Amuse I - by Ian White

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1/13/2011: Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer, and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, electronic, orchestral, and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist.

While in his teens, he acquired a taste for percussion-based avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse and 1950s rhythm and blues music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands—he later switched to electric guitar. He was a self-taught composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often impossible to categorize. His 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was one of rock, jazz or classical. He wrote the lyrics to all his songs, which—often humorously—reflected his iconoclastic view of established social and political processes, structures and movements. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education and the abolition of censorship.

Zappa was a highly productive and prolific artist and gained widespread critical acclaim. Many of his albums are considered essential in rock and jazz history. He is regarded as one of the most original guitarists and composers of his time. He also remains a major influence on musicians and composers. He had some commercial success, particularly in Europe, and for most of his career was able to work as an independent artist. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.

If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

Definition of rock journalism: People who can't write, doing interviews with people who can't think, in order to prepare articles for people who can't read.

A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.

Interviewer: 'So Frank, you have long hair. Does that make you a woman?'
Frank Zappa: 'You have a wooden leg. Does that make you a table?"

There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.

Music is the only religion that delivers the goods.

It's better to have something to remember than anything to regret.

There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.

There is no such thing as a dirty word. Nor is there a word so powerful, that it's going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it.

Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

Art is making something out of nothing, and selling it.

Take the Kama Sutra. How many people died from the Kama Sutra as opposed to the Bible? Who wins?

You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons, but in the very least you need a beer.

Drugs will turn you into your parents.

The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.

The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just keep your f**king mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.

I'm vile and perverted.
I'm obsessed and deranged.
I've existed for years but very little has changed.
I'm the tool of the government and industry too.
For I'm destined to rule and regulate you.
You may think I'm pernicious, but you can't look away.
I'll make you think I'm delicious with the stuff that I say.
I'm the best you can get... have you guessed me yet?
I'm the slime oozing out of your TV set

If your children ever find out how lame you really are, they'll murder you in your sleep.

A true Zen saying: "Nothing is what I want.

Government is the Entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.

I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?

Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity.

My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.

Don't eat the yellow snow.

Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned--I support your right to enjoy it. However, I would appreciate it if you exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to share your dogma, rapture, or necrodestination.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.