Frank Zappa was rock and roll’s sharpest musical mind and most astute social critic. He was the most prolific composer of his age, and he bridged genres – rock, jazz, classical, avant-garde and even novelty music – with masterful ease. Under his own name and with the Mothers of Invention, Zappa recorded 60 albums’ worth of material in his 52 years. Many were double albums or CDs, making his output even more impressively huge. Not surprisingly, he was occupied nearly every waking hour by the composing, recording, editing and performing of music. He also found time to produce and collaborate with acts as widely varied as Captain Beefheart, Jean-Luc Ponty, Grand Funk Railroad, Wild Man Fischer, the London Symphony Orchestra and Berlin’s Ensemble Modern.

Zappa challenged the status quo on many fronts. As a plainspoken curmudgeon, he confronted the corrupt politics of the ruling class and held the banal and decadent lifestyles of his countrymen to unforgiving scrutiny. He pioneered the artist-run independent record label, launching his Straight and Bizarre imprints back in 1969 and later founding the Zappa, DiscReet and Barking Pumpkin labels. In the Sixties, he mocked middle-class mores in “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It” (from Absolutely Free) and sang about the climate of racial inequality and discord on “Trouble Every Day” (from Freak Out). In the Seventies, he satirized everything in sight, including disco music (“Dancin’ Fool,” from Sheik Yerbouti) and new-age movements (“Cosmik Debris,” from Apostrophe). In the Eighties, he enjoyed his one and only Top Forty hit, “Valley Girl,” and took on the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), delivering memorable testimony about the First Amendment at a congressional hearing.

He was born Frank Vincent Zappa in Baltimore, Maryland. Gifted with a keen interest in music from an early age, he became conversant in everything from doo-wop – to which he cast an affectionate nod on the album Cruising With Ruben and the Jets – to the “serious” music of classical composers Bartok and Stravinksky and avant-garde pioneers Varese and Shoenberg. In 1965, Zappa joined the Mothers of Invention (previously the Soul Giants and later, simply the Mothers), who were deliberately and diabolically unconventional. From the way they dressed to the music they played, Zappa intended the Mothers to be provocative, controversial and unafraid of the consequences. He often quoted mentor Edgard Varese’s credo, “The present-day composer refuses to die!”

Zappa brought a high degree of compositional sophistication to a genre that had typically taken its cues from the simplistic chord progressions of songs like “Louie, Louie.” At the same time, Zappa freely acknowledged the naive genius of “Louie, Louie” and the unalloyed brilliance of Fifties doo-wop and R&B, even incorporating them into his program material. Zappa greatly extended the range of rock, composing oratorios, symphonic pieces, ballets, digitized extravaganzas for the Synclavier keyboard, and satirical musicals. A brilliant guitar soloist who recruited similarly adventurous musicians, Zappa helped further the art of improvisation in a rock context. Over the years, his ensembles included such notable musicians as keyboardist George Duke and guitarist Steve Vai.

Throughout his career, Zappa darkly but humorously depicted a landscape of wasted human enterprise largely driven by Pavlovian desires for consumer goods, sports and sex. His brutal jibes began with the first release by the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out (1966), and continued to the posthumous release of his final recorded work, Civilization Phaze III (1995). He reserved some of his keenest insults for rock journalists, which he once described as “people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk for people who can’t read.” But mainly he vented against mindless hedonism and the dumbing down of popular culture.

Rock’s foremost satirist tempered his borderline misanthropy with a high regard for human potential and a fierce belief in free speech and the ideal of democracy. Zappa frankly hated much about what America had become in the late 20th century, expressing deep disgust in this couplet from We’re Only In It for the Money’s “Concentration Moon”: “American way, try and explain/Scab of a nation driven insane.” His finest hour as a songwriter/satirist may have been “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It,” a seven-minute suite from a self-described “underground oratorio” that appeared on the second Mothers album, Absolutely Free (1967). In this audacious indictment of the American Dream gone awry, Zappa foresaw coming trends, equating political power with personal immorality (“A world of secret hungers perverting the men who make your laws”), reproving the vapid pastimes of a dim-witted citizenry (“Do your job and do it right/Life’s a ball!/TV tonight), and pointing out the stultifying effects of the corporate state upon the individual (“Be a loyal plastic robot for a world that doesn’t care”).

Zappa’s work sold largely to a core audience who faithfully attended his concerts and bought his records. His popularity with a broader audience peaked in 1973-74 with the albums Over-nite Sensation and Apostrophe, which married crude humor and virtuoso playing; both went gold (500,000 copies sold). Zappa finally infiltrated the Top Forty in 1982 with “Valley Girl,” a keenly observed satire of California “airhead” culture, complete with slang-driven repartee from daughter Moon Unit. This song’s title subsequently became a national catchphrase. At last being given some overdue recognition by the music industry, Zappa also went on to win a Grammy for his 1986 album Jazz from Hell.

With an unswerving conviction in his own rectitude, Zappa remained an often brilliant voice of dissent to the end of his career. When the music industry began branding albums with voluntary warnings about offensive content under pressure from the PMRC in the mid-Eighties, Zappa wrote a disclaimer of his own, which he stickered on his releases:

“WARNING! This album contains material which a truly free society would neither fear nor suppress. The language and concepts contained herein are guaranteed not to cause eternal torment in the place where the guy with the horns and pointed stick conducts his business. This guarantee is as real as the threats of the video fundamentalists who use attacks on rock music in their attempt to transform America into a nation of check-mailing nincompoops (in the name of Jesus Christ). If there is a hell, its fires wait for them, not us.”

In 1993, Frank Zappa died at age 52 of prostate cancer, but not before culling, mixing and sequencing enough material from his vast archive to ensure the release of even more albums long after his passing.

‘Just’ another version of City of Tiny Lites … and what an incredible solo!!

AUDIO: North Shore Coliseum, Danvers, MA. USA. 25th october, 1978. Line Up: Frank Zappa, Patrick O’Hearn, Denny Walley, Arthur Barrow, Vinnie Colaiuta, Ed Mann, Tommy Mars, Peter Wolf.

VIDEO: Shaun. Thanks, Shaun!

This cute audio piece features Gene Simmons on Bass & Lead Vocals, Dweezil Zappa on Lead Guitar and Gail, Moon and Ahmed Zappa on Backing Vocals.

Nice!

Frank Zappa’s Answering Machine Messages

“Audio: A selection of Frank’s telephone answering machine messages (recorded at the UMRK.) If you called 818 Pumpkin back in the day, then you may have heard these..”

Found on reldditmot’s channel on YouTube. Thanks, Shaun!

F.Z. The Adventures of Greggery Peccary.

G.P Oh here comes Greggery, little Greggery Peccary,
The nocturnal gregarious wild swine.

F.Z. A Peccary is a little pig with a white collar that usually
hangs around between Texas and Paraguay.
Sometimes ranging as far west as Catalina,

G.P. Catalina, Catalina, Catalina.

F.Z. This particular Peccary, is part of that bold,

G.P. Bold

F.Z. New

G.P. New,

F.Z. Bread,

G.P. Breading

F.Z. That extinguishes itself by a wide tie directly below the
white collar.

G.P. If it’s wide enough, everyone will know, that the tie I’m
wearing is a symbol of how nimble my mind will go.

F.Z. Swank Swavay
Look out here he comes again.

G.P Whoa, here comes Greggery Peccary
Yes it’s great he came…..???

F.Z. Every morning Greggery drives his little red Volkswagen,
to the ugly part of town, where they keep the government
buildings.

G.P. voodn, voodn.
Boy, it’s so hard to find a place to park around here.

F.Z. Greggery Peccary takes the elevator up to the 83rd floor of a
grim, grey, evil-looking building with a sign on the front
reading “BIG SWIFTY AND ASSOCIATES…TREND MONGERS”.
And what might you ask is a TREND MONGER?
Well a TREND MONGER is a person, who dreams up a trend, like
“THE TWIST”, or “FLOWER POWER”.
And spreads it throughout the land using all the frightening
little skills that scientists made available.
And so it was one fateful morning Greggery Peccary made his
way through the steno pool.
G.P. Hi Mildred, Hello Gladys. Wanda!

F.Z. Yes, from the moment they laid eyes on him all the girls in
the Big Swifty steno pool knew here is a nocturnal gregarious wild
swine on his way up. A Peccary of destiny adventure and
romance.

G.P. Is there any mail for me?

Stenographers: Swifty’s, this is big swifty’s.
At Big Swifty’s we all know. You’ll go for any gimmick or
gizmo.
G.P. Wouldn’t you rather be involved in a
wasting trends.

F.Z. Air hockey.

Stenographers: La La La La La La La La Yo Yo Yo Yo

G.P. Is you’re wife snoring by the sink?

Stenographers: La La La La La La La La Yo Yo Yo Yo

G.P. Ain’t your life boring, don’t you think?

Stenographers: Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo

G.P. Life is so much better when there’s some little something to
do.

F.Z. Does it matter that this waste of time is what makes a
life for you.

G.P. I must plummet boldly forward to my ultra-avant laminated
simulated replica mahogany desk with the strategically placed,
imported very hip water pipe, and the latest edition of the
“Whole Earth catalog”, and rack my agile mind for a
spectacular new trend, thereby rejuvenating our limping
economy and providing for bored miserable people everywhere,
some great new thing to identify with.

Stenographers: We have got all the little answers to the things
that might be bothering you.

G.P. We have got your little toys.
(We’re busy makin’ ‘em)

Stenographers: Busy makin’ ‘em.
Where is he making them.

G.P. Busy making them, just for you.
Highly efficient Mrs Snodgrass.

F.Z. And with that, Greggery turned & strode nonchalantly into his
dinky little office, with the desk, and the catalog, and the
very hip water pipe, and proceeded with a vigor and
determination know only to piglets of a similarly diminutive
proportion to single-handedly invent the calendar. With his
eyes rolled heavenward, and his little shiny pig hoofs on the
desk, Greggery ponders the question of eternity, and
fractional divisions thereof, as mysterious angelic voices,
sing to him from a great distance, providing the necessary
clues for the construction of his new thrilling new trend.

G.P. Sunday, Sunday, whow.
Sunday, Saturday, Tuesday through Monday, Monday.
Sunday, Saturday.

F.Z. And thus the calendar, in all of its colorful disguises, was
presented to the board and miserable people everywhere.
Gr
the steno pool identified with it strenuously, and worshipped
it as a way of life, and tool their little pills by it, and
went back and forth from work by it, and paid their rent by
it, and before long they were even having birthday parties in
the office by it. Because now at last, Greggery Peccary’s
exciting new invention had made it possible for everyone to
find out how old they were.

G.P. What hath GOD wrought?

F.Z. Unfortunately, there were some people who simiply did not wish
to know, and that’s why on his way home from the office one
night, Greggery was attacked by a rage of hunchmen. Making
his way through the evening traffic, Greggery notices that the
other vehicles which crowd and bump his little red car, are
all inhabited by slowly aging very hip young people. They
appear to be casting sinister glances toward him, through
their glinting, acid burnout eyeballs, trying to run him off
the road, or make him bump into something, giving strong
evidence of hostile aggression. To elude them, Greggery takes
the “Shot Forest” exit off the expressway. They zoom after
him in all manner of cars, trucks, garishly painted busses,
and motorcycles.
Greggery takes a bumpy trail off the main short forest road,
which leads him up the side of a famous and conveniently
placed mountain. And into a strange cave, on the edge of a
cliff, not far from a little twisted tree with eyes on it.
Meanwhile the enraged hunchmen, and hunchwomen, rumble through
the short forest until realizing that the little swine has
escaped.
They decide to park their steaming vehicles in a circular
pseudo-wagon train formation and have a Love-In. Under the
influence of a fantastic amount of trendy chemical amusement
aid, they proceed to perform lewd acts. Rip each other off of
small personal possessions and dance with depraved abandon in
the vicinity of a six foot pile of transistor radi
tuned to a different station.

G.P. What!

F.Z. The hunchman finally expire from exhaustion, and Greggery who
has viewed the proceedings from a safe distance, breathes a
sigh of relief.

G.P. Phew!.

F.Z. Only to be terrified once again by a roar of immense laughter.
Which seems to be rumbling up from the very depths of the cave
in which he has hidden his car.

G.P. Good Lord, what was that?

F.Z. Greggery doesn’t realize he is concealed himself inside the
very mouth of Billy The Mountain. And as you all know,
whenever Billy laughs, rocks and boulders hack up
and the air for miles around is filled with tons of dust
forming a series of huge brown clouds.

G.P. Who is making those new brown clouds?
Who is making those clouds these days,
Who is making those new brown clouds,
Better ask the philostopher and see what he says

F.Z. Greggery stops at a gas station and makes a mysterious phone
call.

G.P. Is this the old loft with the paint pealing off it, by the
chinese police, where the dogs roll by? Is this the where
they keep the philostophers now with the rugs and the dust,
where the books go to die? How many yez got, says yez got
quite a few just sitting around there with nothing to do.
Well I just called yez up cause i wanted to see can the
philostopher be some assistant to me?

F.Z. Greggery receives information that the greatest living
philostofer known to man kind is currently in possession of
the very information in question. And furthermore this
information could be his if only Greggery would attend a
special therapeutic group assembly. Classes now forming and
available at a special low low introductory fee and now here
he is the greatest living philostofer known to man kind
Quenton Robert DeNameland. Take it away.

Quenton: Folks, as you can see for yourself, the way this clock
over here is behaving, time is of affliction. Now this
might be cause for alarm among
certain experience, I tend to proclaim. The eons are closing.

F.Z. Make your checks payable to Quenton Robert deNameland greatest
living philostofer known to man kind.

G.P. Who is making those new brown clouds?
Who is making those clouds these days,
Who is making those new brown clouds,
If you ask a pholostopher he’ll see that you pays

Frank Zappa Chart

This great Frank Zappa chart was drawn by the artist Ward Shelley. I’m posting it with his permission. Please visit his website for more great art.

http://www.wardshelley.com/

- Fh.

Boy Wonder autographed fan card

Alternate version (kinda like pretty much the same, but just for, well, like, the completeness of it).

And to top it all off, here’s my favorite: Orange Colored Sky:

I don’t know about you guys, but since I first heard Cheepnis on the album Roxy & Elsewhere, I wanted to see the movie Zappa was talking about in the introduction of the song. You know, this one:

“Cheepnis.” Let me tell you something, do you like monster movies? Anybody? I LOVE monster movies, I simply adore monster movies, and the cheaper they are, the better they are. And cheepnis in the case of a monster movie has nothing to do with the budget of the film, although it helps, but true cheepnis is exemplified by visible nylon strings attached to the jaw of a giant spider . . . I’ll tell you, a good one that I saw one time, I think the name of the film was “IT CONQUERED THE WORLD,” and the . . . Did you ever see that one? The monster looks sort of like an inverted ice-cream cone with teeth around the bottom. It looks like a (phew!), like a teepee or . . . sort of a rounded off pup-tent affair, and, uh, it’s got fangs on the base of it, I don’t know why but it’s a very threatening sight, and then he’s got a frown and, you know, ugly mouth and everything, and there’s this one scene where the, uh, monster is coming out of a cave, see? There’s always a scene where they come out of a cave, at least once, and the rest of the cast . . . it musta been made around the 1950′s, the lapels are about like that wide, the ties are about that wide and about this short, and they always have a little revolver that they’re gonna shoot the monster with, and there is always a girl who falls down and twists her ankle . . . heh-hey! Of course there is! You know how they are, the weaker sex and everything, twisting their ankle on behalf of the little ice-cream cone. Well in this particular scene, in this scene, folks, they, uh, they didn’t wanna re-take it ’cause it musta been so good they wanted to keep it, but they . . . when the monster came out of the cave, just over on the left hand side of the screen you can see about this much two-by-four attached to the bottom of the Thing as the guy is pushing it out, and then obviously off-camera somebody’s goin’: “NO! GET IT BACK!” And they drag it back just a little bit as the guy is goin’: “KCH! KCH!” Now that’s cheepnis. Awright. And this is “Cheepnis” here. One two three four . . .

Today, I decided to do a little more effort and actually’d try to find the movie. And I did just that. As I am typing these words, the six .rar-files are extracting the .avi-file inside. “All OK” it says! Wow … I am now going to watch It Conquered The World! After all these years

And because I feel like sharing, here’s the link to download the movie (6 .rar-files):

This is the link.

I hereby confirm it works and it’s complete. Here’s a picture:

Watching It Conquered The World

Don’t hold it against me if that download link dies, okay? If you really want to have it, lemme know. I’m pretty sure we can figure something out.

On top, 2nd picture, is a nice wallpaper. For your convenience. And, oh my, that toy monster. I SO much want that. If anyone of you know where to get one, please let me know.

-Fh.

Hot Rats

Recorded in little over a month (July 18 – August 30th), this is one of Frank Zappa’s most praised albums. Unlike the albums preceding it, it’s mostly instrumental. It’s also very jazzy (but with a heavy Zappa sauce – I’d call it jazzappa).

If you’re unfamiliar with the album (which I pretty much doubt, since you’ve ended up hear on these pages, I take it you’re a Zappa-fan), you can listen excerpts of it online (Amazon, for example) and I am pretty sure you can find it somewhere without having to pay for it, but I’m not providing such links, sorry.

You kwow what? Just buy it. You will not regret it. At all.

Here’s the first track of the album: Peaches En Regalia. Enjoy!

- Fh.