Frank Zappa's Roxy & Elsewhere: Troubling Fills in the Air

Discussion on Frank Zappa’s 1974 album Roxy & Elsewhere, as well as some speculation on its influence.

Genesis' "Abacab:" Good Phil/Bad Phil

My take on the follow-up to Duke, 1981's Abacab.


 

The Enduring Catharsis of Genesis' "Duke"

For a dedicated, if critical, progressive rock fan like myself to have maintained a music blog for nearly ten years and not once dedicated a post to Genesis is a pretty glaring omission. Predictably, I have opinions about the unique arc of their oeuvre, but I have waffled for years now on the best way to do justice to their unique transformation from 70s symphonic surrealists to 80s radio staples.

Now the recent Facebook “game,” in which the participants post the cover art from a personally enduring album once a day for ten days, has forced my hand. For a pathological music listener like me, choosing only ten albums to represent all of the most enduring music in my collection was nothing short of tortuous.  After much deliberation, however, I came up with a list that I could mostly live with.

Until one of my nominees posted Duke.

I considered this 1980 release from Genesis when I made my list, but gave it a pass in lieu of other subjectively important progressive rock milestones.  Duke is very personal for me, though, and seeing it posted by someone else felt as if I had failed miserably. I can think of very few albums in my collection that have been more enduring and that I have come back to more often than this unique and sadly overlooked gem. In an act that was equal parts penance and anticipation, Duke found its way back into rotation this Spring.  Now, months later, it would be a contender for album of the year if it had not already earned the title at least four times already.

Duke was in no way my introduction to Genesis, and for a very long time I probably would not have even counted it among my favorites. Initially, I appreciated the album as a unique axis upon which Genesis’ past as progressive rock innovators and their future as a pop outfit rotated.



Throughout the past three decades since I added this album to my library, Duke has retained its initial prog-pop fluency.  The album has revealed layers of depth, however, as my life experiences have unfolded.  Like most, I experienced breakup and heartache as a teenager and a young adult, but it took going through a divorce and, later, having children to really grasp Duke’s narratives.

Duke is, arguably, a concept album about fame and failed relationships,  The themes that hold Duke together were inspired by the toll that the band’s extensive touring schedule exacted on Phil Collins’ disintegrating marriage. Fueled by the ordeals of his private life, Collins finally shed the vestiges of Gabriel’s surreal storytelling and revealed a uniquely personal iteration of Genesis. That his expressions are genuine are, I think, beyond question. I can think of few songs more gut-wrenchingly vivid than Please Don’t Ask, which captures the emotional arc of a grieving man’s internal dialogue as he struggles to keep his composure in the face of deep loss.



Despite being so personal, Duke is not a solo album.  Genesis was made up of three distinctive songwriters, and its a feat of collaboration that they were able to trace the outlines of Collins’ ordeals so clearly. In fact, the perspectives of Collins’ bandmates contribute greatly to Duke’s success. Of particular note is keyboardist Tony Banks, who wrote a multi-movement composition describing an artist’s relationship with the public eye. To distance themselves from their earlier work and perhaps generate a single or two, the band elected to edit the movements of this long-form piece throughout the album. Weaving this narrative in this way imparts Duke with the sense of an objective storyline that frames Collins’ more personal and subjective insights.



This narrative structure suggests that Duke might veer into "rock opera" territory, but a close look at the libretto shows that any story that revolves around a character named "Duke" is more a suggestion than plot.  In fact, such a character is never named in the entire album, and his counterpart "Duchess" only exists as a song title.  Rather like the character "Billy Shears" did for  Sgt. Pepper's,  the idea of "Duke" is set up so vividly in the opening tracks of the album that he frames the listening for all the songs that follow, whether he is intended as an actual character or not.

Looking at the emotional facets of ending a relationship from both inside and out, the band unified their work around Collins' struggle, resulting in a focus that is unique in the Genesis catalog. As a vocalist, Collins called on emotions in ways that he never had before, harnessing an edgy screaming range that would become his signature for years to come. The band’s instrumental aspects, which were always top-notch, rose to meet the challenge of backing his cathartic delivery, and aside from a missed opportunity for a humming low end, the production captures these performances with convincing clarity. I have a hard time imagining any album with better drum sounds than those on Duke.



Revisiting Duke over these past few months, I keep thinking about how it's a shame that the album isn’t considered more highly than it is in the prog-rock pantheon. To be blunt, however, it was too pop to be prog and prog to be pop. Like 90125 and Moving Pictures, it stood at the crossroads of these two genres and was able to inhabit them both with distinctive ease. What makes Duke so enduring, however, its its brutal honesty in describing an experience, both musically and conceptually, that I could only relate to after going through my own trials.

Hyphenated Identities: Netflix's Iron Fist and UZU

Marvel’s collaboration with Netflix has been a game changer for superhero cinema. The mini-series format gave both Daredevil and Jessica Jones the kind of deep backstory and character development that fans appreciate, but that is difficult to develop in the limited screen time available in the movies. I, for one, am really looking to the next installments in this project, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and the eventual crossover into the Defenders. Of all the series, the one I am looking forward to the most is the one we have heard the least about – Iron Fist.

When he was conceived in the 70s, Iron Fist was a very deliberate attempt to tap into the martial arts movies that were prominent in pop culture. As Danny Rand, he was, predictably, a yellow-haired white guy who, after being orphaned as a child, discovered a mystic city and received martial arts training and powers. This did not seem too odd back when “everybody was kung fu fighting,” but by today’s standards of diversity and equity, Rand’s ethnic background has the scent of colonial appropriation. Of course, this did not matter to me, a nerdy white kid that loved comics and had a hankering for the martial arts. Iron Fist was a no-brainer, and one of my favorites.

These days, though, I see the necessity for diversity in the growing Marvel Cinematic Universe and, consequently, the need to sometimes reinvent characters.  Changing the gender or race of a given character shouldn’t matter, but when you are altering someone’s childhood memories, it should be handled with care. I usually support these changes, but in some cases they have felt forced.  To be convincing, these changes have to align with what is essential about the character and then maintain that essence across perceived boundaries of race.

I have seen some discussion about Iron Fist in this regard, with some fans speculating that he should be cast as Asian in his Netflix series. As a fan, I would be the first to say that the casting should stay true to the comic book.  I can, however, see the point in an Asian Iron Fist, especially since this particular ethnic group is sorely underrepresented in the current Marvel Cinematic Universe. Part of the reason why this reinvention seems to make sense at first glance, however, is due to essentialized stereotypes about Asian people.  Although it might result in more a diverse Defenders roster, it would not help to dispel such prejudices. It would actually reinforce them.

There is, however, way to sidestep this issue, or at least address it in a way that might actually serve to deepen the character rather than flatten him, and that is to play Danny Rand as an Asian-American. By this I mean that Iron Fist's alter ego grew up America, perhaps as a second or third generation son of immigrants, and identifies himself as American. Asian-Americans deal with distinct and complex stereotypes that arise in the rift between identifying as American and being perceived as Asian.

Canadian band Yamantaka//Sonic Titan use similar tensions as inspiration. They examine their own authenticity by referring to traditions that they identify with, but have been pushed aside by modernity. Their debut album piqued my interest in a couple of years ago, and although their second album UZU did not crack last year’s top 20, it has been interesting enough to warrant revisiting on several occasions.  I admit that I am not always convinced by Yamantaka//Sonic Titan from a purely musical standpoint, but I do find their carefully constructed identity compelling enough to keep me coming back.

While most might watch Yamantaka//Sonic Titan and see a noisy new-wave reinterpretation of KISS makeup, a seasoned prog fan might also recall Peter Gabriel's costuming in his early Genesis days, especially his "Britannia" character (seen right).  The latter is probably a fairer comparison, as Gabriel intended to make a cultural reference, but Gabriel's cultural background and ethnicity is incontrovertibly  British.  Yamantaka//Sonic Titan juxtapose noh-inspired makeup and First People chanting across cultural boundaries in ways that are less satirical.  Collisions like these in their artwork and imagery subtly deepen the listening experience and paint an engaging picture of culturally hyphenated identities.

It would be similarly engaging to follow an Asian-American Danny Rand that experiences tension between how he feels he is perceived and his own self-image. Perhaps he might feel the weight of his heritage and, feeling out of touch with it, reconnects with it through his transformation into Iron Fist. Conversely, he might feel encircled by an ethnicity that he rejects, but finds that fate draws him though an experience that allows him find his own unique way to “be” both Asian and American. There are probably other scenarios that, not being Asian-American myself, I cannot imagine, which is exactly why they warrant nuanced investigation.  Iron Fist could then be made uniquely relevant in a way that broadens horizons while embellishing (not reinventing) an already established childhood icon of many.