Frank Vincent Zappa (1940–93) was an American rock-and-roll singer, musician, and songwriter. He was known for his masterful musicianship, his non-mainstream compositional style, and his prolific output. He recorded more than fifty albums.
Zappa’s “freak band” Mothers of Invention combined blues, rock, jazz, doo-wop, classical, and avant-garde with irreverent lyrics and politically oriented onstage theatrics. His derisive satire targeted both the establishment and the counterculture.
Zappa was also known for his skills as an audio engineer—he produced innovative collage, or “pastiche” sequences that blended sound effects, conversation, and music.
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Fact of the matter is, there is no hip world, there is no straight world. There’s a world, you see, which has people in it who believe in a variety of different things. Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, use that something to support their own existence.
—Frank Zappa
The computer can’t tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what’s missing is the eyebrows.
—Frank Zappa
Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
—Frank Zappa
Topics: Time Management, Time
No change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to.
—Frank Zappa
Topics: Music
The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.
—Frank Zappa
Topics: Government, Justice
One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds
—Frank Zappa
Topics: Philosophy
Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.
—Frank Zappa
Topics: Ignorance
Music is always a commentary on society.
—Frank Zappa
Topics: Society
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