Who IS Frank Zappa

The first time I heard Frank Zappa's music was at my cousin's house in 1972. The whole entire evening was off the wall and shocking to me ..as I was only like 15 years old and he proceeded to play the GTO'S album, Wild Man Fischer, Captain Beefheart, and Lord Buckley. As termed often as "Outsider Music", a bunch of us were visiting my cousin that evening and simply had no idea/clue what kind of music this specifically was or the overall concept of the meaning behind Zappa signing such artists and his purpose (if any?), to make the music available to fans of his own. My cousin played the Bizzare/Straight albums and they were interspersed between his Zappa albums. We were all a bunch of "hippie wanna-be's" who had  brothers/sisters 5 or 6 years older that were "real hippies" before Madison Ave got a hold of them. At one time I owned about 6 of those Bizzare/Straight releases on LP, later trading them and can't recall the sequence musically/mentally of their sound or characteristic. I am just now listening to "An Evening With Wild Man Fischer" and other  thoughts begin to submerged. First time I heard --The Residents and Throbbing Gristle I remember being curious and my mind thought..you've been here before. And I still wonder if Zappa influenced others with the idea/concept of actually making a attempt to create a band like this. Investing in projects as he often did was obviously a sign of ambition and so he went the distance. It intrigued me that Zappa was so daring in a time period where the old school concepts of your parents were intimidating. Years later he affected me with his messages of sarcasm directed to the Berklee music college, as I had been studying volumes of the William Leavitt method. Zappa was aware of the snooty environment socially and I used to laugh a lot during my work out time, hearing Zappa's comments in my head + myself living in that environment at that point in time..gave me reason to agree with him. I think it was humours how he made a jackass out of someone who was huge in the media. But underneath it felt like he was making a jackass out of the person he asked to sing it. Terry Bozzio, George Duke and others played embarrassing roles Over the years members were on recordings stating "How can Zappa ask me to sing this?" Roy Estrada and many others took on such strange personal roles for Zappa. I never questioned his themes on sex and to me it was all about play acting. In the 70's..what followed a word or a statement in his lyrics was dismissed and the main "punchline word" of the lyric was what a majority of people tended to remember. They misunderstood him and thought he was just being filthy. This was evident when I traveled the road. They didn't stop for a moment to think maybe he was making fun of sex and all it's cheapness. Zappa thought that sex was good for the human race, but he also felt that the dress code or overall presentation of it in the commercial world was ridiculous.So truthfully? A very large population of people in America during that time..didn't get it. Even the Disco fans eventually loved "Dancin' Fool" as there is so much about the song which directly states "Disco" is questionable. When I played "Rock" clubs in the 70's, Disco people remained on one side of the street, and the Rock fans on the other. Bottles were thrown, fights broke out..because Disco was a real threat to "Rock" music fans. In the air was a message that Disco was to overthrow Rock music forever and when I toured they were like gangs fighting every night. Zappa completely understood the situation and wrote many small sequences on the subject.  

Edited by TODDLER - March 19 2013 at 11:30

Thanks

Here, everything becomes more difficult. I love Roxy, but other albums like "One size, Hot Rats, Zoot, Uncle, Grand Wazoo, Waka, Lumpy and the three first Mothers have never satisfied me completely. I'm looking for something else, something that I have found in Burnt and Sleep Dirt, a cohesion that finally matches the dream of music I had in mind. Zappa and me, it is an old story of love and hate. At this moment, I remember a melody that I thought forgotten: the conclusive piece of 200 motels, a very simple song that gradually turns into opera. I think that's what I'm currently looking for. Any suggestion

God !  Sleep Dirt is fantastic. So different. Darker, more melancholic than anything I had heard so far. I love all the songs, all the solos. Apostrophe, Overnite, Burnt, Sleep dirt... Next sept :  Lather  I don't know.

Listening to Cucamongo right now. Interesting listen, but I find it pretty enjoyable. Funny enough that it would probably be the first thing I listen to when I eventually do a chronological Zappa marathon.

I didn't know this :

Canterzeuhl wrote: HarbouringTheSoul wrote: It's definitely not an official release, but you can try poking around here to see if it's a bootleg. Aha! Thanks, will begin nosing around. But if anyone wants to save me time, below is the second track.

This is the guitar solo from "Pound for a Brown" as played on Oct 11, 1971 at Carnegie Hall. It was actually officially released, on the 2011 Carnegie Hall album and as the beginning of "The Subcutaneous Peril" on the 2012 Finer Moments album. Both of these are edited (and thus shorter) and weren't released at the time you got the CD, so I assume what you have is a live audience recording. It would make sense if the "Billy the Mountain" excerpt on your CD was also from that show, and the 20-minute jam might be from that show's "King Kong".

EDIT: And a little bit more googling reveals what is likely the source of your CD. I would rather not share the link because it contains a download link for a bootleg, which I doubt sits well with this forum's rules, but the tracks appear to stem from a planned two-disc version of the Just Another Band from L.A. album that Zappa ultimately scrapped in favor of the single-disc version.

The final album contains an edit of "Billy the Mountain" that removes about eight minutes of soloing so that the whole thing fits on one album side. On the double-disc version, it would have been split over side two and side three, and your 14-minute track is simply the part that would have appeared on side three, so about six minutes of it should overlap with the officially released version and the rest should consist of the removed solos. The remainder of side three would have been made up of the track you uploaded, which is indeed a "Pound" solo from the Carnegie Hall show and was supposed to be called "The Subcutaneous Peril" (just like the Finer Moments track, which is longer and also contains solos from other songs). Unlike what I suspected earlier, I assume this is the official edit that would have ended up on the album, and the bad sound quality stems from the fact that it's a bootleg copy.

The 20-minute track that you have was supposed to make up side four and was called "An Easy Substitute for Eternity Itself". It's also from Carnegie Hall, so I assume it's either the solos from "King Kong" (which lasted 30 minutes in that show) or a compilation of various solos from the show.


Edited by HarbouringTheSoul - March 13 2013 at 05:05

HarbouringTheSoul wrote: It's definitely not an official release, but you can try poking around here to see if it's a bootleg.

Aha! Thanks, will begin nosing around.

But if anyone wants to save me time, below is the second track.

I wonder if anyone could help me out, years ago I was given a CD by my English tutor of some Zappa tracks, and that's pretty much all the info I have on them. I don't know if it was an official release or bootleg (sounds more bootleg though, the sound quality isn't that great) but it contains 3 tracks, the first I can identify as the 'Studerbacher Hoch' section of 'Billy the Mountain' which is the album version but with an organ, sax and guitar solo which was cut to make Billy the Mountain fit on a record side. This track runs for 14 minutes.

It also has two improvised pieces which I cannot for the life of me identify, each running at 5:20 and 20:20.

Any ideas where these came from?
I tried music identification software but it was broken by Zappa's musical prowess.

I believe Frank Zappa had a huge influence on the band Gong. Especially the early Gong material. Oddly enough a track from The Man From Utopia titled "The Radio Is Broken" is stylistically based on the Gong sound. Another track titled "We Are Not Alone" is reminiscent of a Gong instrumental.