These are troubling times for people who really and truly love music. Count Dweezil Zappa, eldest son of the inimitable Frank Zappa, among those who think it's in a real deep decline, and he doesn't know when, or if, it'll be pulled out its current funk.

"I grew up hearing really only what Frank was playing or working on in the house or listening to in the house, and I didn't really hear the radio or any other popular music until I was 11 or 12," recalls Dweezil. "I didn't really hear the radio or any other popular musicc until I was 11 or 12, and I started hearing the popular bands of the time, and 10 years before the time. So, it was bands like Led Zeppelin and Van Halen and AC/DC and all these rock bands ... rock was king, and everybody wanted to actually be a pretty good musician. Flash forward 10, 15 years from that, and everybody wants to just have the right tattoos and the right haircut and not be able to play very well. And then, now, it's all about everybody has to have their own dance squad and tape their music, and it doesn't matter if you can play or not."

Understandably frustrated by the current lack of imagination and devotion to the craft of music making, Dweezil has been busy reintroducing the public to the utterly original, hilariously satirical, painstakingly composed music of his father with the Zappa Plays Zappa project (see the bottom of this post for news on what's upcoming for this unit). A new, richly filmed double-disc DVD set — titled "Zappa Plays Zappa" (personally, I think it's one of the best concert DVDs of the year) — of two 2006 performances by the band he's formed to play Frank's music is out, and the astounding musicianship on display here stands in sharp contrast to the lackluster playing found in many of today's groups (not all, though, as I'll contend there's still amazing music being performed in the underground, as there always is).

"Some people say, 'Man, it keeps getting better,' and there might be a lot of people that would disagree with that," says Dweezil. "Some of these cycles ... have happened throughout the history of music, but it's more stagnant now creatively in a lot of ways in terms of what gets out on the airwaves than I think it's ever been, and back in the days when Frank first came out and other bands in the late''60s/early '70s, record companies were not 'corporatized' in the way they are now, and they used to have, as Frank described, these cigar-chomping impresario guys who would say, 'I don't know if it works. Let's just try it.' And so, you don't have that. Everything is a very calculated concept, and it's quite rare that something unique finds its way out there to the masses anymore."

Is Dweezil right? And if so, who's to blame? Is it the homogenized state of commercial radio? Is it the corporate suits at record companions who are so blind to quality music that they'd probably have rejected The Beatles? Or, is it us? Have we accepted the lowest-common denominator for so long that we've lost the ability to distinguish between good music and garbage? I want to know what you think.

It's my contention that the charts have never been a good indicator of the state of music, and if that's all you're focused on, then you're really not that much of a music fan. So, I'll throw that out there and see if we can get a discussion going. 

In the meantime, here's some news on the Zappa Plays Zappa front. Dweezil says there will be a live album from the '07 tour this year that will coincide with this summer's version of the Zappa Plays Zappa tour. And, later, there will be another DVD; this time it'll include footage of the '07 tour, and it'll be different from the DVD that's out now.

"It won't be in the same vein as the first one, which was quite an expensive presentation," says Dweezil. "There was a large crew, at least 40 extra people, a recording truck, cameras ... the other one is more of a guerilla, hand-held shoot, an indie sort of day-in-the-life experience concept with interviews and performances."

For more information, visit www.zappaplayszappa.com