The Band from Utopia - A Tribute to the Music of Frank Zappa

Recorded live at the Jazz Open in Stuttgart in 1994, The Band from Utopia benefits from musicians fleet-fingered enough to replicate the late Frank Zappa’s intricate amalgams of jazz, rock, classical and r&b. Zappa, who died in 1992, was a prodigious musical talent and one of the few people to build musical bridges between rock and the more "serious" works of Stravinsky and Varese. If there’s a weakness in his music, however, it’s that instead of soul it has only a pervasively sarcastic quality.
Zappa's mirthless humour is in evidence here: architecturally breathtaking music and musicianship is sabotaged by titles like "The Illinois Enima (sic) Bandit", while the wistfully gorgeous backdrop of "Outside Now" is disfigured by an embittered, satirical stream-of-consciousness lyric. This project does work, however, not least because of the cheerful tone set by vocalist/guitarist Ike Willis, who invests in the music humane qualities lacking in Zappa. He savours some of Zappa’s more acrid verse, as in "Bamboozled By Love", while relishing its ploughing, killer blues riff. The rest of the band, meanwhile, set about their task of restoring old Zappa classics like 1968’s "Uncle Meat" with an infectiously good-natured enthusiasm. Playing with Zappa, a notorious disciplinarian, was probably never this much fun. The Stuttgart audience look as if they’ve wandered in from Songs of Praise and the Band From Utopia have the Dress Sense From Hell, but overall this is a musica! l celebration worth celebrating.