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Frank Zappa / Strictly Critique / Frank Zappa In Grove's (Part 2)
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on: December 30, 2003, 12:23:15 AM
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This is the article from Grove Jazz section of Grove's...
Zappa, Frank [Francis Vincent, Jr.]
(b Baltimore, 21 Dec 1940; d Los Angeles, 4 Dec 1993). American electric guitaristand composer. He moved with his family to California at the age of ten, began playing drums when he was 12, and took up the guitar soon afterwards. While in his teens he sang blues and rock, and for six months he studied theory at Chaffey College, Alta Loma, California. Although he is best known as a rock songwriter and guitarist, his work often included elements of jazz. His group the Mothers of Invention, which he led from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, involved such jazz-rock musicians as the saxophonist Ian Underwood (on a regular basis) and George Duke and Bruce Fowler (both periodically during the early 1970s). In 1969 Jean-Luc Ponty recorded an album of Zappa’s compositions (King Kong, PJ 20172), and in 1972 Zappa led the Grand Wazoo, a jazz-rock big band of which Jay Migliori, Charles Owens, and David Parlato were members. Around 1973 he recorded the album A-pos-tro-phe (Discreet 2175), with Ponty, Duke, Fowler, and Jack Bruce among his sidemen. Among later members of his groups were Vinnie Colaiuta (1978–82) and Chad Wackerman (1981–8). Always a highly eclectic musician, as a soloist Zappa incorporated blues, rock, raga, and jazz licks into his improvised lines. From the mid-1970s his work was much more closely related to rock and to contemporary classical music than to jazz, but connections with the jazz aesthetic remained on, for example, the albums Jazz from Hell (c1986, Barking Pumpkin 74205) and Make a Jazz Noise Here (c1990, Barking Pumpkin D2AS74234).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Feather–Gitler ’70s
L. Kart: “Frank Zappa: the Mother of Us All,” DB, xxxvi/22 (1969), 14
H. Siders: “Meet the Grand Wazoo,” DB, xxix/18 (1972), 13
D. Walley: No Commercial Potential: the Saga of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (New York, 1972, 2/1980) [incl. discography]
J. Schaffer: “The Perspective of Frank Zappa,” DB, l/15 (1973), 14
R. Denyer, I. Guillory, and A. M. Crawford: The Guitar Handbook (London and Sydney, 1982), 28
M. Davis: “Frank Zappa Makes a Jazz Noise,” DB, lviii/7 (1991), 29
Obituaries: J. Pareles, New York Times (6 Dec 1993); D. Ouellette, DB, lxi/3 (1994), 20
BARRY KERNFELD
© Oxford University Press 2003
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137
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Frank Zappa / Strictly Critique / Frank Zappa In Grove's (Part 1)
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on: December 30, 2003, 12:17:30 AM
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This is the article in the Grove Music section of Grove's:
Zappa, Frank [Francis] (Vincent)
(b Baltimore, 21 Dec 1940; d Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, 4 Dec 1993). American composer, rock musician and guitarist. His family moved to California in 1950, where Zappa played the drums and guitar in high-school bands with, among others, Don Van Vliet (later to become Captain Beefheart). He studied briefly at Chaffey College, Alta Loma, but left to write music for B-movies. In 1964 he formed his band the Mothers of Invention (originally the Soul Giants); the personnel changed frequently and Zappa disbanded the group in the 1970s to work with musicians selected for particular projects, including Ian Underwood (keyboards, saxophones, brass, guitar etc.), Ruth Underwood (percussion), George Duke (keyboards and trombone), Aynsley Dunbar (drums), Sugar Cane Harris (organ, electric violin and vocals) and Jean-Luc Ponty (violin).
The Mothers of Invention’s first release was Freak Out! (Verve, 1966), which savagely parodied both corporate America and hippy counter-culture in such songs as ‘Hungry Freaks, Daddy’ and ‘Who are the Brain Police?’, culminating in ‘The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet’, an extended improvisation using avant-garde techniques. It was followed by Absolutely Free (Verve, 1967), the experimental orchestral album Lumpy Gravy (Verve, 1968), the parody of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper in We’re Only in it for the Money (Verve, 1968), and the doo-wop pastiches of Cruising with Ruben & The Jets (Verve, 1968). They developed a cult following on both sides of the Atlantic, having made their UK début in 1967, and Zappa was releasing on average two albums a year, a level he was to sustain throughout his career. He toured extensively, with a stage act involving props and interaction with the audience, and developed a system of hand signals which enabled him to initiate rapid switches of style, rhythm and tempo, lending a spontaneity to what were otherwise tightly-controlled structures. In 1970 Zappa performed 200 Motels (U.A., 1971) for rock band and orchestra in Los Angeles at a contemporary music festival organized by Zubin Mehta, and the following year made a film of it: this is one of a number of Zappa large-scale multi-media projects.
Zappa’s music is eclectic and draws freely on the popular music of the 1950s and early 60s, embracing rhythm and blues, rock and roll, doo-wop, middle-of-the-road ballads, the world of Hollywood film music and of TV advertisements, treating them as objets trouvés; at the same time it also draws on the soundworlds of Stravinsky, Ives, Varèse and Stockhausen, creating multi-layered textures and employing montage techniques and abrupt stylistic juxtapositions which have the effect of Brechtian alienation and Dadaist confrontation, as in Burnt Weeny Sandwich(Reprise, 1970) and Over-Nite Sensation (Discreet, 1973). Zappa wanted his music to achieve the autonomy associated with high art music while subversively working from within the popular music industry. In the 1980s this was accentuated by the increasing esteem in which Zappa was held as a serious composer, so that his performances and two albums with the London SO (LSO: Zappa, 1983–7) and with the Ensemble Intercontemporain (The Perfect Stranger, 1984) appear at the same time as his bizarre synthesizer recreations of pieces by his 18th-century namesake (1984). He set up his own record company (Barking Pumpkin) and, after lawsuits, gained control over the master-tapes of his albums released in the 1960s and 1970s by MGM/Verve. In his final decade he worked at his home studio, using a Synclavier synthesizer to create such albums as Jazz From Hell (Capitol, 1986), and to remix much of his earlier work and, in effect, to re-create, through intercutting, a body of previously unissued recordings. His last public appearance was in Frankfurt in 1992 at a concert of his works by the Ensemble Modern, recorded as The Yellow Shark(Barking Pumpkin, 1993), a few months before his death. The first posthumous album appeared in 1994, Civilization: Phaze III, on which Zappa had been working since the late 1980s.
Zappa’s importance lies less in any obvious influence on rock music than in the way in which his music embraces American popular culture while simultaneously maintaining a critical distance from it, and in the way in which his musical critique at the same time constitutes a political and social critique. He saw the music business as concerned with the manipulation of music and its consumers and dedicated to profit. His own material is always calculatedly secondhand, disposable and ephemeral; his approach to structuring it is critical, ironic and self-reflective. The result has a richness of allusion, wealth of detail and a consistency of thought reminiscent of James Joyce. The comprehensive study by Watson (1993) is part of a large and expanding interpretative literature.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
D. Walley: No Commercial Potential: the Saga of Frank Zappa (New York, 1980, 2/1996)
F. Zappa and P. Ochiogrosso: The Real Frank Zappa Book (London, 1989)
B. Miles: Frank Zappa: a Visual Documentary (London, 1993) [incl. discography]
B. Watson: Frank Zappa: the Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play (London, 1993) [incl. discography and bibliography]
F. Zappa and B. Miles: Frank Zappa: in his Own Words (London, 1993)
R. Kostelanetz ed.: The Frank Zappa Companion (London, 1997)
B. Watson: The Complete Guide to the Music of Frank Zappa (London, 1998) [incl. discography]
MAX PADDISON
© Oxford University Press 2003
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138
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Frank Zappa / Strictly Critique / Re:francesco Zappa
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on: December 30, 2003, 12:12:29 AM
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For the records this is the full article from Grove's.
============
Zappa, Francesco
(b Milan; fl 1763–88). Italian cellist and composer. The dedication of his six trios for two violins and bass (London, 1765) shows that he had given the Duke of York, the dedicatee, music lessons in Italy (the duke had been in Italy from late November 1763 to mid-1764). By 1767, the year of the duke’s death, he had entered his service as maestro di musica, as shown by the title-page of his trio sonatas op.2. He then apparently took up residence in The Hague as a music master. He was still there in 1788, according to the place and date of a manuscript Quartetto concertante (inD-Bsb). He had a reputation among his contemporaries as a virtuoso and he toured Germany in 1771, playing in Danzig and, on 22 September, in Frankfurt. According to Mendel, he made another concert tour of Germany in 1781 (though this may be an error for 1771).
Zappa’s writing is lyrical, but tends towards a seriousness of manner in which thegalant elements are tempered by a Classical dignity. His works with obbligato cello demonstrate an easy familiarity with thumb position fingerings, slurred staccato bowings and idiomatic string crossing patterns.
WORKS
Duos: 6 Sonatas, kbd/hp, vn, as op.4a (Paris, n.d.); 6 duos (v, vc)/2 vn (Paris, n.d.)
Trio sonatas, 2 vn, b: 6 Trios (London, 1765), as op.1 (?The Hague, n.d.); 6 as op.2 (London, c1767); 6 as op.3 (Paris, n.d.); 6 as op.4 (London, n.d.); 6 sonates (The Hague, n.d.)
Other works: 6 kbd sonatas, op.6 (Paris, 1776), mentioned in MCL; 6 syms. (Paris, n.d.); 2 romances, 1v, pf, as op.4 (The Hague, n.d.); 27 pieces, 2 for pf, 5 for 1v, pf, op.11 (The Hague, n.d.); 2 Sonata à tre, v, vc obbl, b, ed. in Early Cello Series, xxiii (London, 1983); other works, A-Wgm, D-Bsb, I-Mc
BIBLIOGRAPHY
EitnerQ
GerberL
MCL
E. van der Straeten: History of the Violoncello (London, 1915/R)
O. Tajetti: ‘Francesco Zappa: violoncellista e compositore milanese’, Antiquae musicae italicae studiosi, iii/6 (1987), 9–12
GUIDO SALVETTI/VALERIE WALDEN
© Oxford University Press 2003
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HTH :-) |
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139
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The White Zone / No Commercial Potential / Re:Friday Boot Vines?
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on: December 22, 2003, 05:05:05 PM
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It will be interesting to see how this works out as I am still not sure just what is being suggested here.
Are we talking about a disc exchange vine which seems to be what the one Kookamonga suggested at...
http://www.philzone.org/discus/messages/7473/7473.html?1071956530
is.
Or are we going for quality of sound (Shorten), but huge size, which people with fast connections can download, like at...
http://www.etree.org/index.html
and then pass on copies on disc to those of us with a slow steam powered dial-up connection.
Or are we just talking about the regular Friday mp3 deal but made available on disc for those who can't get it otherwise.
If so would the size of mp3s permit about a months worth of Fridays to be gathered on a single disc?
Some collectors frown on the distribution of mp3s on disc as noted at...
http://www.u2shn.com/shnfaq.php
Having waited decades for a chance to hear some of this stuff a few hours spent downloading seems a small price to pay in whatever format it comes, but can I plea for the file size to be listed with the Friday track titles so that we lowly dial-up people have some idea what we are taking on before we start.
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141
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Frank Zappa / Strictly Critique / BBC Frank Zappa Anniversary Session
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on: December 05, 2003, 03:51:10 PM
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BBC Radio 3 are broadcasting a session right now. You can listen to it for the next week at...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/jazz/jon3/jon3.shtml
...where it says...
Frank Zappa Anniversary Session
Frank Zappa (who died 10 years ago on 4th December) didn't like jazz. He once famously said "jazz is not dead, it just smells funny!" However, much of his music shows a jazz influence, his recorded work features some of the most dazzling improvisers of their time, and he has in turn influenced contemporary jazz.
This week's Jazz on 3 seeks to prove that it's the worst smelling programme on air, as Jez Nelson presents a specially recorded studio session from some of the players that were instrumental in creating Zappa's music.
Recorded in Los Angeles in November, the group reunites some of Zappa's finest sidemen:
Vinnie Colaiuta - drums
Tommy Mars - Hammond organ, Fender Rhodes, and vocals
Arthur Barrow - bass guitar
Walt Fowler - trumpet and flugel horn
Bruce Fowler - trombone
Albert Wing - tenor sax
Kurt McGettrick - bass clarinet, bari sax and flute |
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144
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The White Zone / No Commercial Potential / Re:BBC Star Special Show 1980
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on: November 17, 2003, 12:50:47 AM
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VERY nice listening!!
Were you there at the time, Dunk? I mean did you record the broadcast?
Yes. As I recall - I just managed to get home in time to stick a tape in and press record. I missed FZs intro to Lynyrd Skynyrd because I had to turn the tape over but it is on the transcript of the show at...
http://ftp.catalog.com/mrm/zappa/html/DJ-UK-1982.html
(This must have been a repeat as he has the date as Feb 82)
Froese?
It was only a cheap tape so I am surprised that it has survived all these years and several house moves so well. I shall rummage through all my other old boxes of stuff to see what else I can find. 
What a treat! "I don't care what anybody says, I still like Black Sabbath!" Some surprising picks by FZ. DebK
I had assumed the producers of the show had given (or suggested) records he might like to play - particularly the obscure British stuff - but looking at the list at...
http://home.swipnet.se/fzshows/FZRadio.htm
(wrongly dated Jan 21)
he was playing this same stuff all over the place. How did he keep up with obscure British punk/new wave stuff? How old were his children then - did they keep him informed about what was going on? He obviously enjoyed doing these shows. From the interview at...
http://home.online.no/~corneliu/trouserpress.htm
"Radio as a medium can be very exciting, you know. I just spent four days being a disc jockey on WPIX, and I had a wonderful time. They picked the hits, and I played everything else. I think that out of a two hour show we played maybe five songs from their playlist, and all the rest of the stuff I picked. I put some records on the air that you never would have heard: 'Gidget Goes to Hell' by the Suburban Lawns, Jerry and the Holograms, 'Irene Does It Matter' by the Moth Men, One Ruined Life of a Bronze Tourist by Hampton B. Coles under the news. I also played some things from my old albums that never got played, like 'Debra Cadabra'; when was the last time you heard that on radio? I got away with a total of eight glorious hours during Thanksgiving week, and I think that what I did was good. I'm getting tapes of all the shows so I can play them in Los Angeles when I get back. Radio's a business, like everything else. It does stupid things that it has to do in order to support itself." |
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146
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The White Zone / No Commercial Potential / BBC Star Special Show 1980
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on: November 15, 2003, 09:14:37 AM
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Just found a cassette of the Fraudulent DJ Frank Zappa show which was broadcast Jan 1980 on UK's BBC Radio One.
Does everyone have a copy of this or should I MP3 it and make it available?
Where would be a good place to distribute it from - given copyright and bandwidth considerations I am not sure my web site could handle it
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