Few rock and roll icons can match the originality, innovation, and prolific output of Frank Zappa. His synthesis of blues, rock, jazz, doo-wop, classical, and avant-garde, combined with irreverent lyrics and politically-oriented stage theatrics...

Frank Vincent Zappa[1] (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, musician, and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa established himself as a prolific and highly distinctive composer, electric guitar...

Zappa for president? Frank Zappa, 50, who runs voter registration tables at his concerts, said he has spoken with two Washington political consultants about running for president in 1992. "We're just gonna do a little feasibility study to see what it would take," Zappa...

Such is the dizzying pace of events in Eastern Europe, you may have missed the news that Frank Zappa, avant-garde rock musician and composer, is now working with the Czechoslovak government as an emissary for culture. Zappa, who has been involved in U.S.-Soviet...

Almost Famous: Raise your hand if you’re totally over summer! It’s just a hot mess, what with doofus dudes in flip-flops, our wee Mayor pretending to run for President, our favorite ex-President Bill Clinton pretending he’s being faithful as his bride knocks down small children...

Has middle age finally caught up to Sonic Youth, the noisy New York art-rock quartet whose punky cartoon-selves once pilfered watermelon from Peter Frampton’s cooler on The Simpsons? Because it seems like the longtime fringy group is stealing from mainstream rock elder statesman Paul McCartney’s...

Zappa [is] an extremely creative and highly proficient composer and performer of truly serious contemporary music, whose musical and artistic perception clearly transcends the narrowly defined limits of pop and whose breadth of musical experience outstrips the boundaries of all forms of American music, not simply pop. By "serious," I mean a learned and studied writer of music; one who has studied the traditional techniques of theory, harmony, counterpoint, and composition; one who is aware of ...

Freak Out was a conceptual masterpiece…. [It] served as a living testament to L.A. freakdom, a truly honest work…. It captured the essence of the American Experience with songs like "Who Are the Brain Police."… (p. 60) Freak Out also had some outrageous parodies of Fifties rhythm and blues tunes with "Go Cry on Somebody Else's Shoulder."… The songs on the first record dealt for the most part with common reality. The pieces of extended music on t...

We all live inside a plastic balloon which Frank Zappa is trying to pop…. Zappa is no freaked-out psychedelic acidhead—his band is composed of consummate musicians, and their music is vital, alive, and important. Everything the Mothers do, right down to the multi-tracked belches, has infinite purpose. Zappa is a media master…. (p. 29)