Zappa 2020

[Prince Aboubakar]

Asa mostly self-taught composer and performer, Zappa had diverse musical influences that led him to create music that was sometimes difficult to categorize. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for 20th-century classical modernism, African-American rhythm and blues, and doo-wop music.[7] He began writing classical music in high school, while simultaneously playing drums in rhythm and blues bands, later switching to electric guitar. His debut studio album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out! (1966), combined satirical but seemingly conventional rock and roll songs with extended sound collages. He continued this eclectic and experimental approach throughout his career.

Zappa's output is unified by a conceptual continuity he termed "Project/Object", with numerous musical phrases, ideas, and characters reappearing across his albums.[4] His lyrics reflected his iconoclastic views of established social and political processes, structures and movements, often humorously so, and he has been described as the "godfather" of comedy rock.[8] He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship. Unlike many other rock musicians of his generation, he disapproved of recreational drug use, but supported decriminalization and regulation.

Zappa was a highly productive and prolific artist with a controversial critical standing; supporters of his music admired its compositional complexity, while detractors found it lacking emotional depth.[9] He had greater commercial success outside the US, particularly in Europe. Though he worked as an independent artist, Zappa mostly relied on distribution agreements he had negotiated with the major record labels. He remains a major influence on musicians and composers. His many honors include his posthumous 1995 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the 1997 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

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 Varse, or Stravinsky. To me it was all good music.

In 1967, filmmaker Ed Seeman paid Zappa $2,000 to produce music for a Luden's cough drops television commercial.[36] Zappa's music was matched with Seeman's animation and the advertisement won a Clio Award for "Best Use of Sound".[37][38] An alternate version of the soundtrack, called "The Big Squeeze", later appeared on Zappa's posthumous 1996 album The Lost Episodes. This version lacks Seeman's narration.

During the Mothers' second European tour in September/October 1968 they performed for the Internationale Essener Songtage at the Grugahalle in Essen, Germany; at the Tivoli in Copenhagen, Denmark; for TV programs in Germany (Beat-Club), France, and England; at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; at the Royal Festival Hall in London; and at the Olympia in Paris.[41]

In December 1972,[47] David Walley published the first biography of Zappa, titled No Commercial Potential. Zappa was severely critical, calling it "a quickie, paperback, sensational book". He said that it contained "gross inaccuracies", described the writing as "not quality workmanship" and claimed that Walley had "just slung together a bunch of quotes".[48] Despite Zappa's complaints, the book was later published in an updated edition in 1980[22] and again in 1996 after Zappa's death.

Zappa cut ties with Phonogram after the distributor refused to release his song "I Don't Wanna Get Drafted", which was recorded in February 1980.[74] The single was released independently by Zappa in the United States and was picked up by CBS Records internationally.[75]

In 1981, Zappa also released three instrumental albums, Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar, Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar Some More, and The Return of the Son of Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, which were initially sold via mail order, but later released through CBS Records (now Sony Music Entertainment) due to popular demand.[76]

The albums focus exclusively on Frank Zappa as a guitar soloist, and the tracks are predominantly live recordings from 1979 to 1980; they highlight Zappa's improvisational skills with "beautiful performances from the backing group as well".[77] Another guitar-only album, Guitar, was released in 1988, and a third, Trance-Fusion, which Zappa completed shortly before his death, was released in 2006.[78]

In May 1982, Zappa released Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch, which featured his biggest selling single ever, the Grammy Award-nominated song "Valley Girl" (topping out at No. 32 on the Billboard charts).[66] In her improvised lyrics to the song, Zappa's daughter Moon satirized the patois of teenage girls from the San Fernando Valley, which popularized many "Valleyspeak" expressions such as "gag me with a spoon", "fer sure, fer sure", "grody to the max", and "barf out".[83]

Them or Us is a two LP set of studio and live rock recordings. It includes a version the Allman Brothers Band song "Whipping Post", and "Be in My Video", Zappa's satirical take on perceived visual clichs of the MTV channel. Francesco Zappa, a Synclavier rendition of works by 18th-century composer Francesco Zappa, was also released in 1984.[90]

The album Thing-Fish was an ambitious three-record set in the style of a Broadway play dealing with a dystopian "what-if" scenario involving feminism, homosexuality, manufacturing and distribution of the AIDS virus, and a eugenics program conducted by the United States government.[91] New vocals were combined with previously released tracks and new Synclavier music; "the work is an extraordinary example of bricolage".[92]

From 1983 to 1993, Barfko-Swill was run by Gerry Fialka,[95] who also worked for Zappa as archivist, production assistant, tour assistant, and factotum,[96][97][98][99] and answered the phone for Zappa's Barking Pumpkin Records hotline.[100][101] Fialka appears giving a tour of Barfko-Swill in the 1987 VHS release (but not the original 1979 film release) of Zappa's film Baby Snakes. He is credited on-screen as "Gerald Fialka Cool Guy Who Wraps Stuff So It Doesn't Break".[102] A short clip of this tour is also included in the 2020 documentary film Zappa.

The album Jazz from Hell, released in 1986, earned Zappa his first Grammy Award in 1988 for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Except for one live guitar solo ("St. Etienne"), the album exclusively featured compositions brought to life by the Synclavier.

More recordings from the 1988 tour would appear as part of You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, a series of six double CDs complied by Zappa from unreleased live recordings, dating back to the earliest Mothers recordings from 1965. The six volumes were released between 1988 and 1992. Two further archival live albums, Playground Psychotics and Ahead of Their Time, were released in 1992 and 1993 respectively. The former collected recordings by the early 1970s "Flo & Eddie" era Mothers, while the latter was a complete concert by the original 1960s Mothers at the Royal Festival Hall in 1968 (footage from which has been used in the Uncle Meat movie).

The Real Frank Zappa Book, co-written with Peter Occhiogrosso, was published by Poseidon Press in 1989. Zappa appeared on the TV interview show Larry King Live to promote it. He explained the title by saying he wrote it in response to previous unauthorized books, which he considered to be stupid and exploitative.[104]

The general phases of Zappa's music have been variously categorized under blues rock,[110] experimental rock,[111] jazz,[111] classical,[111] avant-pop,[112] experimental pop,[113] comedy rock,[8] doo-wop,[6][114] jazz fusion,[4] progressive rock,[4] proto-prog,[115] avant-jazz,[4] and psychedelic rock.[4]

In his book The Real Frank Zappa Book, Zappa credited composer Spike Jones for his frequent use of funny sound effects, mouth noises, and humorous percussion interjections. After explaining his ideas on this, he said "I owe this part of my musical existence to Spike Jones."[119]

Zappa is widely recognized as one of the most significant electric guitar soloists. In a 1983 issue of Guitar World, John Swenson declared: "the fact of the matter is that [Zappa] is one of the greatest guitarists we have and is sorely unappreciated as such."[121] His idiosyncratic style developed gradually and was mature by the early 1980s, by which time his live performances featured lengthy improvised solos during many songs. A November 2016 feature by the editors of Guitar Player magazine wrote: "Brimming with sophisticated motifs and convoluted rhythms, Zappa's extended excursions are more akin to symphonies than they are to guitar solos." The symphonic comparison stems from his habit of introducing melodic themes that, like a symphony's main melodies, were repeated with variations throughout his solos. He was further described as using a wide variety of scales and modes, enlivened by "unusual rhythmic combinations". His left hand was capable of smooth legato technique, while Zappa's right was "one of the fastest pick hands in the business."[122] In 2016, Dweezil Zappa explained a distinctive element of his father's guitar improvisation technique was relying heavily on upstrokes much more than many other guitarists, who are more likely to use downstrokes with their picking.[3]

His song "Outside Now" from Joe's Garage poked fun at the negative reception of Zappa's guitar technique by those more commercially minded, as the song's narrator lives in a world where music is outlawed and he imagines "imaginary guitar notes that would irritate/An executive kind of guy", lyrics that are followed by one of Zappa's characteristically quirky solos in 11/8 time.[123] Zappa transcriptionist Kasper Sloots wrote, "Zappa's guitar solos aren't meant to show off technically (Zappa hasn't claimed to be a big virtuoso on the instrument), but for the pleasure it gives trying to build a composition right in front of an audience without knowing what the outcome will be."[124]

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