Frank Zappa Anniversary Dec 4th

Hello,

for those of you that know me, you'll be aware that I'm a massive fan of Frank Zappa's music and have been since I was a teenager. It's hard to desribe accurately the effect his music and overall philosophy has had and continues to have on my life to this day.

Quite a few people have said to me in the past, that they can't see where his influence is in my music. The same thing has been cited when I've said that Pink Floyd influenced me too. For me though, I would never try and sound like someone who influenced me, that's not being influenced by, that's copying in my book and there's no way I could ever copy Zappa!

I have been heavily influenced by his ideals, his belief in experimentation, his belief in fusing adverse styles and for the way he stuck two fingers up to the establishment and did things for himself. He was an extremely single-minded person with visionary, groundbreaking music and studio skills that were second to none in his day.

Anyway back to the point of the post. Tomorrow, December 4th ( he was 17 days short of his 53rd birthday) is the anniversary of his death. I felt cheated when he died so young, which is probably an incredibly selfish thing as I never knew him obviously but considering the fact he released 70+ albums before he died, it's easy to rationalise that there was plenty music left in him yet. He was the most complete composer of the 20th century in my opinion and his influence will reverberate for many, many years.

As well as being a brilliant musician and composer, he was also a great satirist and his quick wit in interviews always gave him the ability to outsmart his detractors and make them look incredibly stupid. Here's a clip of one of my favourite Zappa interviews, it's from the time of the PMRC hearings in America, when Tipper Gore campaigned to have parental control labels printed on the front of albums that had been deemed offensive. Amazingly, not one of Zappa's albums were listed by the PMRC despite the numerous "obscenities" and politically senstitive topics. Listen out in the video for Zappa's prediction that America was heading towards a "Fascist Theocracy", remember this was 1986 and ask yourself if you think he was right.



I listen to zappa every day of my life as my last FM stats will show. It's amazing how I've never grown tired of it, but that only speaks volumes for the content and weight these albums have.

My Top 5 Must Have Zappa Albums












It's really hard choosing a top 5 from 70+ albums as you can imagine and there will be times that other zappa albums get more spins. However, these 5 are always there or there abouts. Each of these albums are heavily inspired by jazz and that's the sort of Zappa material I've always loved the most.

Thanks for the great music Frank and I hope you're happy wherever you are!