Frank Zappa: Classic or Dud?

I think the last actual pal he had was Vliet back in the Lancaster days, eating leftover pineapple buns from Glen Vliet's delivery truck and listening to blues records.

Only David Lee Roth, a man of greater vision than Zappa, understood how to use Vai properly: as a gonzo gimmicky musical equivalent of the Tasmanian Devil meets Bugs Bunny

― Universal LULU Nation (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, September 27, 2017 11:47 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So so OTM.

One should never conflate complexity with quality, that's how you end up with, yeah, Steve Vai, and Dream Theatre. Who at least don't sing misogynistic songs about sex and bodily functions, as far as I know.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, September 27, 2017 2:51 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Steve Vai did have one song called 'Fuck Yourself' ...

the whole We're Only In It For the Money '86 debacle put me off Zappa for a good while. not just because of the terrible aesthetic choices, but also because it felt like the whole thing was just a way to screw his ex-bandmates who were still receiving royalties from the original. he wasn't really honest about the reasons for doing it which threw a wrench into the one thing I'd always admired him for, that he was unabashedly genuine.

zappa let the groupies star in 200 motels! which is awesome.

also zappa is responsible for the formation of missing persons and they are like the best band of all time

xposts:

I'll always prefer the original, but there's some things on that '86 version that I wish were in the original... the Velvet Underground diss and the restored missing verse on 'Mother People' ...

Uhh Josh....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTDjhEp0BvM

Yeah, well, here's Vinnie killing it while barking like a seal for Frank's amusement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKpERTw8DsE

Missing Persons was like a Zappa dream come true: former Playboy bunny fronting virtuosos playing paired down new wave for money.

Anyway, speaking of Vinnie and Vai, any excuse for this story:

"I was just enamored with Vinnie. Back in the Frank days, his whole approach, when I heard Vinnie play, his phrasing - it satisfied something in my heart. It was easy to get certain rhythmic gratification from straight up-and-down-type players. Playing grooves, alternate grooves here and there. But Vinnie just came in and threw a wrench into the works. The guy is an alien. He was able to touch buttons with his sense of polyrhythms that no one has ever done. Frank's band was the perfect soundboard for that. I started transcribing his playing for The Frank Zappa Book. I mean, there's five to six different notations for the hi-hat!" (laughs)

"I'll tell you a really great Vinnie story. He's one of the most amazing sight-readers that ever existed on the instrument. One day we were in a Frank rehearsal, this was early '80s, and Frank brought in this piece of music called "Mo 'N Herb's Vacation." Just unbelievably complex. All the drums were written out, just like "The Black Page" except even more complex. There were these runs of like 17 over 3 and every drumhead is notated differently. And there were a whole bunch of people there, I think Bozzio was there."

"Vinnie had this piece of music on the stand to his right. To his left he had another music stand with a plate of sushi on it, okay? Now the tempo of the piece was very slow, like "The Black Page." And then the first riff came in, [mimics bizarre Zappa-esque drum rhythm patterns] with all these choking of cymbals, and hi-hat, ruffs, spinning of rototoms and all this crazy stuff. And I saw Vinnie reading this thing. Now, Vinnie has this habit of pushing his glasses up with the middle finger of his right hand. Well I saw him look at this one bar of music, it was the last bar of music on the page. He started to play it as he was turning the page with one hand, and then once the page was turned he continued playing the riff with his right hand, as he reached over with his left hand, grabbed a piece of sushi and put it in his mouth, continued the riff with his left hand and feet, pushed his glasses up, and then played the remaining part of the bar."

"It was the sickest thing I have ever seen. Frank threw his music up in the air. Bozzio turned around and walked away. I just started laughing."

Zappa and his pals were in action (not words) way less gross than people like this

Roy Estrada was convicted of sexual assault on a child in October, 1977. He got out in '83 and went right back into Zappa's band. He was convicted of lewd acts with a child in '94. In 2012 he pled again to continuous sexual assault on a child and he's no longer eligible for parole, he'll die in prison. So, maybe you consider gross old Gene Simmons sleeping with consenting adults worse than a guy who literally raped children his entire life, to whose ~conviction and sentence on the charges~ Zappa turned a blind eye, but I gotta disagree there, Roy Estrada is way more gross than anybody in Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, or Three Dog Night.

Zappa in "The Illinois Enema Bandit," a song about a rapist who administered enemas to his victims. It's toward the end of the song. He wrote and tracked and sang this is while Estrada was serving time for sexually assaulting a child:

"Wait a minute. This is for Roy Estrada, wherever he is. Wanna, wanna enema, e-nemaaaa. Wanna, wanna enema, e-nemaaaaa."

Napoleon Murphy Brock was convicted of statutory stuff too :/

and just so we're clear, Estrada was charged and Zappa let him come out on tour anyway so he'd be able to make some money before he went to trial. This was '75; they'd written but not recorded "The Illinois Enema Bandit." A Steve Hoffman poster who saw the tour writes:

For "Illinois Enema Bandit", also a new song to the audience, Frank had Roy Estrada dressed up like the bandit, with more clothes and props added as the lyrics went on. By the end, he had a winter mask hat over his head, so that just his eyes and mouth were visible, and he had a hot water bottle with a long tube dangling from his body.

I defend Zappa's musical sense - I think working out Varesian ideas/moods in rock is interesting, and it makes for some music I really enjoy. I listen to Shut Up And Play Yr Guitar with real pleasure, pace upper mississippi's misgivings. But scaring up legal fees for one's pedophile friend by having that friend act out the part of a rapist onstage is pretty beyond the pale.

Wow, I knew about Estrada's convictions but I didn't know any of that other stuff. I'd also suggest checking out the lyrics to the song Jumbo Go Away for an example of his attitude towards a member of his band giving a groupie a black eye.

That's a member of his band, not a member of Kiss.

Jesus Christ I'd never seen that one, how fucking awful

yikes @ all this

xp

oh wow I'd never seen the lyrics to "Jumbo Go Away" before. Jesus.

https://www.jambase.com/article/steve-vai-issues-statement-frank-zappa-hologram-tour Vai on FakeFrank tour

Pretty sure Steve Vai is actually and has always been a hologram.

Roy Estrada was convicted of sexual assault on a child in October, 1977. He got out in '83 and went right back into Zappa's band. He was convicted of lewd acts with a child in '94. In 2012 he pled again to continuous sexual assault on a child and he's no longer eligible for parole, he'll die in prison. So, maybe you consider gross old Gene Simmons sleeping with consenting adults worse than a guy who literally raped children his entire life, to whose ~conviction and sentence on the charges~ Zappa turned a blind eye, but I gotta disagree there, Roy Estrada is way more gross than anybody in Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, or Three Dog Night.

― she carries a torch. two torches, actually (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi)

i guess this would carry more weight with me if it weren't factually incorrect? i don't know what zappa knew or didn't know about roy estrada's sexual abuse, but estrada was first convicted of child sexual abuse in 1994, by which point zappa was dead. estrada was in the original mothers and then again in the '75-'76 band. he guested at a couple shows in fall of '77.

This indicates he was originally registered as a sex offender in 1977
http://www.homefacts.com/offender-detail/TX04897800/Roy-Ralph-Estrada.html

Public records: https://records.txdps.state.tx.us/SexOffender/PublicSite/Application/Search/Individual.aspx?IND_IDN=11654081

This indicates he was originally registered as a sex offender in 1977
http://www.homefacts.com/offender-detail/TX04897800/Roy-Ralph-Estrada.html

― Οὖτις

ok, now there's some evidence. if he's convicted of child sexual abuse in colorado and three days later is playing with zappa, and zappa was cognizant of what was going on with roy (which is eminently _possible_, though i don't know at this moment of any evidence to that effect), yeah, that would make zappa the joe paterno of rock, fuck that guy a million ways from sunday. i'm a little shocked and horrified (though i guess not surprised) that estrada was convicted of child sexual abuse and was apparently gallivanting around the country as a free man the rest of the year (he played with zappa not just at halloween, but at new year's). the only correction i would make is that estrada did _not_ "go right back into zappa's band" in '83, or as far as i know ever perform with zappa again after '77.

I'm not sure why that doesnt show up in wiki or other mefia reports from his '94 conviction, maybe he managed to get it expunged or something. The '77 conviction does turn up in search results at other zappa-related sites.

he performed and is credited on both Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch and Man From Utopia

both early 80s

actually Them or Us as well

so when did he serve jailtime for his child-rape conviction? fuck, maybe they just decided to give him parole. again, i wouldn't be surprised.

all i know is that all of this stuff was pretty deeply buried until the '12 conviction. same old story: what did he know, and when did he know it?

Well the first of those albums comes out in '82 so that almost lines up w Joanie's timeline

But yeah also possible he didnt do prison time and just had parole or something

i am a little sensitive to this sort of thing because, just by nature of the times i lived in and circles i found myself in (the bbs scene and, later, the bdsm scene), i've had reasonably close associations with multiple people who wound up being guilty of sexual offenses relating to minors. it's surprising how much people could, even as recently as ten years ago, successfully hide this sort of stuff (and as said above, it's not like zappa had any actual friends). i'm ready at any time to believe the worst about anybody, but at the same time "plausible" isn't the same thing as "true".

http://wiki.killuglyradio.com/wiki/Roy_Estrada

Estrada was convicted of sexual assault on a child on October 27, 1977. [2] He served six years in prison after he was convicted of committing lewd acts with a child in Orange County, California in December 1994. In January 2012, he pleaded guilty to a charge of continuous sexual abuse of a child which happened in March 2008. In the plea bargain agreement, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison and is not eligible for parole.[3]

been turning this over in my head more than, well, i probably should. i don't want to come off as one of those internet bozos who can't believe anything bad about their heroes. frank hasn't been my hero for a long, long time now.

as it stands right now, given what we know, i'm inclined to suspend judgment. there's not sufficient evidence, and may never be, to determine one way or another frank's culpability in covering up estrada's crimes.

in light of that i do want to point out that zappa severed his association with "wild man" fischer when fischer threatened zappa's children. this proves nothing, but it goes to character. (the album "an evening with wild man fischer" is a fascinating listen; zappa's verite recording techniques show a lot of him being patient and understanding towards a severely mentally ill man.)

how could Zappa not have known of the conviction is a better question

doesn't seem like a guy that missed too much

The concept of "Freaks" is a context I can only glean, 'cause it's all mashed together with THE SIXTIES in our received understanding of the time, but it's probably an important distinction for this discussion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freak_scene

Zappa seemed to see himself and his "people" as free of the constraints of everything, legitimizing a lot of the awful things they did. They did it for the lulz, to tie it to young nihilists of today, which I think is a completely valid connection to make. I never get the feeling Zappa grappled with demons, the way say Robert Crumb does, frequently unsuccessfully. He saw it all as a transgressive carnival, society's payback for trying to constrain them in the first place. I doubt Estrada was the lone bad apple. Nor do I doubt Zappa was a good dad. There are interesting, nurturing people who are awful on balance in most creative scenes, and some of them make top-flight art. What surprises me is that Zappa's work doesn't resonate with me at all anymore.

I kinda think he was not all that good of a Dad, haven't the kids lamented from time to time that he was never around and he cheated on their Mom all the time? idk if anyone's heard otherwise. he certainly tried to project that he was.

ok, now there's some evidence.

I'll take this as a "Joan, I know you wouldn't have made that claim unless you'd done pretty exhaustive research about it, sorry for suggesting you were just talking shit"

There's a long history of transgressive countercultures in the West and, sure, you could draw connections between them. (David Brooks thinks Trump is the Abbie Hoffman of the right; even John Lydon thinks he might be a Sex Pistol of sorts.) The things that would concern me most about alt-right ideologies (the point I was originally responding to - quoted below) are, you know, the white nationalism and authoritarianism, which I do not see a basis for in Zappa's views.

OTM about Zappa's views leading to alt-right ideologies

(The quote was actually "OTM regarding...")

The concept of "Freaks" is a context I can only glean, 'cause it's all mashed together with THE SIXTIES in our received understanding of the time, but it's probably an important distinction for this discussion

Or a bunch of predatory older guys sniffing around after teenage girls perhaps.

the white nationalism and authoritarianism, which I do not see a basis for in Zappa's views.

OTM about Zappa's views leading to alt-right ideologies
― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Thursday, September 28, 2017 10:35 AM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

see i would suggest that the alt right's embrace of white nationalism and authoritarianism is actually an end point (to which maybe Joan has a point about trying to connect so many dots and causalities) of a gradual seeking out by young white males online of transgression, a general misogyny and victim complex (being under duress by SJWs) and their hobbies (being assholes online and video games) being threatened by the left...I don't think they started out saying "we believe in white nationalism and authoritarianism", in fact they see Trump as ANTI authoritarian in their minds (fighting the repression of "PC culture" and "elites" of the left)

Trump is just something they glommed onto because Trump happened, I don't think real conservatism or libertarianism (outside of weed legalization) is their philosophy, they are just trolls...which metastasized into alt right

kinda on ums's side here - that whole "must preserve the righteous cause of straight white male transgression" thing originally cut against prior generations' puritanism (which was primarily conservative/right wing in nature) but shifted its targets to the left as necessary with changing cultural norms/times.

to which maybe Joan has a point about trying to connect so many dots and causalities

Yes, imo.

I mean, the transgressive counterculture thing was never totally benign, so maybe that's your point? The Futurists, e.g., were literal Italian fascists and probably worse than the current alt-right.

of course it was never benign

basically anything that has too much dude energy can never be totally benign

hippie was super misogynist too, like the MC5 were fuckin cavemen, despite being left wing revolutionary in some respects

i'm not really intellectual or grad school so i don't know the futurists but i bet those italians had dude energy, it's an uncontrollable force

Yeah totally

zappa was a shit dad. in that recent doc "zappa in his own words" or whatever he basically says so. "gails job is to take care of the kids" and also in that one euro profile from the 70s theres that footage of the groupies taking care of dweezil while he almost eats a cig.

great. not only do we have a cadaver synod, we have a cadaver synod that's determined to sound just as much like the republican congressional response to frank zappa's 1985 pmrc testimony as humanly possible.