WATERMELON IN EASTER HAY

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Frank Vincent Zappa (1940-1993) combined the sacred and the profane as a musician, songwriter, composer, bandleader, guitar-player, weirdo, and outspoken critic of mindless censorship in a free society.


Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore on December 21, 1940 to Francis Zappa (born in Partinico, Sicily) who was of Greek-Arab descent, and Rose Marie Colimore who was three-quarters Italian and one-quarter French. His father was a chemist and mathematician in the defense industry, and the Zappas moved around the country as the old man worked in various arsenals and chemical warfare facilities, finally skipping around California--Monterey, Claremont, El Cajon, and San Diego--where Frank joined his first band, The Ramblers, at Mission Bay High School.

The Zappa Family

By 1956, the family had moved to Lancaster, in the Mojave Desert near Edwards Air Force Base. Zappa continued devouring music. He soaked up avant-garde composers Stravinsky and Varese, old fashioned R and B, early rock and roll, and pachuco Do Wop bands. He met Don Vliet at Antelope Valley High School and they became friends--Vliet of course later recorded under the name Captain Beefheart, though he wasn't actually a captain and his heart was almost certainly human. Around then, Zappa played drums for The Blackouts, a racially mixed band that played blues and R and B. Zappa graduated from AVHS, and would later thank two of his high school music teachers on "Freak Out!" (1966) the first album recorded with the group that made him famous, The Mothers of Invention.

thanks for letting me sign your yearbook, Frank


Zappa at 22 on the Steve Allen Show: experimental music on a bicycle

To quote the Wicky, "His own heterogeneous ethnic background, and the diverse social and cultural mix in and around greater Los Angeles, were crucial in the formation of Zappa as a practitioner of underground music and of his later distrustful and openly critical attitude towards "mainstream" social, political and musical movements."

Today, we celebrate Frank Zappa--and Easter--with this 1988 performance of his beautiful composition, "Watermelon in Easter Hay."

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Happy Mother's Day, Mom! And all you mothers out there. Thanks for bringing us into this world, and putting up with years of worry and trouble and dirty socks and tantrums and weird ceramic things that are supposed to be ashtrays. Today is a special day, and we salute you!

To help celebrate, we've got "The Mothers of Invention," a seminal group that blew the minds of kids and censors back in the 1960s. Their fearless leader, musician and composer Frank Zappa, fought against mindless censorship and the PMRC ratings code until his dying day in 1993.


Here's Zappa on "Crossfire," arguing with screwheads about censorship. The exchange between Zappa and smug Conservative gasbag Robert Novak is priceless.


The follow-up show in 1987, with Zappa on CNN's "Crossfire" guest-hosted by Michael Kinsley. Here, Zappa disagrees with suits from the PMRC about censorship and the ratings system of music. The Mothers of Invention

ZAPPA SWAPS SOULS WITH A MONKEE

There is only one Frank Zappa. Maybe two. This creative weirdo stood alone in the music world, a creature at the edge of the wilderness, with no commercial potential. On the other side of the void, but still in Los Angeles, a four-headed beast built solely for commercial potential, ersatz-Beatles created by Hollywood hucksters to capitalize on pop music, struggled to life in both television and records, though never actually playing their instruments...The Monkees!

You would think these two had nothing in common. In fact, you'd think they couldn't occupy the same universe, much like matter and anti-matter, or pasta and anti-pasta. And yet these two forces came together one glorious day, the fuzz-tone Lion and the wool-hatted lamb, somehow merging a moment in the time-space continuum, and this is proof. Do you believe me? Watch as Frank Zappa and Mike Nesmith, the coolest Monkee, swap souls one fine afternoon in LA.

FROM OUR GLORIOUS PAST

Frank Zappa and a stellar band, including Terry Bozzio and Eddie Jobson, performing Peaches en Regalia on SNL, December 11th, 1976. They say Bozzio's audition for Zappa was so brilliant all the other drummers behind him in line walked out, and he got the job.