Thing-Fish Bel Air MD

Thing-Fish

Frank Zappa

Rykodisc, 1984

REVIEW BY: Christopher Thelen

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 09/19/2005

Of all the discs I've had to re-listen to in this ongoingretrospective of Frank Zappa, I will be honest with you: I wasleast looking forward to Thing-Fish, the "original cast recording" of a Broadway playthat Zappa never got around to producing.

You see, this is easily the most challenging, most demandingdisc of Zappa's entire discography, and apparently is still subjectto a lot of scrutiny and confusion. When I first heard it, I wasdisturbed and disgusted by the whole picture painted out in themusic (and, in case you missed it, in the lyrics printed with theCD), and filed it away for what I thought would be forever.

Now it is a decade later - and while I can't say I've become afan of this set, I do understand some of what Zappa was trying toaccomplish a little bit more. Still, this is a disc that, if you'renot ready for it, will piss you off.

After all, who else but Zappa could take on the stereotypicalappearance of Broadway by creating a musical in which the maincharacter, the potato-headed, duck-billed creature Thing-Fish, wasAfrican-American and spoke like a character from Amos 'N' Andy? (In all fairness, Ike Willis, who isAfrican-American, voices the character - if this had truly been aracist script, Willis would have undoubtedly said something.) Butnot only Broadway and its white majority are taken on, but alsoreligion (with the characters of the Mammy Nuns), modern (for 1984)social views (in terms of skewering Yuppies and the women'sliberation movement) and the government (all but accusing them ofcreating diseases to rid the world of "unwanted" aspects ofsociety). Offended yet? Believe me, you have to have skin made ofKevlar not to be offended by something in this.