Buzz Drainpipe Review: Them or Us – Frank Zappa’s 1980s Masterstroke


There’s a certain kind of Zappa album where you can hear the man smirking through the tape hiss — and Them or Us (1984) is one of those sly, oversized beasts. On the surface, it’s a kitchen sink double LP: a grab-bag of road-hardened live takes, studio tinkering, comedic detours, and sudden left turns into shred territory. But play it front to back, and you start to realize it’s a unified snapshot of Zappa’s mid-’80s total control era — where the studio was his toy box and his band was a scalpel.

This is Buzz Drainpipe territory because it’s an album that behaves like a stack of mismatched VHS tapes dubbed over one another. Side one gives you the suave guitar elegance of “The Closer You Are” and the brain-melt soloing of “Marqueson’s Chicken” (a title that sounds like an in-joke from a late-night diner stop). Then you get the horror-surf parody “Be in My Video,” which drips with MTV-era sarcasm. Elsewhere, “Ya Hozna” is reverse-tape voodoo — voices, licks, and studio debris swirling like you’ve just rewound the universe.

The big jaw-dropper is Zappa’s gleeful, high-octane covers of “Whippin’ Post” and “Sharleena” — guitar clinics masquerading as crowd-pleasers. And yet, the album’s real strength is how it refuses to settle. Just as you’re settling into a groove, Zappa yanks you into another room: a basement polka jam, a noir guitar sketch, or a piece that feels like a soundtrack to an unmade B-movie.

By 1984, Zappa had Synclavier experiments in one pocket and a world-class touring band in the other. Them or Us fuses those worlds into a kind of mutant mixtape — less “conceptual continuity” and more “conceptual whiplash.” It’s the VHS thrift store of Zappa albums: hilarious, dense, and full of moments where you have to rewind just to make sure you heard that right.

If you’re new to Zappa, this is the wrong starting point. But if you’re already inside the temple, Them or Us is the secret wing where the neon lights buzz, the floors are sticky, and the maestro himself is in the corner, laughing, guitar in hand.

Buzz Drainpipe Sidebar: Them or Us as a VHS-Scuzz Collage

Imagine you’ve just hauled a milk crate of unlabelled VHS tapes up from a basement. You pop the first one in: it’s a half-taped-over soap opera, followed by a late-night horror host showing a monster flick, then a jump cut to a local metal band’s cable access gig, then commercials for a mall that no longer exists. That’s the Them or Us listening experience.

Zappa in ’84 was working like a VHS pirate — splicing together pristine master takes with weird outtakes, absurdist skits, and audio “found footage” from the road. The fidelity jumps from ultra-clean guitar heroics to tape-warped backwards chants. Some tracks feel like they’ve been played over until the magnetic grain itself has texture.

This is where the Buzz Drainpipe ethos clicks:

  • Scuzz-as-Glue: The unpolished segues and sudden mood swings make the whole thing more human. It’s a living scrapbook, not a sterile studio trophy.

  • Bootleg Spirit in an Official Release: Zappa could release note-perfect orchestral works — and still choose to drop an album that sounds like a contraband mixtape your older cousin warned you about.

  • Temporal Whiplash: Songs pull you from doo-wop nostalgia to metal thrash to avant-garde noise in the span of minutes — a trick ripped straight from the basement zine playbook where page 3 might be a love poem and page 4 a collage of nuclear mushroom clouds.

In the Buzz Drainpipe Library, Them or Us sits between Lumpy Gravy and a dubbed tape of Night Flight episodes. It’s not just an album — it’s a multi-channel fever dream, proof that even in the Reagan-era digital slickness, Zappa could still smuggle in grit, absurdity, and the joy of messing with the medium.

Buzz Drainpipe Bootleg VHS Viewing Guide
File: THEM_OR_US_84_VHS.DRAIN
(Recovered from the “Outer Order Movie Club” archives — label written in green Sharpie, tracking wobbly)

Track 1 – “The Closer You Are” → VHS #14: Mall Make-Outs & Doo-Wop Ghosts
Looks like a low-budget ‘50s teen romance shot in a half-abandoned mall in 1983. Everyone’s wearing Members Only jackets over poodle skirts. The jukebox is an obvious prop — Zappa’s clean harmonies slip in like a phantom radio station that shouldn’t exist in this timeline.

Track 2 – “In France” → VHS #33: The Cajun Detective
A Louisiana swamp noir series taped off late-night PBS, starring an actor who can’t do a French accent but tries anyway. Includes bizarre commercial breaks for bait shops and an inexplicable promo for a mime school.

Track 3 – “Ya Hozna” → VHS #08: Satanic Backmasking Hotline
A call-in show where viewers play rock records backwards live on air to “reveal the truth.” The tape glitch loops over itself, voices garble into demonic syllables. Occasionally, a cat walks across the camera.

**Track 4 – “Sharleena” → VHS #27: Cable Access Wedding
Someone’s cousin’s wedding video with a local funk-rock band for entertainment. Zappa’s guitar solo replaces the vows, and no one complains. The bride’s dress is slightly stained with punch.

Track 5 – “Sinister Footwear II” → VHS #19: Giallo Shoe Commercials, Uncut
An Italian shoe company ad reel from 1977, but edited like a slasher trailer. Shiny heels, sudden knife flashes, slow-motion running.

**Track 6 – “Truck Driver Divorce” → VHS #05: CB Radio Meltdown
A feature-length trucker drama taped off UHF channel 68. Plot revolves around heartbreak, diesel fumes, and a phantom truck only heard, never seen.

Track 7 – “Stevie’s Spanking” → VHS #42: Heavy Metal Talent Show
High school auditorium, 1984. Students in sleeveless denim shred in front of bored parents. One kid’s solo makes the camcorder clip in the red.

Track 8 – “Baby Take Your Teeth Out” → VHS #21: Dental Hygiene PSA Gone Wrong
Educational film from 1966 that abruptly turns into a surrealist comedy halfway through. The tooth costume starts singing.

Track 9 – “Marqueson’s Chicken” → VHS #39: The Haunted Rotisserie
Cooking show pilot that was never aired. The chicken visibly moves when the host’s back is turned.

Track 10 – “Be In My Video” → VHS #01: MTV: The Missing Reels
A parody block of pop videos with cardboard sets, bad lighting, and props obviously stolen from a high school play.

Track 11 – “Them or Us” → VHS #11: Cold War Game Show
Contestants must guess whether grainy surveillance footage is “Them” (the enemy) or “Us” (American citizens). Nobody wins.

**Track 12 – “Frogs with Dirty Little Lips” → VHS #29: Amateur Nature Doc
Close-up frog footage shot on VHS-C with running commentary from a stoned narrator. The frogs are suspiciously cooperative.

Track 13 – “Whippin’ Post” → VHS #99: Live at the Civic Center, Dubbed Third-Hand
The tape begins halfway through the encore. Audience sounds like they’re screaming through a sock. The guitar is molten.

Them or Us feel less like an album and more like a video store shelf in another dimension — one where Zappa’s master tapes have been reincarnated as misfiled, taped-over cultural artifacts.


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