In the first week of August, as in every August for the last 23 years, Zappateers, Zappatistas and Zappafarians from all over the world converged once again on the racecourse just outside the small north German town of Bad Doberan, for the Zappanale – a festival celebrating Frank Zappa in all his facets.

This year more than 40 bands from all over the world played the festival, but many said the  program was too thin to stretch the full five days. Unfortunately many couldn’t make it to see Aachen-based combo Yellow Snow Crystals perform on Wednesday night. They were the surprise hit at last year’s festival, with their eclectic tuba and trombone driven improv jazz cum performance poetry cabaret renditions of Zappa songs, in German.

To the Zappanale hardcore, the top acts on Thursday were George Duke and the French violinist Jean Luc Ponty, famous for their Zappa connections and lengthy improv prog-jazz creations, but for the punters looking for something harder, fatter and shorter, it was Triggerfinger that came up with the goods.

The Belgian-based trio have become firm favourites on the European festival circuit and they pulled a respectable crowd at the Bad Doberan racecourse too. Their chunky bass-guitar driven covers of songs by Lykke Li and and Rihanna, among others, proved that sometimes hidden beneath commercial radio mush there are bones worth chewing on.

The prog-rock psychedelic-synth ensemble Quantum Fantay rounded out the night but the early finish left plenty of bemused festival-goers wandering in the darkness in search of alcohol and further entertainment.

The night was tainted by the theft of a camera bag and two video cameras from beneath the feet of one person in the Quantum Fantay crowd. To further dampen the atmosphere, many tents in the camping ground were ransacked, and for a number of people that was the end of the festival. They simply packed up and left. Old hands had always said that this was one festival where theft was never a problem – perhaps the age of innocence is over.

The police said it was more than likely a gang of organised tent-robbing professionals, who specialise in festivals. Let’s hope their next target was Wacken, just down the road, and that they got caught red-handed robbing the tents of some homosexual blackmetal satanist sadists on angeldust from Alabama.

The Zappanale  traditionally includes an exhibition in Bad Doberan’s town centre, and  this year’s theme was Frank Zappa’s Yellow Shark epic, with original costumes, music scores and other paraphernalia, a film of Yellow Shark being performed, and artwork inspired by the composition. It was all very nice, but it was hard to concentrate or appreciate, as we were still stinging from the thefts of the night before.

In spite of the early departures, by Friday morning the campsite was much fuller than last year – possibly a reflection of higher ticket prices, a source of frequent grumbling with many Zappatistas.

Heavy rain most evenings made life difficult, and not just for the campers. The festival organisers  decided to do away with the large marquee and other covered areas of past years. When the rain really started to come down, there was absolutely nowhere to go. The only people who were truly happy with the conditions were a couple of guys who looked like they’d just stepped off a North-Sea trawler, complete with yellow rubber sou-westers and boots and beards to match.

Guitar maestro Gary Lucas and Dutch radio-man Co de Kloet were the recurring themes on Friday and provided the day’s high-points, Gary with his slide guitar and Co with all sorts of interesting material hauled out of the audio archives, including a rarely heard recording of the last interview ever done by Don van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart.

Co and Gary performed a somewhat cut-down version of a piece based on that interview, called simply “The Cat”. With Gary Lucas stomping hard on on the distortion and the bizarre interview running in the background you could imagine you were on an auditory journey into the backwaters of Beefheart’s addled mind. It was, for us at Zasph incorporated, the highlight of the day.

Magma, the unclassifiable experimental jazz legends from France, was also on the list of must-sees, but the stage was all wrong and so was the weather. Magma were there, but at the same time somehow not. The ambience bumped along the bottom and people began to fidget and grumble.

Saturday dawned bright and hot, so we took a ride to the resort town of Heiligendamm on the Baltic coast, to see what all the fuss was about. I was shocked to learn that people were expected to pay to go on the beach; and as there was no surf anyway, we sat on a bench and knocked back a couple of beers as we watched the passing parade of elderly Germans in inappropriate swimwear.

An hour of that will make almost anyone feel pretty good about their physical shape, and we strutted like marble deities back to the car and back to Bad Doberan.

That afternoon a violent rainstorm tried to kill our grill, but didn’t manage to dampen our enthusiasm; and the next item on the musical menu was Dr Dark with, as special guest, the omnipresent Mr Gary Lucas. Dr Dark is a high-quality Captain Beefheart tribute, and a Dr Dark concert is probably as close as you’ll get these days to actually seeing the dead Captain live. The good Dr delivered Beefheart classics like Electricity and Safe as Milk with real soul. A feast for all Beefheart fans.

From that point on the sounds got heavier, as did the rain. Under the weight of water and a certain volume of beer, the three Norwegians from Motorpsycho blend in my memory with the former East Germans of Herr Blum. De Wolff stand out, if only because they found themselves so awesome.

As is traditional with these things, Sunday began with the Bad Doberan town brass band. The quality deteriorated from there and culminated with self-declared “musical collective” Lapis Lazuli, who were remarkable only for the bizarre rhythmless dancing they provoked in two girls who seemed to be competing for the band’s attention. The collective yawn was almost deafening and it was clear that people were just waiting around for Alice Cooper to bring down the curtain.

And bring it down he did! It was worth every second of torture during the long hot afternoon just to see Ms Cooper do her stuff. What a showman and what a show! Those who were there will also be able to tell their grandchildren they saw the only show ever where Alice paid tribute to Frank Zappa, including trademark moustache and goatee. Some grumbled about Alice Cooper having nothing to do with Frank Zappa, but Zappa actually gave Alice Cooper his first big break.

Many griped that the festival this year had been built around Alice Cooper, and this was why the stage was so wrong for most of the bands that played, why the ticket price was so high, and the reason behind the penny-pinching in other areas. Something in the atmosphere of this year’s festival was missing. A certain intimacy was gone. Let’s hope they find it again again for Zappanale 24.

© CCC