Tag: Zappa

I Come From Nowhere — Zappa or Zoloft?

Are you sad? Take a pill. Stressed out? Take this pill. Depressed? Take that pill. Did Zappa envisage the present-day mass marketing of drugs like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil — drugs designed and marketed to modulate your brain chemistry and intended to make you less depressed, more sociable, more happy at work; aimed at altering your mood or “changing” the way you think, feel and act: with over tens of billions of dollars in annual sales and 35 million users worldwide — when he composed the song “I Come From Nowhere“?

According to The American Music Therapy Association (AMTA):

Listening to music for at least 20 minutes each day can help slow down your heart rate and other body functions and can help you deal with the root causes of depression, such as anger, frustration, sadness or anxiety.

I don’t know about you, but not only does 20 minutes of Frank Zappa each day do good for my bodily functions, but the image of that pussy in headphones alone brings a smile to my face…

Portrait of a Zappa Freak

How old were you when you figured out there was something seriously different with you? When did you discover that the world was going in one particular direction, and you the other? That age for me was around eight or nine years old. The same time I discovered the music of Frank Zappa. The album, Just Another Band From L.A. to be exact. It just made sense to me. Then and now. It was also plainly obvious, even to my young mind at that time, that I was different from my peers. I was a Freak.

The freaks, by Zappa’s reckoning, resisted the binaries of right versus left, dominant culture versus counterculture, or squares versus hippies, preferring instead to align themselves with an aesthetic not narrowly defined by fashion or political leanings.

Of course, it drove my family to distraction and despair as my collection of Zappa records grew, and many a Zappa album found it’s way shattered against the wall like a frisbee, or gashed with long scratches across the vinyl from being too hurriedly de-needled. But by high school, my Zappa fix was a close as the nearest record store (or for those who couldn’t afford them — the nearest public library).

Where do you fit along the Zappa continuum? Passing Zappa listener? Zappaholic? Full fledged Zappa Freak? Then read Ben Watson’s paper, “Houston … Fort .. Marcuse: Sin Versus Archetype in Zappa” addressed to the International Conference of Esemplastic Zappology on 16 January 2004 at Theatro Technis, Crowndale Road, Camden Town, London.

Some Zappa Freaks are really out of this world…

Zappa’s Not Rock ‘n Roll

Michael says:

I have some friends that say “Zappa’s not rock and roll”. Now that is mostly true as we all know there was much more to Frank, but he did produce some of the most smoking rock and roll out there. I want to put together a playlist to prove it to my buddies. So I need help in naming the all time best pure rock and roll songs that FZ or the MOI did.

Troops? Rally!

FM TV — Documentary

A special type of entertainment for a specialized audience. That’s how Frank Zappa describes his own music in this obscure FM TV documentary first broadcast on July 13, 1982 — featuring interviews with FZ, Don Preston, Adrian Belew, and Terry Bozzio; plus footage of “You Are What You Is” as well as videoclips of “Punky’s Whips” and “Black Napkins” from Baby Snakes.

Live from The Pier in NYC 1984

On the sixth month anniversary of my divorce judgement, and fulfilling the requests of two KUR aficionados, here’s an excellent cover of The Allman Brothers Band classic “Whipping Post” by Frank Zappa’s 1984 band (solos and all). Hey, don’t you feel better already…