Talk:Frank Zappa

Genres

This is just an opinion, but the second sentence of the first para. in this section is a bit unwieldy. It lacks some punctuation ( a comma before "but") and it describes "Jazz From Hell" as marking a departure from Zappa band performance and the beginning of an orchestral pahase. The album itself is comprised of compositions performed on (by?) a Synclavier with a single "live" track St. Etienne. It's true that there were some orchestral works released after "JFH", but I don't see this as related to JFH either. A citation is needed. It's a former FA so I'm not touching it any more except to add the word "and" after the last comma and revert obvious vandalism as I find it. It really is convoluted phrasing there and should be edited for better copy. Hamster Sandwich (talk) 08:20, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. Let's get a source, or let's just remove the entire sentence. No harm would be done. - DVdm (talk) 08:36, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree with you up to deleting the sentence altogether... I think a citation is important- crucial- because there is a specific claim being made there (whatever the hell it is!) I'd edit it for copy but it's a non-starter for me with out a cite. Hamster Sandwich (talk) 08:42, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

On further consideration... Zappa and a full band (The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life) did extensive tour in 1988, which negates the claim made in the first para. that Zappa was moving away from band work... I remember several interviews at the time where he described his fingertips as "marshmallows" from years of not actively playing. But that happened after JFH. Then the Boulez/Zappa collaboration and additionally my understanding was Zappa spent most of his time editing old concert tapes into cohesive things for release in the months before his death. So, I guess what I'm saying here is that that little section contains a factual error, and at this point I agree that maybe it should be removed without a verifiable cite. Go ahead... you first! Hamster Sandwich (talk) 10:02, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

I was thinking along the line of away from TBBYNHIYL towards The Yellow Shark and such. Let's wait a few days, perhaps someone will find a source. Otherwise I'll delete it by the end of the week... - DVdm (talk) 11:44, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

I think I see what you're getting at... The section needs to be more specific. Also, and I might be missing it, but Zappa is often overlooked as a "prog" artist. I don't really know why that is, but his music was often "progressive." Maybe it's because he did so much "do-wop" and R & B stuff that the prog gets negated. I have all my old Guitar World, Guitar Player, Guitar, etc etc. from before his death and I'll make the effort to go into my "stacks" and see what I can find. There was one issue in particular that was all Zappa, and that one had a fantastic interview where Matt Groening interviewed him. Very candid Zappa (as if there were another version!) Regards, Hamster Sandwich (talk) 21:22, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

DrKay just beat me to it . Thx! - DVdm (talk) 11:38, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Moi oci! Merci! Regardez, Hamster Sandwich (talk) 20:40, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Frank Zappa for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Frank Zappa is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at this MfD discussion page until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 22:55, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

First sentence of lede

The first sentence of the lede describes Frank Zappa as being a "musician, composer, activist and filmmaker". In the lede, we are supposed to be presenting a summary of the entity, briefly describing the important things about the entity, so that a reader absorbing only the lede (as many surely do) will come away with a basic understanding of what the entity is.

So we're saying the basic thing you need to know about Frank Zappa is that he was a "musician, composer, activist and filmmaker, all of these describing his activities, notability, and interest as more or less equal. (He was also an autobiographer, businessman, producer, and so on, and we talk about these in the body of the article, but we don't include them in the lede as being essential to a basic understanding of who he is, on the same level as being a musician or filmmaker.)

Let's think about the "filmmaker" and "activist" part, as well as a missing part: "bandleader".

Filmmaker

According to the box at the bottom, his filmography is 200 Motels, Baby Snakes, The Dub Room Special, Video from Hell, Does Humor Belong in Music?, The True Story of Frank Zappa's 200 Motels, The Amazing Mr. Bickford, Uncle Meat, The Torture Never Stops, A Token Of His Extreme, Roxy The Movie, and Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words". So let's see. I'll go mostly on what the Wikipedia articles say.

• 200 Motels is a legit movie that he made.
• Baby Snakes is "a film which includes footage from Frank Zappa's 1977 Halloween concert at New York City's Palladium Theater, backstage antics from the crew, and stop motion clay animation from award-winning animator Bruce Bickford". Except for the claymation, it's a concert film/home movie I guess, and it was never shown or distributed in any meaningful way, since no actual distribution company was interested. (I mean, yeah, you could order it from Zappa himself, but home movies for the fan club don't really count to make you a "filmmaker".)
• The Dub Room Special "combines footage from a performance at the KCET studios in Los Angeles on August 27, 1974, a concert performed at The Palladium, New York City on October 31, 1981, some clay animation by Bruce Bickford, and several interviews". Ditto: concert film / home movie, also not distributed.
• Video from Hell. "It is a compilation of pieces of music and video from a series of projects that Zappa presumably planned to finish and release for home video". Whatever it it, it was apparently never finished, and never released.
• Does Humor Belong in Music? is "a one-hour Frank Zappa concert video composed of live performances at The Pier in New York City (August 26, 1984) along with a few interview segments". Never shown theatrically or on TV, it was' released on VHS by MPI Home Video, which is a legit business. Their catalog is composed of D-list films that nobody's heard of or wants to watch, and old TV shows like Here's Lucy. But they are legit. It's still just concert footage.
• The True Story of 200 Motels "takes and rehearsals discarded from the original edit plus interviews made during the shooting", also never distributed theatrically (may have been distributed on home video, not sure).
• The Amazing Mr. Bickford is "a video released by Frank Zappa in 1987, containing orchestral pieces by Zappa set to the clay animation of Bruce Bickford." There's no dialogue, lyrics, or (I think) storyline. It's really a Bruce Bickford film with soundtrack by Zappa, but it's a legit film with Zappa's name on it, and it's almost an hour long. Was not shown theatrically or anywhere. Don't know if it was distributed via mail order.
• Uncle Meat is "a film written and directed by Frank Zappa, released direct-to-video in 1987. Principal photography having never been completed, the videocassette is a 'making of' documentary showing rehearsals and background footage from 1968 and interviews with people involved with the uncompleted production". More of the same. Home movies.
• The Torture Never Stops does not have a Wikipedia article, which doesn't speak well of its notability. IMDb has never heard of it, and they have everything, so I'm skeptical it even exists.
• A Token Of His Extreme, also no article. IMDb has heard of it. It's hard to tell much. The cast is all "[Name of person] as himself" so I guess it's a home movie or something.
• Roxy The Movie, also no article. It's a film of a concert (IMDB has "A concert movie showing a performance by the much-loved 1973 incarnation of the Mothers of Invention. An incredible cast of musicians treat us to a selection of blistering, pointillist jazz rock, hilariously funny asides and lyrics, audience participation and freaky behaviour.")
• Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words is a film about Frank Zappa. He didn't make it.

I mean, except for 200 Motels, it's all a very slim thread on which to hang "filmmaker" as one of the four key things about Frank Zappa. Except for 200 Motel, none of this was ever shown in even one single theater or on TV (except for Baby Snakes which was shown at one theater, the Victoria Theater (New York City)).

Zappa is famous for other stuff, and likes to mess around with cameras backstage and sell the footage, and concert footage, on his website. That's fine, but it doesn't have anything to do with anything, really.

Activist

Frank Zappa had had interesting and biting things to say about current issues and culture, and he said them often enough and in public, but as far I can find he never led, or even joined, any activist group. He never lead or (I guess) even particupated in any boycott, letter-writing campaign, or similar, never campaigned for a candidate, never organized or even joined a protest march or similar.

Nor did his music generally have a political point of view. I can't even tell what his politics even are, from listening to his songs. He is pretty much anti-union in The Real Frank Zappa Book (which doesn't mention politics at all I don't think, which would be kind of odd for the autobiography of a real activist). My guess is he's probably vaguely libertarian. But then it says he was a Democrat. So who knows.

Bruce Springsteen is much more focused on concrete political movements, and Bob Dylan at least wrote popular songs with a political message about current events, and they're not described in their ledes as activists. Joan Baez is. But she legit was a voice of the civil rights movement, marched, went South at some risk. Pete Seeger. Rage Against the Machine. N.W.A. They had a focused political slant to their music, at least. And even they are described as political musicians rather then activists.

Zappa does not fit in here. He was focused on music, and didn't spend a lot of time thinking "What can I do today to move the social and political elements of my society in a better direction", or if he did I don't see any evidence of that.

Zappa was a freelance critic and satirizer of American culture, this is true, and some of his songs show this (mostly obliquely, I think). But that makes him a cultural critic, not an activist. George Carlin is described as "social critic", and maybe that would fit. But after all that was Carlin's full-time job. It's a key core thing about Carlin, but not Zappa.

Bandleader

It is important for the reader to know right off that Zappa was a musician and composer. "Musician" can mean anything in music I guess, but it's usually taken to mean "instrumentalist". Separate from composing or playing guitar, Zappa's being a bandleader is very important I think. "Bandleader" is kind of archaic concept now, mostly associated with big bands of 20 musicians, like they had in the swing era. Glenn Miller is described in his lede as a bandleader. Tommy Dorsey, same. Bob Wills. And so on. You don't see that now.

But Zappa was a bandleader in this sense, though, I would say.

Summary

I deleted "filmmaker" and "activist" and added "bandleader". If y'all want to roll back and discuss, I guess here'd be the place. Herostratus (talk) 08:40, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Homophobia

I've listed Thing Fish in the homophobic category. Does that mean the author should also be included? -ApexUnderground (talk) 06:14, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

No, on the contrary. I have removed the category from Thing Fish. - DVdm (talk) 08:41, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

1993 Playboy quote

Zappa interview in Playboy 1993:

• Playboy: "Is the irreverence and outrageousness in your music a reaction to being a good Catholic boy?"
• Zappa: "Well, I think it was possible to do what I’ve done only because I escaped the bondage of being a devout believer. To be a good member of the congregation, ultimately you have to stop thinking. The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden story. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could still be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn’t asked any questions."

The point he's making here is that knowledge sets you free, but Christianity doesn't want you to have knowledge.

I feel that a recent edit misrepresented Zappa's intent. The recent edit, made by Lightning in the sky, was this: "For example, he felt that God wanted to punish those that wanted to gain certain knowledge, as was the case of Adam and Eve and the Forbidden Tree." Zappa wasn't assuming that God existed, and he wasn't talking about punishment. Rather, Zappa was throwing out the whole system. Binksternet (talk) 04:44, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

I feel that Binksternet is being too pedantic with the edit. While Frank Zappa was obviously anti-Christian and did not want to practice this faith, he was referring to what he saw as the essence of the Christian thought in this quote. His dismissal of the faith has no correlation to his idea that the Christian God, regardless of his existence, in Zappa's view did not want people to know certain things. Thus the edit only reflects this. Lightning in the sky (talk) 05:37, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps there's a better way to formulate it, closer to the actual quote. Perhaps something like, "He held the view that the Garden of Eden story shows that the essence of Christianity is to oppose gaining knowledge." - DVdm (talk) 06:53, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Comments from others are welcome too, but if users Binksternet and Lightning in the sky agree, I will put this in place.. - DVdm (talk) 10:15, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Sure, your version neatly summarizes Zappa's expressed idea. It works better in that it doesn't first assume that Zappa believes there is a God. Binksternet (talk) 13:57, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

I accept this. There's no use in arguing needlessly. Lightning in the sky (talk) 03:20, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

 Done: [1]. - DVdm (talk) 08:25, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Main Photo

I'd like to change Zappa's main photograph at the top of the page. I feel there are better photographs that illustrate Zappa, namely the one attached to this post. This is because it is: 1: In colour, well lit and well-framed. 2: Clearly illustrates Zappa's most iconic look, i.e: long hair, goatee, and his signature Gibson SG guitar. 3: Taken at the scene of one of his more significant works, Roxy & Elsewhere. This album proved influential on Zappa and music of the period, and to a lesser extent his outfit and overall look at these performances is instantly recognisable to more dedicated Zappa fans.

Having attempted to upload the image and being prevented by Wikipedia's upload system, I cannot actually demonstrate it here. However it can be located as the header in an August 2020 article by UDiscoverMusic titled Frank Zappa: How The Hungry Freak Turned DIY Pioneer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tourbillon1795 (talk • contribs) 18:42, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't object to put the image from this source, provided the image is allowed here. If you are prevented to upload it, there might be a copyright related reason. - DVdm (talk) 22:23, 2 September 2020 (UTC)