Zappa: Was he For or Far from the People?
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Topic: Zappa: Was he For or Far from the People?
Posted By: SteveG
Subject: Zappa: Was he For or Far from the People?
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 09:20
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In Barry Miles 2003 book on the relationship between the sixtie's counter culture and rock music titled Hippie, Miles simply reproduces an ad for Mothers of Invention's 1966 debut album Freak Out! in the LA Free Press, and I quote: "This is about the Mothers of Invention. We have watched them grow, and with their growth, we hopefully have grown. Their honesty has offended some and been provocative to many, their performances have had a real effect on their audiences. The Mothers' music is very new, and as their music is new, so is the intention of their music. As much as the Mothers put into music, we must bring to it. The Mothers and what they represent as a group has attracted all of the outcasts, the pariahs, the people who are angry and afraid and contemptuous of existing social structure. The danger lies in the 'Freak Out' becoming an excuse instead of a reason. An excuse implies an end, a reason a beginning. (Parenthesis is mine.) Being that the easiest way is constantly more attractive than the harder way, the essential thing that makes 'Freak Out' audiences different constitutes their sameness. a freak is not a freak if ALL are freaks. 'Freaking Out' should presuppose an active freedom, freedom meaning a liberation from the control of some other person or persons. Unfortunately, reaction seems to have taken place of reaction. We SHOULD be satisfied listening to the Mothers perform from a concert stage. If we could channel expended in 'Freaking Out' physically into 'Freaking Out' intellectually, we might possibly be able to create something concrete out of the ideological twilight of bizarre costumes and being seen being bizarre. Do we really listen? And if we really, do we really think? freedom of thought, conversely, brings an awesome responsibility. Looking and acting eccentric is NOT ENOUGH. A mad tea party is valid only as satire, commenting ironically, and ending in its beginning, in that it is only a trick of interpretation. It is not creation and it IS NOT ENOUGH. What we must try to do then, is not only comment satirically on what's wrong, but try to CHANGE what's wrong. The Mothers are trying." 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. If Zappa's emphasis on the individual was only concerned with art, such as pop music, then the album "Freak Out" would have been more widely received as that of Zappa himself. The result was that the album was not and he was not . I respect and have come to appreciate Zappa as a great musician and composer, and I appreciate his musical output. I am a prog fan, after all. However, Zappa's political commentary and satires will always leave me cold. Was he laughing with us, or simply at us? Was he a man FOR the people or a man FAR from the people?
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Replies:
Posted By: LearsFool
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 09:31
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Zappa, it seems, liked to fire both barrels at everybody. Going through We're Only In It For The Money, he hits both American political parties of the time, The Beatles, and hippies again. Being all about free thought, he hit hippies in his worry that a lot of them were sheep following trendy things - as the name would originally imply, as well - but at the expense of honest members, who, like in most subcultures, are actually the majority. His misfire on the album makes sense in light of how poorly he interpreted The Beatles's integrity; the title of the album is the first salvo he fired at them. He meant well, it's just that on his early albums, amongst his all time greats as they are, he didn't yet have the best marksmanship. -------------  
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Posted By: Walton Street
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 09:31
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I don't know about his politics but I always thought that what he chose to portray of the human condition was childish. his smug tone and juvenile approach to anything to do with sex always turned me off .. Satirical or not - he just kept hitting that same note over and over again ... like a 14 year old boy who would joke about sex because he didn't understand it. I know he was an intelligent man, and I also respected his abilities but I can only ever take him a tiny bit at a time .. It did sound to me like he was mocking everything and everybody whenever he opened his mouth, like he didn't care for his own audience, and only his musician buddies were in on the joke. my personal opinion from listening to about 20 of his albums, I have no scientific proof to back any of this up. ------------- "I know one thing: that I know nothing" - SpongeBob Socrates |
Posted By: TODDLER
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 09:45
No, that's not true. He had all of this Disco garbage around him saturated with the promotion of sex, how to dress in order to attract the right person to have sex with and beyond that, the phony people in America who used tactics to flaunt the importance of sex...so that every teenager in America would be attracted to that mentality and be defenseless when it came down to thinking for themselves. The same deal with "Flower Power" in the 60's. Beads, robes, expressions, ...I mean...just fall in line and don't be yourself? No wonder Zappa preached his gospel? Joe's Garage with it's sarcastic entry into sex. "Here's your 50 bucks Mary, isn't this what life is all about?" You must get that right? Every flippin' place I traveled to in the 70's was in fact all about cheapness and being a phony person out for sex. Zappa told his kids that there was nothing wrong with sex, but warned them about T.V. commercials with a little phone number up in the right hand corner of the screen. I believe he thought the way sex was being promoted in America was revolting and moronic. I also believe that he felt everyone had the right to explore what they wanted to in life, but in the same token he had the right to ridicule it and based on the evident knowledge that it was all from an industry of trend mongers.
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Walton Street wrote:Posted By: TODDLER
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 09:50
| Overall...he was trying to warn people that they COULD think for themselves as opposed to following a media driven marketing concept created by an industry of trend mongers. |
Posted By: Walton Street
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 09:54
of course I get it - but it was just over and over again with great zeal and funny little words for naughty things ... and not just Joe's Garage ... I guess when you're preaching something that simplistic, the people who already get it, get it. the people who don't think Zappa is down with their way of thinking.
------------- "I know one thing: that I know nothing" - SpongeBob Socrates |
Posted By: TeleStrat
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 11:10
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I don't (and didn't) blame Frank one bit for making fun of things in those early days. There was a lot to make fun of. Sex was the biggest product selling tool that the Madison Ave. crowd had and they used it to the fullest extent. He simply pointed out that people were stupid for buying into the scam that this product or that product would help you get laid. The hippie culture, movement, fad was a very short lived phase that was over almost as soon as it got started and was basically a group of followers looking for a leader. Only the name remained (for many years) as a way to describe guys with long hair.
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Posted By: Barbu
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 11:53
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He was laughing at you, me and him. The guy was a real fighter, free and uncorrupted. He will always have my respect for that even if I often disagree with his approach and attitude. ------------- |
Posted By: TradeMark0
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 12:12
| From what I know about Zappa, I can tell that he was a cynical and skeptical person, so I'm not surprised that he criticized the hippies. He was also against drugs and rightfully so in my opinion. I kind of agree with his views on hippies, not because I have anything against hippies, but because of the consequences of some of the hippie ideologies. The focus on sex and drugs in society is largely due to the hippies. The former was a bad idea from the start, the latter has had consequences as well. All of the "love" and "peace" ideas from the hippie movement are largely absent from society nowadays. Hippies are good people but it's unreasonable to assume that their actions won't have consequences on the following generations. |
Posted By: TODDLER
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 12:15
He was sometimes so sarcastic with his approach to the subject matter of sex, that he sounded to some people like he was actually personally in to it and further promoting the mentality of it that he was against. He hated commercialism. So do I. It is often formed in music by observing what would be defined as a catchy grouping of notes. It can later be observed in the areas of chord changes and repeated lines of the lyrics. The last insulting thing on earth that a true musician wants to experience is to have a record executive stand over their shoulders and dictate what notes they should play and what specific parts they should leave out.
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Posted By: KingCrInuYasha
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 12:22
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This is just speculation, but I think Money came about partially due to genuine resentment towards the Beatles, and not just the petty kind you see from your average talentless prima donna. IIRC, Sgt. Pepper was hailed as a groundbreaking concept album by the rock community. Meanwhile you have Zappa who not only beat The Beatles to the punch with not one, but two albums (Freak Out! and Absolutely Free), but those two album showed was more than capable in keeping up with the Fab Four. I think it might have been slightly upsetting that he had this groundbreaking music and no one was listening. However, I think Zappa had too strong a personality to just fire wildly in the dark at whatever group that irked him while playing the martyr. With Money (and Freak Out! and Absolutely Free for that matter), he knew what his targets were and hit the mark with near pinpoint accuracy. I think a good chunk of the points that he made in those three albums - mostly the ones that deal with conformity - still hold up toady, even when those albums are pushing 50 years.
------------- He looks at this world and wants it all... so he strikes, like Thunderball! |
Posted By: Evolver
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 13:57
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From what I recall, the Beatles freely admitted being inspired by Zappa. I doubt he hadn't heard about that. ------------- Trust me. I know what I'm doing. |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 14:25
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I think Frank Zappa liked some of the proclaimed ideals of the counterculture as he recognized most of the things they reacted against as genuine problems with the mainstream culture, but found other aspects of its ideology naďve or even downright dangerous like the promotion of substance abuse, and he disliked how easily it could and did become commodified by the culture industry. A lot of his lyrics from he 1960s have a "real freaks vs. fake ones" theme to it, not just We're Only in It for the Money, but also Plastic People in particular. Doesn't he go into detail about this in his autobiography? Of course, that's something he wrote many years later. I think Peter Doggett's insanely long book about the rise and fall of the hippie movement, There's a Riot Going On, does touch on Frank Zappa's conflicted relationship to it right down to digging up old interviews but it's a really long book which doesn't spend much time on Zappa specifically. (I think it's like 700 pages or so?) Anyway Zappa didn't get anywhere as much "voice of the generation" hype as someone like Bob Dylan, but enough to reject it in interviews cited in Doggett's book. Doggett does make a similar judgement on the as I described Zappa doing in the previous paragraph, but he comes from a more traditional Old Left perspective whereas Zappa ended up on the libertarian right. ------------- "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 |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 15:55
It only takes a second to fire a handgun and kill someone. Should the killer tell the judge "Look, I didn't shoot for long you know, so let me go free!"  Now for part 2 of which I'm more serious. 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. Where do people get these bizarre ideas from?
 Especially people as old as you are. ------------- This message was brought to you by a proud supporter of the Deep State. |
Posted By: TeleStrat
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 19:17
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The hippie movement was a short period in the mid sixties that happened between the British Pop period and the demonstration period. It peaked during the summer of love in '67 and never came near that level again. Six months later the NVA and VC launched the Tet Offensive and the war protest period became the center of interest. No one paid much attention to hippies after that. When Bob Hope and Phyliss Diller dress up like hippies on TV and do a skit about smoking bananas you can pretty much assume that the movement was over. So what are we talking here, a year and a half to two years? The beat generation lasted longer than that. Now, if you're referring to what the hippies tried to stand for, things like peace and love, well I guess society wasn't ready for that because it just didn't catch on. So the psychedelic bands move out of Haight Ashbury and all that remained were drug addicts and lost people who had spent their last dollar coming out to the coast. The head shops were gone from Sunset Blvd because people quickly lost interest in black light posters, love beads and incense. Young men were worrying about how to avoid the draft and groups of students were taking over campus administration buildings. So yeah, it was over. I get my bizarre ideas from facts. I was right here in L.A. and I was seventeen during the summer of love and was very aware of what was going on. |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 19:26
| ^American "hippie" movement circa 1966-1971. It wasn't really that short of time now, was it when you look at it from a nationwide perspective and not just what happened in LA. And I was in LA two months before Altamont in 1969, so I'm not sure where you obtained your facts because the scene looked a lot different to me. |
Posted By: TODDLER
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 19:49
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Frank Zappa wasn't pleased with ex-revolutionaries taking over positions as record executives for huge record companies. He was disappointed in the hippie culture wearing suits and grooming themselves ...because they took on a role to shorten songs and dispose of Progressive Rock. I agree that the idea of counter culture was to NOT blindly follow people and ideologies like sheep.... I also believe there was a lot of money being made in the 60's with all the many bands being signed and "Flower Power" itself. Grateful Dead members had stated in the past that in the late 60's, record company representatives would show up in the streets with the attitude...."Sign!, Sign!, sign anybody! Sign that girl on the street shaking the tambourine! The government had control over the entertainment industry and I recall Zappa saying that this "Flower Power" scene was phony and commercial and had mostly to do with the industry profiting. He seemed to develop an attitude after witnessing it all and continued to mock it for that reason. He seriously disliked drugs and sometimes disliked the people who took them. He fired Henry Vestine from the MOTHERS for that reason. He walked out on Alice Cooper during a session ...and supposedly because they began smoking Pot. He didn't have faith in the mixture of drugs and music ...unlike The Beatles who had experimented with LSD and produced several interesting albums while under the influence. Zappa was known to have fired anyone in his various line ups ..if he caught them doing drugs and especially if they sabotaged his works during a live performance. He may have opposed the hippie culture based on these experiences. His dislike or sarcastic attitude toward the hippie movement may have been based on his personal dislike for the situations it created in HIS life, but he additionally expressed disappointment in the local police force and the government.
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Posted By: TeleStrat
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 19:55
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Regardless of the time frame that history puts on the hippie movement after very early '68 no one even noticed them anymore. The Vietnam war dominated American society for the next five years and far overshadowed any other social concerns. I base all of my opinions on where I was and what I saw and how my friends and I (all draft age) felt. I cannot, and never have spoken for the rest of the state or the rest of the country. I was at the Palm Springs Pop Festival in the summer of '68 listening to Procol Harum sing A Whiter Shade Of Pale and it was a whole different scene. Then we drove back home and it was business as usual.
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Posted By: timothy leary
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 21:38
| ^ So the first rainbow gathering at Granby, Colorado in 1972, what was it a gathering of dentists or maybe a gathering of hippies? |
Posted By: TeleStrat
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 21:58
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^^ I have no idea who gathered there or why they gathered. I have already stated that my opinions are based on living in L.A.
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Posted By: timothy leary
Date Posted: February 19 2015 at 22:04
| Okay |
Posted By: Guy Guden
Date Posted: February 20 2015 at 05:14
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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.
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Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: February 20 2015 at 05:58
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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) ------------- 
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Posted By: Svetonio
Date 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  |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: February 20 2015 at 06:21
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^ growing up in public affords no hiding place for lapses of judgement -------------
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Posted By: dr wu23
Date Posted: February 20 2015 at 09:18
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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 |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: February 20 2015 at 10:37
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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? ------------- 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 |
Posted By: CPicard
Date Posted: February 20 2015 at 10:40
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The art of enema in Zappa's works: how the lower-class received it. Discuss. You have two hours. |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: February 20 2015 at 10:56
Go read "Our Lady of Flowers" first ... and then come back and look at Frank! ------------- 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 |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: February 20 2015 at 11:30
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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 naďve, 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 |
Posted By: CPicard
Date Posted: February 20 2015 at 11:31
You're cute, too. |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: February 20 2015 at 14:32
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Posted By: CPicard
Date Posted: February 20 2015 at 15:48
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. |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: February 20 2015 at 15:54
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Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: February 20 2015 at 15:58
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.
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Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: February 20 2015 at 19:18
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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Posted By: Barbu
Date Posted: February 21 2015 at 00:26
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Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: February 21 2015 at 08:15
^Double slam!  ------------- This message was brought to you by a proud supporter of the Deep State. |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: February 21 2015 at 09:25
Excusez-moi Monsieur, le train pour un monde meilleur...?  |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: February 21 2015 at 09:28
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^ ------------- This message was brought to you by a proud supporter of the Deep State. |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: February 21 2015 at 11:41
I'm about to read that book ... I would think that it was not anti-feminism, but probably more militant than anything else. I find it hard to believe that he did not enjoy, or care for a woman, or her ... personal space! There is nothing wrong with having fun while at it, but it would be easy to mis-interpret frolics in the hay as ... not progressive!
I would think that the extreme side of it was the part that might have been ... a bit more far out ... I'll review the book when I'm done. Reading Pattie Boyd's right now. ------------- 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 |
Posted By: CPicard
Date Posted: February 21 2015 at 18:13
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"Feminazism"... f**k, that's the most stupid word I ever read on this forum! And that's a lot to say! |
Posted By: timothy leary
Date Posted: February 21 2015 at 19:11
| A Rush Limbaugh word^very stupid |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: February 22 2015 at 03:27
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I don't think I've ever heard people mention that term since at least 2007. ------------- "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 |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: February 22 2015 at 10:37
Changing the word, since the folks replying here are too feminazi to stay on course with the discussion instead of going sillyputty on a term that was used lightly and not meant to sound anything but "militant", or similar words that are not on my every day vocabulary.
Take your anti-foreign attitudes somewhere else and regurgitate them plz! ------------- 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 |
Posted By: Slartibartfast
Date Posted: February 22 2015 at 11:37
You do know that feminazi was coined by a big fat idiot blowhard who has a radio show...
As for your question, it depends on who us is. Zappa spoke truth to power in his lyrics. ------------- Released date are often when it it impacted you but recorded dates are when it really happened... 
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Posted By: CPicard
Date Posted: February 22 2015 at 12:22
My "anti-foreign attitudes"?... Poor moron, I'm French (with Arabian-speaking grand-grand-parents, qui plus est). Sorry if I have some difficulties to think that "nazi" is a term that can be used "lightly". I guess having heard some jewish friends talking about grand-parents hiding in fear of being deportated in the death camps, having read Maus and that kind of stuff... make me lose my sense of humor. So, maybe it's that hour of the day when you have to take your pills, the ones which help you to keep in touch in the reality. Tsss, tsss. |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: February 22 2015 at 12:29
I used the word 'like' to describe my feeling towards Zappa's work. I can understand your confusion in this 'it's either black or white' only world we inhabit but I cannot my modify my descriptive to be any simpler. And from your post you sound like you fall into the love and devotion camp.
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Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: February 22 2015 at 16:40
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.
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. |
Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: February 22 2015 at 16:53
| It's something to check on certainly, but I do believe that Jimi Hendrix was to the right of Frank Zappa on the Viet Nam War. |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: February 22 2015 at 19:26
"If you care about other people, that’s now a very dangerous idea. If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself. Maybe you can become rich, but you don’t care whether other people’s kids can go to school, or can afford food to eat, or things like that. In the United States, that’s called “libertarian” for some wild reason. I mean, it’s actually highly authoritarian, but that doctrine is extremely important for power systems as a way of atomizing and undermining the public." Noam Chomsky giving anecdotal evidence that if Americans can confuse a conservative with a liberal, they could just as easily confuse an anarcho-syndicalist with garden furniture -------------
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Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: February 22 2015 at 20:23
I don't know, or might be mistaken as to what your point of using this quote is, because the use of libertarian here is the conservative American libertarianism that does not characterize Chomsky's personal views (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxbeyn2xMQE). Possibly you are talking about Zappa caring only about himself, but I don't know where you would have gotten that from. Perhaps you are making a point about Chomsky being pro-collectivist and Zappa not, but I'm not sure to that Zappa was not in favor of volitional attempts to join forces for genuinely shared intellectual purposes. It seems to me that what he's critical of is people who simply fall into something, whatever it is, a movement maybe, for purely cultural reasons. I might also add that the hippie movement was not only not a successful political movement. It wasn't a political movement virtually at all. It was always a cultural movement. The advocates for liberal political change were the Politicos. There may have been occasional cross-membership (I use membership loosely), but these two groups should not be conflated. |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: February 22 2015 at 21:05
Zappa described himself many times as a 'conservative' yet you would contradict this flatly:
Does this mean that Zappa completely misunderstood the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative' and required a relatively anonymous music fan on a discussion forum to correct him? I admit that in a country that has never had any credible left wing cultural lineage, the terms are maybe closer in the popular consciousness than Europeans are accustomed to.
You're not even remotely aligned with Zappa semantically. see above
Just because passive conditioning is the relative norm in the 1st world doesn't impinge on the positive aspects of culture. Any widely acknowledged definition will suffice - Culture: shared indigenous beliefs and voluntary practices. We create our culture, so yep, without resistance, volition and choice everyone gets the one they ultimately deserve. (Yes, Post globalisation we are very limited in what we can do to prevent this by non violent means apart from boycotting products, services and media etc)
You've confused conditioning/brainwashing with culture again I think. I mean, adopting a view or practice purely for cultural reasons is worse than doing something purely for financial or personal gain? Get real matey
You continually misunderstand culture by denying it's pivotal role in making any social and political change possible at all. I'm at a loss as to why you restrict it's significance to the realm of ideas and aesthetics only. Everything we think, say or do is ultimately accepted or rejected within our culture. (every revolution started in the head) It should be self-evident that politics would be a non sequiter unless there were shared indigenous beliefs and voluntary practices already in place i.e. people. Culture begets politics and not vice versa. -------------
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Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: February 22 2015 at 22:23
Yes, I do. I could be wrong because I've never seen these references, unless you include references to libertarianism. In the YouTube reference I offered Chomsky also describes himself as a conservative. A certain amount of nuance is needed with words that are used in different ways at different times. I am critical of the effect that constant software updates has on the effort to archive endangered languages. Perhaps I am a conservative.
Addressed above.
This was a representation of Zappa's views, and I think the representation is quite apt. As to which is worse, doing something for cultural reasons or for financial reasons, I have staked no claim. I would point out that Noam Chomsky's numerous federally funded grants came heavily from the military. I think he would say that he took their money without offering anything beyond pure theory. Zappa also got lots of money, but threw lots of that money into music gear, getting musical pieces scored and played and so on. |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: February 23 2015 at 00:34
Now you're on the cusp of 'say what?'. How can a choice to share/disavow a belief or endorse/reject a practice not be voluntary? When you say culture is imposed on us by erm...culture what is it exactly that you think this second culture might conceivably be? Once again, I suspect you mean that when culture is manipulated and distorted for expedient ends by powerful industrial and economic players to control and stifle dissent amongst the populace, that is NOT culture. It's a control mechanism, pure and simple and we might at least both agree on that. It is not even an example of that modern misnomer: 'a culture of manipulation, distortion and expediency' (culture cannot be defined in terms of attributes that are injurious to its adherents e.g. 'a culture of genocide/suicide' would be reductio ad absurdum). The Germans likened culture/bildung as being something like 'the shared fruits of independent thinking' I'm starting to think that the very notion of shared beliefs and practices being healthy is maybe anathema to libertarians? Me?, I'll just stick to being a right of centre hard-nosed Feminazi -------------
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Posted By: tamijo
Date Posted: February 23 2015 at 03:08
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If you make hardcore satire, you will attack and offend everyone. Basicly because everyone is redicilous if you expose there "belives" to the extreme. Conservatives will think you are "left", Lefties would call you Conservative, and that is actualy the idear. You will attack systems and belives of any kind, Coverment, Religion, Military ect. ect Just like "Charli Hebdo" ------------- Prog is whatevey you want it to be. So dont diss other peoples prog, and they wont diss yours |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: February 23 2015 at 03:26
Hardcore satire, by your definition, makes sincerity impossible so why should we believe them? -------------
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Posted By: tamijo
Date Posted: February 23 2015 at 03:39
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Satire of not supposed to be belived. Its ment to expose certian (often problematic) aspects about something. ------------- Prog is whatevey you want it to be. So dont diss other peoples prog, and they wont diss yours |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: February 23 2015 at 04:17
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? -------------
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Posted By: Flight123
Date Posted: February 23 2015 at 05:24
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Would agree with the latter statement. Has anybody read any Jonathan Swift? He was certainly the Zappa of his times, especially in his use of disgust as a satirical device. |
Posted By: tamijo
Date Posted: February 23 2015 at 06:39
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If you think so  This was adressing Exitthe.. last post, didnt notice a post come between. ------------- Prog is whatevey you want it to be. So dont diss other peoples prog, and they wont diss yours |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: February 23 2015 at 07:37
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Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: February 23 2015 at 08:38
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Posted By: rogerthat
Date Posted: February 23 2015 at 08:41
Well said. This sums up the slight discomfort I have with satire, as much as I enjoy it.
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Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: February 23 2015 at 10:55
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. |
Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: February 23 2015 at 13:52
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Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: February 23 2015 at 15:50
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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.
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Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: February 23 2015 at 17:51
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Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: February 23 2015 at 18:32
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^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. |
Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: February 25 2015 at 21:56
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Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 08:11
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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. -------------
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Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 08:34
------------- This message was brought to you by a proud supporter of the Deep State. |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 08:45
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^After reading both the excellent posts from HackettFan and Lemming, I'm truly convinced now that Zappa was not a communist. ------------- This message was brought to you by a proud supporter of the Deep State. |
Posted By: Walton Street
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 10:18
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I have a question ... did he give his kids stupid names to mock celebrities that give their kids stupid names? ------------- "I know one thing: that I know nothing" - SpongeBob Socrates |
Posted By: zravkapt
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 11:16
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^He claimed that names like Moon Unit and Dweezil were actually less weird than Bob or Mary. Something like that. ------------- Magma America Great Make Again |
Posted By: Walton Street
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 11:28
riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.... ------------- "I know one thing: that I know nothing" - SpongeBob Socrates |
Posted By: CPicard
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 15:16
Come on, "Bob" is really weird. I can understand "Robert", but "Bob"? Really? "Bob"??? Same thing about "Mary": I guess English-speaking people must mean "Marie" or "Maria", but pronounce it wrong. |
Posted By: The Sloth
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 15:29
| 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. |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 16:03
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Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 16:22
I'm afraid I agreed with every word Zappa said. Was I not supposed to? |
Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 16:25
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Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 18:12
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Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 18:56
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Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 19:03
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^I'm sure this not how Carlin wanted to sound. The simple truth is that there is strength in numbers, not in a single individual to aid in social causes. You could say that there are millionaires that help out the needy, the hungry, etc., but why then are there so many TV commercials for charity and aid groups like Feed The Children? ------------- This message was brought to you by a proud supporter of the Deep State. |
Posted By: timothy leary
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 19:21
| Why did Zappa live in Laurel Canyon with the rest of the musicians? Lived next door to Joni Mitchell. He was part of the movement.He was not on the outside looking in, he was on the inside looking out. If he was not a hippie maybe he was a dental floss technician in Montana. Beats me, I really like his music and his use of comedy as satire is spot on for the time period.A giant. |
Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 19:34
So, what do you make of Robert Fripp and the independent mobile intelligent units? |
Posted By: brainstormer
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 19:56
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I don't think Zappa is the Uber Genius that some make him out to be (I don't think some other ones are either that are called such by proggers). I think he was just an above average rock musician who had a hyper vigilance to make music, and he made some "classical" music. His comments on "they're just words" is pretty meaningless when you get into linguistic studies. Words are very, very important, for what they symbolize, what they cause in human behavior. I think the "good book" said a lot about that. ------------- -- Robert Pearson Regenerative Music http://www.regenerativemusic.net Telical Books http://www.telicalbooks.com ParaMind Brainstorming Software http://www.paramind.net |
Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: February 26 2015 at 20:26
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Posted By: brainstormer
Date Posted: February 27 2015 at 00:44
I've studied linguistics too. Sociological contextes are not arbitrary. The structure of language is not arbitrary (Chomsky). Why do we study grammar, write doctoral thesis on grammer, if it's arbitrary? What does arbritrary actually mean??? If your use of language pisses off someone, that sociological context is not arbitrary. ------------- -- Robert Pearson Regenerative Music http://www.regenerativemusic.net Telical Books http://www.telicalbooks.com ParaMind Brainstorming Software http://www.paramind.net |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: February 27 2015 at 04:21
Just because I don't agree with someone doesn't mean I think they're a dick. I just happen to think Frank is a dick because of his frequently prurient, puerile and asinine song content that his apologists would pass off as 'illuminating irony' with a knowing smirk. In my book, yer only supposed to be sincere I have albums of his that I adore (Grand Wazoo, Hot Rats, One Size Fits All) and others I heartily loathe (Joe's Garage, Lumpy Gravy, 2000 Motels) Zappa was an articulate and intelligent man, so for me, that makes his habitual lyrical crassness all the more galling Nothing he says in the vid strikes me as unreasonable but it's painfully obvious that this is an egalitarian man mired in a capitalist media obsessed dystopia being forced to make intelligent self interest choices because there is no credible alternative left wing ideology to draw from. That's clearly not his fault.Why are we so afraid of words? ...Lenin and McCarthy? -------------
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Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: February 27 2015 at 04:50
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Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: February 27 2015 at 09:08
------------- This message was brought to you by a proud supporter of the Deep State. |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: February 27 2015 at 09:31
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"You can tell a pioneer by the arrows in his back."-Peter Kember of Spacemen 3. Despite his looks and where he resided in the sixties, Zappa will always be considered anti-counter culture. The term counter culture, believe it or not, is not interchangeable with the term hippie. Zappa's later sixties 'counter culture as commercially ingratiated or bought off' stance, supported by albums like We're Only in it for The Money, was dangerously close to the edict posited by the late sixties violent Weather Underground. Zappa's stance came first and he was certainly no violent Weatherman. However, you can clearly see that he couldn't catch a break and he's for the most part, if not ever, never mentioned in social or cultural studies that have to do with America in the nineteen sixties. The best I can say about Zappa, or anyone for that matter, is that his ideas and ideals were sincere and that he never compromised himself. He certainly went his own way and never uttered a single word of regret about his artistic and socio-political statements that I know of. The only other music artist that I can say that of is Roy Harper. One of best answers I get about Zappa on this topic (this is old an old topic for me as I'm old in age myself) is someone simply stating that they don't care what Zappa's views were. They just simply like his music. And Zappa was a true musical and political pioneer. You can see that by looking at the arrows in his back. I'd be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to HackettFan's posts. He really balanced the facts behind Zappa's life and presented a fuller view of the man, especially with Zappa's own chartable and social causes. I rarely read autobiographies, but I'm going to give Zappa's a spin. He's seems too direct and consistent to obscure or change facts about himself. I also need to give a shout out to Ian (lemming) for pointing out the wasted intelligence Zappa has always shown in his supposedly witty lyrics. Another balancing factor that I couldn't have said better myself if someone had paid me to. |
Posted By: twalsh
Date Posted: February 27 2015 at 09:32
Nicely said. Clever too! ------------- More heavy prog, please! |
Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: February 27 2015 at 20:10
If the sociological dimension of words like f**k or s**t were not arbitrary, then the equivalents of those words would be obscene in every human language. This is not the case. In fact, even English has alternative words like fornicate that carry a very different impact. This is an arbitrary fact of the English lexicon. For some languages death spoken of in connection with humans is obscene. 'The man died' even as a purely abstract sentence is very off color in Mparntwe Arrernte. 'The dog died' is fine. Native American languages are generally acknowledged to have no obscene words at all.
Worst example of someone you could cite. Chomsky advanced a theoretical concept of universal grammar (UG), but he claims it to be an innate language organ, autonomous from other non-linguistic mental processes, which leaves out any social dynamics for sure. Even UG only covered a theorized subset of the full grammar of any particular language, a subset that has shrunk to where it only includes recursion nowadays and even that has been called into question.
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Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: February 27 2015 at 21:05
Sorry to go way off topic (that's correct, I know squat about linguistics) but is onomatopoeia an exception to this arbitrariness? e.g. words like 'cuckoo' 'woof' 'meow' 'kerrang!' etc. Similarly, do terms of endearment or affection, persuasion etc tend to deploy softer mellifluous sounds than those used for curses, scolding, warning, admonishing etc in all languages?. (The first bit of any sound ain't called the attack portion by accident) If so, isn't this a deliberate choice by the speaker to imbue the words with the intent?-------------
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Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: February 28 2015 at 11:18
Onomatopoeia is indeed generally spoken of as being partially non-arbitrary in that the onomatopoeic word bears a relationship to a characteristic of the thing it signifies (iconicity). It's also arbitrary too, because the representation of the sound differs by convention. We say cockledoodledoo for the sound of a rooster. The word for chicken in Comanche is also the sound they say is made by a rooster, but it comes out as kokoraa. So, it's still ultimately a matter of convention. There are some other word types, one of which you mentioned, that have some partial iconicity. The overall footprint that these sort of things have any lexicon is rather minor. Arbitrariness in language structure is subject to some nuance based upon one's theoretical dispositions. I adhere to theories that claim that grammar is influenced by general cognitive processes. But even with this, the best one can normally say is that a given grammatical fact is "well motivated by" some other mental process, rather than being "determined by" it. And oftentimes there are multiple competing motivations. |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: February 28 2015 at 15:11
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^ Thanks for the response. I don't pretend to understand a lot of it but it's certainly whetted my appetite to explore the subject further. -------------
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Posted By: The Sloth
Date Posted: February 28 2015 at 16:10
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A buddy of mine once asked, frustrated, "why is it that you have to cut through so much bullsh*t when listening to Zappa?" I immediately snapped, "that bullsh*t is music! Why don't ya try it sometime!" It was a fairly heated moment. Some people can't take the unrelenting abuse of Frank's music, but it's also true that less people would adore the second side of Abbey Road if it were one track under one title. It's all about the size of the bites. On that angle of the subject, it does surprise me that so many prog fans don't like FZ. I think the one thing that people can't get over is the fact that Frank didn't pour his sentimentality into his lyrics. It sounds to a lot of people like a flurry of notes and a joke that only works once (if that). The passion is in the rhythms, the tone combinations, and the idea that over the horizon of the next bar could be anything. It's a really beautiful ideal he committed to, and I love that there's rock music out there that doesn't wait for the listener. Zappa's stuff is a running man fired out of a cannon. :::cues Mars Needs Women:::
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Posted By: brainstormer
Date Posted: February 28 2015 at 21:40
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Hackettfan: I really don't want to go into this with you. I could retract every point you've made. Everyone knows what F@$k means, and why they say it. I think even the post-modernist stance of the universality of subjectivity is just a meme of the present to be weighed. You seem to be saying the deep strcture is arbitrary...that's pretty odd, IMHO. The reason why it is deep is because it's the true form, the surface structure creates greater "generations" and thus is more "arbitrary." There isn't even objective philosophical language perhaps in our discourse to arrive at anything, and this isn't the place to go on about it. ------------- -- Robert Pearson Regenerative Music http://www.regenerativemusic.net Telical Books http://www.telicalbooks.com ParaMind Brainstorming Software http://www.paramind.net |