Customer Reviews

Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I first heard the title cut of this album live in performance in Santa Monica, back around '81, a mind boggling instrumental reminiscent of an expanded version of The Black Page. For that piece alone, this album couldn't release soon enough; I was lucky I had a friend with an audience recording to placate me in the meantime. Ironically, this album gained popularity as being the "Valley Girl" album, and the song is indeed an amusing diversion until the novelty wears off after repeated listenings. "No Not Now", the opener, and "I Come From Nowhere", are this collection's weak points, and should be avoided so as not to diminish the brilliance of the second half, which kicks off with the title cut, builds up in density and intensity with the sonically challenging "Envelopes" (as different a piece from Valley Girl as one could imagine, which one really can't), and finishing with "TeenAge Prostitute" (imagine "I'm So Cute" with a bit of circus music worked in), featuring operatic vocals by Lisa Popeil (daugter of the inventor of the Pocket Fisherman and Kitchen Magician). Now there is more trivia than you needed, but at least this album gets a review from someone who really listened to it. A flawed collection, but the flaws are minimal, with instrumental material that ranks among Zappa's greatest. You make the call.

I always wished Zappa could have kept the sound and intensity he achieved in "Ship Arriving Too Late ..." for at least one more record.

The first song, "No Not Now" has ridiculously stupid lyrics and an excellent blues/doo-wop melody straight from "Cruising with Ruben and the Jets" welded to an infectious hardcore popping bass riff.

Valley Girl has one of the most crushing bass and guitar parts heard then or ever in semi-popular music. because moon zappa's vocal is so funny and off the wall it is easy to forget contemplating the weirdness of this song charting in the top 40 at the end of the 1970s with such a heavy and grinding musical chassis.

There is a very surfy California sound to this entire album, part in the rhythm, the guitar sound, bass sound, the drum sound, and the lyrics. In some ways the sound and attitude reminds me of California bands like Agent Orange and the Minutemen and the Dead Kennedys. It's a light and carefree sound but also deceptively serious. Because Frank Zappa was practically a southern California native, a desert rat Army brat from deep in the Mojave, I like to think that he had this sound in his skin and bones and on Ship Arriving Too Late ... it just oozed out of his pores.

"I Come From Nowhere" has always been one of my favorite Zappa songs. It fuses some of Frank's most aggressive speed metal rhythm and solo guitar playing, an astoundingly tight rhythm section, a completely insane vocal delivery with lyrics that are as funny and disturbing as "Who Are the Brain Police?"

The opening section of Frank's guitar solo is as violent a piece of music as can be found anywhere and his guitar tone rips your head off. Patrick O'Hearn's astounding bass playing takes the song into a whole different category.

It would take nearly a decade, until Metallica, before music this intense, abrasive and highly structured found any audience.

Side two of Ship Arriving Too Late is a 17 minute medley that defies description. Typical of Frank during this period, it contains a continental plate collision of loosely improvised and difficult, highly rehearsed music all performed live, with Steve Vai all over it on some of the weirdest and hardest live guitar parts ever recorded. Scott Thunes on bass deserves huge accolades for anchoring this bizarre concoction, as does drummer Chad Wackerman. This type of stuff shouldn't work but I love it. Frank sarcastically named a bunch of live CDs "You Can't Do This on Stage Anymore" but hearing this stuff I think he was just telling the truth.

SATLTSADW is a short [34 min.] album introducing future-regular time-keepers Chad Wackerman and Scott Thunes; Wackerman plays drums throughout, and Thunes plays bass on four tracks. The album features both studio and live-material, and often both at once (yes, there are over-dubs). It's another album where Steve Vai is credited for "impossible guitar parts", which are performed in e.g. the instrumental composition "Envelopes", and in the heavy-metal-opera-like "Teen-Age Prostitute"; songs that give this album a lot of status, as does the guitar-solo on "Drowning Witch" - it proves that Zappa did right when deciding to keep this drummer and bassist together until the end of his rock'n'roll-band years.
Feminine voices dominate the album; Moon Zappa plays the part of the "Valley Girl" (a hilarious tune), and Lisa Popiel plays the part of the "Teen-Age Prostitute".
The album isn't a must, but is recommended to regular FZ fans, since it--with the exception of "Drowning Witch" and "Envelopes"--only features songs that cannot be heard on any other Zappa album. However, the versions of the two above mentioned tracks are here performed at their best.

Frankly, I bought this album for the Song, "Valley Girl" which was a hit in the early 80's from Frank's daughter Moon! I had forgotten about his level of musicianship - that man had skills! Four stars!!

This disc is another overwhelming success on a musical/lyrical level. To prove this, we created a variegated 100-item song list which our experts felt were of vastly fluctuating musical substance.

The Test:
To assess the melodious class or "musical-caliber" of a song, a musically knowledgeable control group (e.g., exceptional jazz, rock and symphony orchestra musicians) rated each song on a scale ranging from 1 (not at all good) to 10 (excellent). The ratings provided by our controls were reasonably consistent (a = .72). We thus calculated the musical value of each song, producing a final of (a= .76). The analysis of the unisonant classification levels revealed that the songs ranged from the very bad (e.g., "any disc by The Grateful Dead" / Mean expert rating = 0.2) to the exceptional (e.g., "Ship Arriving To Late To Save A Drowning Witch" disc / Mean expert rating = 8.7). Highest scoring song: "Teenage Prostitute" (Mean expert rating = 9.7)

Our test subjects were then chosen at random from a vast cross-cut of everyday American society, and these subjects thereupon rated each song on the same 10-point scale used by the musically conversant control group. Afterward, we compared the participants "ability to recognize what's good" with that of the average control subject in our employ by providing a elementary percentile ranking. In this study, percentile rankings could range from 99 (I'm able to recognize what's good) to 50 (I'm fairly average) to 0 (I'm a conservative republican who listens to Bluegrass). High-scoring participants were rewarded for superior performance with peanut butter crackers.

The Results:
On average, test participants ability to recognize what is superlative, musically speaking, was in the 26th percentile, which lagged behind the actual mean percentile (50, by definition) by 24 percentile points, one-sample t (64) = 7.02, p < .0001. This underestimation occurred even though the ratings were significantly correlated with the measure of actual ability, r (63) = .39, p < .001. A practical field demonstration of this euphonious quandary effect can be seen in the continuing popularity of Korn or Coldplay.

However, our main focus was on the perceptions of the especially confused participants, which we defined as those whose test scores fell in the bottom quartile (n = 13) and those who listen to Conway Twitty. As this model depicts, we grossly overestimated their ability. Using the agreed upon 1-10 rating system, some individuals in this bottom category had rated songs as "11," "yes" or "b". In fact, two participants were invalidated when they inadvertently swallowed their pens.

Summary:
Because the profoundly disordered participants scored at the very bottom of the distribution, it was nearly impossible for us (or them) to underestimate their performance. There were also some unanticipated results, such as the chimpanzee test group scoring significantly higher than the test group of Hip-Hop listeners. To be sure, they had an inkling that they were probably less musically inclined than the chimps, as evidenced by the significant contrariety between perceived and actual ability and the uneven distribution of peanut butter crackers. Eat more Zappa.

One of the greatest things about this album is that, thanks to the song Valley Girl, a lot of people who would never even think about owning a Zappa album bought one. So all the teenagers who really dug the Valley Girl song actually got to listen to 5 other great Zappa tracks. Granted, there's probably a few of them out there who played the album once, and never played it again. But they always say to themselves "what was that really long song on side two? I never heard anything like that. I can't get it out of my head! AARRGGHH!!!!" The stuff got inside their heads, and stayed there. I do rather like this album, especially the title track (the 12 minute one) and No Not Now. Envelopes is OK (I prefer the LSO version), and I do like Valley Girl.

This album is more than just the hit Valley Girl where Frank's daughter Moon rants about teenage life. The Drowning Witch is one of Zappa's most beautiful pieces from the 80's. But it could have been even better. There is a live recording from The Ritz, N.Y.C. 11/17/81 floating around which is one of the coolest live recordings ever where Scott Thunes' bass is louder and very funky and the sounds of FZ's guitar really smokes. Parts of that show is also included on the album, but the Ritz tapes provides listening to the Drowning Witch suite as I wish it should have been released. Here Drowning Witch is linked with a beautiful version of What's New In Baltimore that makes the "Prevention" version seem lame. Moggio makes a furious and perfect end.
Back to the album now. Many fans seem to dislike I Come From Nowhere but I think it's great. Lots of madness and energy in this tricky piece. My theory is that the composing procedure of the song started with Roy Estrada's vocals(!). It sounds as if Roy sang a capella or to a totally different accompanyment and that FZ built a composition around Estrada's vocals. The 2nd half of the song is made up of FZ's most brutal guitar solo ever. Almost in the metal domain, but in his own way of course.
The other songs not mentioned here are OK but not outstanding. The album is mixed for a certain sort of speakers. I've never listened to it through the recommended equipment but I find the sound of the album very "extreme". Very sharp and metal-ish and far from the warm sound of the Discreet era.

This is the record that got me introduced to Frank's music. While not a bad effort, I must say there's a whole bunch of Zappa recordings I like way better than this one. I think that most of his work before Zoot Allures is essential; after that, you can find few good records scattered amongst less interesting stuff. But don't get me wrong on this one: as we all know, a bad Zappa record is still better than anything else...

(of the four I have)
I can't say that I am a diehard Zappa fan, but I immensely enjoy this album. Frank Zappa is amazing at writing music.

The album:
No Not Now: Probably the worst on the album, but it is a good listen every once in a while (whenever I find the time to listen to the album all the way through). 3/5

Valley Girl: Frank Zappa's hit song. Insanely funny. I've heard that this song is where the term Valley Girl actually comes from. Wouldn't surprise me if Zappa had coined it. He was an extremely unique and influential guy. 5/5

I Come From Nowhere: The lyrics are decent (although the first stanza is excellent). The real star here is the music, which is excellent. 4.5/5

Drowning Witch: The star of the album. The lyrics are pretty good, but again, the music is what makes the song great. 5/5

Envelopes: Zappa can really write instrumentals. This is one of his best that I've heard so far. 5/5

Teen-Age Prostitute: A decent end to the album. It's kinda cute. 4/5

An excellent album put out by Zappa. 5/5

A very very good album which is much more than just a showcase for Valley Girl. It has great musicians and lyrics.

No Not Now - The only track on this album which is disposable. It has good rythm and is funny but its appeal runs short. 6/10

Valley Girl - Well this was a huge hit and that is understandable, the bass is great and the lyrics are very funny -great improv on Moon's part. 8/10

I Come From Nowhere - This is my favorite track from the album. It has demented vocals, weird lyrics and one of the greatest guitar solos ever.10/10

Drowning Witch - The pièce-de-resistance and masterpiece of the album. Very complex musically with lots of great solos and a meltdown-style start. 10/10

Envelopes - Drowning Witch segues into this track and I always have difficulty differentiating the two this is a great instrumental. 10/10

Teenage Prostitute - Weirdest track on the album. Great singing by Liza Popeil. Sounds a bit operatic at times. 8/10

All in all this is one of the greater Zappa albums and I would reccommend it to everyone who loves the man! And if you like Vally Girl do yourself a favor and listen to the rest of the album - you might just like it.