Emusers' Guide to Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention

edited January 2011 in General
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Mini Biography
Of all the qualities that typified Frank Zappa, perhaps the most striking is that he was a paradox. A workaholic perfectionist rock star who eschewed the hippie culture of the 1960s, deploring its conformism, spurious ideals, and drug use, Zappa was not only a brilliant rock guitarist, but an orchestral composer, innovative filmmaker, music producer, businessperson, iconoclast, and perceptive political and social commentator. His oeuvre continually amazes: over 60 albums of music from rock to orchestral, in addition to innumerable films, concerts, and other accomplishments. Frank Vincent Zappa (b. 21 Dec 1940, Baltimore MD) began to play drums at the age of 12, and was playing in R & B groups by high school, switching to guitar at 18. After narrowly graduating from high school, and then dropping out of Junior College (where he met his first wife, Kay Sherman), Zappa worked in such jobs as window dresser, copywriter, and door-to-door salesperson. With the money he earned from scoring Run Home Slow (1965) (written by his high school English teacher, Don Cerveris), Zappa purchased a recording studio, and, after concocting an allegedly obscene recording for an undercover policeman, spent ten days in jail. Zappa's diverse range of albums (both with the seminal and protean groups The Mothers Of Invention, and Zappa; as well as solo releases) are renowned not only for their bravura musicianship, and satire, but also for offending various groups (usually religious and political). The 200 Motels soundtrack was deemed too offensive by the Royal Albert Hall, who cancelled scheduled concerts in 1975; and the song 'Jewish Princess' (1979) led to Jewish calls for Zappa to apologise. These, and such events as Zappa testifying before Congress in 1985 against rock music censorship, being appointed by Czechoslovakian president V

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