In This Zoo by Invisible Zoo (MP3 album download)

There’s a Zoo at the End of the Tunnel
by Creston Gaither

To best understand the achievement of In This Zoo I think it’s useful to think about the end of art and the end of rock music.

Art critic Arthur C. Danto intriguingly asserts that (visual) art “ended” in April of 1964 when the Stable Gallery in Manhattan exhibited Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box sculptures. Danto hastens to distinguish this “end” from a “death” of art; what died was “a certain narrative that had…been objectively realized in the history of art, and it was that narrative…that had come to an end. A story was over.” Art would, of course, continue to be made, bought, and enjoyed. But after Warhol there was no longer a certain way art “must” be; “artists today treat museums as filled not with dead art but with living artistic options.”

Rock music certainly did not end in 1964. But I have for some while been thinking that, much later, it met a fate similar to that Danto ascribes to visual art: its story is over. Like Danto’s visual artists, rock musicians are locked into a museum full of options. Any really amazing innovation at this juncture would walk the music out of the “rock” category and into some new genre.

What can you do when it seems like it’s all been done? And this is where Danto’s vision falls short: you can do a lot. What resembles a dull cul-de-sac in Danto is in fact more a voluptuous spring flowering – “living artistic options” is really all you need. You’re in the place where art can best be made, because the palette is finally complete. You just don’t get to name any of the colors. So what?

Doug Lynner, Bill Boydstun and Andy Robinson formed Invisible Zoo in 1980 at roughly the climax of the rock narrative; the palette had only recently been completed. They brought a tremendous portion of that palette into their five track EP, Invisible Zoo; extended versions of its two best pieces, “Unfamiliar Feeling” and “Nighttime,” appear on the recently released In This Zoo, the rest of which languished unreleased for a quarter century.

And with In This Zoo the band really broke loose. Its command over rock’s complete palette is astonishing. In This Zoo is ambitious, generous, lively, and complex, blending a vast array of styles, sounds, technologies, and parameters which lesser musicians might have used to ornament (or disguise) banality. But it is above all else original, energetic, and inspired from start to end, every track a unique and worthwhile creation. Like post-Warhol visual artists, the Zoo uses a great deal. But it imitates almost nothing.

Consider the extended “Nighttime” : a single singing voice gives way to antiphonal voices backed up by throbbing synthetic drums with African, Latin, jazz, and rock elements that drive the piece on through successive solos by guitar, synthesizer, and ultimately the drums themselves. There’s an oriental feeling to some of the riffs, a bit of Springsteen in the lead guitar. The percussion provides continuity in a piece that varies throughout its 7+ minutes. The antiphonal voices play on the lyric – “Nighttime is anytime - I like it - any place - it's anytime - it's our time” – bouncing us between the meaning of the words and their musical value as sounds, giving it all a seasoning of hip-hop. One’s feet tap, ones brain muses on the fine poetry in the lyrics, one’s ear delights in the ultimate product, much greater than the sum of its parts.

“I’m In Love With Your Sister” is probably the best proof that the Zoo could write terrific lyrics, which are often funny and here tell a funny and playfully self-parodying story: the guy with “the one girl you can’t have” is clearly more preoccupied with besting his cocksure buddy than with the buddy’s sister. A bit of a Zappa influence here though the product is artfully original. “Inanimate Object” likewise offers amazingly clever, funny lyrics: “the object of all my desires/is made out of plastic and wires,” contrasting the wackiness of its lyrical premise with a mock-overwrought vocal style that seems to almost quote Elvis’s vocal gyrations in “All Shook Up” (the lyrics here being replete with the King’s very line: “I’m ih-hin love…”). The frenetic bass line in the musical backdrop provides more comic tension.

The only cover on the album, “Doo Wah Diddy,” is brilliant. At one point the synthesizers themselves articulate the famous refrain, restoring its freshness. And the band’s fascinating and delightful use of oriental timbres and melodies floats in and out, a perfect counterpoint somehow. Manfred Mann understood how funny this tune is but Invisible Zoo realized that it could also be quite lovely.

Many many influences can be detected throughout In This Zoo, often used contrapuntally to interesting effect. Lesser musicians might have overdone the futuristic synthesizers on “Monorail;” Invisible Zoo offsets them with a splendidly schmaltzy Spanish xylophone thing. As throughout the album, the interplay between the lyrics and the music is seamless. “Think About It” dabbles with heavy metal—a powerful guitar riff is set against thunderous yet intricate rhythms, which then alter with a really interesting slidey guitar solo. “Love Museum” is bluesy with harmonicas. “Talk Talk” has a whiff of the Cars and presents another clever vignette – the palpable frustration in the lyrics could be that of a woman contending with a Woody Allen type. The music is serviceably rock and roll while the story unfolds; then the chorus repeats the complaint “You’re just talkin’ to me—all we do is talk!” while the lead singer riffs on the lyrics, which once again have both musical and narrative power. As the talk-bound relationship is imploding into unbearable stasis, the music progresses toward an almost orgasmic ecstasy, as though music itself is the way out of the dilemma.

The oriental musical themes that come and go throughout this album take over in “Unfamiliar Feeling,” and they work, introducing what resembles an extended jazz jam with 8 or 10 musicians -- but there’s only 3 guys! Interesting how there are so many more than 3 unique voices (not just tracks, but voices) in the music. The synthesized drums could become numbingly monotonous here if they weren’t so intricately and creatively programmed. In the middle some spoken word raps against a masterful percussion jam that then takes over for awhile, then the synthesizer and guitar improvise around another riff. Then another a synthesizer comes in in a completely different solo – then the speaking voices themselves are cut up into a jamming instrument, as it were. William Burroughs would love this. A chorus of harmonies returns us to the familiar world near the end.

Meaningful lyrics, synthesizers, rock guitars, oriental music, Latin music, jazz, African rhythms, the blues, the King, Manfred Mann, the Cars, Burroughs, futurism, stuff I’ve missed – a lot goes on in 54 minutes! There is a sorcerer’s stock of stuff here and an untrained apprentice could easily drown in it. Which in the arts means: could easily bore us. Could easily fall into the trap of producing something abstract and pretentious, interesting in theory but not moving us anywhere, like so much contemporary art. Invisible Zoo’s technical mastery of its tools is impressive but so is much boring art. What’s worthwhile about this album is neither the Zoo’s technical virtuosity, nor the breadth of its palette (which is great), but the inspired energy and originality of the hands that moved the numerous brushes, and the result is work that is rich and diverse but above all enjoyable over and over – and no less so all these years later. Danto’s end-of-art thesis overlooks the wisdom of a far greater philosopher, Duke Ellington, who averred that “if it sounds good, it IS good.” And whatever theory you bring to In This Zoo, it sounds very, very good.