I was looking for this book for many years without any success. Finally, I asked Vinksu from Tampere, Finland. He hasn't even heard about this book! And he went to the library...

Vinksu Chandrasekhar 2008/11/27:

First, "Suomen Musiikkikirjastoyhdistys" ("Finnish Music Library Association") is not a real publishing house. Since 1987 they have published 134 titles, mostly composer/opus catalogues intended to be used by the music libraries themselves. Besides catalogues they have published only a few more or less "ordinary" books. Most of the older publications have been sold out for years.

The first (and only) edition of "Zappa äänitteillä" (catalogue number 34) must have been very small. About 66.6% of the edition must have gone to the libraries around Finland. Most likely the book was never sold in "ordinary" bookshops. I may be wrong. The price (195 Finnish marks) was very high in 1995. No wonder I never heard about the book.

Strange phenomenon indeed is that someone in Finland has bothered to take the trouble to explore through all FZ material in detail and written this book in Finnish. (About 70% of the book is in Finnish, the citations etc. are in English.)

"Zappa äänitteillä" is a catalogue, in principle, but it contains some interesting chapters – in Finnish – which IMHO keenly and accurately analyze FZ as an activist, controversial anti-drug chain smoker, sexist, composer, lyricist, his influence in general, his attitude towards women etc., not forgetting his undeniable political naivism, egoism, strictness, impatience etc.

Suomen musiikkikirjastoyhdistys has later republished many books in the net – see www.musiikkikirjastot.fi – but it seems they are not planning to republish this one, not at least in the near future.

It's not likely that one can find this FZ catalogue/book in antique bookshops. Not easily, not soon. Besides I'm too lazy to start rummaging in every other bookshop in Finland. (Actually I used to spend many of my days like that in the 1980s, but not anymore. Anyway I still love the smell of old books. – Literature is not dead, it just smells funny.)"

ARF: Bibliography
Review in Rare magazine
zappa-lista – fz mailing list, Finnish, managed by H.Poroila, 1999-2006
Frank Zappa in Finland – not directly related to this book, but fun to read