FRANK ZAPPA - "THE OCEAN IS THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION" (reaction) 

Patrick O'hearn's double bass solo on this is insane.

Zappa's music is Timeless!

The ''Back to the Future'' analogy killed me. Perfect!

HO MY GODSSSSSS I’m so happy and grateful that you’re doing the Zappa study. ANyway, a certain type of study. I believe that, from your mind, a certain refinement can emanate from the Zappa mind. I feel it. I’m very happy to see you interested in him. I think he deserves you in the story of his life. I am very happy to meet people who are interested in him, in his gigantic work.

" Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny" - Frank Zappa

Big Zappa fan since 1978. One of my favorites of what he put on record here. So cool to watch you react to this absolute monster of a fusion masterpiece. Bravo! I would pay to watch you react to the album “Uncle Meat”.

Zappa took the talent of every musician he hired and extracted it to it's fullest extent... Here is an example of Frank jamming with the cute little drummer, Terry Bozzio, going off. Then he drags Patrick O'Hearn, a friend of Bozzio, into his studio at 3 in the morning and he rips off that upright bass solo after 2 sets with Joe Henderson that night... O'Hearn came over the next night and layed down an electric bass part, after which Zappa extended his hand and said "you got a job"...

To Frank, music had no boundaries, he played whatever he wanted, if you liked it, fine, if you didn't he didn't care. All the Frank debate is easier to sort out if you you consider...just what exactly COULDN'T Frank do? The list would be tiny. Light years ahead of everyone else.

"The torture never stops" Frank Zappa!!!! "The present day composer who refuses to die"

Another interesting example of Frank's unique guitar style

Zappa had such a wide variety of music. He only wrote because it scratched an itch. If you don't care much for something he wrote, go to the next song or album to find something entirely different.

Oh my! The legendary Terry Bozzio on drums. Just a great lineup overall. And this was one of 3 albums he had to release to get to his own label Barking Pumpkin Records. Once his obligations were met, he released the double album Sheik Yer Bouti less than a year later on the new label. (Correction: Sheik came out on Zappa not Barking Pumpkin. And Sleep Dirt came out Jan 79 on DiscReet, Sheik in Mar 79)

7:34 This solo is where, I think, that Frank felt the need to "thumb his nose" at John McLaughlin, being compared to him time and time again.(The Mahavishnu Orchestra opened for him at least once while on tour) It's definitely one of his best, and I always enjoy listening to it.

Thank you for choosing this crazy song!! I love it!!!

117 albums...over half after he died...Zappa is the Best

ok, I'm finally getting some of those acid flashbacks I was promised to get decades ago..... look at my hand. I thought I got way too stoned once... but then later I figured out... I was just way too Zappa-ed... Frank on acid definitely alters brain chemistry, psychology, my horoscope even changed. FZ makes the term "nothing like this" meaningless..... like a whole new language I learned the first time I heard it.... this song is like an album sampler with 20 songs in one. if Frank wasn't a musician.... and played with guys like Stephen Hawking instead..... we would've figured out this time travel and how to work a wormhole shit a long time ago.

I wrote tons of code in the 80’s enabled by FZ’s music. He could put you in a spot where complex problems meets complex music and it is simplified … like magic…. Don’t know how else to explain it. Glad to see younger folks taking it on, it’s good for the brain and the soul.

I love Zappa ♥♥

This is it. The Mt Rushmore of Zappa guitar works and in the running for best ever by anybody. No exaggeration: this was a life changer for me as a musician.

Oceanic funk, as the ocean goes the whole planet goes.

Patrick ohearne smashing it on the bass

this is kool, I like matt cardin in the comment section played with the great Joe Henderson, what a phenomenon he was on the saxophone and as a composer"!

The bottom line with Frank is he loved to make his music ugly and yet you can’t help but want to understand what just happened. Your reaction to this song is spot on and props to Ron because this is as deep into it as it gets.

Remember that Frank Zappa was a percussionist that played the guitar. - Ruth Underwood

Another great FZ instrumental. I read his music described somewhere as 'maximalistic' as opposed to 'minimalistic' (such as Philip Glass).

My favorite tracks off the Sleep Dirt album are ... FILTHY HABITS and the RARE acoustic title track ... SLEEP DIRT

I need to remind you he is self taught by reading a library book!!! Genius

So. Go gentle next. BLESSED RELIEF . No wrenches or spanners or surprises Just lovely throughout. Going to have it at my funeral

Quite possibly my favorite Zappa track EVER! In-bloody-credible!!!!! Zappa is a genius!!! I'm a huge jazz and fusion fan too, but the Sex Pistols were on a "different level" too. No one wrote lyrics like "Anarchy in the UK" or "God Save the Queen" before them. They had an impact in the UK close to what The Beatles did. They changed everything in the UK almost overnight (Sensation :) They are in the top 5 most important bands of all time. The Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks said more in one LP than Zappa, Zeppelin, The Stones said in their entire catalog. Yeah I said it! 😁

Another tune I live!!!

love her mouth & her style

Frank Zappa voids the warranty on his metronome. Songs like this are proof of Einstein's theory that you could bend space and time. Frank can make your ears cry uncle!!

This song makes me feel so much.

I'm stoked you took the time on this one. Listen 5 times and you'll get it. Zappa is like tool. Tools songs take many listens. Like Frank. Do purple Lagoon please.

My happy place 🙏

Sir Ron Swirson knows a lot about Zappa, i love the recommendation and the reaction.

Frank was having fun on this track, jamming with the bass player and the drummer after the other guys had gone home. But, he worked on it later, obviously. He would sometimes jam an idea, then score a whole piece from fragments of it. I wouldn’t say he was anti music, more that he got easily bored, and wanted to create things which excited both his and the listener’s mind. He was vehemently anti cliche, though. George Duke, the great jazz pianist who played with him for many years, said (paraphrasing) Frank would write something startlingly beautiful, then deliberately throw a wrench in it, because he said it needed to be fucked up. For sheer beauty (minus the wrench), check out ‘Peaches En Regalia’.

Not "anti-music": more like "anti-hypnosis", or "anti-marching". He disrupts the mindless "groove". It's an embrace of music as something much more, something that can take you on an adventure where you're mind wouldn't go on its own.

This is THE one, off all time, by anybody!

🌊🌅 So fun, so diverse and accomplished, so HIM. Washed out to sea, adrift and happy...was my take last night listening on Patreon. My Mac overheated and shut down before I could comment, but I'm pretty much in agreement with what you guys said!

I think Sleep Dirt is one of the 3 albums Zappa "Dumped" in the same year to finish a contract and be free ...("Sleep Dirt", Orchestral Favories" and "Studio Tan")

Love all the Zappa reactions -- you're choosing some really great songs, and your ears are wide open.

I love!!!!

I love you guys. Can you do KIng Crimson 69 ? The whole dam album with Greg Lake, Robert Fripp holy f...k

YEA... SLEEP DIRT IS ONE OF HIS BEST ALBUMS..>! You are going to love this song. Every song on this album is 110%...!

Road trip, rte 87 north becomes rte 15 Montreal. 💖🍺🍾🍺💖🍾🍺💖

Not sure what was more trippie this song or that shirt ; )

This is awesome bass playing - I think you know that part I mean! O'hearn was.....like everyone else Frank hired, a beast! lol, along with everything else, Frank had good hiring skills! Regyptian Strut is my song on Sleep Dirt - the original, not the one with the singing.

This album was part of fulfilling a contract with Warner; and it seems to me that Zappa’s “trash” is still superior to many colleague’s limelight music

If anything, what he's "deconstructing" is musical GENRE.

I read that this tune was pieced together from 45 minutes of music to create the 13 minute track. That would explain the quick segues in to different directions. The exotic sounding guitar is a 12-string with a strange tuning.

To eleborate on some other comments on this page: Yes, this was built up from a jam which doubled as part one of the audition process for Patrick O'Hearn, whom Frank had only just met. But the most interesting aspect is that Frank had to overdub that guitar solo onto his own acoustic rhythm-guitar improvisations. Improvisations with plenty of chord changes, even if you discount the "implied" harmonic options. This must have been quite a challenge for him - after all this is a guy who (not unlike John Coltrane) decided early on that he preferred to solo over the simplest of progressions, or over a one-chord drone, eventually reaching the stage where he even felt a twelve-bar-blues was too constricting.

Good analysis.

There was a book I read back in the late 70's or early 80's called No Commercial Potential, it was about Zappa and his band. This book described a conflict Zappa had with Warner Brothers, he used to do concerts in front of a giant banner that said "WARNER BROTHERS SUCKS". There lawsuits back and forth and as part of the settlement Zappa had to provide 2 more studio albums. Zappa got previously unpublished studio recordings and put together 2 albums, Sleep Dirt and Studio Tan. I always take music from these albums with a grain of salt as they say, but there's some great recordings on these albums.

Ohhhhh.....The drummer man!!!!!!!!

One of the 3(?) Warner Brothers Albums?

Какой же здесь сочный саунд. В десятку Заппы

Try 'Let me take you to the beach'!!!

Try holiday in Berlin suite.great reaction.

Great stuff! You are what you is!

Oh yeah, this is a heavy piece of work. Believe it or not, alot of this song is improvised by drummer Terry Bozzio and bass player Patrick O'hearn, who is also a renowned pianist. I think Frank was going with more like 'Fusion is the ultimate solution' on this track. If you want a real easy listen, Blessed Relief is a beautiful song.

Food for the Brain.

This period of Zappa was more improvisational. He put together a killer band of jazz musicians to create some of the most far out music of his catalog. This album he utilizes personnel from the "One Size Fits All" and "Sheik Yerbooti" The material was recorded between '74 and '76 and would not be released until 1979.

FZ's titles are brilliant, pithy and hilarious in equal measure. This one describes our world's seas as the answer to everything ...OR perhaps an altruism of science whereby chemistry of the briny dissolves all. FZ = GENIUS, get him in your hungry earholes, children. * * * S.A.D. said FZ as ANTI-MUSIC? ***NOT*** Frank was anti-MUSIC BUSINESS as making product rather than music. ZAPPA vibed with the aether, in essence channeling THE MUSE, folks. He famously said the "universe is composed of THE ONE NOTE". The variety of his output resulted from his having to hear EVERYTHING that bubbled up in his mind then scoring it to have it performed by the best musicians possible. Frank Zappa was a driven musical genius. The best, once in a life-time, never will happen again, like Mozart or Duke Ellington. Also, FZ was entirely an auto-didact, unsullied by THE RULES . Let that be a lesson: go to the library, leave school., DIY and follow your muse.

Frank's musicianship is never in doubt His mind however ?

does anyone even realize the title is a chemistry pun

"Deconstructing music"...interesting take.This kind of playing/jamming may be familiar territory for fans of jazz/fusion but even then it's still very unique. The bassist, Patrick O'Hearn, came from jazz and even he said it was unlike anything he had heard...it's kind of half written, half improvised with bass and lead guitar added later. The guitar is some kind of modified bazouki (!?)

Anti nuthin pro everything

Tooo mu muchch! Makes me want to listen to some Ron Carter...In a dark room.

Gnarly track.

for sumthin a li'l different (as if any FZ ain't diff enuff) try Billy the Mountain ...

Jazz, fusion, Improvisation, add overdubbed lead guitar.

Patrick O'Hearn on bass. That is all.

Hmmm. Anti-music? I say Zappa is a genre.

outasight

One of the first Zappa items I saw (beyond the cover of the first Zappa album I bought) was a poster with a 'fish-eye' camera angle image of Frank emerging from a toilet with his hands grasping over the edge of the pan that had the legend 'Fly Zappa Crappa!!" Clearly that poster made an impression on my young and impressionable Aussie youth mind! Sometimes, as a musician/artist you've got to lose control in order to gain control... Out of chaos comes order. Perhaps it's just an essential part of finding the answer to "what IS music?" (or insert the name of whatever artistic discipline it is that's being 'explored'!)... When does noise become notes and how do those notes react with each other to create 'music'? The answer to that; I am sure, is deeply personal and often quite 'fluid'!! It's also a search that has no doubt gone on since the very first instruments made by human hands produced noise/s, with different streams of 'musical solutions' meandering their way towards an infinite pool that could well be an Ocean full of Ultimate solutions. Don't got to love all the searches for "musical truth" or their discoveries, while giving respect where it's due won't destroy one's own journey of musical self-discovery! And don't worry Dan about whether you could have been a 'Mother of Invention'!! Just know that with S.A.D. it'd be more the decomposer Frank who'd need to fit the musical vision you and Sifa may (or may not 'yet'/"fully") have formulated for yourselves!!! Just 'cause he's a legend, doesn't mean you couldn't 'Zap' him or as implied in the poster I mentioned at the start of this novella of a post; send him on his way back to the ocean with a quick flush - while still fully respecting him of course!!!! 😮😁 Have a goodie guys!! 👍

Apropos of nothing... You should react to Fiona Apple 🍏 her 1st album is a good place to start. ijs

Love it personally but it took time. Yeh it is a stretch. Your mind wants to hold on to those melodic moments but Frank snatches them right away. At the same time though he's ruining you for all those simple catchy songs that used to do. Eventually the complexity of the Zappa way is what you crave (with some Beefheart for light relief).You guys are in deep now😀x

If this won't make you crazy, …

i like the Lather version a bit better. it feels more succinct and gets to the compositional point better without the prelude into the main jam. just an opinion.

The record companies hated Frank so their puppets the main radio stations and music press tried to stop him. Just see what he left us. As Matt Groenig said, some of us don't want to march in regulation time. I say Long live fz and people of his ilk.

I love your steely dan stuff but some advice to you guys. I'm not being a dick, but you guys do way to many obscure songs, which means less views.

Not a Zappa fan.