a row at a Beatles reunion concert.
Mats and Morgan were absolutely right to refrain from participating in this spectacle. Not even they could have saved this concert.
For my own part, it was a very pleasant experience to travel to Stockholm with some good friends – not even the concert experience could spoil this!
After all, it is a very wonderful time we live in, when Hard Rock Hallelujah is Europe’s best hit and you get to see Nina Persson act as a karaoke singer in front of an extremely funny trio from the blissfully asleep Led Zeppelin. This at a gala where you pay tribute to the group thirty years too late! Isn’t it time to rethink the Polar Prize. I find it hard to believe that Stickan intended to distribute this money to established musicians who long ago achieved financial independence. Wouldn’t it be better to give the money – perhaps portioned out in more and smaller piles – to young talent, who had both benefited and enjoyed it. I mean: Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and Elton John… What’s the point of giving these millionaires even more money. Also, at a time when they’ve long since passed the peak of their career and their creativity has long passed its best-before date?
Be that as it may with that matter … you should in any case have a big thank you for these six years! It has been a fun time and it has been enormously stimulating to receive a response to what we have written in MM during these years – not least it has been very positive to notice that you are reading this particular page. Many times it has also succeeded in arousing very upset feelings in one or another reader – perhaps even this last time. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
Have a wonderful life!
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