Zappadan

[fargeblind]

I morgen, 4. desember går vi inn i Zappadan.
Zappadan er tiden mellom dagen han dro til musikkhimmelen og dagen han ble født.
Død 4. desember, født 21. desember.

[fargeblind]

1969, var det det skjedde.....F. Zappa beriket Pink Floyd når de gjorde en av sine mest psykedeliske låter live
Hadde ikke gjort meg noe å vært flue på veggen.

[fargeblind]

28 years ago, at the age of 52, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century died. Frank Vincent Zappa, or simply Frank Zappa, left a huge legacy to the world of music, whether for rock, jazz or classical music, to which he began to dedicate himself in the last years of his life. The Yellow Shark album, released a little over a month before his death, established him as a great erudite composer. It is noteworthy that Zappa is the only composer in the world to have his name engraved in the "Hall of Fame", both on the rock and jazz sidewalks. He also left several songs with extremely complex melodies for live performance, such as "Echdna's Arf (Of You)" and "Black Page #1", as a drum solo (his clear influence from the French composer Edgard Varèse) and "Black Page #2", featured in multiple versions on some of his 60+ albums recorded and released in his lifetime.
Zappa cannot be labeled in any of the musical styles, as his work is and will remain unique, in other words, the Zappa style of composing and playing his extraordinary guitar.

[fargeblind]

Dagens tilbakeblikk er en snutt som er nesten en time lang.

[fargeblind]

Grand Funk Railroad. Et band jeg grisedigget rått den gang da,
Frank var der.

[fargeblind]

Det sies at et vanlig nyp skal bli unnagjort i løpet av den tiden Bolero varer.
Ikke vet jeg, men det er en fin versjon av Ravel Frank Zappa leverte.

[fargeblind]

Pussig at ingen så langt har kommet inn i tråden med en favorittlåt eller noe annet stoff ennå.
Er det bare meg?

[missChance]

Det sies at et vanlig nyp skal bli unnagjort i løpet av den tiden Bolero varer.
Ikke vet jeg, men det er en fin versjon av Ravel Frank Zappa leverte.

Den er vel en ti-tolv minutter for lang for mange

[fargeblind]

Det sies at et vanlig nyp skal bli unnagjort i løpet av den tiden Bolero varer.
Ikke vet jeg, men det er en fin versjon av Ravel Frank Zappa leverte.

Den er vel en ti-tolv minutter for lang for mange

hmmmmmmm....mulig det. Et middels nyp varer visst i 4 minutter. Tror du har rett.
Uansett...siden det er så mye drittnyheter for tiden køler jeg på med avslått nyhetskanal, bruker strøm og luller meg ut av virkeligheten.
Og dingsen mellom beina peker mot jord. Helt greit.
Mer Zappa fra glansperioden :

[fargeblind]

Det kan kanskje bli litt bumping nå og da, men det er altså Zappadan.
Her er likegodt morgensdagens låt. De folka hadde det gøy på scenen.

[Klodrik]

Stort sett 60- og tidlig 70-talls Zappa som er greia for meg

[fargeblind]

Stort sett 60- og tidlig 70-talls Zappa som er greia for meg

Ja. Men Zappa er blant de som klarte å gå inn i åttitallets synth-helvete med æren i behold.
Them or Us er jo et fabelaktig album, jeg syns du skal gi det en sjanse.
Sinister Footwear? Her en live-versjon......

[fargeblind]

På dagens sykkeltur med dings og hodetelefoner kom denne :

fra bursdagskonserten som Frank ikke fikk med seg. Han var syk.
Heidundrende konsert.
I still miss Zappa.

[Bjoro33]

[Hardy-guttene]

Pussig at ingen så langt har kommet inn i tråden med en favorittlåt eller noe annet stoff ennå.
Er det bare meg?

Jeg er hverken verre eller bedre enn folk flest; favorittperioden er f.o.m. Hot Rats t.o.m. Zappa In New York. Det er umulig å plukke ut noen favorittlåt blant over 60 (+ bootlegs, uofisielle og posthume) album, det er helt avhengig av dagsform og humør, men hvis jeg ble truet på livet ville jeg kanskje ha sagt at Roxy & Elsewhere er albumet jeg liker best. Ikke nødvendigvis fordi jeg liker det best, men fordi det er det jeg ville husket først. Synclaviergreiene har jeg fortsatt liten sans for.

[fargeblind]

Han hadde ikke hørt det før, men fikk tekstene og notene på skjermen.

[Hardy-guttene]

This was the keynote address to the 1984 convention of the American Society of University Composers (ASUC) held in Columbus, Ohio.


I do not belong to your organization. I know nothing about it. I'm not even interested in it, and yet, a request has been made for me to give what purports to be a keynote speech.

Before I go on, let me warn you that I talk dirty, and that I will say things you will neither enjoy nor agree with.

You shouldn't feel threatened, though, because I am a mere buffoon, and you are all Serious American Composers.

For those of you who don't know, I am also a composer. I taught myself how to do it by going to the library and listening to records. I started when I was fourteen and I've been doing it for thirty years. I don't like schools. I don't like teachers. I don't like most of the things that you believe in, and if that weren't bad enough, I earn a living by playing electric guitar.

For convenience, without wishing to offend your membership, I will use the word 'WE' when discussing matters pertaining to composers. Some of the "WE" references will apply generally, some will not. And now "The Speech":

The most baffling aspect of the Industrial-American-relevance-question is:"Why do people continue to compose music, and even pretend to teach others how to do it, when they already know the answer? Nobody gives a fuck."

Is it really worth the trouble to write a new piece of music for an audience that doesn't care? The general consensus seems to be that music by living composers is not only irrelevant but also genuinely obnoxious to a society which concerns itself primarily with the consumption of disposable merchandise.

Surely "WE" must be punished for wasting everyone's precious time with an art form so unrequired and trivial in the general scheme of things. Ask your banker--ask your loan officer at the bank, he'll tell you: "WE" are scum. "WE" are the scum of the earth. "WE" are bad people. "WE" are useless bums. No matter how much tenure "WE" manage to weasel out of the universities where "WE" manufacture our baffling, insipid packages of inconsequential poot, "WE" know deep down that "WE" are worthless.

Some of us smoke a pipe. Others have tweed sports coats with leather patches on the elbows. Some of us have mad scientists' eyebrows. Some of us engage in the shameless display of incredibly dramatic mufflers, dangling in the vicinity of a turtleneck sweater. These are only a few of the reasons why "WE" need to be punished.

Today, just as in the glorious past. the composer has to accommodate the specific taste (no matter how bad) of THE KING reincarnated as a movie or TV producer, the head of the opera company, the lady in the frightening hair on the 'special committee' or her niece, Debbie.

Some of you don't know about Debbie, since you don't have to deal with radio stations and record companies the way people from The Real World do, but you ought to find out about her, just in case you decide to visit later.

Debbie is thirteen years old. Her parents like to think of themselves as Average, God-fearing American White Folk. her Dad belongs to a corrupt union of some sort and is, as we might suspect, a lazy, incompetent, overpaid, ignorant son-of-a-bitch.

Her mother is a sexually maladjusted mercenary shrew who lives to spend her husband's paycheck on ridiculous clothes to make her look 'younger.'

Debbie is incredibly stupid. She has been raised to respect the values and traditions which her parents hold sacred. Sometimes she dreams about being kissed by a lifeguard.

When people from the Secret Office Where They Run Everything From found out about Debbie they were thrilled. She was perfect. She was hopeless. She was their kind of girl.

She was immediately chosen to become the Archtypical Imaginary Pop Music Consumer & Ultimate Arbiter of Musical Taste for the Entire Nation from that moment on, everything musical in this country would have to be modified to conform to what they computer to be her needs and desires.

Debbie's "taste" determined the size, shape and color of all music broadcast and sold in the United States during the latter part of the twentieth century. Eventually she grew up to be just like her mother, and married a guy just like her Dad. She has somehow managed to reproduce herself. The people in The Secret Office have their eye on her daughter at this very moment.

Now, as a serious American composer, should Debbie really concern you? I think so. Since Debbie prefers only short songs with lyrics about boy-girl relationships, sung by persons of indeterminate sex, wearing S&M; clothing, and because there is Large Money involved, the major record companies (which a few years ago occasionally risked investment in recordings of new works) have all but shut down their classical divisions, seldom recording new music.

The small labels that do, have wretched distribution. (some have wretched accounting procedures--they might release your recording, but you won't get paid) This underscores a major problem with living composers: they like to eat. (Mostly what they eat is brown and lumpy--and there is no question that this diet has had an effect on their collective output.)

A composer's job involves the decoration of fragments of time. Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid. Living composers are entitled to proper compensation for the use of their works. (Dead guys don't collect--one reason their music is chosen for performance.) There is another reason for the popularity of Dead Person Music. Conductors prefer it because the need more than anything else to look good.

By performing pieces that the orchestra members have hacked their way through since conservatory days, the rehearsal costs are minimized--players go into jukebox mode, and spew off "the classics" with ease--and the expensive guest conductor, unencumbered by a score with "problems" in it , gets to thrash around in mock ecstasy for the benefit of the committee ladies (who wish he didn't have any pants on).

"Hey buddy, when was the last time you thwarted a norm? Can't risk it, eh? Too much at stake over the old Alma Mater? Nowhere else to go? Unqualified for 'janitorial deployment'? Look out? Here they come again! It's that bunch of guys who live in the old joke: it's YOU and two billion of your closest friends standing in shit up to your chins, chanting, DON'T MAKE A WAVE!"

It's the terror of a bad review from one of those tone-deaf elitists who use the premiere performance of every new work as an excuse to sharpen their word skills. It's settling for rotten performances by musicians and conductors who prefer the sound of Death Warmed Over to anything scribbled in recent memory (making them 'assistant music critics', but somehow more glamorous). It's clutching the ol' Serial Pedigree, secure in the knowledge that no one checks anymore.

Beat them all to the punch, ladies and gentlemen! Punish yourselves before they do it for you. (If you do it as a group, the TV rights might be worth something,) Start planning now, so that everyone will be ready in time for the next convention. Change the name of your organization from ASUC to "WE"-SUCK, get some cyanide and swizzle it into the punch bowl with some of that white wine 'artistic' people really go for, and Bite The Big One!

If the current level of ignorance and illiteracy persists, in about two or three hundred years a merchandising nostalgia for this era will occurQand guess what music they'll play! (They'll still play it wrong, of course, and you won't get any money for having written it, but what the hey? At least you didn't die of syphilis in a whorehouse opium stupor with a white curly wig on.)

Its all over, folks. Get smart--take out a real estate license. The least you can do is tell your students: "DON'T DO IT! STOP THIS MADNESS! DONUT WRITE ANY MORE MODERN MUSIC! (If you don't, the little stinker might grow up to kiss more ass than you, have a longer, more dramatic neck-scarf, write music more baffling and insipid than your own, and Bingo! there goes your tenure.)

[fargeblind]

This was the keynote address to the 1984 convention of the American Society of University Composers (ASUC) held in Columbus, Ohio.


I do not belong to your organization. I know nothing about it. I'm not even interested in it, and yet, a request has been made for me to give what purports to be a keynote speech.

Before I go on, let me warn you that I talk dirty, and that I will say things you will neither enjoy nor agree with.

You shouldn't feel threatened, though, because I am a mere buffoon, and you are all Serious American Composers.

For those of you who don't know, I am also a composer. I taught myself how to do it by going to the library and listening to records. I started when I was fourteen and I've been doing it for thirty years. I don't like schools. I don't like teachers. I don't like most of the things that you believe in, and if that weren't bad enough, I earn a living by playing electric guitar.

For convenience, without wishing to offend your membership, I will use the word 'WE' when discussing matters pertaining to composers. Some of the "WE" references will apply generally, some will not. And now "The Speech":

The most baffling aspect of the Industrial-American-relevance-question is:"Why do people continue to compose music, and even pretend to teach others how to do it, when they already know the answer? Nobody gives a fuck."

Is it really worth the trouble to write a new piece of music for an audience that doesn't care? The general consensus seems to be that music by living composers is not only irrelevant but also genuinely obnoxious to a society which concerns itself primarily with the consumption of disposable merchandise.

Surely "WE" must be punished for wasting everyone's precious time with an art form so unrequired and trivial in the general scheme of things. Ask your banker--ask your loan officer at the bank, he'll tell you: "WE" are scum. "WE" are the scum of the earth. "WE" are bad people. "WE" are useless bums. No matter how much tenure "WE" manage to weasel out of the universities where "WE" manufacture our baffling, insipid packages of inconsequential poot, "WE" know deep down that "WE" are worthless.

Some of us smoke a pipe. Others have tweed sports coats with leather patches on the elbows. Some of us have mad scientists' eyebrows. Some of us engage in the shameless display of incredibly dramatic mufflers, dangling in the vicinity of a turtleneck sweater. These are only a few of the reasons why "WE" need to be punished.

Today, just as in the glorious past. the composer has to accommodate the specific taste (no matter how bad) of THE KING reincarnated as a movie or TV producer, the head of the opera company, the lady in the frightening hair on the 'special committee' or her niece, Debbie.

Some of you don't know about Debbie, since you don't have to deal with radio stations and record companies the way people from The Real World do, but you ought to find out about her, just in case you decide to visit later.

Debbie is thirteen years old. Her parents like to think of themselves as Average, God-fearing American White Folk. her Dad belongs to a corrupt union of some sort and is, as we might suspect, a lazy, incompetent, overpaid, ignorant son-of-a-bitch.

Her mother is a sexually maladjusted mercenary shrew who lives to spend her husband's paycheck on ridiculous clothes to make her look 'younger.'

Debbie is incredibly stupid. She has been raised to respect the values and traditions which her parents hold sacred. Sometimes she dreams about being kissed by a lifeguard.

When people from the Secret Office Where They Run Everything From found out about Debbie they were thrilled. She was perfect. She was hopeless. She was their kind of girl.

She was immediately chosen to become the Archtypical Imaginary Pop Music Consumer & Ultimate Arbiter of Musical Taste for the Entire Nation from that moment on, everything musical in this country would have to be modified to conform to what they computer to be her needs and desires.

Debbie's "taste" determined the size, shape and color of all music broadcast and sold in the United States during the latter part of the twentieth century. Eventually she grew up to be just like her mother, and married a guy just like her Dad. She has somehow managed to reproduce herself. The people in The Secret Office have their eye on her daughter at this very moment.

Now, as a serious American composer, should Debbie really concern you? I think so. Since Debbie prefers only short songs with lyrics about boy-girl relationships, sung by persons of indeterminate sex, wearing S&M; clothing, and because there is Large Money involved, the major record companies (which a few years ago occasionally risked investment in recordings of new works) have all but shut down their classical divisions, seldom recording new music.

The small labels that do, have wretched distribution. (some have wretched accounting procedures--they might release your recording, but you won't get paid) This underscores a major problem with living composers: they like to eat. (Mostly what they eat is brown and lumpy--and there is no question that this diet has had an effect on their collective output.)

A composer's job involves the decoration of fragments of time. Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid. Living composers are entitled to proper compensation for the use of their works. (Dead guys don't collect--one reason their music is chosen for performance.) There is another reason for the popularity of Dead Person Music. Conductors prefer it because the need more than anything else to look good.

By performing pieces that the orchestra members have hacked their way through since conservatory days, the rehearsal costs are minimized--players go into jukebox mode, and spew off "the classics" with ease--and the expensive guest conductor, unencumbered by a score with "problems" in it , gets to thrash around in mock ecstasy for the benefit of the committee ladies (who wish he didn't have any pants on).

"Hey buddy, when was the last time you thwarted a norm? Can't risk it, eh? Too much at stake over the old Alma Mater? Nowhere else to go? Unqualified for 'janitorial deployment'? Look out? Here they come again! It's that bunch of guys who live in the old joke: it's YOU and two billion of your closest friends standing in shit up to your chins, chanting, DON'T MAKE A WAVE!"

It's the terror of a bad review from one of those tone-deaf elitists who use the premiere performance of every new work as an excuse to sharpen their word skills. It's settling for rotten performances by musicians and conductors who prefer the sound of Death Warmed Over to anything scribbled in recent memory (making them 'assistant music critics', but somehow more glamorous). It's clutching the ol' Serial Pedigree, secure in the knowledge that no one checks anymore.

Beat them all to the punch, ladies and gentlemen! Punish yourselves before they do it for you. (If you do it as a group, the TV rights might be worth something,) Start planning now, so that everyone will be ready in time for the next convention. Change the name of your organization from ASUC to "WE"-SUCK, get some cyanide and swizzle it into the punch bowl with some of that white wine 'artistic' people really go for, and Bite The Big One!

If the current level of ignorance and illiteracy persists, in about two or three hundred years a merchandising nostalgia for this era will occurQand guess what music they'll play! (They'll still play it wrong, of course, and you won't get any money for having written it, but what the hey? At least you didn't die of syphilis in a whorehouse opium stupor with a white curly wig on.)

Its all over, folks. Get smart--take out a real estate license. The least you can do is tell your students: "DON'T DO IT! STOP THIS MADNESS! DONUT WRITE ANY MORE MODERN MUSIC! (If you don't, the little stinker might grow up to kiss more ass than you, have a longer, more dramatic neck-scarf, write music more baffling and insipid than your own, and Bingo! there goes your tenure.)

Mr. Zappa var flink til å ordlegge seg.
Mye sant og mye å tenke over her, gitt!