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Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention

• art rock was primarily British … Zappa is the exception
• influenced by Varése & Stravinsky, as well as R&B
  • Zappa recorded over 60 albums
  • testified before a Congressional subcommittee against censorship

If you would like to see a very young Frank Zappa on the Steve Allen Show (playing a bicycle), check out this video (from March 4, 1963): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MewcnFl_6Y

• 1964 - joined the Soul Giants, renaming them the Mothers of Invention
  • Ray Collins - vocals
  • Dave Coronada - sax
  • Roy Estrada - bass
  • Jimmy Carl Black - drums
• The Mothers were less a "band," than a dynamic vehicle for Zappa's artistic play

Help I'm a Rock/It Can't Happen Here

from Freak Out! (1966)



• A - "It can't happen here"
• B - "Who could imagine" - Kansas improv
• C - instrumental section (piano & drums)
• B - "Who could imagine" - Washingon D.C. improv
• A - "It can't happen here" gradually takes over
• D - "I remember" - metric, 3 phrases
• A - "It couldn't happen here" - brief return
• E - "Suzy Creamcheese" - dialogue with semi-fictional Zappa character
• A - "It can't happen here" - brief return (filtered voices)

Note arch form at beginning ...

     |--------- ARCH ---------|
                                                 E
                                    D
                 C
           B            B
     A                        A            A            A

Apostrophe

Zappa often parodied music ... for example

• 50s rock

Go Cry on Somebody Else's Shoulder

• disco

Dancin' Fool

• Zappa was the most up-to-date experimentalists in the art rock genre
• 12/4/93 - died of prostate cancer; lifelong teatotaler and abstainer from drugs (smoked cigarettes & drank coffee incessantly)

Examples of audio reversal in the music of Franz Zappa.

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