Baby Snakes

Hey man, I went to Art College, I know who Frank Zappa is. Or was. He’s that guy that called his kids those hippy-dippy names. Dweezil, wasn’t it? And what was the other one, Moon Unit? That’s pretty cold. Just because no-one picked on Frank for his name he thinks no-one gets bugged for their name? Cheesis, try going through school with a two-girl classic like Julian Francis. It’s no wonder I’m afraid of going to the bank.

Anyway, calming now… okay, so I know who Frank Zappa is. Or was. He’s this pioneer of funky noises and drug-related such-and-such in whom so many potheads and burnouts placed their remaining trust. So, in a spirit of coming together (the hippies and me, the name-taunted nerd), I decided to go and get some ‘reefer’ and find out what it was all about.

I bought myself a ‘bong’, which I thought looked like a regular nappy bucket, but the guy said it was a genuine bong and that I should make sure it’s filled first. It cost me a hundred bucks so it musta been the real deal. Anyhow, I invited a sorta hippie single mother I know to come over to get the bucket filled and she said no problem, but had to leave when I offered to share the bong with her. She musta been in a good mood though because she was smiling when she left and might have even been laughing a little.

"What, I gotta kiss you again?"

So with the bong all set up, I unwrapped the ‘weed’ (which I thought smelled remarkably like Oregano) and filled the ‘cone’ and took a ‘hit’. Man, I understood. This is why the hippies got into it. The colours, man, the colours. I’ve never puked so richly in all my life. I think I even puked up a marble I swallowed when I was 12. I then lay back to enjoy the movie and promptly fell into a deep sleep in which I dreamed of lurid landscapes and crazed demons chasing Frank Zappa around the place. I then realised I was actually watching the movie and I had dreamed the sleeping part. But how does one dream of sleeping if they’re not asleep to begin with?

With issues like those being raised in my already fragile state of mind, I decided I needed help. Professional help. So I invited the ‘bong’ guy over and he said he could help but that I’ve got too much furniture and that’s probably what ‘bummed out my trip’. He made some calls and pretty soon the place was looking fairly empty, but then of course I remembered that’s the way them hippie-dippies live. Then he had to go but by then I had it all figured out anyway…

Frank Zappa is a musician. Or was.

This film is little more than a concert film interspersed with numerous backstage outtakes, weird and creepy clay animation that you don’t need to be high to enjoy (although it may help) and a blow-up sex doll.

Ah, musicians. I can’t honestly say I’ve ever seen a show in which the crowd hand the singer a foot long glass tube with all smoke coming out. Whatever that thing was, Frank musta been high because he called it a bong! Talk about crazy!

As for my bong, I was told that the water inside can get really smelly if you leave it too long, but I’m not sure what to do with it. I don’t wanna get ‘busted’ by tipping it outside for my ‘narc’ parents to see and it looks a little thick and brown to pour down the sink. You can barely even see the nappies anymore.

They’ve sorta sank.

Shot on what looks like cellophane in 1979, this film isn’t in a good state of repair. While the audio has been restored (I’ll come to that) the vision here is often beaten up and scratched to shit with a regular artefact apocalypse in progress. Forget shadow detail, while the blacks fluctuate regularly between a wide variety of differently lit blues. I guess flesh tones are okay, but the picture quality isn’t good. It swings between soft and hazy at times to slightly above average as far as crispness goes, but the majority looks exactly like a film made by Frank Zappa in 1979 would look today. The TV spesh ratio of 4:3 is enforced throughout here and the animation seems to easily slot into this size format. While seemingly not storyboarded, just spontaneously made up by Bruce Bickford, this goes from freakish to far out and back again and is interspersed with Bickford’s bizarre and indecipherable recollections of his inspirations. Let’s just say that people don’t only slur from drinking and leave it at that…

This has been taken from an original stereo mix and stretched out using existing tapes and four tracks to bring it up to a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mix for the DVD. There’s also a Dolby Digital 2.0 mix for the TV-only jockeys, and this is fairly similar really. I should emphasise that none of the soundtrack has been changed in the slightest, just the channel mix. Dialogue is all fairly clear here, but there are backstage unscripted moments in which the lack of subtitles won’t help at all. Sound effects are firmly enmeshed in the music of this creatively gifted performer and his Mothers of Invention, while the entire musical landscape has been scored by Zappa himself. This features a shitload of his popular (if they were ever called that) tracks and other oddities plus rehearsals and ‘the show they never get to see’ (which means rehearsals).

At first, in my oregano confusion, I thought there was a lot here, but in actuality and the cold light of flourescents there is not. There are two headings to go for which are About This DVD and More Stuff that hold the goods here.

About This DVD holds, firstly, a document from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers that is just confusing. Secondly comes the original certificate of rating stating the R rating and why which is shot all crazy and voiceovered by the trailer recording. A six page dossier of DVD credits follows and I wouldn’t ordinarily count this, but it is mildly interesting. Finally, Information Regarding Subjects is a comprehensive if difficult to read four-page discography.

More Stuff gives us firstly the Baby Snakes trailer in drug-crazed 4:3 and stereo running for 1:54. This, like those that follow, suffers some authoring compression issues, but it occurs in a truly seizure-inducing part so maybe no-one else will notice it.

Commercial Spot #1 and #2 follow and each run for 40 seconds. These actually look better than the main trailer and suffer less compression trouble as well.

Finally the Roxy trailer is for a film called The Roxy Performances as far as I could figure. This is the monster trailer here running for 3:21.

Yeah, so sorry about that Zappa fans, there isn’t a great deal here.

Fans of Frank Zappa’s work will want to get this because it’s Zappa live and doing other stuff at the same time, however the visual transfer has come from a slightly decayed stock and isn’t a truly crisp and clean transfer. The sound, on the other hand, may be more important to you being that he is (or was) a musician and this has been treated a lot better. There’s not a whole bunch of individual surround action going on, but they carry the music ably enough. The animation is weird enough without any ‘oregano enhancement’, but this may be a drawcard as well for the more devout fans.

Inevitably this one is going to come down to the fans and how badly they feel they want this rather bizarre and long film of one man’s incredibly unique vision for music.

Now, I’d better sneak that ‘bong’ past Mum and Dad…