plug: Baby Snakes (1979)
"A movie about people who do stuff that is NOT normal."
Welcome to today’s plug, a quick recommendation of an oft-forgotten film, cult classic, or movie that is dying to be rewatched // We send plugs Tuesday + Thursday //
Was thinking about the concept of entertainment-as-travel during COVID, and that got me thinking about live virtual events and shit and how it’s probably a great time to brush up on some classic concert films to fill the live-music void. So today’s plug is my personal favorite concert flick, Frank Zappa’s Baby Snakes.
A maniacal blend of footage from Zappa’s Halloween 1977 shows at New York’s Palladium Theater, claymation by Bruce Bickford, obligatory “backstage antics,” and other cinematic-collage bits ‘n bobs; Baby Snakes is probably as polarizing an experience as anything else from the Zappa canon. True to form, Zappa produced, directed, co-edited, and even distributed the film himself. Ironically, part of the reason he had trouble finding a major distributor was ‘cause peeps were afraid that the film’s unruly “cinematic style” (in lieu of a straightforward concert-only approach) wouldn’t work on a late-70s audience. Today, the variety of the piece is the very thing that makes it a rich and engaging time capsule.
It’s also a treasure trove of great music from Zappa’s best era IMO. The concert is heavy with tracks from my fave Zappa album, “Sheik Yerbouti,” an ideal mix of accessible heavy-rock hooks and aggressive sonic oddities with the very best of Zappa’s biting satirical lyrics & vocals. Zappa’s ‘77 backing lineup is also a fuckin’ fun group of musicians to watch on stage at the commercial height of rock-show theatricality.
The “backstage antics,” so common in old rock-concert movies, are pretty stale (they never age well, ya know?) but the movie makes up for that with a great showing of Zappa’s ‘70s post-hippie “freak scene” audience.
The real gem of Baby Snakes is the extended showcase of Bruce Bickford’s unbelievable stop-motion claymation. Zappa started working with Bickford in the early ‘70s after a famous stage accident left Zappa seriously injured and unable to perform live for almost a year. Bickford’s sequences for Baby Snakes evoke the unmistakable oeuvre of counterculture animators from the time — transgressive, timelessly grotesque and beautiful, and impossible to look away from.
Baby Snakes is kinda hard to get. Physical media-wise, it’s barely available as an out-of-print DVD, and you can’t watch it on any of the big streamers (though there are plenty of clips from the film on YouTube). But you can watch the whole thing on Vimeo right now for free. Jump on it while it’s still there!
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