2000 Great Songs #1452: Abba Zaba

As noted previously, one of my favorite music podcasts--and podcasts period--is Andrew Hickey's History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, where he is systematically reviewing the history of rock music, in chronological order, often in painstaking detail with unexpected and sometimes fascinating tangents. And while I don't necessarily care for all the music he covers (for example, I'm far less interested in the 100 or so blues, jazz, country, and early rock tracks he talked about before he even got to the Beatles), one of my favorite parts of the podcast is his ability to get me interested in songs and artists even if the music isn't something I tend to spin.

This summer, he's somewhere in mid-1969, landing back to back on Frank Zappa's "Peaches en Regalia" (song 185) and Captain Beefheart's "Frownland" (186). Now, as I've detailed in these parts before, both of these are artists I've struggled to enjoy, periodically pulling out their music--I've got a ton of their respective albums gathering dust--and, while finding things to admire, just never feeling like hanging out with them for more than a few songs.

And, alas, while I enjoyed the latest 500 Songs episodes, they haven't changed my mind.

That said, there are some Beefheart tunes I still find somewhat great. "Abba Zaba," off his 1967 debut Safe As Milk, hints around the edges at the absurdism and free-jazz-like musical abandon of later work, while still being tethered to the more straight blues rock with which Beefheart started out. It's got a surprisingly funky rhythm, somewhere between a Bo Diddley beat and something more tribal, with the dueling guitar licks and relatively grounded (yet still joyously goofy) call-and-response vocals creating a deliriously frenetic circus-like atmosphere.

1972 performance:

Built to Spill live cover:

See the entire Top 2000 to date in a sortable database!