Show Start / Bogus Pomp Explained - Frank Zappa

Well, hello, folks.

Hello, hello.

Can you bring this up,?

Okay,

just calm down there now.

Alright.

Here’s the deal.

For those of you— Turn

this sucker up.

Hello-oh.

.. Alright

For those of you who might be wondering—it's not a rock & roll concert—it's one

of those other kinds of concerts.

And if you were here last night,

by some stretch of the imagination, you might think, you might think that you

know what’s going to happen tonight, but, you don’t know what’s going to happen

tonight

Because in keeping with that great tradition of our organization,

we will deviate tonight from the patterns established yesterday in certain

very important areas.

However, the show will begin in much the same way that it

did last night, with these sterling differences—one, folks, remember,

we’re recording this one live, so I want you to have a good time.

..

And, two, I’m going to, I’m going to take the liberty of narrating the plot

line to this piece that we’re going to do here

Now, the first tune is called «Bogus Pomp» and, this is a melancholy little

extravaganza—actually this is sort, sort of ballet or choreographed orch number

for 12 winds, 11 brass, 4 amplified strings, 1 amplified harp, 3 keyboard

players, 4 percussion, 1 electric bass, and 1 drumset.

That’s 37 folks

Now, it opens up with this archetypally corny sort of fake classical music

intro, that goes—I'm going to hum it to you now, you’ll really like this

part—it goes, «Dunnnnt, runt-ta-da-da-dunt, tadadant, tunt tunt, tunnt,»

and then the oboes come in and they go, «Wat-wat-wat, wat-wat-wat.

«So right off— right off the bat you know how deep this sucker is, so.

..

A little bit later on though, it starts getting real weird—there's a deluxe

piano solo, which will be played for you by Doctor Lang, and uh—Mike Lang,

you know Mike—and uh, there is also some synthesizer stuff in it

But the main thing that’s happening that’s fun in this piece—because, folks,

fun is the keyword to everything—there is a fun part in this where there’s a

war in the string section over here, now.

.. I want you to, I want you to

watch very, very carefully in this one part where they just uh, mildly begin to

cavort and suddenly, as if by some sort of mysterious inspiration,

the viola player cuts loose with a wah-wah pedal solo, which causes.

..

This solo causes consternation among the other legitimate members of the

quartet.

Also because she’s a girl and she gets the first solo.

So that’s

pissing them off right from the beginning.

This coupled with the fact that the

solo is being played on a viola—not one of your popular instruments—is going to

really make them want to gang up on her later, which they do—later in the piece,

one by one, the other members of the string quartet prepare to take their

revenge on the viola player

So, then, a little bit later after all that has happened, the melody—if there

be such in this piece—atomizes itself, why it just blows itself to little

pieces, and then in the end you’ll hear it sprinkled all over the orchestra

with harp notes, celesta notes and high piano notes—just like they do in the

movies when it’s going to go, «Woooohh.

.. ,» and then you hear the wind

machine, and then at the end there’s a special visual surprise that we have

gotten permission from the Hall to do

Before I, before I introduce to you the gentleman who is going to conduct this

monstrosity—and do one heck-of-a-job at it, I might add, 'cause we recorded

that this afternoon without an audience and it sounded pretty good then,

but maybe this will be hot one—before I bring, before I bring out the

conductor, I wanna tell you that one of the problems in doing this kind of a

concert is the fact that without amplification, even 37 people are not loud

enough for rock & roll standards, so in order to make it balanced—and I hope it

does balance—I'm going to jump off here and go down and sit at the mixing

console and try and keep the sections together and keep the feedback from

happening.

Of course if I chump it, you’ll just have to realize that it’s my

fault, they’re doing it okay—if it sounds wrong, blame it on me

And now, I’d like to introduce to you, Michael Zearott, who is going to conduct

it.

.. Ta-dah!