Zappa: Was he For or Far from the People?

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ExittheLemming wrote: tamijo wrote: Satire of not supposed to be belived. Its ment to expose certian (often problematic) aspects about something.        I don't think you understand. If a hardcore satirist chooses to be sincere, no-one will ever believe him or her, ergo they can never claim an armistice from ridicule. If they would have us believe 'everything sucks' then the onus is on the artist to offer something in its place that they might deem worthy of respect. (otherwise you're just decorating the dung heap with your own scatological and prurient s.h.i.t ) Perhaps Zappas's more formal 'orchestral' instrumental music is as close to a sincere artistic expression he ever approached in his entire life?

SteveG wrote: HackettFan wrote: Zappa was not a conservative. Not even remotely conservative. He was a liberal libertarian. (A conservative libertarian pays lip service to individualism and such, but really only cares about economic issues). Zappa was always comfortable with the ACLU, for instance. If you call Zappa a conservative, you might as well call Noam Chomsky one too. Both are liberal libertarians. Now what Zappa was not was a collectivist liberal for sure. SteveG wrote: For politically active people of my generation, Zappa's anti hippie "you are nothing but sheep" stance did not go down well. In the sixties, it would have been impossible for a single individual to protest against social atrocities such as racism and an immoral and illegal war. Again, this is true. Zappa was not a collectivist liberal. He did, by the way, incorporate anti-war stances in his freak shows. In actuality, I think Zappa was mostly critical of the San Francisco version of the Hippies, kind of thought of them as something comparable to urban cowboys, if you'll allow that analogy. SteveG wrote: The idea of the counter culture was to NOT blindly follow people and ideologies like sheep. Was it fool proof and always successful? Of course not as nothing of this type ever is. I think Zappa would plainly disagree with you here. I have to concur with Zappa on this point. Culture or counter culture makes no difference. Cultures ALWAYS blindly follow people and ideologies like sheep. There is no other definition for culture that can make it otherwise. I should add that I'm not precisely aligned with Zappa politically. I make an effort to strike a balance between collectivist and libertarian approaches to liberalism. I never agreed with Zappa's stance on labor unions, for instance. I did not call Zappa a practical conservative, he himself  did. And you are correct in stating that culture's follow a status quo. That is the reason why the word counter is placed in front of the word culture. It would be similar (but not exact) to prefacing the word culture with the word anti. It's to render the term counter culture as contrary and in opposition  to the word culture. However, this is not a question of academic semantics that you are using to define the term counter culture in your posts. It can only be defined by it's commonly construed and obvious sociological function.

A counter culture is a special type sub culture that defines itself in opposition specifically to the dominant culture. It does not define itself in opposition to culture as a concept. That is the idea of the Freak movement. A counter culture remains a specific kind of contrarian culture, but a culture all the same. It is not a neutral condition. Now I think the Freak Out ideal of attaining pure uncorrupted creativity with respect to one's environment is probably not attainable. It requires too much self awareness to actually be realistically used as a governing life philosophy, but I have a great deal of respect for the concept, which is the driving force behind my contribution here.

SteveG wrote: Without appearing rude, I'm not sure of the point are you driving at HF. All cultures (counter or otherwise) are governed by some type of social conformity. It's intrinsic to social behavior.   Does Zappa idea of a true individual Freak Out! really  make sense?   It certainly does not to me and he sure as hell played no part in portraying it. If so, why didn't he dump his long hair for a shaved head, for example. More importantly, did he make his music his own way, yes. But he complained like hell (that's been documented numerous times) that his records were not being consumed by the masses! How does that fit into his ideal of individualism if everyone bought his records? That makes as much sense to me as a square wheel.   Breaking down the dynamics of what constitutes a counter culture does not breakdown Zappa's nonrealistic ideals and goals for a true individual.  I think that this is what's truly important to this topic.

For not being sure of my point, you seem to have gotten it alright. To a large extent I agree with you. When Zappa attempted the Freak thing, I'm not sure that something didn't leak out of the bucket. His long hair for one thing as you pointed out. I can't quite imagine Frank with a reverse mohawk. The Freak Out idea works best in the confines of music or art, but are hard to apply consistently throughout someone's life day in and day out. I tend to think he abandoned the Freak Out philosophy before the 70s or reduced its footprint at the very least. So, different evaluations may be merited at different periods, I'm not sure. Then again Zappa always talked about conceptual continuity in his work, so...? Did he complain like hell about his music being received by the masses? I never took it that way. I took it more like him speaking to me as part of his discriminating fan base and how I was keyed into something different. In other words, he was defining himself as underground for those that that might appeal to. It extended his shelf-life through the late 70s and 80s when so many Prog bands went down for the count. He did complain a lot about record companies and other venues in court as well as out of court. I think other Prog bands would have done well to follow suit. Yes? No?

SteveG wrote: ^See, it was perfectly clear to me all the time.   I can only go by the best bios I could find on Zappa and they both say he was overly sensitive to the success of the Beatles and felt that his records deserved both the same accolades and sales. It 's too tiny a point to go back and research for actual quotes, but the bios were 'Zappa' by his friend Barry Miles' and 'Electric Don Quixote' by Neil Slavan. Both are considered to be definitive.   My point of Zappa's stance on the individual was not to turn the tables but to turn the spotlight back on him. After all, my post asked if Zappa was for the people, not if the counter culture was for the people.

I hadn't heard or read the things you or Exit the Lemming were talking about. I read Mother! Is the Story of Frank Zappa (if I have that title right) and Zappa's own autobiography with Peter Occhiogrosso (I always thought he made that name up, but apparently he's a real person). I googled 'Frank Zappa practical conservative'. As I said, I might call myself a practical conservative. Afterall, I get pissed off when they change the placement of products at the grocery store. I even get concerned about crime from time to time, but it's not the concern itself but the solution that makes one liberal, conservative or other (I'm thoroughly on the record in PA's Political Discussion thread a few years back as being well toward left). I expected to see positions that were conservative only insofar as they were libertarian. On balance, that's what most of his positions were. He was for ending apartheid in South Africa. He was for respecting Palestinian interests alongside Israeli interests (Chomskyan once again?). He thought efforts to secure the border were silly. He's often sounded the alarm about germ warfare. From my own previous knowledge, he was actively working with the League of Women Voters. At a concert in Buffalo in the 80s he had a representative from that group there registering people to vote. He spends a lot of time disagreeing with conservatives on so many issues. I was already aware of his position on labor unions, which, as I have said, I do not agree with him on that. Another thing that I learned about that gave me pause was that he was in favor of replacing the income tax with a flat tax. I admittedly don't see how it's a libertarian position to free people from paying the income tax so that they would be able to pay flat tax. That position only makes sense in purely conservative ideology.

ExittheLemming wrote: Re Zappa's avowed conservatism, this vid is the one I wanted to post earlier but couldn't find. Although he clearly describes himself as a conservative, I do take on board HackettFan's caveat about the nuances of meaning with regards to how the term is perceived in the USA. It also needs to be clarified that those from a European perspective will habitually associate libertarianism with a left wing socialist orientation c/f the divergence afforded by American libertarians who clearly developed a more right wing capitalist direction. BTW Zappa's interviewers are transparently middle class dicks and he's stooping to conquer here, but don't listen to the sarcasm , listen to what he claims to have a value. For the sake of clarity, and for what it's worth (squat) I think everyone in this video is a complete dick.

Thanks for the post Ian, and your review of the interviewers!

I have a question ...  did he give his kids stupid names to mock celebrities that give their kids stupid names?

zravkapt wrote: ^He claimed that names like Moon Unit and Dweezil were actually less weird than Bob or Mary. Something like that.

Zappa's basic stance was that when people band together, there's trouble. The 60's movement was just another case of our group vs theirs, and I think it's smart that he didn't identify with the youth movement wholesale just because he was young. George Carlin said the same thing with different words. Something like: "If you sit down and talk with one person, you can see the universe in their eyes. Once people begin showing up in groups for a cause, I walk the other way." Obviously said for humor in part, and obviously group conformity is what the makes the world go 'round, but George and Frank were just pointing out that the person with the good heart is bringing his dumb friends to the rally. 

ExittheLemming wrote: Re Zappa's avowed conservatism, this vid is the one I wanted to post earlier but couldn't find. Although he clearly describes himself as a conservative, I do take on board HackettFan's caveat about the nuances of meaning with regards to how the term is perceived in the USA. It also needs to be clarified that those from a European perspective will habitually associate libertarianism with a left wing socialist orientation c/f the divergence afforded by American libertarians who clearly developed a more right wing capitalist direction. BTW Zappa's interviewers are transparently middle class dicks and he's stooping to conquer here, but don't listen to the sarcasm , listen to what he claims to have a value. For the sake of clarity, and for what it's worth (squat) I think everyone in this video is a complete dick.

I'm afraid I agreed with every word Zappa said. Was I not supposed to?