Zappa
by Barry Miles
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Description
Traces the life of ground-breaking musician Frank Zappa from his Italian American childhood roots to his ultimate success as a composer and rock star.Tags
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Member Reviews
great book. managed to listen to about 20 of his albums while reading the book, still more to go. learned a lot about him that i had no idea about. great referencing of other books and interviews. it was excellent how he got different opinions of different events, many of franks opinions of events from his autobio seemed to be very different from how others saw them.
This is a competent biography of Zappa the iconoclast. I've never been a great fan of him as a personality or composer, but learned quite a bit here about his life, achievements and peculiar foibles. It hasn't provoked an interest in Zappa's music, unlike most music biographies I've read, so I won't be browsing through Spotify too long.
An exceptional and well-researched biography of Frank Zappa, the complicated musical genius, curmudgeon, misanthrope, and free-speech advocate. Barry Miles doesn't appear to pull any punches here, praising Zappa's musicianship while describing his hard-nosed and egocentric manner of dealing with his musicians, band-mates, business partners, and even his family. Contains extensive notes, a bibliography, discography, and index.
My recommendation: Don't bother. I quit reading this cut and paste hackwork at page 30.
Yeah this one's on my christmas list. Anyway found a pretty cool site with tons and tons of info on anything written about Frank. (books etc)
http://www.afka.net/index.htm
http://www.afka.net/index.htm
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ThingScore 50
Miles traces Zappa's credibility problem to his "self-destructive" habit of giving sexual or scatological titles to his serious pieces. Zappa was an incorrigible "namer," he says, who called his daughter Moon Unit and named his son Dweezil, after one of his wife's toes. But Miles is too scolding about Zappa's absurdist sensibility. His titles were hilarious, from the album "Burnt Weeny show more Sandwich" to such songs as "Help, I'm a Rock," "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask," "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow," "Don't You Ever Wash That Thing?" and "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing."...
There is a gap between the "juvenile and prurient" Zappa he describes and the one we see in the book's sensational photographs, which show a man of burning magnetism and piercing intellect. Miles calls Zappa a "cold nihilist" who felt no real emotions for anyone. Along with "cynicism and misanthropy," he detects Catholic guilt and "deep-seated problems with women." Zappa was "stuck in a 50's time warp" -- yet the bold feminist Germaine Greer was a Zappa fan. show less
There is a gap between the "juvenile and prurient" Zappa he describes and the one we see in the book's sensational photographs, which show a man of burning magnetism and piercing intellect. Miles calls Zappa a "cold nihilist" who felt no real emotions for anyone. Along with "cynicism and misanthropy," he detects Catholic guilt and "deep-seated problems with women." Zappa was "stuck in a 50's time warp" -- yet the bold feminist Germaine Greer was a Zappa fan. show less
added by SnootyBaronet
Author Information
49+ Works 3,847 Members
Barry Miles was the chairman of the Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the early 1960s.
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Zappa
- Original publication date
- 2004
- People/Characters
- Frank Zappa
- Dedication
- To David Walley, Urban Gwerder, Alain Dister, and Mick Farren; pioneer Zappists.
- First words
- Zappa means 'hoe' in Italian, symbol of the back-breaking toil of the Italian peasants who had to scratch a living from the dry stony ground.
- Quotations
- he idea of an infallible score to be scrupulously realized by musicians did not exist until the Romantic period. Before then many crucial details were left up to the performers. The idea of the note-perfect performance so pri... (show all)zed by Zappa and by music conservatories was unknown; players were expected to add whatever embellishments they could, depending on skill and ability.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)If Zappa had one ultimate message, one over-riding idea: 'It's that the Emperor's not wearing any clothes, never has, never will.' It is even more relevant today than when he first said it.
- Blurbers
- Lennon, John; Starr, Ringo; Groening, Matt; Havel, Vaclav
- Original language
- English
Classifications
- Genres
- Music, Biography & Memoir, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 782.42166092 — Arts & recreation Music Vocal Music, Singing Secular forms of vocal music Songs General principles and musical forms Traditions of secular songs {genres} Rock songs modified standard subdivisions History, geographic treatment, biography Biography
- LCC
- ML410 .Z285 .M49 — Music Literature on music Literature on music History and criticism Biography
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 249
- Popularity
- 129,886
- Reviews
- 5
- Rating
- (3.53)
- Languages
- 5 — Dutch, English, Finnish, German, Italian
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 13
- ASINs
- 3
