Frank Zappa: Classic or Dud?

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.

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

so otm

those Nightmatch videos are something else. 10 years ago I would've proclaimed Zappa a hero for knocking down a church lady like that, especially one with such an encyclopedic knowledge of dirty Prince lyrics, what's going on in HER mind, har har har??? but that's a dumb opinion. Zappa comes off as affable and well-spoken but he's grandstanding about an argument that isn't actually happening. mentions too many times that he isn't a fan of the music in question, like we care what you think about Prince. at one point reads a supposedly "humorous" disclaimer off the back of one of his albums to dead silence. occasionally says something profound. he's right about a lot of things but the isn't the question less about censorship and more about Parental Advisory stickers? parents *should* know what their kids are listening to or watching. so what.

Without even getting into all of the problems with the Parental Advisory stickers, the resolution they were debating on Nightmatch wasn't about warning stickers. It was: "Some rock music is becoming increasingly pornographic, offensive, and detrimental to children. The rock music industry should clean up its act or face legislative reforms." On the second video, Zappa's remarks are sometimes OTT but mostly seem to the point.

Oddly, although this thread has unearthed some terrible things about FZ, it has got me listening to and really digging lots of his stuff over the last few days.

i dig him as a guitar player but he always seemed so obsessed with formalism that the product itself lacked some kind of essential humanity. that's before even getting into the horrific lyrics. i do love "shut up and play your guitar" though, a generous wonderful gift to the world (or me, i guess, i'm absolutely 100% down with just hearing him shred for 3 hours without any bullshit)

xxp yeah that segment was all over the place so maybe I didn't really understand it, at some point the lady said something like "I don't believe in censorship, but the parents should know..." which was like okay what are you even arguing about. I must've missed the part about legislative reforms cuz I was skipping around a lot.

She said that at one point, and they spent a lot of time on the Parental Advisory stickers, but that was never the resolution and mostly seemed like a disingenuous deflection. (FZ would have probably strengthened his position by holding her to the resolution and not taking the bait.) Her concluding statement was something to effect of "if the music industry doesn't clean up its act, Congress will step in".

...less about censorship and more about Parental Advisory stickers?...

One thing going around back then was that some major retailers wouldn't carry albums that were marked as "adult," whether from moral impulses or just not wanting the extra workload of IDing buyers. And in areas where there weren't many options for buying this would affect the artists' income.

Wal-Mart was the big one

my friend Trell had the censored Straight Outta Compton that was such a labored piece of work haha

I had a censored version of 36 Chambers for awhile

shame on a nuh!

Also, if we're talking about the stickers, nb that "occultism" and "Satanism" were two of the major things that the PMRC wanted to label. "We're Not Gonna Take It" was supposedly 'violent' content. As far as I know, there were no real agreed-upon criteria to determine what got labelled. As FZ noted, they only targeted pop/rock. His suggestion to just print out all of the lyrics and make them available to parents who wanted to buy music was a fairly reasonable one that, as he noted, wouldn't get embraced because it would place a burden on the relevant industries. xps

hah ok I remember that. I bought Ill Communication from Wal-Mart and could not figure out what the hell was going on. the censored version of "Get It Together" is a real trip, especially since it has some actual gibberish in it

either way it's kind of hard to pick up on that b/c the two of them seem to talk past each other so much. church lady just wants to repeat as many dirty Prince lyrics as she can remember, Zappa just wants to go on an anti-religion tirade, somewhere in between there's some good discussion (all by Frank, of course)

Yeah, her side of it is incredible. She is supposedly deeply concerned about children being exposed to all of these harmful and obscene lyrics on rock songs so she fights this by ... clearly enunciating pretty much every one of them (from memory!) on national TV.

I can't stand the sight of those stickers (how often were they actually removable stickers) because it just reminds me of music my friends liked in highschool. People actually bought Parental Advisary posters.

I'm told Steve Albini was really into politically incorrect humour, but how far did it go?

Yeah, her side of it is incredible. She is supposedly deeply concerned about children being exposed to all of these harmful and obscene lyrics on rock songs so she fights this by ... clearly enunciating pretty much every one of them (from memory!) on national TV.

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r),

My wife grew up in an ultraconservative fundie church and has a few stories about the testimony of traveling evangelists, people who would give the guest sermon for the week. They'd spend 57 minutes describing their debauched former lives in as much detail as they could get away with (the pews being full of children) and then 3 minutes wrapping up with "and then I was washed with the blood of the lamb" and all that. Those PMRC ladies were very much in the tradition.

shame on a nuh!

― Οὖτις, Friday, September 29, 2017 1:32 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol, I remember that.

I'm told Steve Albini was really into politically incorrect humour, but how far did it go?

is this an actual question

dude had a band called RAPEMAN

Just realized I'm now older than Tipper Gore was when this all went down.

My wife grew up in an ultraconservative fundie church and has a few stories about the testimony of traveling evangelists, people who would give the guest sermon for the week. They'd spend 57 minutes describing their debauched former lives in as much detail as they could get away with (the pews being full of children) and then 3 minutes wrapping up with "and then I was washed with the blood of the lamb" and all that. Those PMRC ladies were very much in the tradition.

I remember late nights where we'd tune in to the bizarre Christian shows that would be very much in this vein. I remember the line "I was ready to hop in the sack with anyone who looked my way" and one guy saying he'd done his own body weight in cocaine, which, even as a know-nothing 12-year old, kinda raised an eyebrow

dude had a band called RAPEMAN

― Οὖτις, Friday, 29 September 2017 18:52

But there was other stuff too.

do you want a list or something

Pretty please

https://i.imgur.com/TbKAF1l.gif

lol

"Let me Google that for you" didn't come up with anything about Albini.

What are you planning to do, sue him?