The entire show is hosted by the mammy nun "Thing-Fish", a part sung by Ike Willis, who first appeared as Joe on "Joe's garage" and continued working with Zappa through the last tour of 1988.As a title "Prologue" also exists as a track recorded in 1968 for the play on "Ahead of their time".Prologue, 0:00-0:12 (midi file).Prologue, 0:00-0:12 (transcription).During the "Prologue" from 1984, Thing-Fish introduces the play, accompanied by an ongoing bass lick in A Mixolydian. A rhythm guitaris ticking the A chord in a loop, with some variation being achieved by its rhythm and the accents of the notes. Regarding sound it's tuned down or re-positioned lower than a guitar normally gets. The bass figure extends this harmony to the A7 chord and you can hear keyboards chords gliding over it. From 2:21 onwards Thing-Fish gets supported by the chorus. It's one of a number of tracks where the music is subservientto the text, spoken by Thing-Fish, rather than sung.
Mamy Blue Midi File
The mammy nuns introduce themselves in the chorus singing of the second song. The example below from "The mammy nuns" has its basis in F# Mixolydian. The mammy nuns, 2:29 till 2:45 (midi file).The mammy nuns, 2:29 till 2:45 (transcription).In staff 1, bars 1-2, Zappa lets two major 5ths chordsfollow upon each other, rather than doing I-III, thus moving to an A chord instead of A#m-5. The A# thus alters to A natural doing so.Staff 1 mostly proceeds via 5th chords. See also the Freak out! and YCDTOSA vol. II sections (at "The idiot bastard son") for more aboutparallel chord types. Staff two is a melody sung againstit in parallel fourths. The bass makes its own movement. The combination of these three parts makes it anotherexample of Zappa creating harmonic fields that mingle about all notes of a scale.
The pieces, where the lyrics stand central, is the following set:- "Prologue".- "Harry and Rhonda".- "That evil prince".- "Harry as a boy".- "The massive improve'lence".- "The crab-grass baby".- "The white boy troubles".- "Brief-case boogie".- "Drop dead".In some cases the background music is pretty interesting, making one wish it could also be listened to with the lyricsmixed to the background. In other cases the music is clearly subservient to the text. Smaller outtakes are shown below, whilebriefly describing their content.The couple Harry and Rhonda from the audience gets integrated into the show. They discuss what they've seen thus far,first whispering but soon talking and sometimes singing a little. The musical basis is a bass movement of two barsin Ab Mixolydian. It keeps being varied upon. The central element is Ab moving to Gb in the first bar and Ab movingto Eb in the second bar. Harry and Rhonda, 0:00-0:16 (midi file).Harry and Rhonda, 2:30-2:48 (midi file).Harry and Rhonda, 0:00-0:16 (transcription).Harry and Rhonda, 2:30-2:48 (transcription).The first example shows this bass theme as played at the beginning with Rhonda startingto talk to Harry (the text isn't included in the example). The second example demonstrates how the piece evolves.It's the section between 2:30-2:48 where Rhonda is both singing and speaking a series of notes. The phrase "I want fairies on the string" is clearly sung (bar 1, beats 3-4), while "... real Broadway entertainment. I want spot-lights, guilt..." etc., is spoken in an aggressive manner (bar 2, from beat 2 onwards). The bass theme getsaccompanied by a slow chord progression (Ab7-Db-Ab) and an improvised descant melody.
In "The 'torchum' never stops" the evil virus experimenting prince sings a lengthy aria, also released as an individual piece, "The evil prince", on "You can't do that on stage anymore, vol. IV". It's in 3/4. It's sort of a newly composedintermezzo within the returning material from "The torture never stops" from "Zoot allures". Like the original it's in G Dorian. You can see the characteristic bass motif return once in bars 4-5, the motif that's used all through in staff 5 of the transcription of the opening from the Zoot allures section.The 'torchum' never stops, Evil prince aria (midi file).The 'torchum' never stops, Evil prince aria (transcription).The evil prince curses gay people and everybody creative. While the evil prince sections seem to be sympathetic of the gay community, most of "Thing-Fish" is quite opposite. Gay people are ridiculed as men unable to deal with liberated women. It culminates in Rhonda's severe feminist monologue in "Drop dead". Above: Still from one of Zappa's appearances at the David Letterman show, talking about his upcomingThing-Fish project. CBS Television, 1983.
Next is a fragment from "Mudd club". The construction of "Mudd club" goes as:0:00 Intro, sung by Ray white.The intro follows a two-bar accompanying pattern, alternating F and Eb as bass pedal notes. A rare instance of the use of the Locrian scale,F Locrian in this case. The chords used on top of this are Db-Cb, as during the main theme. For that reason many might rather interpret the bass notes as steps III and II from the Db Mixolydian scale from the main theme.In this study I'm letting the bass notes determine the key. When doing this consistently this would be a brief instance of Locrian.0:11 Main theme by the chorus.The accompanying pattern becomes a Db-Cb alternation, bass and chords. The key is now clearly Db Mixolydian. When you're listening to "Mudd club" from the beginning, the meter can only be notated as 4/4. What you can see in the examplefrom below is that the downbeat from the second bar from the pattern is rather weak. In bars 1 and 3 the switch to the Cb basspedal is already made on tick two of the 4th beat of the first bar from the pattern.Mudd club, 0:23-0:40 (midi file).Mudd club, 0:23-0:40 (transcription).0:34 Monologue.On this occasion Thing-Fish is doing the monologue instead of Zappa, portraying sceneries at the Mudd club.The accompanying figure continues as a vamp for this monologue.Background voices and sounds are happening at the beginning, suggesting the presence of people in a night club. Between 2:31 and 2:37 a briefinstrumental intermezzo can be heard over the vamp.2:54 The main theme returns.3:16 End, seguing into "The meek shall inherit nothing" with the lyrics "while you work the wall ..." etc.Some information about the Mudd club from Wikipedia. Above to the right a photo, the Mudd club is the red building at the corner.Zappa performed at the Mudd club in 1980, with one track landing on YCDTOSA IV, "Love of my life".
"Clowns on velvet" is new material, in fact a little instrumental. It'sboth used as background music, with Thing-Fish talking, and as an independent interlude. After a small introduction the theme from "Clowns on velvet" gets played four times. It's a through-composed theme,a sequence with variations upon a motif of one bar. Between 0:51 and 1:11 it gets played louder, just by itself, and with extra overdubs. It's played fast and the overdubbed instruments are positioned in very high registers. Like this, with a number of layers, the transcribing of it from CD is getting unrealistic. At some points it's more guessing than positivelyhearing each note. So I've limited myself to presenting a single bar. One would need the mastertape and a mixing panel to get everything bright.Nor can a listener be expected to hear every detail at once. A lead melody can be followed, that is getting bombarded with additional embellishments.Bar from Clowns on velvet (midi file).Bar from Clowns on velvet (transcription).This bar, the first bar of the theme, can be heard between 0:50 and 0:53. The theme begins in A Mixolydian for its first two bars, next the scales change per bar.As a whole it's multi-scale oriented.
The juvenile Harry enters the show, confessing he decided to turn gay as a reaction uponwomen becoming executives, looking like males. There's a drum pattern played in a loop (bars 1-4 of the transcription). The chordsplayed over it are led through various scales and sound very interesting as a composition by themselves. The section below runs from 1:36 through 1:51.It contains broad chords with slow melodic fragments played over them, that further widen the harmonic fields you can hear.Harry-as-a-boy, background music (midi file).Harry-as-a-boy, album mix (midi file).Harry-as-a-boy, section (transcription).It's played in the background and it's hard to hear the exact notes from the chords and their positioning. There are no clear key notes;the Bb and F# pedal notes in the bottom staff are more part of the entire harmony than individually audible, functioning as key note.When you're looking at it as if in major, three scales would be passing by: Ab (bars 1-5), Bb (bars 5-8) and D (bars 8-9).The transcription above contains both the accompaniment and Harry's text. The first midi file above presents the background musicby itself. The second one is mixed as on record with Harry's line in the foreground, but it's hard to get a spoken text properly representedin a midi file (here by a sax following the pitches of the lyrics).
"Artificial Rhonda" is "Miss Pinky" from the "Zoot Allures" album, being retitled. The song goes back to 1975. On "YCDTOSA vol. VI", Zappaintroduces Miss Pinky as a lonely persons device. She's not a person but a sex toy, just the head, with her eyes closed and mouth wide open ... and washable. Artificial Rhonda, 0:20-0:42 (midi file).Artificial Rhonda, 1:13-1:24 (midi file).Artificial Rhonda, 2:05-2:27 (midi file).Artificial Rhonda, 0:20-0:42 (transcription).Artificial Rhonda, 1:13-1:24 (transcription).Artificial Rhonda, 2:05-2:27 (transcription)."Miss Pinky" is one of three Zappa songs, that are using only one theme. He was more inclined to write multi-theme pieces than to do something as simple as this. The others are "You are what you is" and "Stick together". All three have the standard verse-refrain set-up, but for the lyrics only. Their themes getplayed in the manner of a perpetuum mobile, like the Rolling Stones are doing in "Claudine". In order to keep your attention such a theme needsa good drive by itself and to maintain this drive variations upon this theme are necessary. "Miss Pinky" could fit in easily into the opera, only the nameof Miss Pinky had to be changed to Artificial Rhonda. The rubber head being replaced by a rubber mammy nun doll. All instrumental tracks are from the"Zoot allures" recording sessions. In this case the overdubbed vocal parts actually add flavour to the song. Staves 5-6 of the first exampleare the first appearance of the main theme, with the verse part of the lyrics sung over it in bars 5-8. The chorus part is one line at first during bars 1-4,though not entirely sung synchronically. So I needed two staves to notate it. In bars 6 and 8 the chorus is forming chords. The second example is the firsthalf of the harmonica solo by (probably) Don van Vliet. Nobody gets credited for playing harmonica during this song, but Don does get mentioned on thenext track. A second acoustic guitar is added for the main theme with its chords positioned somewhat differently, most conspicuously in the shapeof the diminished F#m triad in bar two. The C# turns up regularly as altered to natural during this song, giving it something of a mix of A Mixolydian(its basis) and A Dorian. Bars 1-4 of the third example contain the refrain as sung during the second half of the song. It goes the same as during the first half, but the bass is playing something you might call a character variation upon the central theme (the bass still moving from A to D and the A chord becoming A7). In bar5 the theme returns in its original form. Bar 6 contains a deviating movement, again using the C natural. The chorus is functioning quitewell in enriching the whole with chords. Above to the right the corresponding part from the libretto. The text is prescribing every detail, evenThing-Fish saying "yow". I guess it's a transcription from the recording as it became, rather than everything being premeditated. 2ff7e9595c
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