No Commercial Potential

No Commercial Potential
Author: David Walley
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1996-08-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780306807107

For nearly thirty years Frank Zappa (1940–1993) pursued an idiosyncratic but influential course in music—rock, jazz, and classical composer (releasing over fifty albums); founder of the Mothers of Invention; guitarist, conductor, and producer; as well as social satirist, sonic scientist, First Amendment champion, and all-around iconoclast. This updated edition of David Walley's cutting-edge classic includes a new foreword, a substantial chapter carrying the Zappa saga through his death from cancer, an afterword, bibliography, discography, videography, and guide to Zappa on the Internet. From 1960's Freak Out! to the posthumous Civilization Phaze III, No Commercial Potential offers converts and connoisseurs the most practical and penetrating book ever written on the musical phenomenon known as Frank Zappa.

Real Frank Zappa Book

Real Frank Zappa Book
Author: Frank Zappa
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 356
Release: 1989
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0671705725

Recounts the career of the rock music performer.

Being Frank

Being Frank
Author: Nigey Lennon
Publisher: SCB Distributors
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2011-03-23
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0983488401

Since his untimely death from prostate cancer in 1993, the legend of iconoclastic musician Frank Zappa has continued to grow. The years following his passing have seen the publication of numerous books, both sacred and profane, which examine his life and work, but the best, and only, up-close-and-personal account of the man and his music remains the original: Nigey Lennon’s Being Frank: My Time with Frank Zappa. Musician/author Lennon maintained a personal and professional relationship with Zappa during the period which is generally agreed to have been the composer’s most creative, and she invests her recollections with considerable musical and emotional insight. The fact that Lennon is an accomplished musician and composer in her own right enables her to perceptively analyze Zappa's complex music, and her previous experience as a biographer of Mark Twain and Alfred Jarry is evident as she examines the complex conditions of Zappa's turbulent life. But above all, Being Frank is simply a great read: filled with wry humor, poignancy, and, of course, a plethora of the juicy road stories that Zappa himself didn't dare to include in his own autobiography. The e-book edition of Being Frank is certain to find a new audience for this classic title, which has been in great demand since its third print run sold out several years ago. “Irreplaceable...is the word to describe Being Frank...[Lennon's] memoir is both spiky and musically literate...Lennon’s previous books were on Mark Twain and Alfred Jarry, which indicates the kind of cultural perspective required to get a grip on Zappa: something brighter than rock-journo pedantry.” –Ben Watson, author of Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play

Electric Don Quixote: The Definitive Story Of Frank Zappa

Electric Don Quixote: The Definitive Story Of Frank Zappa
Author: Neil Slaven
Publisher: Omnibus Press
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2009-11-17
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0857120433

Frank Zappa's reputation as one of rock's maverick geniuses has continued to grow since his death in 1993. Revised and updated, Electric Don Quixote is still the most comprehensive chronicle of his extraordinary life and career. Author, Neil Slaven, brings together the complex strands of Zappa's life and work in a book that will please not just Zappa fans but anyone interested in the history of rock music. Fully illustrated and includes a comprehensive discography.

Academy Zappa

Academy Zappa
Author: Ben Watson
Publisher: SAF Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2005
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780946719792

Academic decorum is trashed as the glories, absurdities and obscenities of rock's greatest Dadaist are unveiled.

Cosmik Debris

Cosmik Debris
Author: Greg Russo
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003
Genre: Rock music
ISBN: 9780964815704

The third, "Son Of Revised" edition of this essential Frank Zappa reference work.

Teenage Nervous Breakdown

Teenage Nervous Breakdown
Author: David Walley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2006
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0415978564

First Published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Frank Zappa and the And

Frank Zappa and the And
Author: Dr Paul Carr
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2013-03-28
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1409473465

This collection of essays, documented by an international and interdisciplinary array of scholars, represents the first academically focused volume exploring the creative idiolect of Frank Zappa. Several of the authors are known for contributing significantly to areas such as popular music, cultural, and translation studies, with expertise and interests ranging from musicology to poetics. The publication presents the reader with an understanding of the ontological depth of Zappa's legacy by relating the artist and his texts to a range of cultural, social, technological and musicological factors, as encapsulated in the book's title - Frank Zappa and the And. Zappa's interface with religion, horror, death, movies, modernism, satire, freaks, technology, resistance, censorship and the avant-garde are brought together analytically for the first time, and approached non chronologically, something that strongly complies with the non linear perspective of time Zappa highlights in both his autobiography and recordings. The book employs a variety of analytical approaches, ranging from literary and performance theory, 'horrality' and musicology, to post modern and textually determined readings, and serves as a unique and invaluable guide to Zappa's legacy and creative force.

Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa
Author: Ben Watson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 597
Release: 1995
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780704302426