Zappa Plays Zappa -Gathering of the Vibes '08 (Part One)

There is an interesting dichotomy with the fans that attend the Gathering of the Vibes. On one hand there are the old hippies that have become a mainstay at the growing community of festivals of the past decade, not reliving their past but continuing to carry the ideas of the 60’s. And for better or worse, 21st Century sensibilities. The other is a little harder to describe. It’s almost as though there is another generation looking for its own identity. I think we can all agree that there are much worse lifestyles to associate yourself with of course and moreover is there a better group of mentors than the Aging Hippie Collective? At the same time there are forces at work that would have that generation be, in its simplest terms, mindless music consumers. I was very happy to see the huge numbers of 16 to 28 year olds embracing a less commercially successful but infinitely more profound genre of music than the alternatives. As Midday Friday arrived it was becoming a memorable festival, but that night one band would bridge the separation of those generations and make a good GotV into a great one in the span of less than 2 hours.
Flashback to a couple of weeks ago when I’d started researching the bands and getting familiar with the huge amounts of music. Friday’s potent schedule included Zappa Plays Zappa, and I reexamine not only Frank Zappa’s material, but some of Dweezil’s solo stuff. I didn’t remember too much of Dweezil’s material but I did remember you could hear he was heavily influenced by greats like Steve Vai, Eddie Van Halen and Joe Satriani. Not entirely dissimilar from his father but not exactly cut from the same cloth. I purposely avoided the ZPZ Live CD that came out in 2006 as well, wanting a completely fresh perspective.
Here’s where the skeptic in me had some conflicting feelings about ZPZ. As both a father and a son, I clearly understood Dweezil’s motivation to explore his father’s life’s work. However, I was also well aware of the challenges that this presented. Frank Zappa legions of fans are seldom casual. They tend to be closer to students of his music, and therein lay the largest hurdles. How does Dweezil play his father’s music to the high standards his fans set but also maintain his own musical identity? How would his band accomplish the Herculean feat of managing the in intricacies of the often unique time signatures and tempo changes of Rock ‘n Roll’s first real orchestral composer but remembers at its core, this is a venue to entertain? By the end of the first song it was clear. My questions were well on their way to being answered and my lofty expectation were about to be exceeded.