http://megaupload.com/?d=H5XBHB0H = The REAL Frank Zappa Book! Inspiring, funny, scary, brilliant, frustrating, ridiculous man! Random quote: "The most important thing in art is the Frame. For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively -- because, without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. You have to put a 'box' around it because otherwise, what is that shit on the wall? If John Cage, for instance, says, "I'm putting a contact microphone on my throat, and I'm going to drink carrot juice, and that's my composition," then his gurgling qualifies as his composition because he put a frame around it and said so. "Take it or leave it, I now will this to be music." After that it's a matter of taste. Without the frame-as-announced, it's a guy swallowing carrot juice".............. dead-on!



no. They both really hated each other at this point and it shows through. No energy at all.. there's a few cool songs but it doesn't reach the insane brilliance of shiny beast, doc at the radar station, and ice cream for crow, which would come shortly after this.

edit: okay, Supercreep said basically the same thing

thanks adam that book is awesome but short

No prob, I used to write off Zappa because the first stuff I heard was his more silly irritating joke song stuff. But then I got into his early stuff, where he was just some ridiculous virtuoso, talented genius of a composer. He's no Beefheart, but I still would rate a good 10 of his albums above just about anyone else's, and he's always interesting to read about.

yeah my first stuff I heard by him was jokey and I hated it. But later discovered ONLY IN IT which is unreal, and then of course "Peaches En Regalia" is one of the greatest compositions ever. EVER. I have the All Music Guide to his albums, which is brief but interesting.

1. Were Only In It For the Money
2. Hot Rats
3. Bongo Fury
4. Absolutely Free
5. Freak Out

I think Bongo Fury is great album. Not as great as We´re only in it or Trout mask for example, but much greater than Bluejeans and moonbeams (and I think Bluejeans is not as bad as many thinks). I think it´s more Zappa album than Beefheart, because there are only 2 songs in which Beefheart made lyrics, all the other material is from Zappa.

Bumping this thread, I love Zappa and heres my 5 favourite (even though Id like to write my top 50, haha!)

1. Sleep dirt
2. Ship Arriving Too late to save a drowning witch
3. The man from utopia
4. Zappa in new york
5. Them Or us

Zappa performing The Purple Lagoon on SNL back in '76:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn94dEpKGFw

You certainly won't see performances like that on SNL anymore.

Get in quick before NBC take it off.