strange headache
Banned
Frank Zappa was not only a rock musician, he was a composer, a lyricist and brilliant eclectic that managed like almost no other artists to combine and redefine different genres of music. Where upstanding citizens of his time merely saw a perverter of youth, little did they know that Zappa was bringing classical melodies, Heavy Metal, Rock and Roll, Jazz, Country, Folk and Doo-Wop to teenage ears. There's almost no other contemporary musician that serves such an insanely broad spectrum of musical styles. His former Band The Mothers of Invention are probably up there with legends such as Pink Floyd and lesser known seminal artists such as Van Der Graaf Generator.
Zappa was heavily influenced by classical composers, specifically Igor Stravinsky and Edgar Varese, whom Zappa liked to quote on his albums: "The present day composer refuses to die". This should come as no surprise as Zappa always considered himself the outsider, the free-thinker and outcast at odds with the industrialization and corporatization of his art-form. He loathed pop music and was a vocal critic of MTV, both of which he thought of infringing upon his creative freedom. Zappa did not like to be told what to think, say, and write, expecially when it came to his uncompromising music.
He would often hide little musical quotes in his songs, alluding to great classical composers of the past. Such as on his album "Absolutely Free" where allusions to Holst's Jupiter can be picked up throughout. Never obvious and hardly noticeable to the general rock listener, but it was there nonetheless. Zappa managed like no other popular rock musician to bring these classics to a younger audience, but never in an obvious or overbearing manner. By the end of his career, he would become widely recognized among the classical community releasing a whole digital album of Francesco Zappa's work, an 18th-century composer and cellist by the same name.
Apart from his better known rock songs, he would also incorporate old musical styles such as Doo-Wop into his work, but giving it an unique twist. The sound of the 1950s was very harmonic and sugary sweet, melodramatically singing about love and heartbreak. Zappa would takes these sounds but combine them with socially critical and very dark lyrics. His song "What's the ugliest part of your body" is both a homage and a harsh critique that's just amazing to listen to.
Maybe the reason why I like Zappa so much is because he was very much frowned upon by his larger contemporary society. His crossfire interview and his Senate hearings are well known. He was an outspoken critic of censorship, a staunch defender of the freedom of creation and expression. Zappa's output is certainly provocative in more than a couple of ways, but that's because he wanted to make you think. He never considered himself an educator who would impose his views, but rather a supporter of critical thought aimed at a younger audience. Which is why he often found himself at odds with the sanitized media of his generation, the social puritans who would rather shield their kids from vast spectrum of human experiences than confront them.
Zappa is an artist that defies labels, he considers himself neither a rock musician, nor a musical influence, he's just a guy who likes music as a whole. This attitude can also be seen in his political talk where he vehemently defended his art against any kind of record lyric branding, refusing to wear the scarlet letter of the PMRC. After his Senate hearings, the album Zappa published was given a parental warning sticker, the entire album was an instrumental and its title "Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention" a reference to PMRC who was campaigning to put warning stickers in albums considered offensive. On the inner sleeve of the album he stated the following warning message:
While his warning was aimed at the censorious conservatives of his times, I'm sure that many parallels can be drawn to the video game industry and the far-left sex-negative puritans of today. Throughout his career Zappa remained defiantly unapologetic, an artist who would not compromise his creative output in order to serve the socio-political climate of his era. I think it was one of the reasons why he remains to this day a much respected musician.
His most well known song is probably "Bobby Brown" where he is singing about raping cheerleaders, in the second verse, a liberated lesbian castrates him and in the third verse, he's gay, into sadomasochism, and being pissed on. "Jewish Princess," also on the same album "Sheik Yerbouti", created quite a stir when it came out. The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith asked the Federal Communications Commission to ban it from radio play and demanded an apology. Zappa's response: "Unlike The Unicorn, such creatures do exist and deserve to be commemorated with their own special opus." The controversial material begins with "I want a hairy little Jewish Princess with a brand new nose" and gets worse (lyrics here). As Zappa refused to bow down, no apology was ever made of course.
Zappa liked to break with societal taboos and that's why his music was so liberating. But contrary to modern day musicians, Zappa wasn't contrarian for the sake for notoriety, he was just a genuinely smart and gifted person who wanted to express himself. In his MTV interview he came to say that he is "easily influenced by the things he hates", which explains his poignant and sarcastic social critique. Despite the best efforts of his critics, Zappa was never silenced.
For me personally, Frank Zappa embodies the view that "safe media is dumb media". The recent political attacks on video games that try to sanitize the art form, that are trying to make them inoffensive, often designed by corporate committee and focus groups, result in a dumbing down of the medium. Games journalists are actively helping this process along by clamoring that they should appeal to everybody alike. They want games to be safe, thus robbing them of their ability to experiment, to explore the fringes of human experience making them boring and bland in the process. During his time, Zappa had very much the same problem with music journalists who were, for the most part, wholly overwhelmed with the complexity of his music.
As Zappa would say, without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. In this current climate that asks video games as a medium to conform itself, to be as inoffensive as possible, the creative output of most game developers is stagnating. We see it with BioWare and Blizzard who substituted good story telling and provocative design for buttoned-up safety and ideological piousness.
Zappa always reminds me to what point political correctness has regressed the artistic output of our societies, leaving little wiggle room for the free-thinkers, the contrarians and the taboo breakers. He is the living proof of the intellectual and artistic impact of offense. In his statement to congress Zappa said the following, which I think encapsulates today's climate very well:
As for myself, I want to experience the full spectrum that human creativity has to offer. I want to be offended, I want to be shocked and confronted with things I hate because these are the things that make my mind wander. I don't want to live in a safe media landscape that coddles my mind and numbs me to the insanely vast and deep spectrum of human thought and emotion. I also want young gamers and media enthusiasts to explore these things freely, to open their minds to the vast creative output that encapsulates all facets of the human condition because only then can they become fully developed individuals. It makes me sad that in today's climate, our media is not allowed to do that while professional gatekeepers and outrage-mongers are on the permanent lookout for offensive content.
Frank Zappa is indeed the modern day composer who refuses to die.
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