Remembering Frank Zappa, born on this day in 1940 (1940-1993).

Frank Zappa (short bio)

Frank Vincent Zappa (Baltimore, December 21, 1940 – Los Angeles, December 4, 1993) will be an American composer, guitarist, singer and record producer. With a career spanning more than thirty years, Frank Zappa has composed rock, jazz, blues, electronica, classical music and concrete music, or acousmatic music, among others. He will also work as a cinema and video director, and will design album covers. Furthermore, he will be in charge of the production of the most popular albums that he will record with The Mothers of Invention and alone.

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The seventh related work is now available on new discs, among originals and posthumous works, thousands of concerts around the world, long lengths, infinite interviews, articles, compositions and more projects that will remain at the same time when it is going to die. With enormous artistic production, according to the professor of Audiovisual Communication at the University of Valencia, Manuel de la Fuente, Zappa perfectly summarizes the cultural and political history of the USA in the second half of the 20th century.

In his adolescence he liked avant-garde composers based on percussion with Edgar Varèse, and the rhythm and blues music of the 1950s. He began writing classical music in high school, while playing drums in some bands. rhythm and blues, instrument that will soon change to the guitar electrical. He was a composer and self-taught musician, and through the diversity of musical tastes he managed to create music that was impossible to classify.

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The Mothers of Invention’s 1966 debut album, Freak Out!, combined conventional rock songs with impossible improvisations and sounds generated in the recording studio. His subsequent albums were a mix of experimental and eclectic music, independently of rock, jazz or classical music. Write the lyrics of all your topics, frequently humorous. He will be critical of political correctness and religion and will be a great defender of freedom of expression and the abolition of censorship.

Frank Zappa will be a very prolific artist and will receive great positive reviews. Most of his albums are considered essential in the history of rock, and are recognized as one of the most original guitarists and composers of his time and a reference for a great name of artists. He will have a reputation for commercial success, especially in Europe, so he will be able to be an independent artist for the vast majority of the time his seventh career will last. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and received the Grammy Award for his entire career in 1995.

Frank Zappa will be married to Kathryn J. ‘Kay’ Sherman from 1960 to 1964 and to Gail Zappa (Adelaide Gail Sloatman) from 1967 until she dies from prostate cancer in 1993. They will have four fills: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emukha Rodan i Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen. Gail Zappa coordinates family businesses under the Zappa Family Trust name.

Zappa received resounding criticism throughout the world both in life and after his death. Rolling Stone’s Album Guide in 2004 wrote: ‘Frank Zappa played almost every genre of music, whether as satirical rocker, jazz-rock fusionist, guitar virtuoso, electronic wizard or orchestral innovator, his eccentric genius was indisputable’.[180] Although his work was inspired by various genres, Zappa established a coherent and personal form of expression. In 1971, his biographer David Walley said: ‘The whole structure of his music is unified, not divided by dates or time sequences, and is built as a composite’. When talking about Zappa’s music, politics and philosophy, Barry Millers said in 2004 that they cannot be separated; ‘All was one thing; it was all part of his ‘conceptual continuity’.

He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. In 2005, the US National Recording Preservation Board listed We’re Only in It for the Money on the National Recording Registry, explaining that Frank Zappa’s ‘inventive and iconoclastic album presents a unique political stance, both anti-conservative and anti-countercultural’ , and offers a scathing satire of both hippism and America’s reactions to it’. In the same 2005, Rolling Stone magazine put him in place number 71 in the list of ‘The 100 greatest artists of all time’

Zappa’s music has influenced a large number of musicians, bands and orchestras of various genres. Rock artists like Mr. Bungle, Butthole Surfers, Alice Cooper, Fee Waybill of The Tubes, Primus, Devin Townsend of Strapping Young Lad and Billy Bob Thornton have cited Zappa’s influence, as have progressive rock artists such as Henry Cow, Trey Anastasio from Phish, John Frusciante and Fulano.

Hard rock and heavy metal formations such as Black Sabbath, Warren DeMartini, Steve Vai, System of a Down, and Clawfinger acknowledge Zappa’s inspiration.

In the classical music scene, Tomas Ulrich, Meridian Arts Ensemble and The Fireworks Ensemble regularly play Zappa compositions.

Contemporary jazz musicians and composers such as Bill Frisell and John Zorn are inspired by Zappa, as is funk legend George Clinton.

Other artists in whose work Zappa exerts an important influence are: The Residents, Faust, the new age pianist George Winston, the electronic composer Bob Gluck, the humorous singer ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic. and noise music artist Masami Akita of Merzbow.

Tributes

• King Kong: Jean-Luc Ponty Plays the Music of Frank Zappa (Jean-Luc Ponty) (1970)
• The BRT Big Band Plays Frank Zappa (BRT Big Band) (1990)
• Yahozna Plays Zappa (Yahonza) (1992)
• Zappa’s Universe—A Celebration of 25 Years of Frank Zappa’s Music (Joel Thome/Orchestra of Our Time)(1993)
• Harmonia Meets Zappa (Harmonia Ensemble) (1994)
• Music by Frank Zappa (Omnibus Wind Ensemble) (1995)
• Frankincense: The Muffin Men Play Zappa (Muffin Men) (1997)
• Plays The Music of Frank Zappa (The Ed Palerm Big Band) (1997)
• Dischordancies Abundant (CoCö Anderson) (1997)
• Frankly A Cappella (The Persuasions) (2000)
• The Zappa Album (Ensemble Ambrosius) (2000)
• Bohuslän Big Band plays Frank Zappa (Bohuslän Big Band) (2000)
• Ensemble Modern Plays Frank Zappa: Greggery Peccary & Other Persuasions (Ensemble Modern) (2003)
• UMO Jazz Orchestra: UMO plays Frank Zappa feat. Marzi Nyman (2003)
• Lemme Take You To The Beach: Surf Instrumental Bands playing the music of Zappa (Cordelia Records) (2005)
• Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance (The Ed Palerm Big Band) (2006)
• Inventionis Mater: Does Humor Belong in Classical Music? (2012)

Frank Zappa’s discography

Frank Zappa – Montana (A Token Of His Extreme)

Recorded on August 27, 1974 at KCET in Hollywood, A TOKEN OF HIS EXTREME features Frank Zappa with five incredibly talented band members for this extravaganza of live music. The line-up exists of Frank Zappa—guitar, percussion, vocals; George Duke—keyboards, finger cymbals, tambourine, vocals; Napoleon Murphy Brock—sax, vocals; Ruth Underwood—percussion; Tom Fowler—bass; Chester Thompson—drums.

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