Taylor Swift's Lumpy Gravy

 

Image created by my own factory-fit artificial intelligence

 

One [grammar - Ed.] has to be very careful when invoking Taylor Swift's name. There are some very strange people out there and they bristle like warthogs if they suspect you're not a Ta-Ta Believer. And there's none stranger than Swiftie Dad™. My only opinion of Ms. Swift's music is that the little I've heard doesn't strike me as exceptional or even interesting, and that's as far as I need to take it. But that's already way over the line for Swiftie Dad™, who sees her in a Messianic light, capable of miracle healing, bonding families, and above all being above all criticism, both as a person and artist. This writer [Rolling Stone Magazine-style authorial modesty - Ed.] wonders what Frank would have made of Swiftie Dad™ - a song, at least. Ever the contrarian, he may well have expressed admiration for Swift herself in some ambiguous way, perhaps praising her public image engineering and steely business acumen. I doubt her music would be of much interest - it's neither dumb nor smart enough.

It's like sex, drugs and rock n' roll without the sex, drugs and rock n' roll

But there's one thing I can say with confidence about the toothsome Taylor: she will boost the page hits of this otherwise boilerplate piece exponentially, even without her permafrost Stepford smile used as chickbait. I'm hoping it attracts chicks ("Dude! This is 2024!") because th' IoF©'s resident population is trending like China's - it's a Stale, Male And Pale Pride Parade. So to all you Taylorbabes popping your IoF© cherries ("Dude! This is 2024!"), th' IoF© bids a warm welcome! Come sit over here with Fwiendly Gwampy Farq while he raps about Frank! Who he? Why, he be like our own Bizarro Taylor Swift back when music was totally created to PISS OFF our parents! OMG!

I need this shirt more than life itself

Lumpy Gravy is a sneaky little sucker, ain't it? It snuck out in '68, two months after the epochal We're Only In It For The Money (as a kind of Part Deux) and everybody be like WTF??? LOL!!! Later that same year he "dropped" - Jesus Fucking Christ dropped - Cruising With Reuben And The Jets, another album that was seen as a side project, even though nobody used the term back then, and could in itself be seen as Part Trois of Money, making a tasty triple-decker of elegantly-rinded American Cheese. That's three perfectly-formed albums in a year, Millennials and Genwhatevs! He didn't take a five-year hiatus in a Mennonite log cabin to work through personal issues of loss, bereavement, and mental health battles, he stayed on the road and in the studio, making music. What a fucking Boomer.

Only thirty-two minutes long, Lumpy crammed in enough ideas to fuel an entire career. But it definitely wasn't a pop album, and it wasn't remotely classical in spite of the orchestrals. It wasn't rock n' roll, jazz or avant garde or easy listening. It was, finally, only categorisable as Contemporary Music. And amazingly, against all the odds, it remains so. A dizzying collage of field recordings, improvised narration, sound effects, scored orchestral interludes, jaunty themes set to teen-friendly beats and ersatz jazz stylings, every brief mood is abruptly smacked into another in a continuously disruptive but coherent listening experience. That was quite a sentence, wasn't it? Would you like a snack?

Most pop enthusiasts who venture beyond Hot Rats into ZappaWorld© eventually list Lumpy in their Top Ten. Every play reveals some delightful and heretofore under-appreciated musical morsel. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Thank you, Frank.