A ZIPLESS Anniversary: Erica Jong's 'Fear of Flying' turns 40

It was the only book my mother would read with the cover folded back, and the only one she carried away when she finished reading. 

Being a writer herself, she devoured books until their covers were creased and tattered, until the pages were folded and torn, bindings nearly bifurcated. 

This one particular book, having consumed it so completely, at some point it split right down the middle. She reconnected the two parts with multiple layers of Scotch tape: that's how I knew how to find it once she tucked it away in the 'J' section of the umpteen books she had alphabetized on her shelves. Of course I read the back cover, but it wasn't until my Senior year at Barnard, - coincidentally Jong's alma mater - that I read 'Fear of Flying' with my mother's same voraciousness. 

When I was just out of college, I met Erica, and felt an immediate, electric kind of connection, as I had with Isadora Wing. And as my mother had done, I would carry "Fear of Flying' with me for months, with the binding creased hard down the middle, my black inky notes scrawled in the margins. 

I would soon dive headlong into Erica's poetry, 'Half Lives', 'Fruits & Vegetables', 'Loveroot'. It was with 'Becoming Light', a collection of Jong's poetry released by Harper Collins in 1992, that I began to dig more thoroughly and fervidly into Jong's verses. I found myself within those pages.

'Zipless' was the fruit borne from that experience, an album which focused my thinking on the fact of my femininity, of my gender and sexuality, of the relationship between pen and paper, the synergies and differences between a Poem and a Song. That process of reflecting, revising, and reconstructing Erica's poems into song was a kind of rite-of-passage for me artistically. I approached the task with a zeal and exuberance that has never left me.

I think everyone who has read 'Fear of Flying' comes out of the experience changed somehow: feeling either self-affirmation — that an intuited, hidden truth has been uncloaked — or transformed — that some new truth has been uncovered. In either and both cases, the change is permanent: the world stands still, but you keep moving, and there's no returning once you've boarded that Zipless train.

Best Albums of the '90s | SLANT Magazine

98. Vanessa Daou, Zipless. It's a small victory that Vanessa Daou was able to sneak "Near the Black Forest," writer Eric Jong's ode to her untended bush, onto VH1's playlist for a short spell. Daou's is a whisper of a singing voice, and her husband's jazz-house compositions would have been a challenge for any pop radio programmer, but more importantly, the content of Zipless, Daou's interpretations of Jong's poetry, was far too sophisticated for general audiences. The lyrical and musical centerpiece of the album is the entirely spoken-word "Alcestis on the Poetry Circuit"; in her understanding of how restraint, imposed both from within and from without ("The very fact of her gift should cause her such pain/That she will take her own life rather than best us"), is countered by the discovery or renewal of one's sense of self, Daou empowers both herself and her listeners. SC 

Read more @ SLANT

Five Albums You Should Be Listening To Right Now | by Sal Cinquemani

4. Vanessa Daou, Zipless

 

We recently posted our long-awaited list of the Best Albums of the '90s, and this is one of our lesser known picks. It's a collection of jazz-house interpretations of writer Erica Jong's poems. The lyrical and musical centerpiece of the album is the entirely spoken-word "Alcestis on the Poetry Circuit," which explores women's self-imposed restraint, both literal and figurative. Also, it's got a kick-ass keyboard solo.

Listen to "Alcestis on the Poetry Circuit" & Read more @ Nerve

The Rockologist: The Women Who Have Rocked My World

"They say that the voice of a woman can be enough to soothe both the savage beast in man, as well as serve as proverbial nails on a chalkboard.

Nowhere has this been more true over the years than in music. My own relationship with women in music over the years has been, well let's just say that as in life, it's been complicated.

The first time I can remember falling in love with a woman's voice was when as a pre-teen boy I first heard Grace Slick sing "White Rabbit" with the Jefferson Airplane. Even though I nary understood a thing that Grace was talking about with all her talk about pills that made you either larger or small, there was still something about her sweet, yet seductive voice that made me really want to fall down that particular rabbit hole.

Even so, I would grow to develop a certain love/hate relationship with the various women of rock over the years as I grew older. For every Janis Joplin or Aretha Franklin who were able to touch some unrealized yearning deep within my soul, or for every Ronnie Spector who was able to light the flame of innocent, unconditional romantic love — there would be those angry feminist singers who could just as quickly extinguish it.

...

When it comes to pure out and out eroticism, no one has ever communicated this as perfectly as Vanessa Daou did on her tragically slept on, Erica Jong-inspired album Zipless.

And this is the point where I guess I apologize for taking you through a personal mix-tape of my own fantasies.

But hell yeah. Damn, would I like to get with a girl like this:

On the other end of Vanessa Daou's pure sexuality, lies the innocent pre-"Cloudbusting" romanticism of Kate Bush. Before Kate got corrupted by the eighties New Wave of weird chicks like Lene Lovich, this was the "Dorothy in Oz" sort of girl every guy dreams of."

Read more

Remembering Guru

It was during my tour for 'Zipless' opening for 'Jazzmatazz' in '95 that I got to know Guru - His extreme intelligence & exceptional talent was ever-present, he was fearless with his voice & creative vision. An immense loss to lovers of Jazz, Hip-Hop, Poetry, artists everywhere.

The New York Times & All About Jazz have solid pieces on his life, career, & achingly beautiful written letter to fans, friends, and loved ones.

Ben Williams @Codesignal streams his in depth 2009 interview here with the legendary Jazz-Rapper pioneer.

Author Graham Reid on 'Zipless'

"There is sexy music and there is sex music.

And there can be quite a difference between the two in execution.

Prince made a lot of sex music but slightly less sexy music; Donna Summer and Jane Birkin brought orgasms to music -- and so did Yoko Ono who screamed it to the ceiling and beyond.

Ono was sex, the other two sexy. Sometimes Grace Jones could be both.

Sexy music -- the stuff you might want to play while engaging with someone while the lights are dimmed and the phone is off the hook -- will come in many forms. Doubtless you know someone for whom Tool or Linkin Park is their ideal sex music. I'm pleased to say I don't think I do.

But when it comes to mood pieces for "that" moment then there are the ever reliables such as Miles Davis' Kind of Blue or the soundtrack to The Hot Spot where Davis teamed up with John Lee Hooker to deliver something very sultry and sex-soaked.

Into this world of steamy windows and heavy breathing came Vanessa Daou, an American multi-talent (painter, poet and dancer) whose Zipless album was inspired by the work of her husband/producer Peter's aunt Erica Jong who wrote of the "zipless fuck" in her '73 novel Fear of Flying.

Vanessa Daou had come from the electronica underground in New York and she'd almost perfected a more sensual style which made Sade sound vapid and asexual. Daou was a heavy breather in the manner of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg's Je t'aime, but also brought a poetic spin to things.

....

Electronica beats keep their distance, a saxophone eases in from down the corridor, pianos play slow and sensuously, and everywhere is Daou's remarkable voice spinning out poetry worth reading or barely suggesting melodies as if she is too sated to rouse herself fully.

It is about carnal need as much as sexual passion and delight, and sometimes a wish not to be driven by such fevers: "I think I can live without it, love with its pumping blood ... sex with its messy hungers" she speak-sings unconvincingly on Becoming a Nun.

This is electronica erotica, aural sex and the perfect soundtrack to . . .

Well, not doing dishes.

It is, as they say, an album for "special occasions".

Enjoy."

Graham Reid is an award winning writer & journalist - In 2005 Graham wrote a book of travel stories published by Random House, Postcards from Elsewhere which won the Whitcoulls Travel Book of the Year award in 2006.

Read his full post on Zipless on his blog Elsewhere

Zipless/Vanessa Daou

"Vanessa Daou's 1994 debut album Zipless consists entirely of musical interpretations of the poetry of feminist writer Erica Jong, as found in her 1991 collection Becoming Light: Poems New and Selected. ... According to the description of the album on Daou's website, "Jong's emotionally complex and sexually-charged narratives radiated against the sumptuous backdrop of Peter’s masterful arrangements and Vanessa’s engrossing vocal caresses." Jong herself provided a vocal for the album, reciting her own poem on the track Smoke. The album's title alludes to a two-word phrase coined by Jong in her 1973 novel Fear of Flying, referring to a sexual encounter between two strangers, without emotional commitment or involvement. One of the words is "zipless." We're far too delicate to include the other word here."

Read original blog post at Classics Rock