Was Frank Zap­pa a musi­cal genius? A mod­ernist, avant-garde com­pos­er who just hap­pened to work in an idiomat­ic pas­tiche of jazz, clas­si­cal, pro­gres­sive rock and juve­nile shock tac­tics? The ques­tion can be a deeply divi­sive one. Zap­pa tends to inspire either intense devo­tion or intense dis­like. But what­ev­er one’s opin­ion of the man or his music, it’s safe to say that when he wasn’t work­ing alone, Zap­pa worked in the com­pa­ny of some incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed musi­cians. And he attract­ed, as John Rock­well wrote in 1984 at The New York Times, “a tiny fol­low­ing among clas­si­cal avant-gardists.”

That year, one of his more gen­teel fans, Pierre Boulez—for­mer music direc­tor of the New York Phil­har­mon­ic and “wide­ly regard­ed,” notes Rock­well, “as one of the great com­posers of the [20th] century”—decided to con­duct a suite of Zap­pa songs. Zap­pa hoped the result­ing album, The Per­fect Stranger, would help him real­ize his ambi­tion of hav­ing his music tak­en seri­ous­ly in clas­si­cal cir­cles. (“A brief col­lab­o­ra­tion in 1970 with Zubin Mehta,” writes April Peavey at PRI, “went nowhere.”)

Boulez con­ducts his own ensem­ble for three tracks on the album, “The Per­fect Stranger,” “Naval Avi­a­tion in Art?” and “Dupree’s Par­adise.” The remain­ing four songs are per­formed by “The Bark­ing Pump­kin Dig­i­tal Grat­i­fi­ca­tion Con­sort,” a Zap­paism for the Syn­clavier, Zap­pa’s favorite elec­tron­ic instru­ment. For all the high seri­ous­ness the col­lab­o­ra­tion implies, Zap­pa couldn’t help insert­ing his sur­re­al­ly sar­don­ic sense of humor; always “a com­pul­sive musi­cal come­di­an,” wrote Rock­well, he wears here “the defen­sive mask of irony, again.”

Each of the songs has an accom­pa­ny­ing sce­nario. “The Per­fect Stranger” imag­ines that “a door-to-door sales­man, accom­pa­nied by his faith­ful gyp­sy-mutant indus­tri­al vac­u­um clean­er, cavorts licen­tious­ly with a sloven­ly house­wife.” In “Love Sto­ry,” Zap­pa wants us to pic­ture “an elder­ly Repub­li­can cou­ple attempt­ing sex while break­danc­ing.” Many peo­ple have had trou­ble get­ting past the sopho­moric pos­tur­ing and see­ing Zappa’s music as seri­ous art. He often seemed intent on alien­at­ing exact­ly such peo­ple.

But per­haps Zap­pa did not need the pedi­gree Boulez lent to his work. When lis­ten­ing, for exam­ple, to the Moth­ers of Inven­tion play Zappa’s orig­i­nal arrange­ment of “Dupree’s Par­adise” (top), one has to admit, he cre­at­ed bril­liant­ly com­plex, rhyth­mi­cal­ly excit­ing music and, in the final analy­sis, rep­re­sent­ed “a par­tic­u­lar­ly appeal­ing type of quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Amer­i­can composer—genuinely defi­ant of estab­lished cat­e­gories and divi­sions that oth­ers rou­tine­ly accept.” Lis­ten to the Boulez/Zappa col­lab­o­ra­tion The Per­fect Stranger in the Spo­ti­fy playlist above, or access it direct­ly on Spo­ti­fy here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of Frank Zap­pa in 401 Songs

Frank Zap­pa Gets Sur­prised & Ser­e­nad­ed by the U.S. Navy Band at the San Fran­cis­co Air­port (1980)

Frank Zappa’s Amaz­ing Final Con­certs: Prague and Budapest, 1991

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

There are bands one casu­al­ly encoun­ters through great­est hits or break­through albums, on which they sound exact­ly like them­selves and no one else. It’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine any­one but Fleet­wood Mac mak­ing Rumors or Tusk. Or any­one but Pink Floyd record­ing Wish You Were Here or Dark Side of the Moon. But just like Fleet­wood Mac, when we look back before Floyd’s best-known work, we find, as Mark Blake writes at Team Rock, that “they were a very dif­fer­ent propo­si­tion.”

And yet it was­n’t that Pink Floyd rad­i­cal­ly shuf­fled the lineup—though they had, since their first album, lost found­ing singer and gui­tarist Syd Bar­rett to men­tal ill­ness and tak­en on David Gilmour to replace him. It’s that the same four musi­cians who re-invent­ed psych-rock in the ear­ly 70s with “Mon­ey,” “Time,” and “Great Gig in the Sky,” sound­ed noth­ing like that blues/funk/disco/prog hybrid in the late 60s. Some of the same ele­ments were there—the sar­don­ic sense of humor, love for sound effects and extend­ed jam sessions—but they cohered in much more alien and exper­i­men­tal shapes.

The title track of 1968’s Saucer­ful of Secrets, for exam­ple, opens with four min­utes of dis­so­nant hor­ror-movie organ drones, which give way to pri­mal drum­ming around which piano chords and sci-fi nois­es fall hap­haz­ard­ly, then resolve in a clos­ing word­less choral pas­sage. Not a sin­gle, cyn­i­cal lyric about the pains of mod­ern life to be found. The fol­low­ing year’s Ummagum­ma con­tin­ued to build the band’s exper­i­men­tal foun­da­tions, and in-between these projects, they record­ed film sound­tracks that, again, do not make one think of laser-lit are­na rock shows.

But there is plen­ty of con­nec­tive tis­sue between the var­i­ous phas­es of Floyd, much of it, like the bulk of their 1970 sound­track for Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, offi­cial­ly unre­leased. We can add to that list an attempt­ed album called House­hold Objects, which they began in 1970 and aban­doned in ’74. The project, drum­mer Nick Mason admit­ted, rep­re­sents the then-large­ly-instru­men­tal band “still look­ing for a coher­ent direc­tion,” and in so doing, aban­don­ing instru­ments alto­geth­er. On House­hold Objects, they made serendip­i­tous dis­cov­er­ies using—as the title clear­ly stated—found sounds, in the vein of John Cage or the avant-garde com­posers of musique con­crete.

In 1971, Abbey Road stu­dios tape oper­a­tor John Leck­ie, who went on to pro­duce the heav­i­ly Floyd-influ­enced Muse, remem­bers the band “mak­ing chords up from the tap­ping of beer bot­tles, tear­ing news­pa­pers for rhythm, and let­ting off aerosol cans to get a hi-hat sound.” Key­boardist Richard Wright recalls spend­ing “days get­ting a pen­cil and a rub­ber band till it sound­ed like a bass.” The idea began two years ear­li­er when the band per­formed a com­po­si­tion called Work that “involved,” writes Blake, “saw­ing wood and boil­ing ket­tles on stage.”

House­hold Objects record­ing ses­sions, writes Rolling Stone, “con­sist­ed of Pink Floyd play­ing songs on hand mix­ers, light bulbs, wood saws, ham­mers, brooms and oth­er home appli­ances. Record­ing in this man­ner was excru­ci­at­ing.” Wright and Gilmour grew exas­per­at­ed and the band moved on to oth­er things, name­ly Wish You Were Here. All that seem­ing­ly remains of House­hold Objects are the two tracks here, “The Hard Way” (an instance where rub­ber bands sound like a bass) and “Wine Glass­es,” the lat­ter employ­ing, you guessed it, wine glass­es. But like so much of Floyd’s less­er-known or for­got­ten exper­i­men­tal work, these ses­sions cre­at­ed the back­drop for their more acces­si­ble hits. “Wine Glass­es” sur­vived in “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond.” In the video just above, you can see David Gilmour work out the glass arrange­ments for his per­for­mance of the song in the 2006 Roy­al Albert Hall con­cert film Remem­ber That Night.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Lost” Pink Floyd Sound­track for Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s Only Amer­i­can Film, Zabriskie Point (1970)

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” Pro­vides a Sound­track for the Final Scene of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness