December 21
Frank Vincent Zappa's  Birthday
 

 

Frank Zappa was a brilliant rock guitarist, an  accomplished composer,  an innovative filmmaker, a tireless social critic, and a  workaholic. Workaholism is considered by some psychiatrists as an addiction and an obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Although Frank Zappa, was a classic workaholic who produced over 60 albums of music from rock to orchestral, he transcended the usual narrow focus of most workaholics to become a significant social critic who even considered running for US president  in 1991 to more effectively address the myriad of social challenges that haunted him day and night. Frank's music had a profound effect on music history .His first release with the Mothers of Invention in 1966 was Freak Out! which  was a primary influence on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. His music career was dedicated to tearing down the barriers between rock, jazz, and classical music.  In 1960, he produced Hot Rats , which essentially launched the jazz-rock fusion genre. He later reflected on this new adventure by stating "Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny." His legacy may have been best summarized by biographer David Walley who reminded us that "The whole structure of his music is unified, not neatly divided by dates or time sequences and it is all building into a composite." But Frank was also an effective social critic.  Some oldies but goodies may remember Frank testifying before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on September 19, 1985 against the censorship of free expression by artists. He was hardly recognizable with his business style haircu  and his famous mustached severely trimmed.  The hearing were a result of  the Parents Music Resource Cente  headed by Susan Baker and Tipper Gore to promote a rating system for recorded music,  Frank then began to take a stance again all of the anti-communist hate rhetoric of the time and  during an appearance in 1986 on CNN's Crossfire:, he made headlines by stating that " The biggest threat to America today is not Communism. It's the turning of this country into a Fascist Theocracy and everything that's happened during the Reagan Administration has put us right down that pipA few years later. Frank founded Why Not?, a consulting company designed to facilitate US investment in the Soviet Union  which led to a request in 1990 from Czech president Vaclav Havel for Zappa to officially represent Czechia's trade interests in the United States which was subsequently quashed the first Bush administration. So how should we celebrate Frank's birthday? We suggest a culinary fusion parallel to his rock/jazz fusion by preparing Watermelon/Vidalia Salsa as a sly tribute to his recording of Watermelon in Easter Hay about which music historian Alexander Baron writes "This guitar solo runs to 9 minutes, 9 seconds, and is the penultimate track on this somewhat off-beat concept album, which was composed and arranged in its entirety by Zappa. There are no lyrics as such but there is a spoken introduction. It is a pity that this is mired by the de rigueur expletive, but in the 21st Century this is a lot less shocking than in 1979. For all his sins, Frank Zappa was both a brilliant composer and a very fine guitarist, and this is one of his best." But we also recommend watching the controversial Dutch documentary Frank Zappa (1971) originally broadcast on February 11, 1971 in which Frank uses a vacuum cleaner on a groupie's breasts and genitalia while his daughter Moon is present as a reminder of the excesses of some rock musicians during the height of the rock revolution. If you can't locate it , there is always Dark Shadows (2012) in which Frank may have come off better than Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's somewhat disappointing film.

Instructions