If Frank Zappa Was Such a Genius

For sure, for sure!

Didn't he release hundreds of albums?

He might not be mainstream but he has a cult fanbase.

He was more of a scene maker and freak daddy who got press for being the unstoned intelligent weirdo. I know... inspired by Varèse, etc etc wank wank.. but I find his music unlistenable bullshit.

Didn’t his wife have family money?

He kind of redeemed himself by taking on Tipper Gore and the PMRC.

Huh? He has a massive discography and is listened to as much as Can or Captain Beefhart or Yoko Ono. He’s famous and infamous within a certain generation. Or several. He didn’t write for or care about “hits” but had an accidental one late in his career with his daughter in the 80’s.

Younger people (mostly) don’t listen to him or know who he is or care, if that’s what you mean.

Seriously OP?

The same reason more people read James Patterson than Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dickens and Shakespeare combined.

Spotify lists his main page as having an average of 1.2 million listeners monthly

At the PMRC hearings, 1985

A song DL can certainly identify with

Major BDF

In interviews he came across as intelligent but very unlikable. One of his more stupid projects was the GTOs, a "girl group" he fashioned out of a bunch of drug addled groupies, the most infamous of them being Pamela Des Barres (the dumb bimbo was his children's babysitter; she said she had "dibs" on his son Dweezil when he grew up). Their one album "Permanent Damage" , produced by Zappa, painfully revealed they had no musical talent whatsoever. I guess creating an "act" consisting of a bunch of wacko groupies seemed like a fun thing to do at the time.

Maybe Zappa is just too good for us.

Maybe we don't deserve him.

Does anybody know where I can find a copy of Zappa's "Bowling for Dollars" (never seen this single on sale anywhere since I was a kid and only call it that because of the line "That bowling ball . . . was my wife!")

“Flower Punk” (1968)

What an incredibly stupid question OP.

Zappa wasn't for everyone. Most people have pedestrian tastes, in music, in film and basically in everything.

Most people are followers not leaders, you know, like the uneducated easily manipulated morons who voted for Dump. Pretty sure you won't find a Zappa LP in the record collection of a MAGAT.

I just like looking at him, all that beautiful black hair all over his face!

His “art rock” was satirical, hysterical and often brilliant. But I could see how it could sometimes be seen as grating (see ‘Flower Punk’ above).

I personally always loved his 1969 solo instrumental album HOT RATS. Richly detail jazz-fusion funk groove, very enjoyable and very much of the era. Dynamite! And I love that album cover photo!

[quote]And I love that album cover photo!

That's one of the GTOS on the HOT RATS cover. The model is Christine Frka, AKA as Miss Christine of The GTOs.

A bit OT, one of the GTOS. Cynthia Wells, was married to John Cale. John was also married to fashion designer Betsey Johnson. The night before the June 1974 London concert with Nico and Eno, John's GTO wife fucked Kevin Ayers. Cynthia died a mysterious death.

I love rock gossip!

Never could stand his oh-so-smart-and-above-it-all posture. (Varese, yeah, GIVE ME A BREAK)....He would have KILLED to have a Top 40 hit on his own (Moon Unit's doesn't count).

There’s three types of people in the world.

1. People with sensibility

2. People who don’t have sensibility, but appreciate it in others and support it.

3. People who don’t have sensibility, but recognize that others do, and angrily attack and try to devalue it.

That should be “There are,” not “There’s.”

OP is confusing art with commerce.

The GTOs didn't fare too well. Miss Lucy died of AIDS. Miss Sandra died of cancer at 42. Miss Christine overdosed shortly before her 23rd birthday. Miss Cynderella died in 1997 in "mysterious circumstances." Miss Mercy had some longevity; she died in 2020. Miss Sparky is still around. And so is Pamela Des Barres, who still makes a living off of blabbing about sexual encounters with rock stars that happened a lifetime ago.

Because he didn't want to make simple music with catchy lyrics to appeal to the widest audience possible. That's why his music isn't as widely consumed as say The Beatles because it wasn't meant to be.

Have the Zappa kids patched things up or are they still fighting? The impression I got was that Gail Zappa manipulated and pitted the siblings against each other

Buried in an unmarked grave in Westwood Cemetery.

Spoiler, He's the only empty space in a area of flat markers near a tree. Next to Lew Ayres.

Great guitarist, but his concept albums were shit.

Zappa had an unpleasant experience with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Here's an article about it:

John Lennon and Yoko Ono joined Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention onstage after the Mothers' set in the last days of New York's Fillmore East. The four songs performed on June 6, 1971, were recorded and released on Lennon's 1972 album Some Time in New York City and later on Zappa's 1992 live LP Playground Psychotics.

The session had its genesis in an interview conducted with Lennon and Ono by Village Voice writer Howard Smith on his WPLJ-FM show. Smith, who was headed over to talk to Zappa next, asked Lennon if he would like to come along. Lennon, a fan of Zappa's music, said yes.

"A journalist in New York City woke me up – knocked on the door and is standing there with a tape recorder and goes, 'Frank, I'd like to introduce you to John Lennon,' you know, waiting for me to gasp and fall on the floor," Zappa recalled on his 1984 Interview Picture Disc. "And I said, 'Well, okay. Come on in.'

"And we sat around and talked, and I think the first thing he said to me was, 'You're not as ugly as I thought you would be.' So anyway, I thought he had a pretty good sense of humor so I invited him to come down and jam with us at the Fillmore East. We had already booked in a recording truck because we were making the Live at the Fillmore album at the time."

The Fillmore East audience, awaiting an encore by the Mothers, was surprised to see Lennon and Ono take the stage. The group opened with "Well (Baby Please Don't Go)," a 1958 tune by the Olympics. "This is a song I used to sing when I was at the Cavern in Liverpool," Lennon announced. "I haven't done it since."

Lennon told the BBC that "it was a 12-bar kind of thing I used to do at the Cavern. … It was pretty good with Zappa because he's pretty far out, as they say – so we blended quite well."

Ono's spacey vocals did blend well with the Mothers' freaked-out progressive rock. Three improvisational numbers followed: First was a take on "King Kong," a song from the Mothers' 1969 album Uncle Meat. Next was "Scumbag," in which the title is repeated over and over. (In case the audience didn't get the point, Ono was covered head-to-toe by a bag as she sang.) The jam wrapped with "Aaawk" (which was retitled "Au" on the Lennon album).

Three weeks later, the Fillmore East closed. When Some Time in New York City was released the following year, Zappa was surprised that "King Kong" was now called "Jamrag" – British slang for a sanitary napkin – and credited to Lennon and Ono.

"After they had sat in with us, an arrangement was made that we would both have access to the tapes," Zappa said. "He wanted to release it with his mix, and I had the right to release it with my mix – so that's how that one section came about.

"The bad part is, there's a song that I wrote called 'King Kong' which we played that night, and I don't know whether it was Yoko's idea or John's idea, but they changed the name of the song to 'Jamrag,' gave themselves writing and publishing credit on it, stuck it on an album and never paid me," Zappa added. "It was obviously not a jam session song: It's got a melody, it's got a bass line; it's obviously an organized song. Little bit disappointing."

Zappa had a cult-like following then and now, but I preferred the acts around the periphery of his universe, like Captain Beefhart, Flo and Eddy, Jean-Luc Ponty, and George Duke. All of them had significant success well outside Frank's wack-pack that I prefer, like Beefheart's amazing Safe as Milk album, and the whole Turtles catalog.

I also loved Wild Man Fischer, a mentally unwell street peformer, and of course, the GTOs. I thought they were just weird like me.

Zappa’s wife Gail got fat and unkept with age. Their daughter Moon tells a story of her father Frank pulling out a fat woman porno video and putting it in in front of her. Then commenting and laughing at the open film. He wanted her to see this. What a scummy guy. I never liked him. I like him even less after hearing that.

Only a real creep would show a kid any porn.

Weird story of in 1971 when at two separate shows in the span of a week Zappa was bizarrely attacked by deranged fans from the audience. First one firing a flare gun at the band, which permanently damaged his voice and burned the entire venue to the ground. The second pushing him off the stage into an orchestra pit where he had to be rushed to the hospital. Good times, baaaaad times!

It wasn't that Zappa was such a genius, it was that the vast majority of rock musicians were so dumb.

The GTOs might not have possessed much singing talent, they sounded like cats in heat, but they sure had some amazing musicians on their LP!

Most of the Mothers of Invention were their backing band: Don Preston - Synthesizer

Roy Estrada - Bass

Jimmy Carl Black - Drums

Craig Doerge - Keyboards

Ian Underwood - Keyboards

As well as famous guest musicians: Nicky Hopkins - Keyboards

Guitar – Lowell George (Track 7)

Guitar – Ry Cooder (Track 11)

Vocals – Rod Stewart (Track 14)

Guitar - Jeff Beck - (Tracks 1, 14)

Frank who?

[quote]Weird story of in 1971 when at two separate shows in the span of a week Zappa was bizarrely attacked by deranged fans from the audience. First one firing a flare gun at the band, which permanently damaged his voice and burned the entire venue to the ground. The second pushing him off the stage into an orchestra pit where he had to be rushed to the hospital. Good times, baaaaad times!

Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" is about the Casino de Montreux fire in Switzerland, that's where a fan in the audience set off a flare. Besides the Mothers' equipment being destroyed, the fire burned down the entire casino.

Actually Zappa's voice changed after his larynx was crushed when he was pushed of the stage at London's Rainbow Theater: "After a week's break (after the Montreux fire), the Mothers played at the Rainbow Theatre, London, with rented gear. During the encore, an audience member pushed Zappa off the stage and into the concrete-floored orchestra pit.

The band thought Zappa had been killed—he had suffered serious fractures, head trauma and injuries to his back, leg, and neck, as well as a crushed larynx, which ultimately caused his voice to drop a third after healing.

This accident resulted in him using a wheelchair for an extended period, forcing him off the road for over half a year. Upon his return to the stage in September 1972, he was still wearing a leg brace, had a noticeable limp and could not stand for very long while on stage. Zappa noted that one leg healed "shorter than the other" (a reference later found in the lyrics of songs "Zomby Woof" and "Dancin' Fool"), resulting in chronic back pain. Meanwhile, the Mothers were left in limbo and eventually formed the core of Flo and Eddie's band as they set out on their own."

"The GTOs might not have possessed much singing talent, they sounded like cats in heat, but they sure had some amazing musicians on their LP!"

Yes, they did. And their album was still a piece of shit.