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Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention

• art rock was primarily British … Zappa is the exception
• Zappa was influenced by Edgar Varése & Igro 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)



Click on any color-coded button below to initiate playback from the specified location in the recording.

Intro/Groove (4:42) (an array of guitar and vocal sounds) this section lasts almost 5 minutes! Follow the musical form: A: "It Can't Happen Here" B: "Who Could Imagine? ("Kansas" & "Minnesota" improvisations) C: instrumental section (piano & drums) B: "Who Could Imagine? ("Washington D.C." improvisation) A: "It Can't Happen Here" ("AC/DC" improvisation) D: "I remember" (clearly metrical; 3 phrases) A: "It Can't Happen Here" E: "Suzy Creamcheese" (dialogue with a semi-fictional Zappa character) A: "It Can't Happen Here"

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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