I'll begin with a warning. If you listen to the song or watch the video I'll be discussing, and I don't recommend that you do, you may well end up with a stubborn case of CILS (Chronic Internal Looping Syndrome), as I have.
Looking at old Steve Allen shows one night--and for those of you too young to remember, Steve Allen was the first host of the Tonight Show, from 1954-1957. He went on to host The Steve Allen Show, which lasted into the early sixties. He wrote (or co-wrote) some 50 books, composed thousands of, mostly unknown, songs (a few hits), was a decent jazz pianist, great wit, and a comedian. He appeared on talk and game shows off-and-on until his death in 2000. He was a very bright and funny guy. He was married to Audry Meadows, someone I never "got," despite her being a fellow sinophile, born of Episcopal missionary parents in China. But I did like her terrific sister, Audry, who played Ralph Kramden's wife Alice in the classic Honeymooners series. Anyway, in 1963 Frank Zappa appeared on Steve's show, ostensibly to "play" the bicycle. He was promoting a movie, The World's Greatest Sinner, for which he had composed the music. Out of curiosity I looked for the music from that movie, excited about a chance to hear very some very early Frank Zappa. This is when I discovered the video linked above (man in video is not Zappa), and listened to the song. That was about two months ago, and I have not been able to drive the song or the video from my consciousness.
Like Allen, Zappa was talented, relentless, prolific, and largely self-taught. Unlike Allen, he was a highly technical musician/composer who created, used, and depended upon charts, influenced by everything from R&B, doo-wop, and jazz, to avant garde orchestral music, particularly that of Edgard Varèse. In Varèse's compositions, which are hard to find, the influence is obvious. Allen looked like your dad, Zappa like your older stoner brother. Allen was widely covered in his day by other artists, he wrote jazz, popular songs, for movies, and musical theater; though, unlike Zappa, he never learned to read music. Zappa wrote and composed in almost every genre and style. His orchestral/jazz compositions on the album "The Yellow Shark" are particularly striking, though as a listener it is difficult to tell when you're being led down some satirical or ironic path; it's usually safer to assume that you are. One final comparison: Jack Paar is reported to have said something like, "Steve Allen says he has written thousands of songs. Name one." For the average person, the same question could reference Zappa. Though Zappa's music is often funny and technically amazing, particularly considering he was working before the digital revolution, to me it often lacks heart, or love, for people, if not for music. The same cannot be said for Allen's music, though he was admittedly writing in more sentimental genres.
As a teenager, my favorite Zappa album was "We're Only In It for The Money," which satirizes everything it touches, the Beatles in particular. You could call the humor and rhythm of his early albums Pythonesque were it not that he predated them by years. Zappa was a contrarian who refused to be categorized. What was he rebelling against? "Whaddaya got?" Brando's character in The Wild One replied to the same question. Though in his early days he looked the hippy, he was anything but, and relentlessly made sport of them in his music, though he was popular among them. He didn't use or advocate the use of drugs, he was musically literate beyond any of his contemporaries, and his politics were closer to Ted Nugent's than John Lennon's, though he would surely deny that statement were he here to defend himself.
If you are not familiar with Zappa, I recommend you familiarize yourself by listening (allow a moment for download) to these recordings of "Brown Shoes Don't Make It," and "Who Needs the Peace Corps?" And for his orchestral/jazz side, here's something from the album "The Yellow Shark."
His music is sticky, but "The World's Greatest Sinner" is just too damn sticky, and too ridiculous (and, of course, meant to be). I wish I could get it out of my poor head.
As for Steve Allen? Here's a tune: Gravy Waltz.
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