Vinnie Coliauta, Adrian Belew, Lowell George, George Duke, Chester Thompson, Steve Vai, Mike Keneally, Terry Bozzio, Jean Luc Ponty, Captain Beefheart. Any critic worth his column inches knows what connects these names: Frank Zappa band alumni who went on to reknown as sidemen, band leaders, influential axe and drum gurus, or to Syd/Salinger-like obscurity.
So with Frank over ten years gone, what could Bob Quaranta, Paul Adamy, Ray Marchica, Carl Restivo, Ronnie Buttacavoli, Johnny Tabacco, and about ten or so others have in common, besides lots of names ending in vowels? Sadly, too few can answer this, though this group shines like the first. Answer: Ed Palermo, whose jazz big band has performed Zappa's music for nine years at NYC's Bottom Line. Even the Beatles didn't last that long, but more on them later.
On July 25th, the band performed their last concert of 2003. Partly to return to his own compositions, Palermo has ended his run of quarterly Zappa gigs, each showcasing fresh examples of his arranging genius. While well-attended on mere word of mouth and their now out of print 1997 CD (with guest soloists like Bob Mintzer and Mike Stern), paying some 20 musicians has produced a negative, well, bottom line. A lack of coverage hasn't helped. "Nine years," noted Palermo onstage, "and not one NY paper has reviewed us." This despite NYC's Zappa stronghold status (even the Philharmonic had a Zappa/Varese show).
So what have critics been missing? The only comparably entertaining, longer running dose of brilliance is also Palermo's popularity opposite: The Simpsons. As couch potato cognoscenti well know, Simpsons creator Matt Groening was heavily influenced by and later a close friend of Zappa. The show's Zappa-ish score by Danny Elfman (of Tim Burton fame) and Alf Clausen is awash in eclectic, riff and genre referencing tunes. So imagine the Simpson theme played live by some perfectly deranged oompah band which was seamlessly, simultaneously true to Zappa's smoking song segues and Dada quotes, Ellington swing, be-bop improv and classical. And those Beatle guys. Now you've got Palermo.
What makes the Palermo band so great? For starters, Frank's early 70's big band was short-lived, and on each tour for twenty-some years evolving, under-sized groups struggled with a ream of black pages. Palermo, by contrast, has spent a decade fronting a driven core stacked with Broadway pit and session quality stars dedicated to mastering those twisted signatures and 32nd notes. Unique talents keep showing up to make the stew even more amazing. Mr. Tabacco (his real name) is the latest. Looking like he's tight, on-screen and off, with Steve Buscemi, this Hawaiian-shirted, fuzzy L.I. Italian has inherited Zappa's distinctive baritone and engaging, slightly unwashed presence.
Palermo, quite simply, has distilled Zappa to perfection. Not all of Zappa's experiments worked, but none of Palermo's have failed. Luckily, Zappa left a Motherlode for him to mine. Hearing the band's searing horn sections rock and swing through an intricate scoring of Peaches en Regalia, (Zappa's own "A Train" and father to the Simpsons theme), is transcendental. The baritone sax hits your belly's secret b-spot, giving off the same sense of infinite pleasure as the horn runs in Steely Dan's "My Old School." It's Becker and Fagen-level perfection.
Indeed, the music is more beautiful and powerful than Frank could ever manage or maybe imagine. While Frank was pleased, nearing death, that the German Ensemble Modern could execute some of his Synclavier and classical works, Palermo's group, now up to some 100 tunes, revives the soul of nearly the entire Zappa canon, in both music and concept. Frank's tunes have been capably covered in recent years by a French wind quintet, a Swedish wind ensemble, and a Finnish baroque group, among others. All charming, revealing interpretations, but as dead in their own way as Frank. In Palermo, the music lives. He's done for Zappa what Rimsky-Korsakov did for Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition," and Ellington/Strayhorn with their Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Suite. And then some.
Palermo shows are often events, with Zappa alums like Keneally, singer Ike Willis, and sister Candy Zappa sitting in. Once I skipped Palermo's late set to see Ike's band Project/Object a few bars down. It seemed simplistic and unsatisfying. Unlike Project/Object and Zappa-alum group Band from Utopia, also fronted by Ike, Palermo never breaks Frank's ban on pointless solos.
Most solos have a George Harrison or Andy Summers-like economy. Bassplayer Adamy and drummer Marchica manage to simultaneously rock, swing and groove. With Quaranty's piano, they lay down a steady support fire plus the unexpected chords and rhythm that challenge and drive the soloists. The others watch intently, marveling themselves until the four count from Palermo kicks off another obscure Zappa-theme made magical.
Like Duke and Frank, alto sax/guitarist Palermo lives to hear his band. Slowing an intro to a sonorous, Gershwin-like languor, milking the sweetness of the melody, he holds the pause to savor the silence before the toilet-plunger muted trumpets emit that signature Zappa queef. Watching Palermo conduct a feverish arrangement of Zappa's Synclavier tune, "G-Spot Tornado," as the frenetic polyrhythm gives way to a John Zorn-like acid jazz tenor sax freak out, as he pulls down the band, bit by bit, until only the drummer is beating out a wicked, driving off-beat in support, is a thrilling avante-garde moment, a total train wreck only one bad note away. The bad note never comes.
Zappa broke boundaries, throwing in "Louie Louie," classical motifs, whatever fit. His 1988 "Bolero" was straight Ravel but for a climactic, hilarious "My Sharona" quote, and his "Stairway to Heaven" simultaneously sent up and celebrated that sacred warhorse. Palermo does all this and better, quoting "Inca Roads" here, "Mother People" there, then slipping into Saint Saens' "Carnival of the Animals" (or Stravinsky, Shostokovich, or Brahms). Even to the unconverted, the music is totally accessible and enjoyable, like the Saturday morning cartoon soundtracks of your youth. Watching, you begin listing tunes by others you wish Palermo would cover.
The reworking never ends. Tunes are demolished to essential rhythm and melody and remade into something new, yet true. After retiring the Zappa staple "King Kong," a theme, improv and restatement piece, Palermo re-scored it, brilliantly topping himself. Halfway through, the tune melds into the staccato midsection from "21st Century Schizoid Man," the band firing in perfect sync. You sit thinking, this rocks, I know this, what is it? As the power chord chorus arrives, so does the epiphany. "King Kong meets King Crimson. Oh yeah, that's why music is the best."
So where are the Beatles when you need them? Luckily, they're here too, sure as Frank took on Sgt. Pepper, cover and all, with "We're Only in it for the Money." For Palermo, who's clearly not in it for the money, the final gig segues from the front half of "A Day in the Life" to Zappa's "Waka/Jawaka" to Abbey Road's "The End" (complete with Ringo's taut solo). The encore brings a delicious, straight take on "I Am the Walrus," part of Zappa's ‘88 Beatles medley. At the "Sitting in an English garden..." classical radio dial-switching snippet, the sax section whispers on flutes and piccolo. Then the band stomps back full blast for the "I am the Eggman (goo goo ga joob)" chorus while the audience yells out "Wooo-ooo!" You sing along, too, at one with the Fab Four and Frank. You can't buy that anywhere else on the planet. If you like music one tiny bit, you leave very impressed. Unless you never came. In which case, you'll have to wait for next year's show. Until then, as Frank once said (of Al Dimeola), "Let's hear it for another great Italian."
[Note: the opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the Mike Keneally website.]