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Your Favourite Frank Zappa Quotes!

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Topic: Your Favourite Frank Zappa Quotes!
Posted By: Ancient Tree
Subject: Your Favourite Frank Zappa Quotes!
Date Posted: June 24 2012 at 14:25
Post your best FZ quotes:

here are mines:
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Tax the f**k out of the churches!
-- Frank Zappa

Beware of the fish people, they are the true enemy.
-- Frank Zappa, speech to a pro-choice rally in Los Angeles around 1989-90

Those Jesus Freaks
Well, they're friendly but
The sh*t they believe
Has got their minds all shut
An' they don't even care
When the church takes a cut
Ain't it bleak when you got so much nothin'
-- Frank Zappa, "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothin'"


The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your f**king mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.
-- Frank Zappa, interview, Playboy, May 2, 1993

My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.
-- Frank Zappa

The whole Universe is a large joke.
Everything in the Universe are just subdivisions of this joke.
So why take anything too serious.
-- Frank Zappa, in September, 1992, on SFB 3 when he gave an interview about the Yellow Shark




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Replies:
Posted By: Slartibartfast
Date Posted: June 24 2012 at 16:33
"Republicans is fine,
If you're a multi-millionaire
Democrats is fair,
If all you own is what you wear
Neither of 'em's REALLY right,
'Cause neither of 'em CARE
'Bout that Hot-Plate Heaven,
'Cause they ain't been there"

"I'm the slime oozin' out
From your TV set

You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't go for help . . . no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold "




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Released date are often when it it impacted you but recorded dates are when it really happened...



Posted By: SaltyJon
Date Posted: June 24 2012 at 16:35
The Ultimate Rule ought to be: 'If it sounds GOOD to you, it's bitchin'; if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's sh*tty. The more your musical experience, the easier it is to define for yourself what you like and what you don't like. American radio listeners, raised on a diet of _____ (fill in the blank), have experienced a musical universe so small they cannot begin to know what they like. - Frank Zappa

I think it's really tragic when people get serious about stuff. It's such an absurdity to take anything really seriously ... I make an honest attempt not to take anything seriously: I worked that attitude out about the time I was eighteen, I mean, what does it all mean when you get right down to it, what's the story here? Being alive is so weird. - Frank Zappa

Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best... - Frank Zappa

The creation and destruction of harmonic and 'statistical' tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consistent and 'regular' throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only 'good guys' in it, or eating cottage cheese. - Frank Zappa

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http://www.last.fm/user/Salty_Jon" rel="nofollow">


Posted By: Cactus Choir
Date Posted: June 24 2012 at 17:17
"Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." Frank Zappa quoted in Linda Botts, "Loose Talk" (1980).

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"And now...on the drums...Mick Underwooooooooood!!!"

"He's up the pub"


Posted By: zravkapt
Date Posted: June 24 2012 at 17:41
"All the best music has already been written by guys in wigs and stuff"

"You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream"

"If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library"

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible"


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Magma America Great Make Again


Posted By: zappaholic
Date Posted: June 24 2012 at 20:27
"I never set out to be weird.  It was always other people who called me weird."

"People make a lot of fuss about my kids having such supposedly 'strange names', but the fact is that no matter what first names I might have given them, it's the last name that is going to get them in trouble."

"Every major industrialized nation has A BEER (you can't be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need A BEER)."




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"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." -- H.L. Mencken


Posted By: Tapfret
Date Posted: June 24 2012 at 21:11
I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe. 

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https://www.last.fm/user/Tapfret" rel="nofollow">
https://bandcamp.com/tapfret" rel="nofollow - Bandcamp


Posted By: Jim Garten
Date Posted: June 27 2012 at 11:15
"To me, a cigarette is food...

...there are people in Los Angeles who believe they will live forever if they stamp out tobacco smoke"

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Jon Lord 1941 - 2012


Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: June 27 2012 at 11:23
In front of congress and responding to attempts by the PMRC to instigate a ratings system for all rock albums with regards the suitability of their lyrics for children:

The PMRC proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children, and promises to keep the courts busy for years, dealing with the interpretation-al and enforce-mental problems inherent in the proposal's design. It is my understanding that, in law, First Amendment Issues are decided with a preference for the least restrictive alternative. In this context, the PMRC's demands are the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation.


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Posted By: HolyMoly
Date Posted: June 27 2012 at 11:36
Don't let your meat loaf... ha ha ha

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My other avatar is a Porsche

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased.

-Kehlog Albran


Posted By: The T
Date Posted: June 27 2012 at 12:39
Many of these quotes are stupid. 

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Posted By: KingCrInuYasha
Date Posted: June 27 2012 at 16:37
"Everyone in this room is wearing a uniform and don't kid yourself." - From the coda of "The Little House I Used To Live In", from Burnt Weenie Sandwich.

If I ever see someone ranting about how people are conformists for liking something popular, I plan to quote that.


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He looks at this world and wants it all... so he strikes, like Thunderball!


Posted By: HarbouringTheSoul
Date Posted: June 27 2012 at 17:42
I always thought Zappa coined "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture", but apparently he didn't. Oh well. So I'll go with this, which is more or less the philosophy I try to live by:

Originally posted by SaltyJon SaltyJon wrote:

I think it's really tragic when people get serious about stuff. It's such an absurdity to take anything really seriously ... I make an honest attempt not to take anything seriously: I worked that attitude out about the time I was eighteen, I mean, what does it all mean when you get right down to it, what's the story here? Being alive is so weird. - Frank Zappa



Posted By: HolyMoly
Date Posted: June 27 2012 at 17:51
Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny

-The Be-Bop Tango


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My other avatar is a Porsche

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased.

-Kehlog Albran


Posted By: Dayvenkirq
Date Posted: June 28 2012 at 02:44
Originally posted by The T The T wrote:

Many of these quotes are stupid. 

You made the comment, you sell it to us.


Posted By: The T
Date Posted: June 28 2012 at 09:11
Originally posted by Dayvenkirq Dayvenkirq wrote:

Originally posted by The T The T wrote:

Many of these quotes are stupid. 

You made the comment, you sell it to us.
Too long. Not worth the time. Some are good. Some really good. The first post contains most of the stupid ones (the ones about the church and religion). When he talks about other stuff he makes so much more sense. 

Did he say the "writing about music is like dancing about architecture" or something like that? That one would qualify as stupid. On the other hand, the one about rock journalism is really good. 

I'll correct my first comment: many of these quotes are good, but some are stupid. 


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Posted By: zravkapt
Date Posted: June 28 2012 at 12:01
^You are forgiven. One of the stupidest things Frank ever said was that he considered coffee and cigarettes 'food groups'...and where is he now again? Disapprove

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Magma America Great Make Again


Posted By: Dayvenkirq
Date Posted: June 28 2012 at 15:57
^ Oh, I thought the man was gone because his guitar was too loud and the dynamics had seriously affected his prostate.


Posted By: Barbu
Date Posted: June 28 2012 at 16:05
Originally posted by ExittheLemming ExittheLemming wrote:

In front of congress and responding to attempts by the PMRC to instigate a ratings system for all rock albums with regards the suitability of their lyrics for children:


If lyrics make people do things, how come we don't love each other?

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Posted By: HolyMoly
Date Posted: June 28 2012 at 16:12
Zappa's music has been central to my musical development, but as I get older I find I like him less and less as a human being.

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My other avatar is a Porsche

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased.

-Kehlog Albran


Posted By: jammun
Date Posted: June 28 2012 at 22:03
Not exactly a quote, but I always liked:

She was buns up, kneeling.

I don't know why anyone wouldn't like him as a human being. Well of course in these days he had many traits in common with CEO's who get government bailouts. He was a perfectionist, he was an a****le, he thought himself on a plane above his peers, he was demanding of his employees, and he expected nothing but the best. There are 60+ albums to attest to that. The big difference of course that he had a sense of humor about the whole enterprise. 

If I had a child who wanted to be a musician (and I have children but they are not foolish enough to be musicians, not in the era of "music wants to be free"), I would tell them be exactly like Zappa. Be as dirty as you want, be as political as you want, challenge everything.


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Can you tell me where we're headin'?
Lincoln County Road or Armageddon.


Posted By: Dayvenkirq
Date Posted: June 29 2012 at 01:12
Originally posted by jammun jammun wrote:

... and I have children but they are not foolish enough to be musicians, not in the era of "music wants to be free" ... .

Please, careful there.



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