Essay about Frank Zappa

Hey!

Here's 3 to be going on with - took me all of 30 secs to get them...

http://catalog.com/mrm/zappa.html

http://catalog.com/mrm/zappa/html/zarticles.html

http://www.hotshotdigital.com/WellAlwaysRemember.3/FrankZappaBio.html

Hope this helps!

- Wil

PS: Anyone else, I'd have told to "Get off your fat arse and do it for yourself, you lazy bugger!" - but as it was on a favourite topic of mine, your choice of subject softened me :>

 

It is a favorite subject of mine also so I will not harp on you for the congeniality.

 

The best source I have found for information about FZ is in "The Real Frank Zappa Book"-his autobiography, co-written with Peter Ochiogrosso. It is a pretty comprehensive overview of his career and contains a stupendous number of hilarious anecdotes and rock music history tidbits (such as the night the Mothers played at a theater which caught on fire in Montreux-providing the inspiration for Deep Purple's "Smoke On the Water.")

Zappa easily has the most diverse body of work of ANY major 20th century composer and he certainly did his part to keep the powers that be on their toes while he was alive. Although his brand of humor can be considred juvenile and crass, beneath it lies a serious critique of the mores and politics of his time. It would be simple to fill 2000 words by "comparing and contrasting" such works as "We're Only In It For The Money," "Zappa and the London Symphony Orchestra," and "200 Motels," just to name 3 off the top of my head. Good luck!

 

If you want to wade through a really scholarly dissection of Zappa's music and thought, try amazon.com or barnes & noble's site and look for a tome titled "The Dialectics of Poodle Play." It's thick. It's deep. I think it was a doctoral dissertation. But it approaches the material in a more academic way, which, if you use some of the other lighter texts to balance it out, might give you a nicely complementary view. Heady stuff. Good luck.