Jason Pettigrew

There I was, making an early morning drive to Cleveland to conduct business, pay bills, fill up my DJ bag and later that night, see the mighty Beat. But the real unexpected surprise was when none other than Associated Press news reporter Maria Sherman (whom I lovingly refer to as Shermanic Street Preacher) called me up to discuss My Chemical Romance. It's truly one for the WTF playbook. Bob Bryar (RIP), Frank Iero, Ray Toro and brothers Gerard and Michael Way revived their bonafide masterpiece The Black Parade 20 years later to jumpstart young listeners' imaginations, reaffirm the aesthetic/cultural decisions of elder emo millennials and fill stadiums with a magnificent stage show (retooled as a cautionary tale of totalitarian politics), thereby reinforcing the power of the underdogs—with guitars. Thank you, Maria!

Anyway: Maria called me up, and I sat in the parking lot of my accountant's office, spewing all kinds of science as to why—after two decades—The Black Parade has sustained its resonance. And some of it ended up in her piece on MCR's ascendance to the top of the SoundScan charts with the record's reissue. (Shoutout to fellow culture-factory denizen/writer Paige Owens for chiming in, as well.) When many bands of that era were writing about "what it's like being in our band," MCR were making all the big gestures, chrome-plating classic-rock tropes and gathering up a legion of fans and turning them all into heroes in spite of whatever personal demons were living in their psychic backpacks. Lofty ambitions, when it could've been easier just to do nude selfies in hotel bathroom mirrors.

In my personal mythology, Gerard Way has blessed me with many bon mots. But the one that really holds the most weight for me is clearly: "We didn't come here to be ordinary." And damn if they didn't follow that through their entire career. Their post-break-up greatest hits collection had a previously unreleased track called "Fake Your Death." Rarely do the inside jokes become the chef's kisses. And I couldn't be prouder of them.

My personal favorite prog-rock king is hands-down, Edwin “Eddie” Jobson. My first exposure to Jobson was seeing him with Roxy Music on an episode of ABC’s In Concert sawing away on his clear plexiglass violin during “Street Life” and “A Song For Europe.” When all my fave prog bands made their most ass records (do the research: prog died in 1976), Jobson stepped up in ‘77 and formed UK with Bill Bruford and Allan Holdsworth and John Wetton (may they both RIP) for a stellar self-titled 1978 debut. When Holdsworth and Bruford jumped ship, Jobson enlisted PTGRW’s fave drummer in life (Terry Bozzio) and recorded Danger Money and a live album, Night After Night, and then adjourned sometime in 1980. Bozzio started Missing Persons; Wetton was enticed to front Asia; and Jobson went out on tour with Jethro Tull, maintained a brief solo career and then stayed at home for nearly three decades and composed music for movies and TV shows. (He has seen more episodes of Nash Bridges than you have.) 

But waaaaay before all that, Jobson was enlisted to play in Frank Zappa’s band. Apparently Roxy Music was opening for FZ on some American shows in 1975 and Jobson expressed a great desire to enter the ranks of America’s most sardonic musical genius. He joined Zappa just in time to end up on the front cover of 1976’s Zoot Allures, but nowhere on the record. FZ did put some mileage on him though: The musically sophisticated Englishman appeared on SNL and plays on the maestro’s recordings Zappa In New York, Studio Tan, Philly ‘76, Läther and Zappa/Erie. I was already a Zappa fan in 1974 after getting a free copy of Roxy And Elsewhere for subscribing to CREEM. I spent the rest of the ‘70s acquiring all the other Zappa/Mothers records in his discography at the time. 

I distinctly remember reading about Zappa in an issue of Circus magazine in the summer of 1976. Throughout the story, the writer kept talking about this record called The Night Of The Iron Sausage and the tracks that were on it. In my self-appointed role as The Imperial Teenage Zappa Ambassador For The Milky Way Galaxy, I was incredulous. That’s not the name of the record, you dolt. There’s not even a song on the record with that title. This particular moment would come into play in adulthood during my tenure at the culture factory, when the phrase “two-month lead time” comes into play. In the two-month window prior to the record’s release, a lot of plans were scrapped. The most obvious of them was the title of the record being changed and the harsh reality that the planned two-LP set was now a single album. The record was also issued on Warner Bros. (now Warner Records) instead of Zappa’s label imprint, Discreet. (FZ was suing his manager at the time, who was a co-partner in that venture.) The fanboy obsession over this stuff meant I didn’t get invited to a lot of parties. To this day, I’m OK with that.

I’m bloviating about this for two reasons. The first reason is that uME and the undisputed king of the Zappa archivists, Joe “The Vaultmeister” Travers, have announced Dec 4 as the release date for the 50th anniversary of Zoot Allures in a number of permutations. There’s a six-disc Super Deluxe Edition which includes the original LP, a complete 1975 concert recorded in Paris (featuring the lineup on the FZ:OZ release), as well as various mixes and previously unreleased tracks. But what has my heart practicing potential atrial fibrillation is a reconstruction of the intended Night Of The Iron Sausage, where Zoot tracks are augmented with songs that ended up on future FZ releases (drawing significantly from 1979’s Sleep Dirt). If you want the specifics about the contents of “Zoot 50” in all its majesty, well, I’ve got you, boo.

While not quite burying the lede, the second reason I’m bit-champing is that I was asked to contribute an essay to this reissue, which found me checking in with bassist/synthesist/Zappa band alumnus Patrick O’Hearn (almost hidden by FZ in the above photo) and Davey Moire, the co-engineer on the original Zoot sessions. I also professed my love of the album by discussing that it was the tour heralding my first time seeing Zappa in the flesh, something I would do approximately seven times later whenever he rolled into Pittsburgh, prior to his resignation from live gigs in 1988 and his passing in 1993.

Admittedly, I have not heard the final result of Monsieur Travers’ historical curation and state of the art mixology, nor have I read his always informative premablic essay about the project. In complete transparency, 15-year-old PTGRW can’t believe what the hell is happening and the elderly version of me is looking forward to cultivating new levels of tinnitus. I am forever grateful to Tim Plumley, Mr Travers and Holland Greco for their enthusiasm, encouragement and laughter at my puns (especially the bad ones). And let me once again shout out the 60th anniversary of The Mothers Of Invention’s debut, Freak Out, that I was incredibly honored to assist in.

Meanwhile, the latest issue of SPIN is waiting for you, so go to your favorite newsstand and scrape some microplastics off your credit card. Not only do you get some commentary from culture-war veterans (Henry Rollins, Anthrax, Diamanda Galas), electronic icons (Soft Cell, Human League) alt-rock institutions (Death Cab For Cutie) and columnist Steve Hochman’s Outside The Lines dispatch, my esteemed editor Jon Cohen turned me loose on the new Queens Of The Stone Age LP, Perfecth, as well as Who Loves The Sun, the remarkably depressing new album from Chat Pile (the d-word is not pejorative), as well as The Vinyl Countdown where I shoehorn commentary on no less than 13 records centered around all kinds of noises and the swath of people who make them.

Oh yeah, back to Eddie Jobson. Years ago, I registered with his information service (The Zealot’s Lounge) for $20 and stayed up for nine weeks straight refreshing my browser waiting for a response as to what I’d be getting in return for sending him a portrait of Andrew Jackson. I’m only half-kidding: I didn’t wait by the computer like a ‘70s teenage Air Supply fan waiting for the phone to ring three weeks before the senior prom. But like that unloved youngster, I too, got nothing.

Recently, efforts were made to potentially interview him for some outlet in support of what he considers “his final live dates.” But alas, his publicist said he wasn’t interested. So I took the money I had earmarked for seeing him in Chicago this week and preordered the deluxe version of Roxy Music’s second album, 1973’s For Your Pleasure, which features all kinds of experimental madness perpetrated by his predecessor, Brian Eno. Now mind you, it would’ve been cool to corner Jobson’s drummer Marco Minnemann and ask him about his stint in Necrophagist with guitarist Muhammed Suiçmez. But to spend $125-plus for the VIP pay-me-an’-dig-me package with travel expenses on top of that? Why, I could bring home a 50-count box of copies of Zoot 50 to give to my friends. Or better yet, finance a trip to see a much more exhilarating expedition.

Late-stage capitalism. As a wondrously cynical man once posited, “That’s what’s the deal we’re dealin’ in.”