Category: Zappa Articles

Perfect Echo

Perfect Echo:

It’s monday morning and at work i’m playing “Freak Out”. FZ collection 001. and I intend to make this trend last long enough to get to the end. I’m gonna listen to it all, and time permitting, review them all, create a catalog of the masterworks that I, or you, can refer to.

Succinct, nicely written reviews.

Garni Du Jour

Interesting interview from Downbeat Magazine’s May ’78 edition, where Zappa talks (among other things) about foreground vs background in music and how he approaches the issue:

The chord is like the establishing shot in a movie–where you see the exterior of the building, or the alley with the garbage cans. It tells you where it’s happening. Then the action takes place. So you have a chord, and you have three notes that provide certain types of emotional activity versus the chord. And that emotional activity is redefined every time you change the order of the notes and the space in between the notes. (…) But what’s really happening in the solo is this: for each harmonic climate that’s presented, there are experiments being conducted, in real time, with different notes and weights and measures of those different notes, versus the climate. And every time you change the position of the note, it has a different impact.

(via Popular Musing)

Zappa In Humo

This week’s Humo Magazine has an article on the Zappa’s featuring interviews with Dweezil, Ahmet and Gail. I may be putting up a translated version later. For now though, here’s their intro, which I found rather amusing:

On 15 November 1973 a memorable interview took place: […] on that day Marc Didden had a long conversation with Frank Zappa. You can easily find that interview on the internet. Just google “Marc Didden Frank Zappa” and click the first link you come across.

A very good idea, that — thanks for the plug, Humo. :)

Robert Carl Cohen On Mondo Hollywood

Interesting comment from Robert Carl Cohen on the Mystery Disc page:

To Whom It May Concern
I am the Writer-Producer-Director and owner of all rights to MONDO HOLLYWOOD. Among the various misrepresentations made about my film are the following:
1. That the music of Frank Zappa and his group, THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION, was edited out of the film. He and his group were, indeed, filmed by me at one of several parties, scenes from which are intercut in the film’s final “Freakout” sequence, but I did not record their music at any time. I shot them silent, using a non-blimped Arriflex 35-C. The few shots of them seen in my film constitute all the footage recorded. There were no out-takes.
2. A certain “Kim Fowley” claims to have recorded Zappa and his group during the MONDO HOLLYWOOD party; and has been selling what he claims is the music from that party. The truth is that there was no one professionally recording the music performed at that event. I am in possession of signed releases from everyone who was present. I have no idea where Fowley acquired the music he is selling as “The sound track from the MONDO HOLLYWOOD party scene, or whose music it is, but it was never a part of my film.
Sincerely
Robert Carl Cohen

Bit Of Nostalgia

Lovely bit of nostalgia: pictures of the ’57 and ’58 Antelope High yearbooks, and some background information:

Many of us girls were forbidden by our parents to attend the “wild” Blackouts dances, but of course we went anyway. The dances were great fun – the lights were low, the r&b music loud, rhythmic, & wonderful, the dancing nonstop, and no chaperones! The local police always cruised by Frank Zappa’s dances. After all, he was the town Bad Boy. Our own James Dean.

The PMRC Letters In Print

With a hat tip to our pal of British persuasion Magic Fingers, KUR obtained scans of the original PMRC documents as they were sent out by Frank Zappa during (and following) the PMRC hearings back in ’85.

pmrc envelope

Most of the documents were sent out as a package or kit to give guidance and background information to anyone who wanted to support FZ’s anti-PMRC position on a local level (phone your representative, help get this stopped). The text of FZ’s statement to Congress and the “It’s Not Over Yet, Folks” were then sent out at a later date obviously after the hearings.

While some of the letters were already available in text form at the wiki, these are the originals — warts, mid 80s typewriter fonts ‘n all.

The Lost Tour

From AlterDudes (a site well worth keeping an eye on, methinks), an interview with Frank Zappa in Electronic Musician, dated September ’86:

EM: What about live performances? Would you go out with the Synclavier?
FZ: I’ve been trying to figure out whether it’s practical. I’ve talked to an agent about it and discussed the possibility of a tour in the fall, but without a major advertising campaign to create an interest for what the machine can do or what I’m doing with it, I doubt whether a tour like that would attract much attention. I’m certainly not going out and playing “Dinah Mo Hum ” or the rest of that stuff anymore because that’s like–what?–that’s a million years ago.