Zappa.com

Thanks for the welcome! I'm finally realizing that I need to communicate with other ZappaFreaks as our brains work kinda differently to the rest of the general popluation...

You got that right. You've come to the right place fo' all things Zappa. Before ya know it you'll be speaking Zappaneze just like the rest of us.

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I'm getting larger as I walk away.

I'm fairly new here as well. Welcome to Freakville bro!

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"Everything dies baby that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back"

I've been speaking Zappanese for a while, just have never been much for message boards. But for Zappa, I make exceptions to all my rules! I'm eager to hear more about favorite Zappa moments and albums that fried your minds...

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"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible." -FZ

I don't remenber it with great detail but I'll do my best:

A few years ago (2 or 3) I was in my dad office, my dad was there drinking some beers with a neighboor (who is some kind of crazy artist) and they were talking about music and naming several bands and then this guy mentioned a guy named Frank Zappa.

I remenber that his name caused curiosity in me (I don't know why) but I didn't look for it on youtube or anywhere, I was to bussy listening to Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix at that time.

At some point I decided to search for it in Youtube. Know, I'm not sure what was the first song I listened but I do remenber I didn't listen the full thing (maybe I didn't like it)...what I remenber was that I listened "He is so gay" and "Stinkfoot" (a token of his extreme version) and liked then both, and that was it. For several weeks those were the only two frank zappa songs that I listened, I didn't care for anything else.




...An then one day "Joes Garage" appeared in my life. I laughed my ass off and at the same time was amazed by the music, watermelon in easter hay is an UNIVERSAL MASTERPIECE.

...And then Hot Rats.

And now he is my favorite composer, just like that.

Welcome to our world. The Zappa Zealots surrounded by ZappaFreaks! It's all good with FZ.

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I'm getting larger as I walk away.

Well, I found some "the best albums in history" collection on the web, in the 2007 or 2008 and there was "Freak Out!" !
I simply love it, 'cause that's not greates album in history, but the greatest in the universe, for me.

Used to hand out in a friend's basement...very That 70's Show...another friend who hung out decided to start bringing albums from his collection that he hadn't listened to in a while over for us all to check out....two of those were The Mothers of Invention's Freak Out and the Pink Floyd's Ummagumma. In both cases it was love at first listen.

When I was 15 I got a box of garage sale records from my grandpa, in that box was The Mothers Live at the Filmore East.

After I heard that I listened to Freak Out!

And that's all she wrote.

My journey to know Frank Zappa has been a complicated one. I grew up listening to rock, mostly mining out of my father's music collection, then moved on to heavy metal in my teens, passed on to prog rock (including Zappa, which i really didn't get at this time, at least not fully) for a few years then moved out of rock music altogether straight into classical and jazz, going back to rock only occasionally. After gaining a lot of experience in those musical genres, and with the occasional foray into new genres, like blues, or even Indian classical music, i came back to Zappa on a whim and suddenly everything made sense. Before he was just a good rock musician among many. Suddenly he appeared to me as one of the most interesting rock musicians in existence, if not THE most interesting, at least on a technical level (aesthetics are always subjective anyway).

Despite all this, i still can't stand his lyrics. They are just too profane for me, and i find all the sexual stuff distasteful and unfunny. I understand what he was trying to do, sort of a cynical regurgitation of the insane society we currently live in, throwing a monkey wrench to the optimism and idealism people seem to have for modernity, but still...

I agree in that some of the lyrics I find difficult now cos I have four daughters. But his word play is great. I go around quoting it like I do the simpsons and silence of the lambs.
TT

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and I know, I think

Well, one of these days I'll have my first Zappa birthday! . But 1 year isn't enough to fully discover and understand his whole output.

I came to Zappa at some moment of september/october of 2013. From that month to march/april this year I just listened to less than 10 of his albums, but had no idea about the rest. But when I got here, you made me listen a lot more, and I realised that almost every Zappa album is great to my ears. I have trouble with some of his more poppy stuff, though. And there are Zappa albums that I've never heard, too, but some more months will be enough to listen to everything and fully get into it, i think.

Maybe about 8 years ago I was given Hot Rats and really dug what I heard, but was so intimidated by the discography I didn't listen to anything else. A few years after when I was seriously getting into prog rock I found my way with Apostrophe('), then Roxy and onwards, and the obsession began in earnest.
Now I've just written a piece cataloguing all points of continuity I've been able to find over 63 of his albums, and I'll post that once I get ten posts! So it's been quite the journey!!

...and this very post will get me there! How helpful.

I just saw Roxy a few weeks ago, and it fucking blew me away... I hadn't enjoyed so much in a long, long time, and I'm talking here about real, pure childish joy - music, lyrics, concept, images... everything made sense.

You usually enjoy music OR lyrics OR the context OR the images, not everything at once. It was perfection. You could ask 'Was it perfect because it was what you were looking for?' I'd rather say... I was ready for it, having had my musical education grown into something way more richer than the first time I met Zappa, during my teens, with a very basic understanding of Jazz, which you do fucking need if you want to make any sense of Zappa! (Also I think it works much better as an introduction to watch Roxy or any other concert, and then listen to the albums)

Please fast forward to this year... There he was, the Zappa Beast on Roxy... Blending it all on an explosive mix that included JAZZ, BLUES, ROCK... And amazing brains, capable of depth and originality, and humor.

Imagine how I felt as I kept thinking 'Fuck, I have to meet this guy, I do want to meet this guy!', and then at the end of the concert those words falling hard over my head : Zappa had been quite dead... Even before I had even heard of him.

Anyways, I want more of this. It's not just 'good' : It's First Class Stuff. And you can have Everything when you listen to the music : You can have Rock, Blues, Pop, Jazz... He does whatever he wants in a fearless way, same as with the lyrics and just whatever he said.

And you know what... I don't give a fuck about the domestics, or if he was 'a good person' or not. All I care about is what I mentioned. Most of us are awful anyways (except of course the little beautiful special snowflakes who will go to heaven, and then send us to hell)

So if there is a hell, I'll finally meet dear Frank there

carter, my ignore list
my ignore list, carter.

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that's what happens when you don't read you loose your link to higher thinking

Kannst mich mal...

"This post was made by Carter who is currently on your ignore list. Click here to lick his arse."

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that's what happens when you don't read you loose your link to higher thinking

I wish there was an option to ignore everything related to 9/11 and the rest.

Seen one, seen them all...

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Let ’em be happy

'77
Palladium
The village
4th row
Halloween
...if mom only knew!

My first introduction to FZ was at Summer Camp in 1975, I was a very impressionable 13 year old. A counselor had some Zappa records and played them in the bunk. One Size Fits All was just released and he was thrilled to get his hands on a copy, we listened to that a bunch of times, along with the other early stuff like Freak Out, Absolutely Free, Bongo Fury and Filmore 1971. From then on I was hooked! My camp counselor (Dave Garfinkle) said I had been officially "Zaptised"

I saw my very first rock concert at The Music Hall in Boston in 1977, yes, it was Zappa. I saw him again in 1980, 1984 and the final time in Providence 1988, that was the "Broadway The Hard Way" tour. I continued to collect all the (vinyl) albums I could get, and when CD's came out in the mid 80's, I began collecting those. Now nearly all of my collection is on .mp3 and I have SD and USB capable radios in both my cars.

I saw DZ last Sunday at Hampton Beach NH, awesome show!
I'm also a big fan of Project Object and go to their shows when they're playing around Boston or Providence.
I also got to see The Grandmothers several times when they were around (late 90's- early 2000's), I got to meet Don Preston, Bunk Gardner, Jimmy Carl Black and Roy Estrada. And over the years I've also met Ray White, Tom Fowler, Denny Walley, Napoleon Murphy Brock, Ike Willis and Ed Mann at different times when they were touring with Project Object.

It's pretty sad that hardly anyone under the age of 40 ever heard of Frank Zappa, but I try my best to educate them.