HIS APPEARANCE was the first thing that left me confused. In fact speechless. That morning, faintest hint of breeze had blown holes in the hot Los Angeles smog. But Frank Zappa wore a coat draped round him as he sat alone in his sound-proof recording studio. In a green checked shirt, with a standing ashtray at his shoulder, he looked so frail and thin, his trademark "imperial" moustache buried beneath a grey beard. All his life, Frank Zappa has battled against cant, hypocrisy, censorship, record company executives and social injustice. While much of his music may remain on the fringe, his voice has had an influence, despite its radical non-conformism, on several generations. But now, at 52, the man who put the sneer into rock is losing his last and toughest battle. Frank Zappa is dying of cancer. (read more)

Source: slime.oofytv.set

FRANK ZAPPA, who has died in Los Angeles of prostate cancer aged 52, was one of the great innovators of popular music of the past 25 years, a composer and performer whose prolific output spanned and often collided with rock music, jazz, avant-garde orchestral work and satire.

He was a confusing, often contradictory figure who will be remembered initially for his outrageous image back in the sixties and seventies: his rock band, The Mothers Of Invention, his campaigns against rock music censorship, and his more recent dips into international politics as cultural liaison officer to the West for the new Czech government.

But he deserves credit as a serious musician who was willing to take enormous gambles on and devote much of his own wealth to writing and recording his often idiosyncratic work. With Zappa, image and reality were often at odds. (read more)

ALTHOUGH headlines like "Rock Legend Dies" have attended the death on Saturday of Frank Zappa, he was scarcely a household name of the sort you could bracket with Bruce Springsteen or Axl Rose. Some knew Zappa only as the man who christened his children Dweezil and Moon Unit. Others took one look at his alarming hawk-like nose, Billy Connolly hair and bandit's moustache (Zappa's parents were second generation Sicilian-Greeks living in Baltimore), and fled towards the comfort and safety of Adult-Orientated Rock. (read more)

Source: slime.oofytv.set

Scan from the Saturday 30th Oct 2010 'family' pullout of the Guardian [UK], containing an article with Diva, Dweezil & Gail Zappa, about FZ stuff in the lead up to The Roundhouse 70th Birthday celebration. Download @ zappateers.

Source: hoops @ zappateers