Camille Paglia on Zappa

[perezoso]

'Zappa': Freak Out!
By CAMILLE PAGLIA

Published: November 14, 2004


"FRANK ZAPPA is one of the most unclassifiable figures in American popular music. A passionate devotee of rhythm and blues, he fused rock with jazz and atonal music. His persona was half angry Beat hipster and half loopy Mad magazine satirist. Barry Miles's new biography, ''Zappa,'' argues that he was a major artist in the line of Courbet and Duchamp. Despite sometimes tendentious overstatements, the book does indeed establish that Zappa, through his genre-shattering experiments, technical virtuosity and staggering productivity, deserves to be considered a central figure of late-20th-century American culture."

http://nytimes.com/2004/11/14/books/rev ... GLIAL.html

"......obvious points of intersection {of FZ} with
Pynchon at pynchonoid.org"

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http://pynchonoid.org
"everything connects"


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[Lightning Rod]

interesting stuff, perozoso

only met Frank once but corresponded

lr

[perezoso]

Ms. Paglia writes some decent things from time to time. Although I am not a musician I admit to having a few Zappa CDs, and lived out in the high desert in my teens where Zappa and Beefheart grew up (his sister still lives out there, a bizarre and brutal area immortalized in Village of the Sun and Billy the Mountain). Also saw the Grandmothers in concert (in 2001) and had a drink with Bunk Gardner. It was pretty cool, though the sicilian dude playing guitar was no FZ.

In the 80s Don Van Vliet still lived in the Antelope Valley and you might see him wandering around or at the Desert Inn drinking and hustling local hos. Some of the Magic Band are still up there I think.

Pynchon in Vineland has a brief vision of FZ on Mt. Rushmore and I think Mr,. Pynchon probably has some FZ CDs tucked away next to his Spike Jones, sandoz, and quantum physics stash. Rumor is TRP plays a mean gee-tar as well.

And I do have fairly regular fantasies about the rather sordid things I would like to do wtih Moon Unit.............

[Lightning Rod]

when I met Frank, it was backstage at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin. I had spoken to him on the phone and corresponded with him by way of sending tapes that he was examining by our band.

I talked to him for maybe 15 minutes while he was warming up on his little practice amp.

He said, "If you are a one-percenter, you can make a living in this business." Meaning that if one percent of the people just knew who you were, whether or not they bought your record, you could survive.

I met Beefheart one time too, at a little dive I used to play in Dallas. He let me slobber in his harp.

[perezoso]

I never met FZ, though I have met people that knew him. His music is for me like 33% really great, 33% decent and interesting, and 33 % mierda. But that's about the same with say Debussy, ain't it. I have the Yellow Shark which has some great pieces--like Tragedy at Valdez. I did meet Beefheart, who was living in a trailer with his mum out in the desert, between coke binges methinx. He invited me to go and party with some nuns near Palmdale who he said liked to fuck. I declined. He then told me a strange story about selling a vacuum cleaner to Aldous HUxley.

Anyhoo. I think TRP is sort of the Zappa of American writers and IM looking forward to seeing him on Simpsons ( Groening is also a Zappa/Beefheart head) , though I bet it will just be a short surreal section.

Brown SHoes Don't Make it.

[Lightning Rod]

I would have gone for the nun adventure with Beefheart
but I would probably get into the habit

yes, I think I read something about the VanVliet-Huxley-Cocaine intersection

didn't Huxley write a book shortly before his death called

The Hoovers to Perception?