collecting stuff

I once wrote a small piece for a Zappa fanzine (the late lamented "T'Mershi Duween" named after one of Frank's more esoteric tracks...), in which commented on how most Zappa fans seem to be a certain type of man. I put forth a groundbreaking and possibly earth-shattering reason for this - everybody is different...

Most people, and virtually all women, don't, on the whole, collect stuff. Yes, some women buy clothes and have more pairs of shoes than is often reasonably explicable but they don't go in for the minutiae of collecting.

This is may be a huge generalisation, but men, in general, like details. Very few women follow football with the same attention to detail that many men exhibit. How many women train spotters are there? How many women have collecting hobbies? Whilst I'm hastily trying, but probably failing, to distance myself from these slightly odd pastimes, I have been known to memorize, without even trying, the track times of various songs I like. Pointless, and possibly a poor use of brain space, but men seem to have these spaces in their brains for precisely these lists of facts. Why can I tell you which actors played which characters in Doctor Who? I've no idea. I have loads of books that can tell me this sort of stuff if I really need to know, or the internet can provide this information at the click of a mouse - but I can remember these things, so I do. 

Zappa music is hard work. It requires what Robert Fripp calls ‘active listening’. You can't really have Zappa in the background; it's complex stuff that gives me a great deal of pleasure, if you put in the effort. Many people, probably sensibly, have better things to do with their time. 

Most people enjoy music passively. They just want to hear it, but not get too involved with it. They like pop stuff noodling along in the background because it's nicely funky and there are some catchy tunes. Pop music is precisely that - Popular, hence the name. Most people have no real interest in who played the music, or the name of the recording studio. This is of course the first thing I look at on a new album! I was fascinated when the Phil Manzanera website published the recording dates of the first Roxy Music album. It took only a week or so to record, plus mixing, and I now know which songs were taped on which days. This adds precisely nothing to the actual enjoyment of the music as such, but it added hugely to my overall enjoyment of Roxy as a whole. Inexplicable, but I like this stuff.

It's a strange fact that I can remember all the lyrics, every single one, to songs like Brian Eno's “Miss Shapiro” (verse three runs thus - Dalai llama llama puss puss, stella maris missa nobis, miss a dinner Miss Shapiro, shampoos pot pot pinkies pampered, movements hampered like at Christmas, ha ha isn't life a circus, round in circles like The Archers, always stiff and always starchy, yes it's happening and it's fattening and all that we can get into the show...) yet I can't remember my car number plate.

How many times do I really need to hear a live recording of “Heroes“? I've no idea, but the fact is that I do enjoy hearing different versions of the same songs. Likewise listening to rehearsals and demos gives me enormous pleasure. The fact that some are unfinished / never heard before makes most people quite rightly question the value of hearing the stuff. Why not listen to the 'proper version'? It’s a good question, with no sensible answer.

Why are aborted takes of songs so interesting? To me, they just are. I have the Stooges box set - all the recordings from the Funhouse sessions. There are 28 takes of “Loose”, one after the other - and I can listen to this quite happily. I especially like the fact that the take they used on the record was number 24, yet they continued for another 4 takes trying to better it. Why does this interest me? It is, I'm sure, some sort of genetic thing.

Sad, maybe - obsessive, certainly - fascinating and enthralling, oh yes!