Youtube geeft je een hoop mogelijkheden. Zo ook om een idool wat beter te leren kennen.
Ik was een grote fan van Frank Zappa in de jaren 70. En zoals de meeste fans erg ontdaan over zijn overlijden in 93.
Toen ik ging snuisteren om wat mooie video's te zien, zag ik dat hij verschillende interviews heeft gegeven. Frank Zappa blijkt hierin een aantal profetische uitspraken te doen.
Hij is naast heel grappig ook zeer intelligent. Een man naar mijn hart. Niet alleen zijn muziek maar zijn ideeën zijn meer dan de moeite waard.
Hier eerst drie stukken van een interview uit de jaren tachtig.
In deze video wordt het ADL aangehaald.
dit staat voor Anti-Defamation League: The Anti-Defamation League was founded in 1913 "to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all." Now the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency, ADL fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects civil rights for all.
Frank heeft zich rond die periode op zijn wit paard gezet en zijn nek uitgestoken ten voordele van de vrije meningsuitingdie hij bedreigt zag en tegen de bemoeizucht van de politici (waar hebben we dat nog gehoord?)
Hij wordt in de volgende video uitgenodigd om zijn mening hieromtrend te verdedigen. Hetgaat er soms vrij heftig aan toe, ik zou niet graag in zijn plaats gezeten hebben.
Een laatste interview, kort voor zijn dood:
Tot slot nog een stukje muziek.Wie meer wil moet youtube maar eens raadplegen. Je kan nog uuuuuuren zoet zijn met Zappa.
A brilliant jazz, rock, and classical musician who also wrote what he called a "very stupid little song" about venereal disease;
an acute and acerbic social and political critic who refused to kowtow to any form of political correctness,
preferring instead to be seen as an equal-opportunity offender - this was Frank Zappa.
Born in 1940, Zappa's earliest musical influence in his teen years was Varèse's percussion composition Ionisation,
which introduced him to the powerful explorations of modern classical music. Bored with formal studies, he dropped out of community college after one semester,
and in the early 1960s set up shop in Los Angeles as a professional musician with his own recording studio.
In 1964 he joined a local R&B band, The Soul Giants, as a guitarist, and became the group's leader,
renaming it "The Mothers" - which subsequently had to be renamed "The Mothers of Invention" at their recording studio's insistence -
you can guess why. Their 1966 debut album, Freak Out!, established the band firmly at the forefront of musical experimentation and satirical critique of American society;
1967's Absolutely Free and 1968's We're Only In It For The Money confirmed this status, while parodying the worst excesses of the hippie and flower power movement.
Zappa created a unique approach to composition, which he called "conceptual continuity", which allowed him to bridge wildly varying musical styles
in pursuit of expressive richness and clarity. Simultaneously, his requirement for precise tuning and timing from his fellow performers allowed him to merge studio production
and live performance recordings seamlessly when creating new works. The original Mothers were disbanded in 1969, when Zappa released the solo album Hot Rats,
featuring his jazz-inspired guitar backed by session players. A new version of the Mothers backed Zappa in the soundtrack to his movie 200 Motels,
which was shot on videotape and transferred to 35mm film after editing, a Zappa innovation. In December 1971, Zappa was sidelined by a fire at the Montreux Festival,
which destroyed the band's equipment (the theme of the song "Smoke on the Water"), and by an attack by a disgruntled audience member in London,
which hospitalized Zappa with multiple fractures. Returning to the stage in 1972, he continued to tour with multiple versions of the Mothers,
and produce albums at an astounding rate. He closed the 70s with Sheik Yerbouti and the triple LP Joe's Garage, both of which gathered critical acclaim from music fans,
and condemnation from the conservative right. The 1980s saw Zappa continue his development of new experimental musical techniques,
including ground-breaking work on synclavier composition.
His political side was not neglected: on September 19, 1985, Zappa testified before the US Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, a
ttacking the Parents Music Resource Center, a music censorship organization founded by a group of congressional wives; he subsequently used excerpts from the PMRC hearings
to good satirical and musical effect in his album Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention.
His final rock band tour took place in 1988;
in 1991, Zappa was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, at which point he devoted the bulk of his time and energy to creating modern orchestral and synclavier works,
which culminated in 1993's Civilization, Phaze III. Frank Zappa died on December 4, 1993, at the age of 52, after working a minimum of 12 hours per day for most of his life.
Had he lived longer, he would have been happy to see the creation of downloadable music services like iTunes, a development he foretold in 1983.