Sinister Footwear - The Living Composition
AJ Wilkes

Sinister Footwear is very typical of Frank Zappa's musical world - both musically complex and almost cartoon-like at the same time, it has been recorded by an orchestra and performed in a rock arrangement by a number of his touring bands. It brings together music from many disparate sources, including a guitar solo that was orchestrated into a grandiose closing movement. And it has a silly name.

It's one of my favourite of Zappa's compositions, and I'd like to dissect it in front of your eyes and ears, show you it's various sources, and how the idea of Conceptual Continuity must also be applied to Zappa's musical output.

I've purposely avoided including complete soundclips of anything, just to make you go out and hunt the tapes for yourselves. You'll thank me in the long run.

And I STILL don't hear Rollo in the first movement...



Footwear through the ages
An overview of the ballet performance
The original solo - Halloween 1978
Sinisterism in the Spring of 1980
There's more to CC than poodles...
Boot polish and spare laces


To find out about the touring band versions of Sinister Footwear, check out Foggy G's touring pages at:

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/turtlestew




And that's the end. Be sure to write up a similar page on a composition of your choice - the Notes & Comments are okay, but we need depth, depth, depth.

Anyway: thanks for watching, and for not reversing the charges.

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