Hello And welcome to legends Number 32 Mr Frank Zappa I have been waiting a good while to see this legends and I think the wait has been more than worthwhile . This legend is the work of Frankyz84 I take no credit what so ever . So stop reading this and get on with the thread .

Frank Zappa.
Born Dec 21, 1940 in Baltimore
Died Dec 04 1993 in San Fransisco



Francesco Zappola, born December 21st 1940, in baltimore, of Sicilian/Greek
parents.In 1950 at the age of 10 he started to learn to play drums, From
here his interest in music developed. And so began writing songs. he was
greatly influencedby the blues music of the 1920s and 30s deppresion era,
espesialy Willie Johnston,Which lead him to pick up guitar, after moving
to Lancaster at the age of 12. At the age of 15 he met Don Van Vliet
(who became Captain Beefheart)and formed a school band called 'Blackout'
who then renamed themselves 'Joe Merrino and the Mellowtones,and changed
again a while after to 'The Ramblers'
Frank Zappa`s first big break came when a producer heard him performing
some of his own songs, and recognising his songwriting talent, asked him
to write the music score for a "B" movie called 'The Worlds Greatest Sinner.
Now able to gain acsess to the music industry, it was not long before his
talents were being recognised by the record labels, and was signed to "Verve"
a label owned by M.B.A. His first "Pro" band was called 'The Soul Giants'
And after a lineup change they renamed themselves 'The Muthers' then
'The Mothers of Invention'. In 1966, the released their first album "Freak out"
on the 'Verve' label. They went on to make 6 albums with 'Verve', including
Zappa`s first solo album called "Lumpy Gravy".
Zappa started to show his flare and passion for music, and was starting
to show his individuality as a songwriter and musician, influenced not just
by Blues, but also Jazz(modern and trad), the theatrical elements of Opera,
the style and pomposity of Classical music, the excitment of Latin American
music, and a good sprinkling of Rock'n'Roll. The composers Edgar Verese,
and Anton Webeen, had a big impact on him, and influenced his Classical writing.
In 1969, having made a fair wedge, he Started his own Record Label called
"Bizarre" and signed Bands like 'Captain Beefheart', 'Alice Cooper', and
'Wild Man Fisher'. He also released a total of 10 albums on this label
including,"Chungas Revenge", "The Grand Wazoo", and his first film, "200 Motels"
After some initial sucsess with these bands, and good record sales, Zappa went
on to form his next record label, "Discreet Records" in 1973. he produced 9 albums
including "Overnight Sensation", "Apostrophe", "Bongo Fury" featuring
'Captain Beefheart', and "Zoot Alures".



In 1979, Zappa founded "Zappa Records" And his writing style changed a little
to taking a more satirical look at life and music. He produced "Sheik Yerbouti",
"Joes Garage parts 1,2" and then "3 and 4", and "Tinsel Town Rebellion".
In 1982, Zappa Started his final record label "Barking Pumpkin" Which Produced
over 25 records, including,"Shutup and Play Your Guitar" with new guitar prodigy
'Steve Vai' (who himself has gone on to become a legend) "Ship Ariving To
Late, To Save A Drowning Witch", "Does Humour Belong in Music" (a kind of documentry)
and "Havin` a Bad Day" with son Dweezil Zappa, And the album to bring more
political awarness to the youth of America "Broadway the Hard way". he also
produced some work with his daughter Moon Unit, And worked with The London
Symphony Orchestra.
In 1990 he traveled to Czechoslovakia, and met President Vaclav Havel, who
was a huge Zappa fan. After meeting him Vaclav was so impessed by Zappa`s
Outspoken honesty, and his Humble personality, that he made him Trade and Culture
Emissary.
In 1991 Zappa was diagnosed with Prostrate cancer but carried on working till his
death in 1993. He was working with the Irish Folk giants 'The Dubliners'
Frank Zappa used his music to quite a dramatic effect, to laugh at people, and
to make people laugh. he used many forms of music to comunicate with us,
from Blues, Jazz, Classical, Rock, Folk, Country, and Western, Latin, and
World music. Zappa`s influance can still be heard in a great many of the Bands
today, He was a musical genius, and in my own humble opinion, one of the
greatest musicians of the 20th century.



Chronological Index
FREAK OUT! 1966
ABSOLUTELY FREE 1967
LUMPY GRAVY 1967
WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY 1968
CRUISING WITH RUBEN AND THE JETS 1968
UNCLE MEAT 1969
MOTHERMANIA (Best of) 1969
HOT RATS 1969
BURNT WEENY SANDWICH 1969
WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH 1970
CHUNGA'S REVENGE 1970
FILLMORE EAST, JUNE 1971 1971
200 MOTELS 1971
JUST ANOTHER BAND FROM L.A. 1972
WAKA/JAWAKA 1972
THE GRAND WAZOO 1972
OVER-NITE SENSATION 1973
APOSTROPHE(') 1974
ROXY AND ELSEWHERE 1974
ONE SIZE FITS ALL 1975
BONGO FURY (w. Captain Beefheart) 1975
ZOOT ALLURES 1976
ZAPPA IN NEW YORK 1978
STUDIO TAN 1978
SLEEP DIRT 1979
SHEIK YERBOUTI 1979
ORCHESTRAL FAVORITES 1979
JOE'S CARAGE, act 1 1979
JOE'S CARAGE, acts 2 & 3 1979
TINSELTOWN REBELLION 1981
SHUT UP 'N' PLAY YER GUITAR 1981
YOU ARE WHAT YOU IS 1981
SHIP ARRIVING TOO LATE TO SAVE A DROWNING WITCH 1982
THE MAN FROM UTOPIA 1983
BABY SNAKES 1983
LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, vol 1 1983
THE PERFECT STRANGER 1984
THEM OR US 1984
THING-FISH 1984
FRANCESCO ZAPPA 1984
FZ MEETS THE MOTHERS OF PREVENTION 1985
FZ MEETS THE MOTHERS OF PREVENTION (European version) 1985
DOES HUMOR BELONG IN MUSIC? 1986
JAZZ FROM HELL 1986
LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, vol. 2 1987
GUITAR 1988
YOU CAN'T DO THAT ON STAGE ANYMORE, vol. 1 1988
YOU CAN'T DO THAT ON STAGE ANYMORE, vol. 2 1988
BROADWAY THE HARD WAY 1988
YOU CAN'T DO THAT ON STAGE ANYMORE, vol. 3 1989
THE BEST BAND YOU NEVER HEARD IN YOUR LIFE 1991
YOU CAN'T DO THAT ON STAGE ANYMORE, vol. 4 1991
MAKE A JAZZ NOISE HERE 1991
YOU CAN'T DO THAT ON STAGE ANYMORE, vol. 5 1992
YOU CAN'T DO THAT ON STAGE ANYMORE, vol. 6 1992
PLAYGROUND PSYCHOTICS 1992
AHEAD OF THEIR TIME 1993
THE YELLOW SHARK 1993
CIVILIZATION, PHAZE III 1994



Bootlegs rereleased with Zappa's permission:

BEAT THE BOOTS 1 1991
'TIS THE SEASON TO BE JELLY (live 1967)
THE ARK (live 1968)
FREAKS & MOTHERFU*#@%! (live 1970)
PIQUANTIQUE (live 1973)
UNMITIGATED AUDACITY (live 1974)
SAARBRUCKEN 1979 (live 1978)
ANYWAY THE WIND BLOWS (live 1979)
AS AN AM (live 1981 & 1982)
BEAT THE BOOTS 2 1992
ELECTRIC AUNT JEMIMA (live 1968)
OUR MAN IN NIRVANA (live 1968)
TENGO NA MINCHIA TANTA (live 1970)
DISCONNECTED SYNAPSES (live 1970)
SWISS CHEESE/FIRE (live 1971)
CONCEPTUAL CONTINUITY (live 1976)
AT THE CIRCUS (live 1978)

http://www.esper.ping.de/ZappaDisco.HTML

Some of the great musicians who worked with Frank Zappa

Ray Collins -- lead vocalist, harmonica, tambourine, finger cymbals.
Jim Black -- drums.
Roy Estrada -- bass & guitarron.
Elliot Ingber -- alternate lead & rhytm guitar.
Billy Mundi -- drums, vocal.
Captain Beefheart -- harp, vocals.
Bunk Gardner -- all woodwinds.
Ian Underwood -- piano, woodwinds.
Euclid James Motorhead Sherwood -- soprano & baritone saxophone.
Gary Kellgren, Dick Kunc, Eric Clapton.
Jack Bruce, Tom Fowler -- bass.
Steve Vai -- guitar, Ray White -- guitar, vocals.
Tommy Mars -- keyboards, Chuck Wild -- broadway piano.
Arthur Barrow -- bass, Scott Thunes -- bass.
Jay Anderson -- string bass, Ed Mann -- percussion.
Chad Wackerman -- drums.
Steve De Furia & David Ocker -- synclavier programmers.
Ike Willis, Terry Bozzio, Dale Bozzio, Napoleon Murphy Brock.
Bob Harris, Johnny 'Guitar' Watson -- vocals.
Adrian Belew -- rhythm guitar, vocals, Ed Mann -- percussion, vocals.
Moon Zappa -- vocals, Dweezil Zappa -- guitar. Chester Thompson -- drums



And there you have it a fantastic legends thread by Frankyz so until next legends thread Adios

Great one! Zappa kicks arse.

Great read I never knew Zappa ended up being the Trade and Culture
Emissary for Czech That's brilliant. Zappa is a wonderful musician and knew how to look on the bright side, through the blue. A superb character and a genius composer.

Deserves alot more recognition. But he was nuts, he called his kids Dweezil and Moon Unit for god sake!

Nice! Frank Zappa is my hero, in a cool way. Broadway the Hard Way is one of my favorite albums.

i'm glad to see one of the most influencial people, not just guitarist, but person in general is up here. definitely someone i look up to. with the world how it is today, zappa's voice and his musicianship is missed more then ever. there never can be another frank zappa

"and doooon't eat the yellllow snow"

I love his lyrics, fun, dirty, hilarious and not to mention this guy can rip!!!

My father has almost everyone of this guy's bootlegs and 75% of his real albums.He really destroys his strats, he was an awesome player and guitar hero.

And don't forget that Zappa defended the music industry in the Supreme Court against Tipper Gore. She said that violent music made violent kids, and he responded thusly:

"I wrote a song about toothpaste, but no one's teeth got any better."

Zappa is the man, he's hilarious. And one hell of a guitarist! Shame he died.

one of my favorites, this guy can be credited with raising one of my fvorite steve vai, but man this guy was freakin sweet

hey why are you so dumb?

Crazy, crazy man. In a very cool way.

I love Frank, the man was a god.

Care to explain that statement.

Absolut genius. Just got into him a while ago and now own 6 of his albums. Great guitarist.

Zappa was of French, Sicilian, Neapolitan, Greek and Arab ancestry.

Someone has been doing some digging

word

on topic though, zappa was genius

Ok, i just got done watching 200 Motels. That was a weird movie, but very good. Is "The indian of the group" really indian?

The "Indian of the group" thing is a running gag, though I don't know how it started. I have several Mothers albums, and on at least two (We're Only In It For The Money and Ahead Of Our Time), there are numerous repetitions of "Hi boys and girls, I'm Jimmy Carl Black and I'm the Indian of the group."

That's what I thought. The only one I've heard it on was "Concentration Moon" off of We're Only In It For The Money.

I think that Frank Zappa is kind of underated he is really good....by the way one of my friends found a picture of him sitting on the can it was pretty funny I will try to get it and post it up in here.

the guy was severely underated,by a very long way.

composer
musician
sociologist
arranger
conductor


people in the commercial world breathed a sigh of relief when he died as he had endeavoured for most of his musical career to try to move music forward.
music stagnates if there is no-one to help it evolve.

he did that.

I do not hero worship but, if their is someone that i admire as a musician/entertainer then frank zappa has my deepest!

by the way if you go to ebay you can get that picture on a coffee mug!



zappa n vai jamming

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5ORGWfJiTI

Where did that come from? Never heard of that before...

That was his birth name.

I did a search and couldn't find any mention of that name anywhere. In The Real FZ Book he explains how he always thought his first name was Francis (which he hated), but that he found out before his first overseas tour that his actual name was Frank (not much better) from his birth certificate that he needed for his passport.

I see no "Francesco Zappola" on wikipedia... Idk, Rick, you're going to have to back that one up. *laugh*

The information came from several sources including a couple of biographys. The research i did for this peice was done at college, around 1998, when i had no access to the internet, and i did all my research the old fashion way, the library, and book stalls.

....li...brar....y....? Oh, right. That's where everybody goes to have sex once before college is over. That 'books' part threw me off.

You wanna take the piss, fine. i used to spend a lot of time in the library, studying, i took my music course very seriously.

I will concede that i cannot back up what i wrote, as it was all taken from books, same as my Yes article. Also that GoDrex could be right as to the name Francis, as i have also read the Real FZ book, but about 3 years after i wrote this article. I do not remember the name of the author of the book i got the original Frank Zappa name from, but i would trust Wiki even less, as it has been shown quite often that it is not exactly accurate. I also can only be as accurate as the information i read, where ever i get it from.

o_O Simmer down there. Believe it or not, I've used the library before...and for my history of rock and roll class.

The Real Frank Zappa Book, by Frank Zappa and Peter Occhiogrosso - page 15:

"My real name is Frank Vincent Zappa (not Francis - I'll explain it later)."

page 245:

"(I was in my mid-twenties when I found out! Up until the time I had to get a passport for the first European tour, I thought my name was Francis - a name I had always hated. In order to get the passport I had to present my birth certificate - a mysterious document I had never seen before. My mother mailed it to me from California, and on it, much to my delight, was a name OTHER THAN FRANCIS - well it wasn't that good - "Frank" isn't much of a bargain - but I had thought for years, even printing it on album covers, that I was Francis Vincent Zappa Junior. How could I be such a fool?)"

----

by the way I just remembered THIS:
http://wiki.killuglyradio.com/index.php/Francesco_Zappa

Yes i know it's a wiki - but it's the actual liner notes from the Francesco Zappa album that FZ did. I never got the album because it's not Frank's music so it never really interested me much.

OK - since I've been mainly harping on the facts around his name, I figured I should contribute something real. Especially since I love Frank, and I think people should know a little about him.

So today I whipped up a mix of some clips that I've been collecting over the years.

Frank Zappa, various interview clips, PSA's etc...

It's about 16 megs so I recommend doing a right click, save as...
Enjoy!

Very nice! Any particular reason you made that or just dinking around? The Super Fan?

Thanks. Well, I run tiny little internet/FM pirate radio station that kind of got started to play Zappa on the air and I've been collecting clips for a while. Today I just thought it would be fun to actually contribute something of some interest, other than just messing around and harping on the correct version of his name. It only took about 20 minutes to throw that together since all of the parts are edited out already. And yeah I'm a super fan, but incredibly, I'm aware of people that are even more die hard than I am. I don't even have all of his official output.

I just checked out the current playlist...I know, unfortunately, very little of it. Regardless that's pretty cool. Is this something you threw together yourself or are there scripts laying around for this kinds of stuff?

http://www.wfzr.net/radio/playlist.php - - if you were to do some browsing/searching around there I'm sure you'd find some familiar stuff. I think at this time of day it was a particular show/genre thing happening.

Yeah the website is a script that comes with the program SAM Broadcaster. I just took their template and changed the look of it slightly.

from another thread - just in case people might miss it...

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok - for those put off by all that vulgar sex (yuck!) talk in some Zappa songs, I come baring gifts...

Frank Zappa Guitar Extravagant Ganza! - mixed by me. Sorry it's all one track. Burn it to CD and listen to it in the car. Ooops - there's a vulgar part on this. Some bad band members say "blow job" a bunch of times. Otherwise it's clean (except for tons of extremely vulgar guitar soloing).

public radio documentary... it's good stuff. Learn something.

A selection of instrumentals... edited and arranged...

my clip mix - - various clips from interviews, psa's, etc...

that ought to be enough to blow anyone's mind hahaha I'd say the selection of instrumentals is your best bet and most user friendly. Or listen to the doc and hear other people put him on a pedestal.

Another great musician....Mister Zappa

Let's here it for another great Italian... Frank Zappa

anyone want a tough challenge?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Frank-Zappa-Guitar...1530&sr=8-3

only 1 for 97 pounds? I guess it's a hard to find book.

Frank Zappa was cool. Amazing musician, super intelligent. Very funny too. I got his book, but I havent yet read it all. I've skimmed a few chapters. He had some very interesting thoughts about things, made a lot of sense. Some of it is hilarious too!

The thing about Frank is that he only seemed so wacky or crazy. The more you learn about him the more you realize that he was a very sane and very intelligent person. He enjoyed pointing out the insanity and stupidity in everyday things that most people take for granted as normal.

Right, Like to me he was never weird in any way, but life is weird. The dude was, what I would call highly evolved

i was watching TCM Underground a few nights ago when i saw something called 200 Motels and i couldnt help but notice that Frank Zappa looked a little Jack Sparrow-ish. I know Johnny Depp said that Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones was the look he went for concerning the pirates movies.

I also looked at pictures of the New Wave 80s singer Adam Ant and thought to myself :Johnny Depp could pull this look off too.

so....which singer can you see Johnny Depp portray ?