Frank Zappa (Official Thread)

Flower

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Discography

I was so sad when I heard that Frank Zappa had died .. He was a beloved father, husband and a brilliant man (perhaps misunderstood by some people) .. I will build this thread slowly .. everyone is welcome to add their thoughts of course ...

Frank Zappa
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Background information
Birth name Frank Vincent Zappa
Born December 21, 1940(1940-12-21)
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Died December 4, 1993 (aged 52)
Los Angeles, California, USA
Genres Rock, jazz, fusion, classical, avant-garde, experimental, progressive rock
Occupations Composer, musician, conductor, producer
Instruments Guitar, vocals, bass, keyboards, drums, Synclavier
Years active 1950s–1993
Labels Verve/MGM, Warner Bros., Bizarre/Straight, DiscReet, Zappa Records, Barking Pumpkin Records, Rykodisc
Associated acts The Mothers of Invention
Captain Beefheart
Website Zappa.com


Frank Vincent Zappa (pronounced /ˈzæpə/; December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, electric guitarist, record producer, and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, electronic, orchestral, and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist.

While in his teens, he acquired a taste for percussion-based avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse and 1950s rhythm and blues music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands—he later switched to electric guitar. He was a self-taught composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often impossible to categorize. His 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was one of rock, jazz or classical. He wrote the lyrics to all his songs, which—often humorously—reflected his iconoclastic view of established social and political processes, structures and movements. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, autodidacticism and the abolition of censorship.

Zappa was a highly productive and prolific artist and he gained widespread critical acclaim. Many of his albums are considered essential in rock and jazz history. He is regarded as one of the most original guitarists and composers of his time. He also remains a major influence on musicians and composers. He had some commercial success, particularly in Europe, and for most of his career was able to work as an independent artist. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.

Zappa was married to Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman from 1960 to 1964. In 1967 he married Adelaide Gail Sloatman, with whom he remained until his death from prostate cancer in 1993. They had four children: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen. Gail Zappa manages the businesses of her late husband under the name the Zappa Family Trust


 
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rtbuck

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Re: Frank Zappa ~ Appreciated

:cheers2 to Zappa...I'm a big fan & will probably write more on him after the Holiday. His guitar playing is amazing. I love his 'Shut Up & Play Yer Guitar' album. My favorite album though is 'Apostrophe' & one of my favorite songs is "Bobby Brown"
 

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Re: Frank Zappa ~ Appreciated

Early life

Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 21, 1940. His mother, Rose Marie (née Colimore), was of Italian and French descent, and his father, Francis Vincent Zappa, was a native of Partinico, Sicily and had Greek and Arab ancestry. Zappa was the eldest of four children, and had two brothers and a sister. The family moved often during Zappa's childhood because his father, a chemist and mathematician, had various jobs in the US defense industry. After a brief time in Florida in the mid-1940s, the family returned to Maryland, where Zappa's father worked at the Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility at the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Due to their home's proximity to the arsenal, which stored mustard gas, gas masks were kept in the house in case of an accident. This had a profound effect on the young Zappa: references to germs, germ warfare and other aspects of the defense industry occur throughout his work.

During his childhood Zappa was often sick, suffering from asthma, earaches and sinus problems. A doctor treated the latter by inserting a pellet of radium into each of Zappa's nostrils; little was known at the time about the potential dangers of being subjected to even small amounts of therapeutic radiation. Nasal imagery and references appear both in his music and lyrics, as well as in the collage album covers created by his long-time visual collaborator, Cal Schenkel.

Many of Zappa's childhood diseases may have arisen from exposure to mustard gas; furthermore, his health worsened when he lived in the Baltimore area. In 1952, his family relocated mainly because of Zappa's health. They next moved to Monterey, California, where Zappa's father taught metallurgy at the Naval Postgraduate School. Shortly afterward, they moved to Claremont, then to El Cajon before finally moving to San Diego.

Musical influences

Since I didn't have any kind of formal training, it didn't make any difference to me if I was listening to Lightnin' Slim, or a vocal group called the Jewels ... , or Webern, or Varèse, or Stravinsky. To me it was all good music.

Frank Zappa, 1989 Zappa joined his first band, The Ramblers, at Mission Bay High School in San Diego. He was the band's drummer] About the same time his parents bought a phonograph, which allowed him to develop his interest in music, and to begin building his record collection.

R&B singles were early purchases, starting a large collection he kept for the rest of his life. He was interested in sounds for their own sake, particularly the sounds of drums and other percussion instruments. By age 12, he had obtained a snare drum and began learning the basics of orchestral percussion. Zappa's deep interest in modern classical music began when he read a LOOK magazine article about the Sam Goody record store chain that lauded its ability to sell an LP as obscure as The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Volume One.

The article described Varèse's percussion composition Ionisation, produced by EMS Recordings, as "a weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds". Zappa decided to seek out Varèse's music. After searching for over a year, Zappa found a copy (he noticed the LP because of the "mad scientist" looking photo of Varèse on the cover). Not having enough money with him, he persuaded the salesman to sell him the record at a discount. Thus began his lifelong passion for Varèse's music and that of other modern classical composers.

Zappa grew up influenced by avant-garde composers such as Varèse, Igor Stravinsky and Anton Webern, R&B and doo-wop groups (particularly local pachuco groups), and modern jazz. His own heterogeneous ethnic background, and the diverse social and cultural mix in and around greater Los Angeles, were crucial in the formation of Zappa as a practitioner of underground music and of his later distrustful and openly critical attitude towards "mainstream" social, political and musical movements. He frequently lampooned musical fads like psychedelia, rock opera and disco. Television also exerted a strong influence, as demonstrated by quotations from show themes and advertising jingles found in his later works.

Youth and beginning of career (1955–1960)

By 1956, the Zappa family had moved to Lancaster, a small aerospace and farming town in the Antelope Valley of the Mojave Desert close to Edwards Air Force Base, in northern Los Angeles County. Zappa's mother encouraged him in his musical interests. Although she disliked Varèse's music, she was indulgent enough to give her son a long distance call to the composer as a 15th birthday present. Unfortunately, Varèse was in Europe at the time, so Zappa spoke to the composer's wife. He later received a letter from Varèse thanking him for his interest, and telling him about a composition he was working on called "Déserts". Living in the desert town of Lancaster, Zappa found this very exciting. Varèse invited him to visit if he ever came to New York. The meeting never took place (Varèse died in 1965), but Zappa framed the letter and kept it on display for the rest of his life.

At Antelope Valley High School, Zappa met Don Vliet (who later expanded his name to Don Van Vliet and adopted the stage name Captain Beefheart). Zappa and Vliet became close friends, sharing an interest in R&B records and influencing each other musically throughout their careers. Around the same time, Zappa started playing drums in a local band, The Blackouts. The band was racially diverse, and included Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood who later became a member of the Mothers of Invention. Zappa's interest in the guitar grew, and in 1957 he was given his first guitar. Among his early influences were Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Howlin' Wolf and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. (In the 1970s and '80s, he invited Watson to perform on several albums.) Zappa considered soloing as the equivalent of forming "air sculptures", and developed an eclectic, innovative and personal style.

Zappa's interest in composing and arranging proliferated in his last high-school years. By his final year, he was writing, arranging and conducting avant-garde performance pieces for the school orchestra. He graduated from Antelope Valley High School in 1958, and later acknowledged two of his music teachers on the sleeve of the 1966 album Freak Out!. Due to his family's frequent moves, Zappa attended at least six different high schools, and as a student he was often bored and given to distracting the rest of the class with juvenile antics. He left community college after one semester, and maintained thereafter a disdain for formal education, taking his children out of school at age 15 and refusing to pay for their college.

Zappa left home in 1959, and moved into a small apartment in Echo Park, Los Angeles. After meeting Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman during his short stay at Pomona College, they moved in together in Ontario, and were married December 28, 1960. Zappa worked for a short period in advertising. His sojourn in the commercial world was brief, but gave him valuable insights into how it works. Throughout his career, he took a keen interest in the visual presentation of his work, designing some of his album covers and directing his own films and videos.


....................... to be continued ... :)

 

Flower

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Re: Frank Zappa ~ Appreciated

From his mini-bio on IMDB ...

Of all the qualities that typified Frank Zappa, perhaps the most striking is that he was a paradox. A workaholic perfectionist rock star who eschewed the hippie culture of the 1960s, deploring its conformism, spurious ideals, and drug use, Zappa was not only a brilliant rock guitarist, but an orchestral composer, innovative filmmaker, music producer, businessperson, iconoclast, and perceptive political and social commentator. His oeuvre continually amazes: over 60 albums of music from rock to orchestral, in addition to innumerable films, concerts, and other accomplishments
 

Foxhound

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Re: Frank Zappa ~ Appreciated

Yes, Frank was a perfectionist who deplored conformity, including that practiced by the hippies. He was a lifelong teetotaller who campaigned against the taking of drugs and did not allow the members of his band to take drugs while they were on concert tours. Here are some excellent Frank Zappa quotes:

Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.

Stupidity is the basic building block of the universe.

Tobacco is my favorite vegetable.

There is no hell. There is only France.

Don't mind your make-up, you'd better make your mind up.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

It is always advisable to be a loser if you cannot become a winner.

A mind is like a parachute. It doesnt work if it's not open.

If we can't be free at least we can be cheap.

Sometimes you got to get sick before you can feel better.

You can't be a Real Country unless you have a BEER and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.

There will never be a nuclear war; there's too much real estate involved.

Consider for a moment any beauty in the name Ralph.

Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?

Outdoors for me is walking from the car to the ticket desk at the airport

You drank beer, you played golf, you watched football - WE EVOLVED!

You have just destroyed one model XQJ-37 nuclear powered pansexual roto-plooker....and you're gonna have to pay for it.

Interviewer: "So Frank, you have long hair. Does that make you a woman?"
FZ: "You have a wooden leg. Does that make you a table?"

Without deviation from the norm, 'progress' is not possible.

Who are the brain police?

The people of your century no longer require the service of composers.
A composer is as useful to a person in a jogging suit as a dinsoaur turd in the middle of his runway.

There are more love songs than anything else.
If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another.

Hey, you know something people? I'm not black, but there's a whole lots a times I wish I could say I'm not white.

Most people wouldn't know good music if it came up and bit them in the ass.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.

There are three things that smell of fish. One of them is fish. The other two are growing on you!

May your shit come to life and kiss you on the face.

Let's not be too rough on our own ignorance, it's what makes America great.

Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is THE BEST.

Beauty is a pair of shoes that makes you wanna die.

The creation and destruction of harmonic and 'statistical' tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consonant and 'regular' throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only 'good guys' in it, or eating cottage cheese.

Take the Kama Sutra. How many people died from the Kama Sutra, as opposed to the Bible? Who wins?

I think that if you use the so called "strong words" you'll get your point across faster and you can save a lot of beating around the bush. Why are people afraid of words? Sometimes the dumbest thing that gets said makes the point for ya.

I have four children, and I want them to grow up in a country that has a working First Amendment.

A wise man once said, "never discuss philosophy or politics in a disco environment."

The rock and roll business is pretty absurd, but the world of serious music is much worse.

A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.

Tax the **** out of the churches!

Children are naïve -- they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you're asking for trouble.

In every language, the first word after "Mama!" that every kid learns to say is "Mine!" A system that doesn't allow ownership, that doesn't allow you to say "Mine!" when you grow up, has -- to put it mildly -- a fatal design flaw.
Decades of indoctrination, manipulation, censorship and KGB excursions haven't altered this fact: People want a piece of their own little Something-or-Other, and, if they don't get it, have a tendency to initiate counterrevolution.

My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.

People on drugs are assholes in action.

I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?
-- Frank Zappa, Senate Hearing on "Porn Rock", 1985, in response to Tipper Gore's allegations that music incites people towards deviant behavior, or influences their behavior in general

Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality.
-- Frank Zappa, Statement to the Senate Hearing on "Porn Rock," 1985


:grinthumb
 

Hepcat

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Re: Frank Zappa ~ Appreciated

Here are three of my favourite album covers by the Mothers of invention:

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71f8v9SuTNL.jpg

:****:
 

Vic2010

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Re: Frank Zappa ~ Appreciated

I've tried to get into Zappa several times over the years but I just ain't feelin' him. I've owned two Zappa albums in the past. Got rid of one of 'em and kept the other. The one I traded was "Jazz From Hell." The one I kept is titled "Wacka Jawacka." To me it's just jazz. There's other jazz I'd rather hear than Frank Zappa. But I respect him for his legacy. May he rest in peace.
 

Astrid Kirchherr65

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First song I ever heard by Frank Zappa was Joe's Garage..still a favorite

Frank Zappa was totally unique and totally brilliant !:cheers2
 

Flower

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Re: Frank Zappa ~ Appreciated

Love the quotes Foxhound ... Frank was an extremely clever, witty man ....

.........

Early 1960s: Studio Z

Zappa attempted to earn a living as a musician and composer, and played different nightclub gigs, some with a new version of The Blackouts. Financially more rewarding were Zappa's earliest professional recordings, two soundtracks for the low-budget films The World's Greatest Sinner (1962) and Run Home Slow (1965).

The former score was commissioned by actor-producer Timothy Carey and recorded in 1961. It contains many themes that appeared on later Zappa records. The latter soundtrack was recorded in 1963 after the film was completed, but it was commissioned by one of Zappa's former high school teachers in 1959 and Zappa may have worked on it before the film was shot. Excerpts from the soundtrack can be heard on the posthumous album The Lost Episodes (1996).


During the early 1960s, Zappa wrote and produced songs for other local artists, often working with singer-songwriter Ray Collins and producer Paul Buff. Their "Memories of El Monte" was recorded by The Penguins (although only Cleve Duncan of the original group was featured). Buff owned the small Pal Recording Studio in Cucamonga, which included a unique five-track tape recorder he had built. At that time, only a handful of the most sophisticated commercial studios had multi-track facilities; the industry standard for smaller studios was still mono or two-track. Although none of the recordings from the period achieved major commercial success, Zappa earned enough money to allow him to stage a concert of his orchestral music in 1963 and to broadcast and record it. He appeared on Steve Allen's syndicated late night show the same year, in which he played a bicycle as a musical instrument. With Captain Beefheart, Zappa recorded some songs under the name of The Soots. They were rejected by Dot Records for having no "commercial potential"; a quote Zappa later used on the sleeve of Freak Out!

In 1964, after his marriage started to break up, he moved into the Pal studio and began routinely working 12 hours or more per day recording and experimenting with overdubbing and audio tape manipulation. This set a work pattern that endured for most of his life. Aided by his income from film composing, Zappa took over the studio from Paul Buff, who was now working with Art Laboe at Original Sound. It was renamed Studio Z. Studio Z was rarely booked for recordings by other musicians. Instead, friends moved in, notably James "Motorhead" Sherwood. Zappa started performing as guitarist with a power trio, The Muthers, in local bars in order to support himself.

An article in the local press describing Zappa as "the Movie King of Cucamonga" prompted the local police to suspect that he was making pornographic films. In March 1965, Zappa was approached by a vice squad undercover officer, and accepted an offer of $100 to produce a suggestive audio tape for an alleged stag party. Zappa and a female friend faked an erotic recording. When Zappa was about to hand over the tape, he was arrested, and the police stripped the studio of all recorded material.[39] The press was tipped beforehand, and next day's The Daily Report wrote that "Vice Squad investigators stilled the tape recorders of a free-swinging, a-go-go film and recording studio here Friday and arrested a self-styled movie producer".

Zappa was charged with "conspiracy to commit pornography". This felony charge was reduced and he was sentenced to six months in jail on a misdemeanor, with all but ten days suspended. His entrapment and brief imprisonment left a permanent mark, and was key in the formation of his anti-authoritarian stance. Zappa lost several recordings made at Studio Z in the process, as the police only returned 30 out of 80 hours of tape seized. Eventually, he could no longer afford to pay the rent on the studio and was evicted. Zappa managed to recover some of his possessions before the studio was torn down in 1966.

 

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Re: Frank Zappa ~ Appreciated

30-1.jpg

The Lost Episodes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Lost Episodes

Compilation album by Frank Zappa
Released February 27, 1996
Recorded 1958–1992
Genre Experimental rock, progressive rock, jazz fusion, hard rock
Length 71:14
Label Rykodisc
Producer Frank Zappa
Professional reviews
Allmusic link
The Guardian link

Frank Zappa chronology
Strictly Commercial
(1995) The Lost Episodes
(1996) Frank Zappa Plays the Music of Frank Zappa: A Memorial Tribute
(1996)

The Lost Episodes is an album by Frank Zappa which compiles previously unreleased material and was posthumously released in 1996. Much of the material covered dates from early in his career, and as early as 1958, into the mid-1970s. Zappa had been working on these tracks in the years before his death in 1993.

The album is also notable for its five tracks which feature Captain Beefheart (known in early recordings by his birth name, Don Vliet, and later Don Van Vliet): "Lost in a Whirlpool", a blues parody from around 1958–59 in which Beefheart sings of being flushed down the toilet; "Tiger Roach", a rhythm and blues track from around three years later; "I'm a Band Leader" from 1969, a spoken word piece written by Zappa and read by Beefheart; "Alley Cat", a blues number in which Zappa plays guitar with two members of Beefheart's Magic Band, and "The Grand Wazoo", a spoken word piece recorded in 1969, to which Zappa added a Synclavier track in 1992 [1]. Dan Glaister, writing in The Guardian, judged the first to be "a passable Bessie Smith cover", adding, "while "Alley Cat" could be a missing track from Clear Spot."

Elsewhere on the disc are included a number of alternate, earlier versions of compositions which were later released on Zappa's studio albums. The Lost Episodes' version of "Any Way the Wind Blows", for instance, was recorded in Cucamonga in around 1963—three years before its appearance on Freak Out! (1966). And the version of "Fountain of Love" here was recorded around the same time, but not released until Cruising with Ruben & the Jets (1968).



Track listing

"The Blackouts" – 0:22
"Lost in a Whirlpool" (Van Vliet, Zappa) – 2:46
"Ronnie Sings?" – 1:05
"Kenny's Booger Story" – 0:33
"Ronnie's Booger Story" – 1:16
"Mount St. Mary's Concert Excerpt" – 2:28
"Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance" – 3:51
"Tiger Roach" (Van Vliet, Zappa) – 2:20
"Run Home Slow Theme" – 1:25
"Fountain of Love" (Zappa, Ray Collins) – 2:08
"Run Home Cues, #2" – 0:28
"Any Way the Wind Blows" – 2:14
"Run Home Cues, #3" – 0:11
"Charva" – 1:59
"The Dick Kunc Story" – 0:46
"Wedding Dress Song" (Trad., arr. Zappa) – 1:14
"Handsome Cabin Boy" (Trad., arr. Zappa) – 1:21
"Cops & Buns" – 2:36
"The Big Squeeze" – 0:43
"I'm a Band Leader" – 1:14
"Alley Cat" (Van Vliet, Zappa) – 2:47
"The Grand Wazoo" – 2:12
"Wonderful Wino" (Zappa, Jeff Simmons) – 2:47
"Kung Fu" – 1:06
"RDNZL" – 3:49
"Basement Music #1" – 3:46
"Inca Roads" – 3:42
"Lil' Clanton Shuffle" – 4:47
"I Don't Wanna Get Drafted" – 3:24
"Sharleena" – 11:54



MP edit: Removed dead videos
 

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