Frank Zappa is perfect fodder for biography: A gifted composer, staunch advocate of personal freedom and ground breaking guitarist, his achievements have been covered in many books. Kevin Courrier's Dangerous Kitchen is an ideal primer for the novice: In serviceable prose, he analyzes Zappa’s music and his efforts agitating for artistic freedom (such as his testimony before Congress in 1985 about dirty lyrics). It’s too bad Courrier doesn't reveal any evidence of firsthand reporting until page 194; without the journalism he’s borrowed from others, this struggles to get beyond a collection of album reviews.

Before he became MTV's newsreader, Kurt Loder was a music journalist, and this reissue of his 1990 interview collection functions as an'80s time warp. There's Mick Jagger before he married Jerry Hall, and Laurie Anderson before she teamed up with Lou Reed. Old-schoolers already know the fates of Loder's subjects — whether death (Frank Zappa) or superstardom (Bruce Springsteen) — but his access in an age before spin control reveals him as a surprisingly emotional writer. Still, he might have put a little more effort and insight into his hasty, tacked-on intro ("And Prince, well, what can one say about Prince?").
See Bat Chain Puller.

Frank Zappa. Hot Rats
"Zappa was fucking crazy and he hated hippies. He was also one of the best guitarists in the world, so underrated. My brother and I had a band – I played guitar, he played piano – and this album was so influential that we started playing Zappa-style music and changed our name to Sons of Mr. Greengenes, after a song on this record. The label Acid Jazz offered us a deal, but we never signed. What we were doing was cool for about 25 minutes."