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Joined: November 07 2014
Location: California
Status: Offline
Points: 2616
Posted: February 20 2015 at 05:14
Despite his appearance and approach, Frank Zappa was very conservative. He said so. His family background
was conservative. His Father was in Defense, I believe. His only liberal leanings were a hatred of organized religion and a love for sexual freedom that could veer into the pornographic. Only when he knew he was dying did he lean to the left and considered helping the Democrats. By then it was too late.
For me he was the very embodiment of an American dream that many of us would prefer to believe he routinely abhorred. This self-made multi millionaire who controlled practically every facet of his creative output from sales, to marketing to mail order could serve as a Harvard Business School text book example of the sort of ambitious, driven and successful entrepreneur that is the antithesis of the hippy groundswell on which he was carried along circa the late 60's. Short version: None of the foregoing impinges on Zappa's music but yes, an avowed conservative at heart (but mostly head)
Joined: September 20 2010
Location: Serbia
Status: Offline
Points: 10213
Posted: February 20 2015 at 06:14
Zappa's "antihippism" is really funny in comparision with Mr Townshend who recorded this radio commercial for U.S. Air Force in the middle of the Summer of Love
Joined: August 22 2010
Location: Indiana
Status: Offline
Points: 20623
Posted: February 20 2015 at 09:18
He was a musical satirist at times.....and aren't they supposed to poke fun at society to affect change..?
IMHO that doesn't make him estranged from the people but someone who respected honesty and not all the fakes running around back then....on both sides of the fence.
One does nothing yet nothing is left undone. Haquin
Joined: January 04 2007
Location: Grok City
Status: Offline
Points: 17484
Posted: February 20 2015 at 10:37
I'm not, in any way, an expert on Zappa, and there are a lot of ideas and thoughts running left and right ... and all of them fit and don't fit!
For me, a lot of it was something that was very valuable, because of all the intelligenzia and intelect that went through our overly literate house of intelectuals, who took pleasure in discussing their ideals probably as much as using a belt or a 2x4 on their children for being naughty ... that's intelect for you! And I'm sick and tired of that merde!
I don't blame Frank for even getting down right and dirty and mean ... sometimes you just have to let it out, but the only thing I worry about is the hippocrisy behind it. I have never married, probably because I was afraid to dump any angers and disappointments on children or the wife ... I'm emotional, but I don't want to be hippocritical or stupid and then justify it in the same way that my supposedly more important parents and artists did! Sorry ... nothing personal here ... I just do not wish to repeat my own parents issues ... I would rather bring out the best of them, not the worst, but their "reality" was dual natured and might even be considered "utopian", which we all know was full of excrement!
Zappa's early material was important to me, in that it plainly said ... what I could tell was true, but the intelectuals would not admit, EVER, because those people were not a part of their social clique ... that the "so-called" lower class, could not make music, write, paint, or be "an artist".
The rest, for me, is just details that we find to excuse our own means and personal hells and heavens, and I'm not convinced that everyone can get past their prejudices enough to discuss it ... yes enema bandit is nasty ... but then isn't our attitude any better? And specially so towards the arts?
Edited by moshkito - February 20 2015 at 10:37
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com
Joined: April 12 2008
Location: Denmark
Status: Offline
Points: 5898
Posted: February 20 2015 at 11:30
I think Frank Zappa later in life became a registered member of the US
Libertarian Party, making him "a man of the right" without being traditionally
conservative-with-a-big-C as such. I can't remember if his libertarianism was the cause or the effect of his disillusion with the hippie movement. He already seemed to dislike the utopianism, which he saw as naïve, and glorification of substance abuse back in the 1960s.
As far as the lifespan of the hippie movement goes, I thought the pacifist movements of the 1960s and early 1970s had a symbiotic relationship with that subculture as was the major kick environmental activism got back then, and a lot of other left-wing grassroots movement around then? Same thing with the New Age religious movement and some of the avantgarde art/literature scenes I read were active at the time. All of those things seem to have lasted well into the 1970s, even if they got more serious and ideological.
Maybe my geographical location (Continental Europe viz Anglosphere) is kind of distorting my perspective here, and it might have lasted a couple years longer where I lived. My parents were both pretty active in left-wing activist circles back then, and my mom in New Age religiosity too.
"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
Joined: April 11 2014
Location: Kyiv In Spirit
Status: Offline
Points: 20604
Posted: February 20 2015 at 14:32
CPicard wrote:
The art of enema in Zappa's works: how the lower-class received it. Discuss. You have two hours.
One of Zappa's sickest songs that did not go down well with many feminist groups. Zappa also had an old school anti feminism streak which is surprising for someone as progressive leaning as he was.(From the biography: Zappa by Barry Miles Published 2004.)
Joined: October 03 2008
Location: Là, sui monti.
Status: Offline
Points: 10841
Posted: February 20 2015 at 15:48
SteveG wrote:
CPicard wrote:
The art of enema in Zappa's works: how the lower-class received it. Discuss. You have two hours.
One of Zappa's sickest songs that did not go down well with many feminist groups. Zappa also had an old school anti feminism streak which is surprising for someone as progressive leaning as he was.(From the biography: Zappa by Barry Miles Published 2004.)
I'm not sure he was anti-feminist. After all, he hired women musicians (which didn't seem to complain about his attitude) and I don't think his own girl felt "opressed by the patriarchy". Maybe he was against some feminists, but since I haven't read everything he can have said on the subject, I will abstain from further comments.
Joined: April 11 2014
Location: Kyiv In Spirit
Status: Offline
Points: 20604
Posted: February 20 2015 at 15:58
CPicard wrote:
SteveG wrote:
CPicard wrote:
The art of enema in Zappa's works: how the lower-class received it. Discuss. You have two hours.
One of Zappa's sickest songs that did not go down well with many feminist groups. Zappa also had an old school anti feminism streak which is surprising for someone as progressive leaning as he was.(From the biography: Zappa by Barry Miles Published 2004.)
I'm not sure he was anti-feminist. After all, he hired women musicians (which didn't seem to complain about his attitude) and I don't think his own girl felt "opressed by the patriarchy". Maybe he was against some feminists, but since I haven't read everything he can have said on the subject, I will abstain from further comments.
No, his stance was anti Women's Lib according to Miles' bio. Again, this is strange for somebody that considered himself some sort of practical conservative while embracing the free sex culture of the sixties.
As to his practical conservatism, that's something he seems to have moderated as long as it did not interfere with his ability as a businessman, which was excellently commented upon by Ian in an earlier post.
^ growing up in public affords no hiding place for lapses of judgement
Mr Townshend was also an Iraqi war supporter.
Right on Sister! If you lived in Iraq I would have signed up for the US Air Force in a second (with or without Pete's ad) Stop derailing the thread please.
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Zappa: Was he For or Far from the People?
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