Frank Zappa: Classic or Dud?

That was rough going, but Moon’s book sounds quite interesting. If it’s sort of a Mommie Dearest of rock thing I’m into it.

I mean I’m sure it won’t be that hostile since Moon is spiritual

My take, which is mine, is: Zappa himself was pretty smart, despite using way too much of his brain power on things like "A Critique of Wet T-Shirt Contests" etc so I imagine if Moon inherited any share of that intelligence and instinct to criticize but it is leavened with some spirituality as you say, then this will be an interesting book.

Think this is the kick-off tour I previewed, def remember press sheet roll call incl. Napoleon Murphy BROCK:

The band debuted in 2006 with shows in Europe, Canada, and the United States during May and June (the tour was also known as Zappa Plays Zappa: Tour de Frank'). The shows presented a collection of Frank Zappa's rock-oriented compositions from the 1960s to the late 1970s.[5] Apart from Dweezil Zappa on lead guitar, many of the band members previously played with Frank Zappa. Among those, Napoleon Murphy Brock (sax, flute, and vocals) was an integral part of the band, while drummer/vocalist Terry Bozzio and guitarist Steve Vai performed as guests in parts of the shows. At several shows the live band played along with audio and video recordings of Frank Zappa himself, notably portions of "Chunga's Revenge", "Dumb All Over", "Cosmik Debris", and "Muffin Man".

agreed that the moon/ahmet thing is very strange and hard to watch, though it gets a bit less strained at the end. i think it's mainly to do with the awful brocast format more than anything. you can see her weird laugh is actually a cringe/biting-of-tongue when ahmet goes off on some kind of "attack helicopter" spiel at some point :/

i watched a couple of other interviews however in which she comes across a lot better. i know nothing about her but it seems like there was some LA-woo stuff in her past but seems like it's just of the brené brown, EFT, attachment theory etc. etc. now. which is fair enough given what it seems like she's gone through. i had no idea of extent of the gail stuff (i always assumed that a lot of her reputation was mainly due to weird misogyny from some of the fan base).

brené brown, EFT, attachment theory etc. etc.

Can’t get over Ahmet interrupting Moon’s story to tell his own story of his dog going down on his girlfriend from behind on 9/11/01.

Wow, some apples don't fall far from the tree...

xxp oh they're unrelated, but as in she mentioned all of those things in the interview. they're all just popular therapy-type things at the moment. so it seems like LA-guru-days-in-the-ashram are in a long time in the past - re: "I mean I’m sure it won’t be that hostile since Moon is spiritual"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bren%C3%A9_Brown
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotionally_focused_therapy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory

Thanks, can see how Moon might relate to those. Hope they helped!

oh cool, turns out Dweezil is a right-wing edgelord

https://old.reddit.com/r/Zappa/comments/1f16k57/portland_me_show_82424/

What a surprise.

Those gags were in the show I saw and the Jar-Jar/Kamala in particular was def jarring but in the moment it was hard to parse if was indictive of a right-wing edgelord-isms or merely a topical(?) joke that wasn't very funny or both

that reddit thread makes it clear he's just doing this every night. sounds completely insufferable

Him and his brother have always seemed like dicks tbh.

learned from the best

A surprising turn on John Cale S?D:

Just came across a good JC interview---didn't realize he wrote so much in the studio, and was so into improvising there---this part is striking as well, on VU gigs with the Mothers:

...the only reason Zappa was on those gigs was that Herb Cohen knew that he'd get all this publicity from Andy and us. The thing is about Frank, that was reinforced years after I saw him, is that he had a very acerbic wit, which was kind of enjoyable, but at the same time, I really can't say there was anything about his music or him that made me love music. There was something about him, I think it was a real deep-seeded anger and fury about being forced to learn music in the first place - there was a revenge factor there - but it made me very uncomfortable watching him. There was so much putting down of himself that wasn't pleasant. I lost the gleam of innocence that you get from somebody really enjoying a melody or a solo or anything like that. And he could rip off [play, not pilfer] all these incredible solos, and you knew the guy had tremendous talent, but there was never anything there that made me love music so I'd want to do it. The reason you're doing this is to show how people how exciting and enjoyable this is. It's a shared experience. People shouldn't be punished for sharing an experience.

---from the Oklahoma Daily:
https://www.oudaily.com/interview-with-john-cale/article_ede0d7c9-ebb8-5745-a974-e937d103ad84.html

― dow, Thursday, November 16, 2023 10:35 PM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Didn’t Zappa famously mock Nico from the side of the stage, pretending to play organ and making pained singing faces?

― Shifty Henry’s Swing Club (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, November 17, 2023 12:00 AM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh worse than that, he went up on stage and actually played her organ and sang some moronic lyrics not much different from his usual output.

― Shifty Henry’s Swing Club (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, November 17, 2023 12:47 AM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.openculture.com/2017/06/andy-warhol-hosts-frank-zappa-on-his-cable-tv-show.html

― Shifty Henry’s Swing Club (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, November 17, 2023 12:54 AM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

He did play "All Tomorrow's Parties" when the BBC gave him a radio show to play his favourite music. Along with some other surprising choices (the UK Subs!) Zappa that is, not Cale. He was still an asshole though of course.

― The First Time Ever I Saw Gervais (Tom D.), Friday, November 17, 2023 3:41 AM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Right, forgot about that. The ATP part that is, not the other part.

― Shifty Henry’s Swing Club (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, November 17, 2023 4:55 AM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Also that thing I posted brings up something I never thought about, comparing the different flavors of control that FZ and AW bring to the table and what may lie behind each.

― Shifty Henry’s Swing Club (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, November 17, 2023

I meant to say John Cale S/D

Just reread the Warhol link and found this:

But perhaps Zappa just couldn’t tolerate anyone else taking the spotlight, especially a talented female performer. Warhol remembers Zappa’s response to a compliment about his daughter, Moon. “Listen,” he supposedly told Warhol, “I created her. I invented her.… She’s nothing. It’s all me.” In contrast to the “peculiar” reply, Warhol writes “if it were my daughter I would be saying ‘Gee, she’s so smart,’ but he’s taking all the credit.” Zappa may have been a musical genius with a special entrepreneurial flair and incisive critical wit, but the “sexist autocrat… with a scabrous attitude,” as Carlo Wolff describes him, “was not a likeable man.” Certainly the mild-mannered Warhol didn’t think so.

I'm learning to see ZAppa in "neither classic nor dud" terms but a mix, duds and classics living in a pond - together - even meldinginto cluds or massics

Have started reading the Moon Unit book and though I’m only up to Moon at age six it’s paid dividends. She does have a way with phrasing and a seemingly sharp memory for detail.

Funny to picture two ‘70s kids, her and Dweezil, growing up with the GTOs always hanging out at their house.

So far it’s not making me hate Frank or Gail, it just paints a portrait of a daughter who’s temperamentally very diffferent from her parents, who also happen to be self-involved eccentrics.

Did you know the story of one of the GTOs dying whilst visiting her boyfriend drummer David Robinson of The Modern Lovers and Jonathan Richman totally freaking out? "There's something wrong with Christine!"

https://www.altaonline.com/dispatches/a4456/miss-christine-rock-legend/

The Modern Loves killed Gram Parsons AND one of the GTOs.

Modern Lovers

Moon says Miss Christine was one of her faves of that crowd early on but one day she was told "she went away, meaning forever."

Seems like I once read about Miss Christine moved in and OD's maybe the very might that the MLs arrived in town, and things went downhill from there. Cale sent them back to Boston, saying that they were very talented, but too young, not ready for El Lay/The Biz yet
Back in the 70s,A friend had the GTOs album, produced by Frank I think: Jeff Beck among the heavy guests: think I'd remember if had actually heard it (this was in the later 70s, not the LSD etc. 70s for me).

Miss Pamela (Des Barres)'s books are worth reading for sure.

Also read that Gail had to deal with, for instance, the Manson girls dropping in unannounced, and Frank's Wife desperately wiping the sofa after they finally left.

Miss Christine moved into where the Modern Lovers would be living while working w Cale, their producer.

Your somehow living out the Gram Parsons funeral part

Leaving

You’re

Maybe I should request a zing delay feature

Didn't know, please tell us about it! The funeral.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zILJ_NOhc0

Hanxs! Mention of GP started me wondering if she was inspiration for "Devil In Disguise," but no.
And yeah, as Wiki sez:

Miss Christine, born Christine Ann Frka on November 27, 1949, in San Pedro, California, was the first babysitter for Moon Unit Zappa, Frank Zappa's first daughter. She is shown on the front cover of Frank Zappa's 1969 album Hot Rats emerging from an empty swimming pool on Errol Flynn's former estate in the Hollywood Hills. She dated rock musician Alice Cooper and is credited with creating his stage persona.[4] Frka also dated Todd Rundgren and Russell Mael; Frka died on November 6, 1972, of a barbiturate overdose in a house in Cohasset, Massachusetts, which at the time was being rented by Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers.[5] She overdosed shortly before her 23rd birthday.

From Billboard:

Chris Hillman Reflects on The Flying Burrito Brothers' 'The Gilded Palace of Sin' at 50

The story has always been that "Christine" was Miss Christine from the GTOs, but according to Hillman's comments here (see below), it was David Crosby's girlfriend: Christine Hinton. That's new to me.

"The Gilded Palace of Sin kicks off with “Christine’s Tune,” which is such a bitter breakup song. What, or who, inspired it?

Well, it’s not a pleasant story. We wrote the song about this girl. Parsons and I got together and we were living in this house. We had both come out of these failed relationships. This girl we knew was causing havoc and spreading a lot of unnecessary rumors. It’s pretty trivial now.

But the problem was, Christine was David Crosby’s girlfriend, and then they were quite an item. Then she got in a horrible car crash and died. So, we quickly changed the name of that song to “Devil in Disguise.” I felt terrible. It’s sort of a misogynistic song."

Strangest thing that ever happened:

Miss Mercy sent me an email via ILX offering a track for the "ILX / Bucket" comp by Lucky Otis (son of Shuggie) after Arthur Lee contacted her about it.

Then I got a following email 5 mins later saying "Sorry, wrong email address"

the moon book sounds interesting. she was on maron recently, so i might check that out.

speaking of weird, almost unbearable energy -- but still

"GRODY" is in the NYT crossword today, clearly Moon Unit is having a moment

xxxpost that is indeed wild, Mark.
The Otis connection, anyway:

Miss Mercy, a.k.a. Mercy Fontenot, was born Judith Edra Peters in Burbank, California on February 15[1] or 16, 1949.[2] After the breakup of the GTOs in 1971, Fontenot married the guitarist Shuggie Otis. They divorced, and their son Lucky Otis (also a musician) was raised by his grandparents, the R&B musician Johnny Otis and his wife Phyllis. Miss Mercy died on July 27, 2020.[1]

(Arthur Lee was a lurker!? Or an official ilxor--)

I know, right? For a whole 5 minutes I was like.. well, giddy.

Then, pop it was gone.

I didn't know she'd died, bless her...

Shocking revelations from Moon Unit’s book: Frank liked the music of the Spin Doctors and thought Amy Grant had a beautiful singing voice.

Zappa fans will now run out and the complete discographies of Amy Grant and the Spin Doctors.

Lool!

I listened to the audiobook...I know I'm a terrible terrible person and I have unending sympathy for her but I found the whole thing unrelentingly bleak...like so so bleak...the toxicity oozes from the speakers...I think it's given me bad dreams...mind you Amy Grant does have a pretty sweet voice

That's a fair reaction. I finished the book, and there were definitely times reading it I thought, "Gee, Moon, didn't anything ever go right in your life? Did you never meet anyone who didn't disappoint you?" And I know she's had lots of good things happen to her and has made plenty of friends, but it's the emotionally traumatic stuff that is incessantly foregrounded in her account.

Shocking revelations from Moon Unit’s book: Frank liked the music of the Spin Doctors and thought Amy Grant had a beautiful singing voice.

― Josefa, Saturday, 31 August 2024 18:38 (four days ago) link

believe there's a famed ILX'r that would agree with that Amy Grant assessment.