| 1 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Resize_Frank__5726.jpg]] |
| 2 | |
| 3 | [floatboxright:Influences: |
| 4 | + Music/EdgardVarese, Music/IgorStravinsky, Music/JohnnyGuitarWatson, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Guitar Slim, Music/MuddyWaters, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Music/BelaBartok, {{Doowop}}, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Music/HowlinWolf, Johnny Otis, Music/SpikeJones, Pierre Boulez, Music/JohnCage, Music/CharlesIves, Music/CharlesMingus, Music/EricDolphy, Music/MauriceRavel, Music/RaviShankar... |
| 5 | Influenced: |
| 6 | + Music/TheBeatles, Music/JohnLennon, Music/YokoOno, Music/JimiHendrix, Music/CaptainBeefheart, Music/TheStooges, Music/AliceCooper, Music/BlackSabbath, Music/GeorgeClinton, Music/SteveVai, Music/JethroTull, Music/DeadKennedys, Music/TalkingHeads, Music/{{Cardiacs}}, Music/WeirdAlYankovic, Music/TheyMightBeGiants, Music/{{Primus}}, Music/{{Phish}}, Music/{{Ween}}, Music/TenaciousD, Music/PereUbu, Music/DavidBowie, Music/BrianEno, Music/IggyPop, Music/{{Devo}}, Music/{{Kraftwerk}}, Music/OingoBoingo, Music/SystemOfADown, Music/KingCrimson, Creator/HirokazuTanaka, Music/{{Merzbow}}, Music/SoftMachine, Music/StevenWilson, Music/RedHotChiliPeppers, Music/JohnFrusciante, Music/{{Radiohead}}, Music/TheMarsVolta, R. Stevie Moore, Music/{{Magma}}, Music/TheResidents... |
| 7 | ] |
| 8 | %% This is how the quote formatting is suppose to look: One indent, then dialog, then two indents, then the source. Don't mess with it. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | ->''"A lot of what we ''[The Mothers]'' do is designed to annoy people to the point that they -- just for a second -- might question enough of their environment to do something about it."'' |
| 11 | -->--'''Interview with British TV in 1968.''' |
| 12 | |
| 13 | Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 -- December 4, 1993) was a famous CrazyIsCool and prolific composer/musician, singer, guitarist, RecordProducer, film director and anti-censorship activist. His [[ArchivePanic massive]] [[AttentionDeficitCreatorDisorder 75-album output]], both solo and with his band The Mothers of Invention, is largely known for spanning almost every genre known to man from [[HardRock straightforward rock 'n roll]] to free-jazz, musique concrète and classical music, alternating between heavy experimentalism and accessible catchiness and being chock-full of satirical, absurd, [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments gut-bustingly funny]] lyrics. While he had occasional brushes with mainstream fame in TheSeventies and TheEighties, the bulk of his career was spent as a legendary cult figure, boasting a small but devoted fandom and critical acclaim. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | Many other famous musicians worked with him at various points, such as [[Music/{{Cream}} Jack Bruce]], Aynsley Dunbar, Mike Keneally, Music/SteveVai [[note]]Vai, when he was a 17 year old, sent a note-perfect transcription of Zappa's guitar solo in "The Black Page" to him, so he hired him as a transcriber, eventually promoting him to 'stunt guitarist' for his live band in the early 80s.[[/note]], Jean Luc-Ponty, Music/JohnLennon and Music/YokoOno, Music/PinkFloyd[[note]]The band famously [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz9bn24rxrI jammed]] with Zappa at a music festival once in 1969; Zappa notably looked like the OnlySaneMan during the entire performance, not just among the band but among ''everyone else at the festival'', high-as-dicks audience included[[/note]], and friend (and occasional [[TheRival rival]]) and collaborator [[Music/CaptainBeefheart Don Van Vliet]]. Avant-garde guitarist Adrian Belew also got his big break working with Zappa, and managed to work with both Music/DavidBowie and Music/TalkingHeads off of the strength of his contributions to Zappa's music (having impressed Music/BrianEno enough to make him recommend Belew to both artists); in turn, his work with Bowie and [=GaGa=] led to him becoming the frontman for Music/KingCrimson between 1981 and 2008 (and he certainly didn't forget his roots working with Zappa; hell, "City of Tiny Lites" would fit right in with Belew's later work with King Crimson). |
| 16 | |
| 17 | His eclecticism, absurdism, instrumental talent and anti-establishment stance has been heavily influential, with numerous acts citing his influence such as Music/{{Primus}}, Music/{{Phish}}, Music/JohnFrusciante of Music/RedHotChiliPeppers[[note]]Before Frusciante joined RHCP, he actually auditioned to join the Mothers of Invention; however, he declined Zappa's invitation after he realized Zappa had a strict no-drugs policy[[/note]], Music/JethroTull, Music/BlackSabbath, Music/DreamTheater, Music/SystemOfADown, Music/GeorgeClinton, [[Music/InsaneClownPosse Mike E. Clark]], Music/TheyMightBeGiants and Music/WeirdAlYankovic. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | Zappa's life-long anti-establishment stance manifested itself through harsh criticism of public education and organized religion, and most famously through his anti-censorship activism. The latter earned him lasting fame when he showed up at a Senate hearing in 1985 and completely tore the [[MoralGuardians PMRC]] a new asshole with his statements, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa#Senate_testimony memorably comparing their proposed "Parental Advisory" sticker to "treating dandruff by decapitation"]]. As a result, the PMRC slapped his entirely instrumental ''Music/JazzFromHell'' album with the "Explicit Lyrics" warning (the only instrumental album to have such a sticker), citing the title of the song "G-Spot Tornado". |
| 20 | |
| 21 | Despite his anti-establishment stance, Zappa was a major supporter of advancements in technology in music. He was one of the first non-classical, non-jazz artists to embrace digital recording, sourced out indie label Creator/{{Rykodisc}} to provide officially-sanctioned CD releases of his work (long before they hit it big with the Music/JimiHendrix and David Bowie back-catalogs; incidentally, Bowie's decision to license his catalog to Rykodisc was directly inspired by Zappa's use of the label), and was an early adopter of the Synclavier digital synthesizer and sampler. The instrument would become an increasingly prominent feature in Zappa's work as the years went on and his music grew more complex, leading Zappa to believe that his work had reached a point where performing it with actual musicians would be next-to-impossible (the Modern Ensemble's performance of "G-Spot Tornado" on ''Music/TheYellowShark'' would at least partly trounce that notion). Zappa even predicted the rise of digitally downloaded music, albeit envisioning it as being a phone line-based service (seeing as how the internet [[TechnologyMarchesOn at the time]] wasn't the publicly available and widely versatile network that it is today). |
| 22 | |
| 23 | He once appeared in the ''WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow'' episode "Powdered Toast Man", voicing the Pope (which, almost inevitably for both Zappa and ''Ren & Stimpy'' at this point, was edited due to censor complaints). He also appeared in an episode of ''Series/MiamiVice'', playing the role of a coke lord, ironic but also surprisingly apt given his own distaste for the drug and its prevalence at the time. Zappa also hosted an episode of ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' during its fourth season (1978-1979), which didn't go over so well with the cast at the time, who saw Zappa's mugging and calling attention to the cue cards during sketches extremely irritating and led to him getting banned from the show (the only cast member who liked Frank Zappa and was glad that he hosted was Creator/JohnBelushi); ''SNL'' fans tend to consider it one of the worst episodes of the show, a possible IntendedAudienceReaction on Zappa's part given his dislike towards the stringently limited amount of time he had to memorize and rehearse the episode's scripts. He published his autobiography, ''Literature/TheRealFrankZappaBook'', in 1989. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | Frank was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1990; it was already terminal, and it's thought he was suffering with it for up to a decade prior. He devoted his remaining years to work with the Synclavier, and continued a prolific production schedule. He died in 1993, 17 days short of his 53rd birthday. His final album, the double-CD Synclavier epic ''Music/CivilizationPhazeIII'', was released the following year. |
| 26 | |
| 27 | Some of his songs were used during the first two seasons of ''WesternAnimation/{{Duckman}}'' as a tribute and his son, Dweezil, was cast as the voice of Duckman's moronic Valley Boy son, Ajax. Two years later a group of Zappa fans in Lithuania paid to have a bronze bust of Zappa erected in downtown Vilnius, although Zappa wasn't Lithuanian and had never visited the country. It went on to become Vilnius' [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/may/09/news second-most-popular tourist attraction]]. In 2008 a replica was erected in Baltimore, which actually ''was'' his birthplace. Magazine/RollingStone recognizes him as the twentieth greatest guitarist of all time on their list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. |
| 28 | |
| 29 | No relation to the ''[[VideoGame/GuiltyGear other]]'' Zappa (although he did get the name from him). Or the blacksmith from ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'' (though with the game's repeated musical {{Shout Out}}s, he may be...). |
| 30 | |
| 31 | Oh, and he gave his four kids really weird but cool names like Moon Unit Zappa, Dweezil Zappa, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan Zappa and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen Zappa. Moon is probably best known for her vocals on Zappa's highest-charting single, 1982's "Valley Girl", and Dweezil has toured with many former Zappa band members over the past several years, playing much of his father's repertoire in a series of successful concert tours billed as ''Zappa Plays Zappa''. |
| 32 | |
| 33 | After his death, Frank's wife Gail managed the ''Zappa Family Trust'', which is responsible for overseeing re-issues of his discography, overseeing the use of Zappa's works in other media, as well the [[http://zappa.com release]] of new posthumous releases. In 2012, the Trust collaborated with Universal Music Enterprises to put out a massive CD reissue campaign of Zappa's canonical back-catalog, compiling every studio and live album released during his lifetime (including the three that Warner Bros. released behind his back) plus the 1996 posthumous release ''Music/{{Lather}}'' under the "Official Release" banner; these reissues are nowadays considered the definitive CD releases of Zappa's material, with only a small number of exceptions[[note]]mainly those that preserve the 80's remixes over the original LP ones, e.g. ''Music/FreakOutAlbum'' (the 2006 ''MOFO Project/Object'' CD contains the original mix), ''Music/CruisingWithRubenAndTheJets'' (the 2010 ''Greasy Love Songs'' CD contains the original mix), and ''Music/RoxyAndElsewhere'' (the original Barking Pumpkin CD is the only one to contain the original mix of "Cheepnis")[[/note]]. The "Official Release" banner is also used for new posthumous releases that've been officially sanctioned by the Trust. When Gail passed away in October of 2015, Amhet and Diva were given the majority share of the Trust, much to the chagrin of their older siblings. For a couple of years, relations were strained, to the point where Dweezil was no longer allowed to use the 'Zappa Plays Zappa' name for his tours. But in 2018, the four appeared to work out their differences. |
| 34 | |
| 35 | A documentary by Alex Winter, '''Zappa''', was released in 2020 by Magnolia Pictures to strong reviews. The entire Zappa catalogue was sold to UMD in 2022, and Amhet Zappa oversees new releases of archival material and anniversary reissues of Zappa's previous albums. |
| 36 | |
| 37 | !! Zappa albums with pages on TV Tropes, as indicated by the 2012 "Official Releases" reissue campaign (studio albums in '''bold'''): |
| 38 | * '''''Music/FreakOutAlbum''''' (1966) |
| 39 | * '''''Music/AbsolutelyFree''''' (1967) |
| 40 | * '''''Music/LumpyGravy''''' (1968) |
| 41 | * '''''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney''''' (1968) |
| 42 | * '''''Music/CruisingWithRubenAndTheJets''''' (1968) |
| 43 | * '''''Music/UncleMeat''''' (1969) |
| 44 | * '''''Music/HotRats''''' (1969) |
| 45 | * '''''Music/BurntWeenySandwich''''' (1970) |
| 46 | * '''''Music/WeaselsRippedMyFlesh''''' (1970) |
| 47 | * '''''Music/ChungasRevenge''''' (1970) |
| 48 | * ''Music/FillmoreEastJune1971'' (1971) |
| 49 | * ''Film/TwoHundredMotels'' (1971) |
| 50 | * ''Music/JustAnotherBandFromLA'' (1972) |
| 51 | * '''''Music/WakaJawaka''''' (1972) |
| 52 | * '''''Music/TheGrandWazoo''''' (1972) |
| 53 | * '''''Music/OverNiteSensation''''' (1973) |
| 54 | * '''''Music/{{Apostrophe}}''''' (1974) |
| 55 | * ''Music/RoxyAndElsewhere'' (1974) |
| 56 | * '''''Music/OneSizeFitsAll''''' (1975) |
| 57 | * ''Music/BongoFury'' (1975) |
| 58 | * '''''Music/ZootAllures''''' (1976) |
| 59 | * ''Music/ZappaInNewYork'' (1978) |
| 60 | * '''''Music/StudioTan''''' (1978) |
| 61 | * '''''Music/SleepDirt''''' (1978) |
| 62 | * ''Music/SheikYerbouti'' (1979)[[note]]Live album with heavy studio overdubbing; Website/{{Wikipedia}} classifies it as a live album.[[/note]] |
| 63 | * ''Music/OrchestralFavorites'' (1979) |
| 64 | * '''''Music/JoesGarage''''' (1979) |
| 65 | * ''Music/TinseltownRebellion'' (1981) |
| 66 | * ''Music/ShutUpNPlayYerGuitar'' (1981) |
| 67 | * '''''Music/YouAreWhatYouIs''''' (1981) |
| 68 | * '''''Music/ShipArrivingTooLateToSaveADrowningWitch''''' (1982) |
| 69 | * '''''Music/TheManFromUtopia''''' (1983) |
| 70 | * '''''Music/LondonSymphonyOrchestra''''' (1983/1987)[[note]]Volume I released in 1983, Volume II released in 1987; both volumes are described on one page here[[/note]] |
| 71 | * '''''Music/ThePerfectStranger''''' (1984) |
| 72 | * '''''Music/ThemOrUs''''' (1984) |
| 73 | * '''''Music/FrancescoZappa''''' (1984) |
| 74 | * '''''Music/ThingFish''''' (1984) |
| 75 | * '''''Music/FrankZappaMeetsTheMothersOfPrevention''''' (1985) |
| 76 | * ''Music/DoesHumorBelongInMusic'' (1986) |
| 77 | * '''''Music/JazzFromHell''''' (1986) |
| 78 | * ''Music/{{Guitar}}'' (1988) |
| 79 | * ''Music/BroadwayTheHardWay'' (1988) |
| 80 | * ''Music/TheBestBandYouNeverHeardInYourLife'' (1991) |
| 81 | * ''Music/MakeAJazzNoiseHere'' (1991) |
| 82 | * ''Music/TheYellowShark'' (1993) |
| 83 | * '''''Music/CivilizationPhazeIII''''' (1994) |
| 84 | * '''''Music/{{Lather}}''''' (1996)[[note]]Some tracks recorded from live performances and originally included on the live album ''Zappa in New York'', but this album is overall considered a studio record.[[/note]] |
| 85 | ---- |
| 86 | !!! '''''TV Tropes, what's gotten into you?''''': |
| 87 | * AffectionateParody: |
| 88 | ** The album ''Music/CruisingWithRubenAndTheJets'', made along with the Mothers of Invention, is an affectionate parody of [[TheFifties fifties]] {{Doowop}} music. Borders on IndecisiveParody, as the sound was so authentic that many radio stations believed it to be made by another band entirely. |
| 89 | ** Music/WeirdAlYankovic parodied Zappa's style in the song "Genius in France", which is an original "style parody" rather than a takeoff of an existing song. It sounds uncannily like a real Zappa piece, thanks at least in part to Frank's son Dweezil showing up to play the guitar solo. |
| 90 | ** The introduction to "The Illinois Enema Bandit" from ''Music/ZappaInNewYork'' starts out with a march followed by some ''Radio/{{Dragnet}}''-style heavy brass and "this is a true story"-type narration. |
| 91 | * AlbumFiller: Many first-time Zappa listeners will likely enjoy the accessible tracks on his albums more than the complex and weird ones. However, people who gradually get used to the more difficult songs will after a while appreciate them too. That said, there are some tracks that have been criticized for being nothing but album filler, even by hardcore fans. |
| 92 | ** ''Music/UncleMeat'': The CD issue of this album added roughly ''forty-one minutes'' of dialogue from the unfinished film of the same name between the original LP's third and fourth sides, alongside a bonus track recorded almost two decades later in the early eighties ("Tengo na minchia tanta", which also appears in the ''Dub Room Special'' video), that ended up in a later revision of the film (one that saw home video release) but otherwise had nothing to do with ''Uncle Meat'' itself. ''Uncle Meat'' proper is just under seventy-seven minutes, which at the time could not fit on one CD; making two discs felt short, so the bonuses were added to really pad it all out. Most Zappa fans call them "penalty tracks". |
| 93 | ** ''Music/JoesGarage'': This 3LP / 2CD RockOpera is a bit of a BrokenBase, as the plot and tight sequencing at the beginning of the album starts to unwind as the album plays out. The album spends three songs early on focusing on a background character and her sexual encounters with a band (as a bit of an AuthorTract), and the final third of the album features little in the way of plot and plenty in the way of guitar solos. |
| 94 | ** ''Thing Fish'': Another 3LP / 2CD RockOpera, generally considered to be the most despised record in Zappa's catalogue. The album was critically panned on release for repurposing eight songs to fit the narrative of the album. |
| 95 | * AlbumTitleDrop: |
| 96 | ** "It Can't Happen Here" from ''Music/FreakOutAlbum'': |
| 97 | --->Who could imagine that they would ''freak out'' somewhere in Kansas? |
| 98 | ** "''Hot Rats''", in "Willie the Pimp" |
| 99 | ** ''Apostrophe'' is mentioned in "Stink-Foot". |
| 100 | * AllDrummersAreAnimals: Terry Bozzio, hoo boy. |
| 101 | * AllThereInTheManual: A lot of times, the liner notes spell things out and explain some of the in-jokes, word salads, satirical intentions, and weird lyrics (Zappa felt that having the liner notes and album jacket to look at and touch was part of what fans treasured about the music buying experience). Indeed, several songs in the late 70s and early 80s were based entirely around in-jokes, such as "Punky's Whips" (see AttractiveBentGender). Beyond that though, there's still his autobiography which explains a lot, also the snippets of vital info you get from reading the oceans of Zappa info available on the net. Many Zappa confederates and well-wishers have stepped out from behind the curtains over the years to explain motivations or in-jokes or origins of songs. Also, Zappa's vast non-American audience is frequently confused by Zappa's satirically America-centric references, his younger audience is frequently confused by his unspeakable filthiness, and his modern audience is confused by his (often deliberately) dated references. These people gather all over the internet to enlighten each other in public. There's a lot out there to take in. |
| 102 | * AnimalMotifs: Fido the poodle (''Music/{{Apostrophe}}'', ''Music/RoxyAndElsewhere''), pigs and ponies (''Music/LumpyGravy''), the mudshark (''Music/FillmoreEastJune1971''), giant spiders (''Roxy & Elsewhere'', ''Music/SleepDirt''), toads (''Music/WeaselsRippedMyFlesh'') and weasels (''Music/WeaselsRippedMyFlesh''). |
| 103 | * {{Anorgasmia}}: On the album ''Music/FillmoreEastJune1971'' the track "Do You Like My New Car?" features a sketch where Howard plays himself, while Mark plays a groupie who is in awe of Howard's "professionalism as a rockstar". In other versions of the sketch (the Fillmore album doesn't make it clear), she tells him that she "can't come" unless he sings "his big hit record" to her. Being part of The Mothers Of Invention Howard of course never had a hit single, but [[spoiler:since he used to be a member of The Turtles too he just sings "Happy Together" to her.]] This sketch was also based on reality, as Howard did once encounter a groupie who had this request. |
| 104 | * AntiLoveSong: Most famously on ''Music/FreakOutAlbum'', but throughout his discography. |
| 105 | * ArcWords: On ''Music/JoesGarage'' the phrase "The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you gotta load or unload, go to the White Zone. You'll love it. It's a way of life." comes up in at least three songs. |
| 106 | * ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: From versions of "Honey, Don't You Want a Man Like Me?" from ''Music/ZappaInNewYork'' performed in the '80s (examples can be found on, at the very least volumes 3 and 6 of the ''You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore'' series): "He called her a pig, a slut, and a whore, a bitch and a Republican". The last of those epithets is likely to be interpreted as the most offensive.[[note]]Notably, he also revised Betty's favourite group from Helen Reddy to Music/TwistedSister in this era. In a coincidence, that group's frontman Dee Snider was, alongside Music/JohnDenver, the only other musician besides Zappa to testify at the PMRC hearings, but Zappa had already started performing the revised lyrics before that occurrence.[[/note]] |
| 107 | * AttractiveBentGender: Occurs with Zappa's then-drummer Terry Bozzio in "Punky's Whips", in reference to androgynous male singer and guitarist Punky Meadows, a member of the GlamRock band Angel. The song was based on Bozzio keeping a picture of the guitarist with him. |
| 108 | * AudienceParticipation: Would at times attempt to create special pieces involving different sections of the audience to sing different songs/compositions as a way to compensate for playing in terrible settings. |
| 109 | * AuthorAppeal: Music in general, freedom of speech, Music/EdgardVarese, Music/IgorStravinsky, {{Doowop}}, smoking, coffee, politics, comedy, {{Satire}}, ..., which are all a CreatorThumbprint too. |
| 110 | * [[{{Biography}} Autobiography]]: ''Literature/TheRealFrankZappaBook'' |
| 111 | * BadassCrew: Zappa once played an open-air concert in Italy in which, during the song "Cocaine Decisions", a full-scale riot broke out between the audience and the police. When a tear gas canister went off near the stage, the singers hesitated but the band kept playing, and when Zappa's attempts to calm things down didn't work, he cued up the next song, "Nig-Biz". Despite the tear gas continuing to fill the stage and the increasing mayhem in the stalls, the band kept playing and gave a thoroughly solid performance; according to Zappa, his bodyguard John Smothers had to keep running on stage to wipe the tears from the eyes of lead singer Ray White. As Zappa had a habit of recording every live performance, the full audio of this was eventually released on ''You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore Vol. 3''. |
| 112 | * BadassNormal: Believe it or not, a human being wrote all that. |
| 113 | * UsefulNotes/{{Baseball}}: ''You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore Vol. 4'' includes a spoof of the classic "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", done as a spoken broadcast of a game between the [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball Atlanta Braves and Chicago Cubs]], with a sort-of rendition of the actual lyrics at the end. |
| 114 | * BawdySong: A considerable chunk of his lyrics fit in this category. |
| 115 | * BerserkButton: CountryMusic, hippies, love songs, the ''plastic people'', Republicans, unions, {{Disco}}, UsefulNotes/RichardNixon, the American government, American public schools, UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan, drug users, televangelists, the Moral Majority, Creator/{{MTV}}, the PMRC, Pat Boone, ''Music/SgtPeppersLonelyHeartsClubBand'', Music/MichaelJackson, advertising,... |
| 116 | * BitingTheHandHumor: ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'' splits its time between satirizing the mistreatment of ''actual'' outcasts ("Concentration Moon", "Mom & Dad") and mocking hippies ("Who Needs the Peace Corps?", "Absolutely Free", "Flower Punk"). |
| 117 | * BlackComedy: |
| 118 | ** The album ''Music/ThingFish'', about a mutated gang of black stereotypes with dresses growing out of their bodies putting on a Broadway show, in which they urinate on the audience. The two audience members remaining are chained up and forced to watch a character eat the raw digestive system of a pig surrounded by zombies. Various bizarre events ensue, involving a woman having simulated sex with an enormous briefcase, a man being defecated on by a deformed ventriloquist dummy while in bare-chested S&M gear, and an ending which has no resolution whatsoever, as dwarfs holding onions spill out of the set and several characters begin randomly having anal sex as a song from earlier in the album is played backwards. This also falls under HeadTiltinglyKinky, AntiquatedLinguistics and a variety of other tropes. |
| 119 | ** "Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk" from ''Music/BroadwayTheHardWay'' features a dark joke making fun of the hypocrisy of religious fundamentalists claiming to oppose abortion because they respect the sancticty of life while also having no problem using violence on the people they discriminate against. |
| 120 | -->What's that hanging' from the neighbor's tree?\ |
| 121 | Why, it looks like colored folks to me. |
| 122 | * BodyHorror: Frank Zappa defeats the Devil by invoking the power of ''Titties and Beer'' from ''Music/ZappaInNewYork''... and burrowing right into his body. |
| 123 | * BreadEggsBreadedEggs: "Wet T-Shirt Nite" on ''Music/JoesGarage'': |
| 124 | -->'''Ike Willis:''' I know you want someone to show you some tits! BIG ONES! WET ONES! BIG WET ONES! |
| 125 | * BreakUpSong: |
| 126 | ** "Any Way the Wind Blows", where the singer tells his girlfriend how he's so sick of their quarrels that he's leaving her for another woman who he knows will treat him better. |
| 127 | ** "Stuff Up the Cracks" from ''Music/CruisingWithRubenAndTheJets'' has the singer pleading his girl not to leave him, or else he'll [[SuicideAsComedy kill himself with oven gas]]. |
| 128 | * BreakingTheFourthWall: Done a couple of times. |
| 129 | ** "Plastic People", from ''Music/AbsolutelyFree'' |
| 130 | --->Then go home and check yourself. You think we're singing 'bout someone else? |
| 131 | ** "The Idiot Bastard Son", from ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'' |
| 132 | --->The child will grow and enter a world of liars and cheaters and people like you/who smile and think they know what this is about/you think you know everything/maybe so/the song we sing/are you listening? |
| 133 | * BrokenPedestal: |
| 134 | ** Scottish rocker Alex Harvey loved Frank Zappa and finally got to open for him one night. The crowd booed Alex off the stage, and Frank never intervened or helped in any way. Alex was kind of crushed. |
| 135 | ** [[Creator/CheechAndChong Tommy Chong]] is a huge Zappa fan. Zappa attended one of Cheech & Chong's performances and left because he hated the duo's stoner humor, much to Chong's disappointment. |
| 136 | * BrotherhoodOfFunnyHats: Claimed in the liner notes of "The Lost Episodes" that the title ''Music/TheGrandWazoo'' referred to whoever it was in one of these organizations who had the biggest, stupidest hat. |
| 137 | * CallBack: His music is filled with these; he called it "Conceptual Continuity". Musical and lyrical elements recurred from songs to song; for example, "The Adventures of Greggery Peccary" from ''Music/StudioTan'' and ''Music/{{Lather}}'' has both musical and lyrical references to earlier-released songs such as "For Calvin (and His Next Two Hitch-Hikers)" from ''Music/TheGrandWazoo'' and "Billy the Mountain" from ''Music/JustAnotherBandFromLA''. The callbacks even extend to works of other artists he produced; Music/CaptainBeefheart's "The Blimp (Mousetrapreplica)" from ''Music/TroutMaskReplica'' contains elements of the Mothers' "Charles Ives" (which appears on ''You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore Vol. 5'' as well as the coda to "Didja Get Any Onya?" on the Rykodisc CD edition of ''Music/WeaselsRippedMyFlesh''). |
| 138 | * CasanovaWannabe: "You want to get set free onetime? All you have to do is get your pants off, admit that you have your pants off, find somebody of the opposite sex, or, if you wanna be a little bit weird, you can do something else, but do it sexually, that's the only way you're going to set yourself free." |
| 139 | * CatchPhrase: |
| 140 | ** "Take it away, [name]!" |
| 141 | ** "Bring the band on down behind me", when making an announcement. |
| 142 | ** Also "That's right, you heard right..." and "Aw-reety, aw-righty" and "Hello/Goodnight, boys and girls". Zappa ''loved'' cheesy showbiz catchphrases. His invariable sign-off at the end of a concert was a straightforward "Thanks for comin' to the concert, good night". |
| 143 | ** Terry Bozzio had 'One more time for the world!' |
| 144 | ** Jimmy Carl Black had "Hi there, boys and girls. I'm Jimmy Carl Black, and I'm the Indian of the group". |
| 145 | ** "Suzy Creamcheese, what's got into you?" |
| 146 | * CatholicSchoolgirlsRule: "Catholic Girls", from ''Music/FrankZappa'' |
| 147 | -->Did they all take the vow? |
| 148 | * ClassicalMusic: His work often incorporates classical music, or '''is''' classical music, and he often employed classical orchestras. Started out in serious music and took up rock/pop music as a day job. ''Music/ThePerfectStranger'', ''Music/LondonSymphonyOrchestra'' and ''Music/TheYellowShark'' are all classical albums. |
| 149 | * ConceptAlbum: A handful of his albums fit this trope. Some featured recurring thematic ideas, while others were fully fleshed out rock operas. Notable examples include: |
| 150 | ** ''Music/FreakOutAlbum'' is often considered the first rock concept album (if Music/TheBeachBoys' ''Music/PetSounds'', which came out a month before it, isn't[[note]]the songs on ''Pet Sounds'' are thematically unified but Brian Wilson has hinted that it may not have been consciously intended as a concept album[[/note]]), so it could be listed as the UrExample, [[TropeMakers Trope Maker]], and/or TropeCodifier. The following two Mothers albums, ''Music/AbsolutelyFree'' and ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'', were heavier concept albums than ''Freak Out!'', with the latter being a satire on all sides of the Flower Power movement: the hippies that abandoned their cause to conform to a lifestyle of flowers and weed, and the fakes who would join them to look hip; the parents who didn't pay attention to their kids; and the police who would eventually brutalize those kids. |
| 151 | ** ''Music/CruisingWithRubenAndTheJets'': An album of straight doo-wop songs, removed from their era. |
| 152 | ** ''Music/{{Apostrophe}}'' is a concept album for the first five songs. The narrator has a dream that he is an Eskimo named [[Film/NanookOfTheNorth Nanook]], and when he discovers a fur trapper beating his favorite baby seal he rubs yellow snow in his eyes, causing the trapper to go blind. The fur trapper must travel to the Parish of St. Alfonso, currently hosting a pancake breakfast, with food cooked by Father Vivian O'Blivion. The narrator then visits a scamming fortune teller whom he humiliates. The album then branches off into unrelated territory, concluding with the tale of a horrid disease called Stink-Foot. |
| 153 | ** ''Music/JoesGarage'': A man is jailed for playing in a rock and roll band in a time when music is outlawed. [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot Falls off the rails hard]] by the end. |
| 154 | ** ''Music/YouAreWhatYouIs'': A stream-of-consciousness story skewering teenagers, groupies, phonies and religious fanatics. |
| 155 | ** ''Thing Fish'': Mutated black people stage a play for an unwitting white couple as a pretense to kidnap and torture them, and show how their carelessness led to their situation. ''Spectacularly falls off the rails and bursts into flames'' by the end. |
| 156 | ** ''Francesco Zappa'': Zappa performing compositions by the actual 18th century composer Francesco Zappa. |
| 157 | ** ''Civilization Phaze III'': A post-apocalyptic society lives within a piano, as sentient pigs and ponies have taken over the Earth. The album is conceptually linked with ''We're Only In It for the Money'' (Phase I) and ''Lumpy Gravy'' (Phase II) as all share source material from 1966-67. |
| 158 | * ConfusingMultipleNegatives: The chorus of "You Are What You Is": |
| 159 | -->Do you know what you are?\ |
| 160 | You are what you is,\ |
| 161 | You is what you am,\ |
| 162 | (A cow don't make ham),\ |
| 163 | You ain't what you're not,\ |
| 164 | So see what you got,\ |
| 165 | You are what you is,\ |
| 166 | And that's all it is... |
| 167 | * ContinuityNod: Zappa made continuity nods to his entire oeuvre all the time. He even had a special name for it: "conceptual continuity". |
| 168 | * CreatorInJoke: Zappa had so many in-jokes with his bandmates that he wrote multiple songs about them. Only a few of them have been fully explained, and only one – "The Jazz Discharge Party Hats" from ''Music/TheManFromUtopia'' – explains the joke for the audience (the joke in question was why certain members of the band wore women's panties on their head during concerts). Other in-jokes are mentioned in passing in concerts, such as Zappa offhandedly mentioning in "Titties & Beer" from ''Music/ZappaInNewYork'' that the Devil (played by drummer Terry Bozzio) jerks off to a picture of Angel guitarist Punky Meadows (which got its own in-joke song, "Punky's Whips". See AttractiveBentGender). |
| 169 | * CurseCutShort: On his episode of ''A&E Biography'', he explained that, at the time he renamed the Soul Giants "The Mothers", the word ''mother'' was short for ''motherfucker'' and was slang for "great musician", and that the Mothers were a ''group'' of ''motherfuckers.'' The record company insisted that they change the name, so the line is, |
| 170 | -->'''Zappa:''' Out of necessity, we became the Mothers of Invention. |
| 171 | * DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: |
| 172 | ** "Honey, Don't You Want A Man Like Me?" from ''Music/ZappaInNewYork'' has one, when the male protagonist loses his temper on being denied sex by the female protagonist: |
| 173 | --->And she slammed the door (''THE DOOR!'') in a petulant frenzy.\ |
| 174 | ''A PETULANT FRENZY! THIS IS A PETULANT! FRENZY! I'M PETULANT, AND I'M HAVING A FRENZY!'' |
| 175 | ** "Billy The Mountain" from ''Music/JustAnotherBandFromLA'' |
| 176 | --->''Billy the Mountain was a mountain/ Ethel was a tree growing off his shoulder'' (''Billy was a mountain. Ethel was a tree growing off his shoulder.'') |
| 177 | * DistinctDoubleAlbum: ''Music/FreakOutAlbum'' was one of the first rock double albums in history, though on the CD release it all fits on one disc. Other double albums in Zappa's catalogue are ''Music/UncleMeat'', ''Film/TwoHundredMotels'', ''Music/ZappaInNewYork'', ''Thing Fish'', ''Make A Jazz Noise Here'', all the ''You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore'' albums, ''Playground Psychotics'', ''Civilization Phaze II'' the triple album ''Music/ShutUpNPlayYerGuitar'' and ''Music/{{Lather}}'' which was planned as a quadruple vinyl album (it became a triple CD set). |
| 178 | * DownerEnding: The narrative of ''Music/JoesGarage'' has one in the form of the instrumental track "Watermelon in Easter Hay", in which the protagonist, depressed over nobody being able to hear his imaginary songs in a society where music is banned, retreats to his room and dreams one last song as a farewell to music before he conforms to society. Although this is the end of Joe's story, it's not the end of ''Music/JoesGarage'' the album, as the final track is a very odd fake-shambolic singalong featuring Zappa and anyone who was in the studio at the time, called "Little Green Rosetta" - technically a GainaxEnding. |
| 179 | ** Also, his death from prostate cancer at age 52. |
| 180 | * DrugsAreBad: He didn't like them, and he didn't want his band members using them while working. Wrote some anti-drug themed songs like "Cocaine Decisions" from ''Music/TheManFromUtopia'' and "Charlie's Enormous Mouth" from ''Music/YouAreWhatYouIs''. |
| 181 | ** However, that said, he was a lifelong opponent of the drug war, making him a slight subversion of this trope as well. He didn't think people should be ''using'' drugs, but he also didn't think it was any of the government's business whether they were or not, and furthermore felt that creating a black market was much more dangerous than having a legal, regulated market. |
| 182 | * {{Dystopia}}: ''Music/JoesGarage'' is a rock opera set in a dystopian future where music and sex will be illegal, and the dominant religion is the [[ChurchOfHappyology Church of Appliantology]]. |
| 183 | * ElvisHasLeftThePlanet: "Elvis Has Just Left the Building" from ''Broadway The Hard Way'', where the narrator asks Jesus to let him come back. |
| 184 | * EpicRocking: He did this countless times throughout his career; one of his best known examples is the seven minute guitar solo during "Willie the Pimp" on ''Music/HotRats'' or the epic jams that take up the final tracks of ''Music/FreakOutAlbum'' and ''Music/UncleMeat''. Other extreme examples are "Billy the Mountain" from ''Music/JustAnotherBandFromLA'', which was known to get as long as forty minutes sometimes during live performances, and the sort-of sequel "The Adventures of Gregary Peccary" from ''Music/StudioTan'' and ''Music/{{Lather}}'', which in the album version is twenty-one minutes long and in one live performance is ''thirty-three''. "Black Napkins" is twenty-eight minutes long on the deluxe reissue of ''Music/ZappaInNewYork''. ''Absolutely Free'' could also be considered an example; it essentially consists of the 19:46 title suite (not to be confused with the identically named and much shorter song on ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'', which is a completely different composition) and the 18:49 "The M.O.I. American Pageant", but these are each divided into several tracks. There are plenty of other examples, many of which also hover around the twenty-minute mark; you could probably fill four or five [=CDs=] with different songs Zappa stretched out to the twenty-minute mark in various performances throughout the years. |
| 185 | * EverythingIsAnInstrument: In one of his earliest performances live on the Steve Allen Show in 1963, Zappa played the fiddle... on a bicycle. |
| 186 | * EvilMentor: One night, the green but eager original line-up of Music/AliceCooper caused an entire club to walk out. A music manager named Shep Gordon saw the strong reaction they caused and realized their powers could be harnessed for more profitable use. He took them to see Zappa, who signed them for this own label (he was impressed when they mistook his instructions and showed up at 7 am completely ready to play, and the Alice Cooper band idolized Zappa). Once they were on the label, their maniacal labelmates The [=GTOs=] starting dressing the boys from Alice Cooper and giving them their signature bizarre look. Soon, these young "shock rockers" have a reputation, enough so that someone thinks it's cool to throw a chicken at them on stage. The lead singer, Alice Cooper himself, said that as a young man from Detroit he really didn't know from chickens and assumed that if he threw the stupid bird back it would fly away, right? It didn't and was famously torn apart by fans. Of course, Alice Cooper earned national news headlines for deliberately and Satanically killing a chicken on stage. Frank Zappa called Mr. Cooper the very next day and asked about the "Chicken Incident". Zappa heard the true story and immediately said "Well, whatever you do, don't tell anyone you didn't do it". |
| 187 | * TheEvilPrince: |
| 188 | ** The song "The Torture Never Stops" on Music/ZootAllures, features an Evil Prince. |
| 189 | ** ''Thing Fish'' features a government scientist and part-time theater critic who's referred to as The Evil Prince. |
| 190 | * FadingIntoTheNextSong: A lot of his albums contain almost no gaps except when needed for LP side breaks, although in some cases songs are linked with StudioChatter rather than with musical cues. Good examples include ''Music/AbsolutelyFree'', ''Music/LumpyGravy'', ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'', ''Music/{{Lather}}'', and ''Music/CivilizationPhazeIII'', but there are many others. ''Absolutely Free'' basically only has two songs (except on CD reissues, which add two short bonus songs), but they're divided into several tracks each. |
| 191 | * FreakOut: The name of his debut album, which really lives up to its name during the final three tracks (two songs on LP versions, but "Help, I'm a Rock" was divided into two tracks for CD releases). |
| 192 | * GainaxEnding / NoEnding: |
| 193 | ** ''Music/JoesGarage'' follows the story of Joe as he is arrested for performing music at a time when music is declared illegal. [[spoiler:At the end, he plays one final guitar solo in his mind before hanging up his imaginary guitar and rejoining society.]] The ending is represented by "A Little Green Rosetta", which goes entirely off the rails from the album itself and even from itself halfway through the song. |
| 194 | ** ''Thing Fish'' involves a [=WASP=] couple being tortured by genetically mutated black people, under the pretense that everything happening to them is AllPartOfTheShow the [=WASP=] couple thought they were watching. [[spoiler:It eventually devolves into an enormous orgy involving every character as a song from earlier in the album plays in reverse.]] |
| 195 | * GenerationXerox: Frank's son, Dweezil, is an amazing guitarist who is more than willing to play his father's songs, with equal technical brilliance, but also has his own, unique style. |
| 196 | * GenreRoulette: He performed at least one song in virtually every genre of his time: blues, rock, jazz, classical, fusion, and so on. |
| 197 | * GentileJewChaser: "Jewish Princess" from ''Music/SheikYerbouti'' has the singer talk all about his attraction to Jewish women. |
| 198 | * GeorgeLucasAlteredVersion: Zappa decided to heavily alter much of his catalog when it was reissued on compact disc, due to the improved mixing and recording technology which he believed allowed him to improve the quality of the albums. A few of these, most notably ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'' and ''Music/CruisingWithRubenAndTheJets'', had newly recorded instrumentation. Purists derided these initial reissues, which emerged between 1986 and 1995. The 2012 reissues, distributed by Universal, were largely sourced from the original, unaltered master tapes, in response to fans' poor reception of the altered versions. It should be noted that some albums, such as ''Cruising'' and ''Music/UncleMeat'', are simply better mastered copies of the 1986-1995 altered versions. A full list of comparisons between nearly every pressing of each album, can be found [[http://www.lukpac.org/~handmade/patio/vinylvscds/index.html here.]] |
| 199 | ** The film version of ''Music/UncleMeat'' kept on production well after 1968, to the point where a song recorded in ''1982'' made the cut before the project was ultimately shelved. (An unfinished version got a direct-to-video release in 1987). |
| 200 | * GroupieBrigade: Zappa wrote countless songs about groupies and their devotion for rock stars, most notably on the albums ''Music/ChungasRevenge'', ''Music/FillmoreEastJune1971'', ''Film/TwoHundredMotels'' and album one of ''Music/JoesGarage''. |
| 201 | * HeroicBSOD: For a while, he was paying the Mothers of Invention a decent stipend, even when they weren't working. One night, he heard his hero Music/DukeEllington begging a promoter for a small advance and got disgusted with the biz. He subsequently broke up the Mothers. |
| 202 | * TheHyena: Louis the Turkey on ''Music/LumpyGravy''. |
| 203 | * IkeaErotica: Offences by a [[Music/PeterFrampton certain other rock musician]] are parodied hilariously in "Is That Guy Kidding or What?" and "I Have Been in You" from ''Music/SheikYerbouti''. |
| 204 | * ImAHumanitarian: |
| 205 | ** The truck driver is eaten in "Mr. Green Genes" from ''Music/UncleMeat''. |
| 206 | ** The devil in "Titties 'n Beer". |
| 207 | * IAmSong: "I'm the Slime" from ''Music/OverNiteSensation'', "Help I'm a Rock" from ''Music/FreakOutAlbum'', "Pick Me, I'm Clean" from ''Music/TinseltownRebellion'' and "I'm a Beautiful Guy" from ''Music/YouAreWhatYouIs''. |
| 208 | * InformedAbility: We know Studebaker Hoch (in "Billy the Mountain" from ''Music/JustAnotherBandFromLA'') is heroic because the narrator claims he is. He never actually does anything heroic in the song, which is probably the whole point. |
| 209 | * InsistentTerminology: Zappa wanted the music itself to express ideas and humor beyond the words. He said that a college's music appreciation class's example of a trumpet sounding like it was "laughing" was a very weak and shallow example of what he was going for. He pointed out old car horns going "arooga" or Harmon-muted trumpets as being hilarious for unexplainable reasons. Now, in practice Zappa's theory along these lines mostly presented itself as a deliberately Music/IgorStravinsky-esque use of StandardSnippet for humor purposes, but there were some cases where he innovated his own motifs, which is where this trope comes. The most memorable is probably Zappa's idea that someone talking through a plastic megaphone is the ultimate expression of bland, faceless authority. If you don't think plastic megaphones are that hilarious and/or ominous, you will by the time Zappa's done with you, especially after ''Music/JoesGarage''. |
| 210 | * {{Instrumentals}}: They were often the highlights of his albums. |
| 211 | * InsufferableGenius: Had an IQ estimated at '''172''' and could, at times, be somewhat insufferable. |
| 212 | * IntercourseWithYou: |
| 213 | ** Parodied and taken to the extreme with "Dirty Love" from ''Music/{{Apostrophe}}'', "Titties and Beer" from ''Music/ZappaInNewYork'', "Fembot in a Wet T-Shirt" from ''Music/JoesGarage'' and many more. |
| 214 | ** Most of the ''Music/FillmoreEastJune1971'' album is about this - the "groupie suite" which occupies most of the album is filled with references to assorted fetishes and sexual acts |
| 215 | ** ''Music/ChungasRevenge'' has almost every vocal tune be about this ("Road Ladies", "Tell Me You Love Me", "Would You Go All the Way?"), except "Rudy Wants to Buy Yez a Drink". |
| 216 | ** Several songs on ''You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore Vol. 6'' as well, which Zappa himself acknowledged in the notes. |
| 217 | * JerkWithAHeartOfGold: While Frank could be difficult to deal with, he nevertheless showed devotion to many of the people in his life and fought passionately for personal freedom. |
| 218 | ** In the 1970s Zappa hired a music copyist to copy a bunch of music he'd written; these were the days before it was possible to get computers to do that. As the work went on (music copying takes a long time), the copyist found out that he and his wife were going to have a baby. Towards the end of the job, the copyist was worried that he was about to have a newborn child and be out of a job. Zappa said goodbye to the guy and let him go, and then the next day rang him up and told him "I feel bad letting you go like this when you could really use the money. I'll find more work for you to do". He kept the copyist on the payroll for several more months. |
| 219 | ** Two Scandinavian fans once approached Zappa after a gig and asked if he could say goodnight to their little brother, who had wanted to come but was too young, and was in bed at home. Zappa went back to their house and woke the kid up to say hi, and then sat in the family kitchen for hours drinking coffee with the parents and talking politics. |
| 220 | * LampshadeHanging: |
| 221 | ** For both the incidents described in the lyrics of this particular song and, arguably, his entire body of work, from "Jazz Discharge Party Hats" from ''Music/TheManFromUtopia'': |
| 222 | --->Some of you might think this is weird, no wonder\ |
| 223 | It's not exactly normal, but what the heck |
| 224 | ** "You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here" from ''Music/FreakOutAlbum'' is a total Lampshade Hanging. |
| 225 | * LargeHam: Terry Bozzio, Napoleon Murphy Brock, Captain Beefheart, Adrian Belew, Flo and Eddie... really, Frank's band was a WorldOfHam. |
| 226 | * LastNoteNightmare: |
| 227 | ** Perhaps the {{Trope Maker|s}}, "[[AntiLoveSong I Ain't Got No Heart]]" from ''Music/FreakOutAlbum'' is a DoubleSubversion. |
| 228 | ** "The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny" from ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'' is a ''Last Song'' Nightmare. [[note]]Of course, that album was intended to be played before ''Music/LumpyGravy'', so conceptually it leads into an even weirder album which ends with the instrumental version of the straightforward and upbeat "Take Your Clothes Off"...which leads into the third album, released over 30 years later, ''Music/CivilizationPhazeIII'', which is a Last ALBUM Nightmare, depending on how you look at it.[[/note]] To a lesser extent "The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet" on ''Music/FreakOutAlbum'' could be perceived the same way. |
| 229 | ** The title track of ''Music/WeaselsRippedMyFlesh" is another example of this on the scale of an entire album, even with the applause at the end of the track. |
| 230 | * LeaveTheCameraRunning: Frank Zappa enjoyed leaving small snippets of casual conversations or incidents on his albums. |
| 231 | ** A telephone conversation between Zappa and a friend of his wife can be heard on Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney. |
| 232 | ** "If we'd all been living in California…" on ''Music/UncleMeat'' consists of nothing more than Jimmy Carl Black complaining about the financial situation of the band. |
| 233 | ** The end of the three hour film ''Baby Snakes'' (1979) keeps on going for 10 minutes, even after the concert is over. We even follow Zappa's car going back on the road for a while. |
| 234 | * LeftHanging: ''Nanook Rubs It'' from ''Music/{{Apostrophe}}''. |
| 235 | -->And it was at that precise moment that he remembered\ |
| 236 | An ancient Eskimo legend\ |
| 237 | Wherein it is written\ |
| 238 | On whatever it is that they write it on up there |
| 239 | * [[ViewersAreGeniuses Listeners Are Geniuses]]: A lot of his material requires extensive knowledge of multiple musical genres before you can even ''begin'' to appreciate it. Most obvious on albums like ''Music/LumpyGravy''. |
| 240 | * LiveAlbum: Zappa has released an alarming amount of live albums in his career. Many of his releases that are considered proper "albums" have been fully live albums, such as ''Music/SheikYerbouti'' and ''Music/BongoFury''. Many of them featured studio overdubs, while some featured studio compositions interspersed with the live material (like ''Music/WeaselsRippedMyFlesh''). Notable albums include: |
| 241 | ** ''Music/RoxyAndElsewhere'': A showcase of Zappa's formidable 1974 band. |
| 242 | ** ''Music/ZappaInNewYork'': Zappa's December 1976 shows with an enlarged ensemble including members of the ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' band. |
| 243 | ** ''Music/ShutUpNPlayYerGuitar'': Guitar solos excerpted from concerts (later repeated on ''Music/{{Guitar}}.'') |
| 244 | ** the ''You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore'' series: carefully selected live performances over the course of Zappa's career. |
| 245 | ** ''Ahead of Their Time'', ''Hammersmith Odeon'', etc.: Full versions of performances which were previously excerpted and overdubbed for studio albums (''Hammersmith'' being the basis of ''Sheik Yerbouti'', for example). |
| 246 | * LyricalDissonance: Zappa often gave his compositions lyrics that were either politically militant, offensive, vulgar, nothing but indecipherable inside jokes or just plain silly and/or stupid. |
| 247 | * MediumAwareness: From "Sy Borg" on ''Music/JoesGarage'': |
| 248 | -->'''Joe:''' But I...\ |
| 249 | I, I, I, I, I...\ |
| 250 | I can't pay\ |
| 251 | I gave all my money\ |
| 252 | To some kinda groovy\ |
| 253 | religious guy...\ |
| 254 | Two songs ago... |
| 255 | * MindScrew: A lot of his albums qualify. |
| 256 | ** The rather surreal video for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oblbLHYu6uY "You Are What You Is"]] from ''Music/YouAreWhatYouIs''. Highlights include a man with a leafy green vegetable for a head and President UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan on the electric chair. |
| 257 | * MisogynySong: Zappa was often accused of writing misogynist songs, though he defended himself that he had written more songs about "stupid men" than "stupid women". Granted, it doesn't help that a lot of his "stupid men" songs were written in-character, attacking and dismissing women for any variety of reasons. |
| 258 | * MisterMuffykins: Zappa built an entire RunningGag concept about poodles in his lyrics, also pondering why humans have felt the need to modify this dog species according to their own kitschy desires. A famous example is "The Poodle Lecture", included on various live albums and videos. A spoken prelude to "Dirty Love", it incorporates poodle-grooming into the story of the Garden Of Eden. |
| 259 | * MundaneMadeAwesome: Music/FrankZappa was an expert at this. He wrote songs about the dangers of going to your kitchen at night ("The Dangerous Kitchen", from ''Music/TheManFromUtopia''), dental floss ("Montana" from ''Music/OverNiteSensation''), sex dolls ("Mrs. Pinky" from ''Music/ZootAllures''), smelly feet ("Stink Foot" from ''Music/{{Apostrophe}}''), wet t-shirt contests and working in a muffin factory ("Wet T-shirt Nite" and "A Little Green Rosetta" from ''Music/JoesGarage''),... |
| 260 | * MustHaveCaffeine: Although he eschewed the harder stuff (and didn't tolerate drug use by his band members either), Frank consumed coffee and cigarettes by the truckload. |
| 261 | * MyCountryTisOfTheeThatISting: Zappa frequently targeted his home country in his lyrics and during interviews. |
| 262 | * MythArc: His preferred term for it was "conceptual continuity". Also, his "xenochrony" method of lifting guitar riffs and melodies from either himself or others (he was a big fan of the "Louie Louie" riff) and inserting them in other songs. |
| 263 | * NamedAfterSomebodyFamous: |
| 264 | ** Camp Reagan in ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'' is named after UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan. |
| 265 | ** ''Greggery Peccary'' from ''Music/StudioTan'' and ''Music/{{Lather}}'' is named after Creator/GregoryPeck and also Pope Gregory VII (in keeping with the "calendar" theme of the song). |
| 266 | * NewSoundAlbum: Zappa had a new sound every single album, even during individual tracks! He was so versatile that even hardcore fans may not like ''all'' the albums he released. |
| 267 | ** ''Music/FreakOutAlbum'': Psychedelic rock, love song parodies, political protest songs and complete madness. |
| 268 | ** ''Music/AbsolutelyFree'': More epic in scale, with direct musical quotations of Music/IgorStravinsky and Music/GustavHolst and a majority of political protest songs and hidden messages. |
| 269 | ** ''Music/LumpyGravy'': A very intimate musical collage of instrumental music, sound effects, distortions of tapes and surreal conversations. |
| 270 | ** ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'': Again a collage sound, with mostly rock, but avantgarde classical music too. Protest songs about the hippie culture, which was very audacious back in 1967, and songs satirizing police, parents and the square people. Apart from that Zappa introduced songs like "Let's Make The Water Turn Black", full with inside jokes incomprehensible to other people. |
| 271 | ** ''Music/UncleMeat'': A collage album with more emphasis on instrumental music, though occasional recordings of Zappa with band members and song with totally surreal lyrics are also heard. It's less heavy on the satirical stuff. |
| 272 | ** ''Music/CruisingWithRubenAndTheJets'': A total break with Zappa's image: no satire, no bawdy comedy, no experimentations, no political messages, but a {{Homage}} to doo-wop music, which was totally unpopular at the end of the 1960s. |
| 273 | ** ''Music/BurntWeenySandwich'' and ''Music/WeaselsRippedMyFlesh'': Mostly instrumental songs, live tracks and some cover songs. |
| 274 | ** ''Music/HotRats'': A more jazzy sound, mostly instrumental except for one track. |
| 275 | ** ''Music/ChungasRevenge'', ''Music/FillmoreEastJune1971'', ''Film/TwoHundredMotels'' and ''Music/JustAnotherBandFromLA'': a more blues rock oriented sound with two new lead singers, Mark and Howie from Music/TheTurtles. The lyrics are far more bawdy and mostly center around rock bands on tour and their sleazy intercourse with groupies. There is also more emphasis on songs that have the allures of a comedy sketch with just a drum in the background as musical accompaniment. |
| 276 | ** ''Music/TheGrandWazoo'' and ''Music/WakaJawaka'': Jazz albums, mostly instrumental, with less emphasis on songs. Comparable to ''Music/HotRats'' in that regard. |
| 277 | ** ''Music/OverNiteSensation'', ''Music/{{Apostrophe}}'', ''Music/RoxyAndElsewhere'', ''Music/OneSizeFitsAll'': The music here combines hard rock with epic and increasingly complicated jazzy jams and a full band with professional musicians. The lyrics are more surreal and/or focus on bawdy topics without much politics/ |
| 278 | ** ''Music/BongoFury'', ''Music/ZappaInNewYork'' and ''Music/SheikYerbouti'': Rock albums mostly recorded live, with epic songs and instrumentals. Zappa's guitar solo's start to get longer and longer. |
| 279 | ** ''Music/ZootAllures'': A darker, sleazier rock sound, where instrumental work and songs are in balance. |
| 280 | ** ''Music/StudioTan'', ''Music/SleepDirt'' and ''Music/OrchestralFavorites'': Mostly instrumental albums with a GenreRoulette sound that almost sounds like the soundtrack to a WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes cartoon at times, exemplified by the musical sketch "The Adventures of Greggery Peccary". (These albums were all pieced together by Warner Bros. through ExecutiveMeddling; Zappa's original vision for this material was finally released as intended in 1996 as ''Music/{{Lather}}''). |
| 281 | ** ''Music/JoesGarage'': A RockOpera with a story that is continued from the first until the penultimate track. Introduced a xenochronic sound and the second side of the double album is surprisingly melancholic for a Zappa album. His trademark ultralong guitar solos start to become more prominent. |
| 282 | ** From the 1980s on Zappa's albums became more politically pointed again (and unfortunately so specific in their targets (UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan, Moral Majority, televangelists, MTV,...- that most of it is very dated), combined with more bawdy songs sang with increasingly more silly, comedic voices. More classically orchestrated albums came out (''Music/ThePerfectStranger'', ''Francesco Zappa'', ''Music/LondonSymphonyOrchestra'', ''Music/TheYellowShark''), two completely instrumental albums with guitar solos (''Music/ShutUpNPlayYerGuitar'', ''Music/{{Guitar}}''), compilations of memorable moments during live concerts (The six volume ''You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore'' series, ''Music/MakeAJazzNoiseHere'', ''Playground Psychotics'', ''Music/TheBestBandYouNeverHeardInYourLife'', ''The Lost Episodes'', ''Ahead Of Their Time'', ''Music/{{Lather}}''), Synclavier stuff (''Music/JazzFromHell'', ''Music/CivilizationPhazeIII''). |
| 283 | * NippleAndDimed: Satirized in "Fembot In A Wet T-Shirt" from ''Music/JoesGarage'': |
| 284 | -->That's right, you heard right... our big prize tonite is fifty American Dollars to the girl with the most exciting mammalian protruberances...as viewed through a thoroughly soaked, stupid looking white sort of male person's conservative kind of middle-of-the-road COTTON UNDERGARMENT! Whoopee! And here comes THE WATER! |
| 285 | * NonAppearingTitle: Some album titles are never uttered on the albums themselves: ''Music/LumpyGravy'' and ''Music/DoesHumorBelongInMusic'', for instance. Some tracks have this aspect too, like ''The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet''. |
| 286 | * NonSequitur: From "Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder" from ''Music/FreakOutAlbum'': |
| 287 | -->You cheated me baby\ |
| 288 | And told some dirty lies about me\ |
| 289 | Fooled around with all those other guys\ |
| 290 | That's why I had to get my khakis pressed |
| 291 | * NoodleIncident: The true nature of what happened on the 1988 tour that made Zappa cancel the rest of the tour and fire the band may never be known. The received wisdom for years was that bassist Scott Thunes, who was responsible for rehearsing the band in Zappa's absence, was a {{Jerkass}} who antagonised the band and that the rest of the band sided against him: the truth seems to be considerably more complicated and has to do with complex intra-band dynamics.[[note]]Thunes himself found the experience highly demoralising. Only in recent years has he started playing Zappa's music again.[[/note]] |
| 292 | * NostalgiaFilter: He had no need for nostalgia and devoted a whole chapter in his autobiography ''Literature/TheRealFrankZappaBook'' about how people's tendencies to look over their shoulders and be TwoDecadesBehind caused progress to be slowed down. Only a few songs in his repertoire have a nostalgic feel to them and always refer to his teens and twenties, his years watching B-movies and being the proprietor of Studio Z in Cucamonga in the early 1960s: ''Village of the Sun'', ''Debra Kadabra'', '' |
| 293 | * NudeNatureDance: ''Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance'' from ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney''. Also hinted at in 'The Adventures Of Greggery Peccary' (and made visible in the related piece of animation by Bruce Bickford). |
| 294 | * NWordPrivileges: [[ZigZaggedTrope Zig-zagged;]] the TitleTrack of ''You Are What You Is'' contains an n-bomb in the second verse. The first half of the song is sung in unison by Zappa and his African-American backing vocalists, but for the inflammatory word, Zappa suddenly isolates his own voice, which just ends up drawing ''more'' attention to it. |
| 295 | * OneDialogueTwoConversations and OneSceneTwoMonologues: Zappa features moments like this on ''Music/LumpyGravy'' and during ''Flower Punk'' on ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney''. |
| 296 | * OneWomanSong: "Big Leg Emma" (''Music/AbsolutelyFree'', ''Music/ZappaInNewYork''), "Lonely Little Girl" (''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney''), "Electric Aunt Jemima" (''Music/UncleMeat''), "Deseri" (''Music/CruisingWithRubenAndTheJets''), "Valerie" (''Music/BurntWeenySandwich''), "Sharleena" (''Music/WeaselsRippedMyFlesh''), "Magdalena" (''Music/JustAnotherBandFromLA''), "Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up" (''Music/JoesGarage''), "Doreen" (''Music/YouAreWhatYouIs''), "Evelyn, A Modified Dog" (''Music/OneSizeFitsAll''), "Sad Jane" (''Music/LondonSymphonyOrchestra''), "Artificial Rhonda" (''Thing Fish''), "Babbette" (''YCDTOSA, Vol. 1''), "Chana In De Bushwop" (''YCDTOSA, Vol. 3''), "Ruth Is Sleeping" (''Music/TheYellowShark''), "Charva" ("The Lost Episodes"). |
| 297 | * OOCIsSeriousBusiness: In one live recording from Geneva in the early 80s, Zappa got enraged by the audience throwing ''used syringes'' onto the stage, and drops his usual sardonic onstage persona to tell them, with deadly seriousness, that if anything else gets thrown on stage, the concert will end there and then. There's a pause, during which the audience goes on being unruly. Then: |
| 298 | -->'''Zappa''': [''audibly pissed off''] House lights. Concert's over. [''Slow fade on the still yelling audience''] |
| 299 | * TheParody: Zappa enjoyed parodying various musical styles and artists, including Music/TheBeatles (The album cover of Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney), Music/PeterFrampton (''I Have Been In You'' from Music/SheikYerbouti), Music/BobDylan (''Flakes'' from ''Music/SheikYerbouti''), Christopher Cross (''Teenage Wind'' from ''Music/YouAreWhatYouIs''), Music/MichaelJackson (''Why Don't You Like Me?'' from ''Broadway The Hard Way''),... |
| 300 | * PissTakeRap: "Promiscuous" on ''Broadway The Hard Way''. |
| 301 | * PoliticalCorrectnessIsEvil: Naturally, as someone who was fiercely against censorship, Frank was not afraid to hurt people's feelings if it meant avoiding worthwhile satire. He famously defended "Jewish Princess" on the grounds that "Unlike unicorns, [[TruthInTelevision they actually exist]]". This eventually warranted a compilation album of his most overtly politically incorrect songs, ''Have I Offended Someone?''. |
| 302 | * PopStarComposer: Inverted as he rarely licensed his songs for movie soundtracks, and when he would, he tended to favor movies by foreign directors. This seems to have continued even after his death. Recent examples were two songs used in the 1997 Wong Kor-Wai film ''Happy Together'' and "Watermelon In Easter Hay" used over the end credits of ''Film/YTuMamaTambien''. Most movies that feature Zappa songs are either his concert films or documentaries. |
| 303 | * {{Pornstache}}: Zappa's iconic, long black moustache. |
| 304 | * ProfessionalWrestling: "Broken Hearts Are For Assholes" from ''Music/SheikYerbouti'' mentions a "no holds barred tag team grudge match". |
| 305 | * ProgressiveRock: One of the {{Trope Codifier}}s, and arguably, {{Trope Maker}}s (''Music/AbsolutelyFree'' in particular could qualify for the latter). Songs like "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" from ''Music/AbsolutelyFree'' and "The Adventures of Greggery Peccary" from ''Music/StudioTan'' and ''Music/{{Lather}}'' are staples of the genre. |
| 306 | * ProtestSong: Zappa wrote many satirical songs depicting the society he lived in, but also criticized American politics: "Trouble Every Day" (''Music/FreakOutAlbun''), "Who Needs the Peace Corps?" (''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney''), "Plastic People" (from ''Music/AbsolutelyFree''),... |
| 307 | * PublicSecretMessage: He included secret messages and clues in the album art work and lyrics of his songs that are still being decyphered by fans and music historians world wide. Starting in the late 1970s (it was only an occasional phenomenon prior to that), he also had at least one secret word in each concert that he gave, usually inside jokes between him and his band members. |
| 308 | * PunBasedTitle: |
| 309 | ** ''Music/ZootAllures'' - say it out loud and use your French knowledge. |
| 310 | ** ''Music/SheikYerbouti'' - Think of a famous disco hit... |
| 311 | ** "Dinah-Moe Humm" from ''Music/OverNiteSensation'': "I heard a Dinah-Moe humm", a pun on a humming dynamo. |
| 312 | ** "Manx Needs Women" from ''Music/ZappaInNewYork'' is a pun on the film "Film/MarsNeedsWomen". |
| 313 | ** "Aybe Sea" from ''Music/BurntWeenySandwich'' |
| 314 | ** "Läther" from ''Music/{{Lather}}'' - Yes, the umlaut is important. |
| 315 | * QuestioningTitle: Zappa has a few songs with such titles: "Who Are The Brain Police?", "How Could I Be Such A Fool?" (''Music/FreakOutAlbum''), "Why Don'tcha Do Me Right?" (''Music/AbsolutelyFree''), "Are You Hung Up?", "What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?" (''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney''), "Didja Get Any Onya?" (''Music/WeaselsRippedMyFlesh''), "Would You Go All The Way?" (''Music/ChungasRevenge''), "Do You Like My New Car?", "What Kind Of Girl Do You Think We Are?" (''Music/FillmoreEastJune1971''), "What Will This Evening Bring Me This Morning?", "Would You Like A Snack?" (''Film/TwoHundredMotels''), "Eddie Are You Kidding?" (''Music/JustAnotherBandFromLA''), "Don't You Ever Wash That Thing?" (''Music/RoxyAndElsewhere''), "Honey Don't You Want A Man Like Me?" (''Music/ZappaInNewYork'', ''Music/{{Lather}}''), "Whatever Happened To All The Fun In The World?" (''Music/SheikYerbouti''), "Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?" (''Music/JoesGarage''), "What's New In Baltimore?" (''Music/FrankZappaMeetsTheMothersOfPrevention''), ''Music/DoesHumorBelongInMusic'', "Swans? What Swans?" (''Music/{{Guitar}}''), "But Who Was Fulcanelli?" (''Music/Guitar''). |
| 316 | * RealLifeWritesThePlot[=/=]RippedFromTheHeadlines: Many of his lyrics are inspired by 20th century society, both politics and real life anecdotes from his personal or bandmembers' lives. |
| 317 | * RegionalRiff: During "Almost Chinese" (Music/LumpyGravy) and "Cheepnis" (Music/RoxyAndElsewhere) an oriental riff is heard. |
| 318 | * RecurringRiff: Often from songs written decades earlier; see xenochrony above. |
| 319 | * ReferenceOverdosed: Zappa's work is literally packed with references to other musical works and genres, 20th century politics and society and even inside jokes. Fans are still deciphering hidden meanings. |
| 320 | * [[RefugeInAudacity Refuge In Unmitigated Audacity]]: |
| 321 | ** Became increasingly prevalent as the years passed, although it was there from the start - it was ''unheard of'' for an unknown rock group to release a double album at the time ''Music/FreakOutAlbum'' appeared, and by some accounts it's the first rock double album of any kind. The fact that Tom Wilson produced it probably helped the group's fortunes a lot - Wilson had, by that point, gotten the kind of stature that basically meant any act he produced could do pretty much anything they wanted, as long as he signed off on it (which he usually did - he was a smart enough producer to trust his artists' instincts). |
| 322 | ** Released ''Music/ShutUpNPlayYerGuitar'', a ''triple album'' of guitar solos excerpted from live performances. Followed by another album of similar length and execution, ''Music/{{Guitar}}'', 7 years later. |
| 323 | ** His ''quadruple album'' with a running time of over two and a half hours, ''Music/{{Lather}}'', which his record company refused to release at the time. It eventually got released in 1996 as a 3-CD set with four bonus tracks that extended the running time to almost three hours. |
| 324 | * ReligionRantSong: "Dumb All Over", "Heavenly Bank Account", "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing" from ''Music/YouAreWhatYouIs''. "Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk" from ''Broadway The Hard Way'' is a Type 3. |
| 325 | * RevolvingDoorBand: Zappa was well-known for both hiring and firing musicians on short notice. [[http://wiki.killuglyradio.com/wiki/Mothers_Of_Invention Just look at the line-up of the Mothers of Invention]]. Having said that, when he found good musicians that he got on personally with, he liked to keep them in the band for as long as they wanted to stay: Ruth Underwood first played with Zappa in 1967 and appeared on several albums over the next ten years, while Ike Willis joined the band in 1978 and (apart from a brief hiatus) was still there for the final tour in 1988; Scott Thunes lasted from 1981 to 1988, etc. |
| 326 | * RewrittenPopVersion: ''The Black Page'' is featured twice on ''Music/ZappaInNewYork'' in different versions, with the second version specifically described and announced as the "easy, teenage, New York version". |
| 327 | * TheRival: |
| 328 | ** Occasionally Music/CaptainBeefheart. Both were cult icons of avantgarde music who were once childhood friends and always shared a love-hate relationship. |
| 329 | ** Music/LouReed and Zappa never got along; Zappa had no time for Reed's glorification of drug use, although he admired some of Reed's songs, notably "Femme Fatale" and "All Tomorrow's Parties", and praised ''Music/TheVelvetUndergroundAndNico'' in a 1967 interview. Their rivalry makes it especially ironic that Reed was chosen to induct Zappa into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, saying in his induction speech "I admired Frank greatly, and I know he admired me", although in 1966 Reed's verdict on Zappa had been quite different: "He's probably the single most untalented person I've heard in my life. He's a two-bit, pretentious academic, and he can't play rock 'n' roll, because he's a loser". |
| 330 | * RockOpera: Most famously ''Music/JoesGarage''. Also, ''[[Film/TwoHundredMotels 200 Motels]]'', ''Thing Fish'', "Billy the Mountain" (from ''Music/JustAnotherBandFromLA''), "The Adventures of Greggery Peccary" (from ''Music/StudioTan'' and ''Music/{{Lather}}'') and "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" (a seven-minute long mini-rock opera from ''Music/AbsolutelyFree''). |
| 331 | ** It's worth noting that a lot of these are pretty obvious parodies and deconstructions of rock operas in general, namely "Greggery Peccary". ''Music/ThingFish'' also features deconstructions of a lot of Broadway tropes. |
| 332 | * RockStarSong: |
| 333 | ** "Joe's Garage" from ''Music/JoesGarage''. |
| 334 | ** "Bobby Brown" is something of it in reverse. |
| 335 | * SayingSoundEffectsOutLoud: ''Music/WakaJawaka''. |
| 336 | * SecretWord: Zappa introduced a "secret word" to his audience during all of his concerts. This was usually an inside joke only he and his band members would get, but it would hold the attention of the audience during the show. |
| 337 | * SeriousBusiness: Turned down a [[UsefulNotes/AmericanPoliticalSystem nomination for running for the President]] of the United States on the Libertarian Ticket. Also, was cultural attaché for the Czechoslovak government and has [[http://www.balticsworldwide.com/news/features/zappa.htm a statue of him in Vilnius, Lithuania]]. |
| 338 | * SesquipedalianLoquaciousness: |
| 339 | ** "What's The Ugliest Part of Your Body?" from ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'': |
| 340 | --->All your children are poor unfortunate victims of systems beyond their control\ |
| 341 | A plague upon your ignorance and the gray despair of your ugly life |
| 342 | ** Zappa was particularly fond of doing this. Describing drugs as "chemical amusement aid" in "The Adventures of Greggery Peccary" from ''Music/StudioTan'' and ''Music/{{Lather}}'', wet dreams as "nocturnal emission" in "Dental Hygiene Dilemma" from ''Film/TwoHundredMotels'', and perhaps the most extreme example, "a thoroughly-soaked stupid-looking white sort of male person's conservative kind of middle of the road cotton undergarment", aka the eponymous item of clothing in "Fembot in a Wet T-Shirt" from ''Music/JoesGarage''. |
| 343 | * SexySoakedShirt: Made fun of, in true Zappa fashion, in "Wet T-Shirt Nite" from ''Music/JoesGarage''. |
| 344 | * ShaggyDogStory: Several, including "Billy the Mountain" from ''Music/JustAnotherBandFromLA'' and "The Adventures of Greggery Peccary" from ''Music/StudioTan'' and ''Music/{{Lather}}''. These two especially parodied the idea of the RockOpera by making them as bizarre and shaggy as possible. |
| 345 | * ShoutOut: |
| 346 | ** Zappa had a regular habit of quoting other people's songs (as well as his own) to give specific flavour and context to his own works. These included jazz and pop standards, traditional pieces, classical works and songs from his contemporaries. Several of Zappa's musical quotations were context-sensitive, especially in live jams during the 70s, where the quotation was cued by Zappa making a reference to it onstage, or wasrehearsed into the song to evoke a certain feeling (such as the 1932 song "Isn't It Romantic?" being inserted into a few lines of "Punky's Whips" from ''Music/ZappaInNewYork'' to emphasize how wacky the romance in the song is). The traditional compositions "God Bless America", "America the Beautiful" and "Marine's Hymn" are regularly quoted throughout Zappa's discography, as well as the rhythm and blues song "Louie Louie". Various works from Music/IgorStravinsky and Music/GustavHolst were quoted early on in his career, on ''Music/AbsolutelyFree'' and ''Music/CruisingWithRubenAndTheJets''. |
| 347 | ** The notes for "The Chrome-Plated Megaphone of Destiny", the instrumental at the end of ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'', instructs listeners to read Creator/FranzKafka's "In the Penal Colony" before listening to it. |
| 348 | ** His album ''Music/ShipArrivingTooLateToSaveADrowningWitch'' takes its name and cover art from a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droodle Droodle]] by author Roger Price. |
| 349 | * SkewedPriorities: In "Billy the Mountain", the US government is more concerned that the title character is a [[DraftDodging draft dodger]] than the fact he is leaving a trail of death and destruction wherever he goes. |
| 350 | * SkinnyDipping: Mentioned in "Jazz Discharge Party Hats" from ''Music/TheManFromUtopia''. |
| 351 | * SmokingIsCool: Considered tobacco a food. |
| 352 | * TheSmurfettePrinciple: Mallet percussionist Ruth Underwood stands out in a mostly male cast of musicians throughout Zappa's career. That said she's also very good and key to his "Mother's 2.0" sound of TheSeventies. |
| 353 | ** There were also short-term female band members and recurrent guests - Joanne McNabb (1972), Norma Jean Bell (1975), Lady Bianca (1976), Lisa Popeil and Thana Harris (both early '80s) - and in the "undocumented" department there were Alice Stuart (1965), Essra Mohawk aka Sandy Hurvitz (1967) and Nigey Lennon (1971) |
| 354 | * SoloSideProject: He is a special case. When he was part of the Mothers of Invention he released one solo album outside the group's activities, namely ''Music/LumpyGravy''. None of the band members appear on it as a group, though a few of them (Jimmy Carl Black, Roy Estrada, Jim "Motorhead" Sherwood and Bunk Gardner) have guest appearances, but only in speaking parts. All music on the record is instrumental and recorded with an orchestra. Seeing that Zappa was pretty much IAmTheBand from the start and all of his output nowadays is branded under the name "Frank Zappa" the distinction has disappeared. |
| 355 | * TheSomethingSong: "Frog Song" from "Joe's Domage", a posthumous album. (Which is a work-in-progress version of "It Just Might Be A One-Shot Deal"). |
| 356 | * SophisticatedAsHell: His humor could be crude at times, but his music was very sophisticated, with jazz and classical influences. |
| 357 | * SpaceWhaleAesop: According to the song itself, the moral of "Billy the Mountain" is "A mountain is something you don't want to fuck with". |
| 358 | * SpecialGuest: |
| 359 | ** Music/JimiHendrix on the album cover of ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney''. On the same album Music/EricClapton says: ''It's God, I see God''. |
| 360 | ** Music/CaptainBeefheart on ''Music/HotRats'' and ''Music/BongoFury''. |
| 361 | ** Keith Moon (Music/TheWho) and Music/RingoStarr play a part in ''Film/TwoHundredMotels'', as does groupie Pamela des Barres. |
| 362 | ** Music/TinaTurner and the Ikettes on the album ''Music/OverNiteSensation'' and ''Music/{{Apostrophe}}''. |
| 363 | ** Music/{{Sting}} comes on stage and sings on a cover of [[Music/ThePolice "Murder By Numbers"]] on the live album ''Music/BroadwayTheHardWay''. |
| 364 | ** Music/JohnLennon and Music/YokoOno appear on ''Playground Psychotics'', John delivering a blistering cover of Walter Ward's "Well (Baby Please Don't Go)" with Yoko doing her trademark wail in the background.[[note]]It's actually the same performance that's on John's album ''Some Time in New York City'', but Zappa remixed it for his own album.[[/note]] |
| 365 | * SpeechBubbles: Zappa made use of these on the album covers and gatefold sleeves of ''Music/LumpyGravy'', ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'', ''Music/UncleMeat'', ''Music/CruisingWithRubenAndTheJets'' and the Barking Pumpkin logo. |
| 366 | * SpokenWordInMusic: Zappa's signature vocal style in many of his works, which makes them sound a lot like bizarre poetry set to music. |
| 367 | * SpoofAesop: "A mountain is something you don't want to [[PrecisionFStrike fuck]] with". |
| 368 | * StandardSnippet: Zappa had an ironic and fervent love for how hilarious and expressive these could be and had his band drilled to play them flawlessly. The combination of universal recognition and wretched cliche was like a magical drug to Zappa's post-modern psyche. |
| 369 | * [[StageMom Stage Dad]]: He loved family life and relished being a father... But his whole life and in fact his whole house were configured to serve his musical career. His entire family was swept up in its orbit, and they've all helped out one way or another. The nightmarish practice and touring schedules of his bands. Living with Zappa meant living for Zappa's music. |
| 370 | * StartMyOwn: After years of dealing with nonsense from major record labels, he created his own, Barking Pumpkin, with his own distribution system and other enterprises. Of course, after his death his catalogue was eventually re-absorbed by major labels. |
| 371 | * StockAnimalName: The poodle in Zappa's conceptual continuity is called Fido. |
| 372 | * StudioChatter: Frequently kept it on the albums. Some of it was spontaneous, other scripted. |
| 373 | * SuicideAsComedy: |
| 374 | ** His song "Suicide Chump" from ''Music/YouAreWhatYouIs'' must be the most hilarious song ever written about suicide. |
| 375 | ** "Stuff Up the Cracks", the final track on ''Music/CruisingWithRubenAndTheJets'', is essentially an upbeat doo-wop number about a man threatening to kill himself with oven gas if his girlfriend leaves him. |
| 376 | * SurprisinglyGentleSong: His lyrics were usually either pointed political/sociological satire or a BawdySong about groupies and the like. He absolutely despised SillyLoveSongs and didn't care about be taken seriously, making most of his music comedy stuff. Yet Zappa could write very heartwarming music if he wanted, notably in his guitar solos and some of his instrumental compositions, but also in genuine non-comedy songs like "Lonely Little Girl" (''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney''), All tracks on ''Music/CruisingWithRubenAndTheJets'', "Valerie" (''Music/BurntWeenySandwich''), "Twenty Small Cigars" and "Sharleena" (''Music/ChungasRevenge''), "Tears Began To Fall" (''Music/FillmoreEastJune1971''), "Village Of The Sun" (''Music/RoxyAndElsewhere''), "Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up" (''Music/JoesGarage'') and "Alley Cat" ("The Lost Episodes"). |
| 377 | * TakeAThirdOption: When there were two diametrically opposed groups, Zappa would usually choose to ridicule them both: hippies/squares, Republicans/Democrats (although he generally heaped much harsher scorn on Republicans), battle of the sexes, list goes on. It even extended to his serious writings - for instance, in ''The Real Frank Zappa Book'' he notes at various points that unions, businesses, and governments are all untrustworthy. |
| 378 | * TakeThat: Many, of which the quote at the top is a TakeThatAudience. |
| 379 | ** 'Titties n' Beer' in the film ''Baby Snakes'' has Zappa unafraid of anything in Hell - because he was signed to Creator/WarnerBrosRecords for '''eight fuckin' years.'''. Also the devil brags he has the souls of UsefulNotes/RichardNixon and Spiro Agnew. |
| 380 | ** The video for "Music/YouAreWhatYouIs" depicted a UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan lookalike (called "President from Hell") being hooked up to an electric chair. |
| 381 | ** "Rhyming Man" from ''Music/BroadwayTheHardWay'' is one directed at the Rev. Jesse Jackson. |
| 382 | ** "Trouble Every Day" from ''Music/FreakOutAlbum'', the song that got the Mothers of Invention a record deal in the first place, is a Take That to the mid-60s American broadcast media and the way that they cover current affairs; it's like mid-60s [[Music/BobDylan Dylan]] singing Creator/NoamChomsky. |
| 383 | ** Zappa's home recording studio was dubbed "Utility Muffin Research Kitchen" ("UMRK" for short) as an obvious jab at audiophile label Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MFSL). By the time MFSL started tapping into the CD market, Zappa began branding early CD releases of his back-catalog in Europe as being special UMRK remixes. |
| 384 | ** In "Billy the Mountain", George Putnam is called a "right-wing fascist radical creepo pig newscaster from Los Angeles" several times. |
| 385 | * TerriblePickUpLines: Frank Zappa recorded ''Dancin Fool'' during the disco craze. Desperate for a date, the Dancin' Fool haunts the discotheques despite being hopelessly inept at dancing. The song concludes with the Fool trying some corny pick-up lines on a barfly. |
| 386 | * TortureCellar: "The Torture Never Stops" from ''Music/ZootAllures'', which hovers between [[BlackComedy funny]] and scary. |
| 387 | * TrademarkFavouriteFood: Zappa was noted for his love of coffee. |
| 388 | * TrainingFromHell: Serving a tour in Zappa's band was proof to all discerning people that you had chops, but the tours lasted forever and Zappa demanded perfection. George Duke related a story about how he missed a note in a concert once. Zappa stopped the whole song, announced that George was going to try that again, and restarted at the point where he had made the error. |
| 389 | * TwoPartTrilogy: |
| 390 | ** ''Music/HotRats'' got two sequels released close to each other, ''Music/WakaJawaka'' and ''Music/TheGrandWazoo''. |
| 391 | ** Then, several years after that, there was the unoffically named ''Music/{{Lather}}'' trilogy, consisting of ''Music/StudioTan'', ''Music/SleepDirt''(sometimes ''referred to'' as ''Hot Rats III''), and ''Music/OrchestralFavorites'', making up a three-part sexology. Confused yet? |
| 392 | ** Zappa kept this up until his death. ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'' and ''Music/LumpyGravy'', released within a year of each other, were intended as complements to each other (and even alluded to being such in their liner notes). Then, more than twenty-five years later, he produced the album ''Music/CivilizationPhazeIII'', which contains numerous references back to ''Music/LumpyGravy''. (''Civilization'' was the last album he completed during his lifetime, and it was released posthumously. It was almost twice the length of the two previous albums combined). |
| 393 | * UnabashedBMovieFan: Zappa loved B-films, especially cheap monster movies, and referenced them a lot in his work, sometimes only in the titles. |
| 394 | ** "Return of the Son of Monster Magnet", from ''Music/FreakOutAlbum''. |
| 395 | ** "Return of the Son of Shut Up 'n' Play Yer Guitar", from ''Music/ShutUpNPlayYerGuitar'' |
| 396 | ** "Cheepnis" from ''Music/RoxyAndElsewhere'' is an entire ode to B-monster movies. |
| 397 | ** "The Radio Is Broken" from ''Music/TheManFromUtopia'' is a homage to B-science fiction movies. |
| 398 | * ToiletHumour: |
| 399 | ** ''Let's Make The Water Turn Black'' from ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'', about two men collecting urine in a jar and smearing nose drippings on a window. BasedOnATrueStory, by the way. |
| 400 | ** ''Pound For A Brown On The Bus'' from ''Music/UncleMeat'', about Jimmy Carl Black mooning on the tour bus for a bet. |
| 401 | ** ''Nanook Rubs It'' from ''Music/{{Apostrophe}}'' about an Eskimo rubbing dog urine drenched snow in a fur trapper's eyes. |
| 402 | ** ''Stink Foot'' from ''Music/{{Apostrophe}}'' about smelly feet. |
| 403 | ** ''Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?'' from ''Music/JoesGarage'' |
| 404 | ** And he actually had two photographs of him taken, seated on the toilet, which were later sold as a poster. |
| 405 | * UncommonTime: Used pretty frequently. Lampshaded in one section of "Toads of the Short Forest" on ''Music/WeaselsRippedMyFlesh'', which provides the page quote for this trope: |
| 406 | -->At this very moment on stage we have drummer A playing in 7/8, drummer B playing in 3/4, the bass playing in 3/4, the organ playing in 5/8, the tambourine playing in 3/4, and the alto sax blowing his nose. |
| 407 | * UnusualEuphemism: |
| 408 | ** On ''Music/JoesGarage'', the term "to plook" is used to refer to sex and rape. |
| 409 | ** Other unusual Zappa euphemisms include "poot" (a reference to flatulence), "spoo" (ejaculation), and "numies" (mucus), although this is by no means an exhaustive list. |
| 410 | * VirtualGhost: A highlight of some of the recent ''Zappa Plays Zappa'' tours is when Dweezil (or the entire band) duets with archived footage of Frank projected onscreen. |
| 411 | * WhatsAnXLikeYouDoingInAYLikeThis: Used [[http://wiki.killuglyradio.com/wiki/%22What%27s_a_girl_like_you_doin%27_in_a_place_like_this%3F%22 repeatedly]]. |
| 412 | * WithLyrics: A borderline case - [[WordOfGod Frank stated in interviews]] that some of his songs were essentially instrumental compositions that had lyrics thrown in at the last minute so that listeners with [[ViewersAreGoldfish short attention spans]] wouldn't get bored. |
| 413 | * WordSaladLyrics: Used quite a lot, but not as common as you might think. Perhaps the best example comes from "Stink-Foot" from ''Music/{{Apostrophe}}'': |
| 414 | -->Well then Fido got up off the floor and he rolled over and he looked me straight in the eye, and do you know what he said?\ |
| 415 | "Once upon a time, somebody say to me (this is the dog talking now)\ |
| 416 | 'What is your conceptual continuity?'\ |
| 417 | Well I told him right then", Fido said, "'It should be easy to see\ |
| 418 | The crux of the biscuit is the [[AlbumTitleDrop apostrophe]]'". |
| 419 | %%** Other songs include "Mr Green Genes" and "The Air", both from ''Music/UncleMeat''. |
| 420 | %%Why? This is zero-context as written. |
| 421 | * WordSaladTitle: |
| 422 | ** A lot of his albums: ''Music/UncleMeat'', ''Music/BurntWeenySandwich'', ''Music/WeaselsRippedMyFlesh'', ''Music/ZootAllures'', ''Music/SleepDirt''... |
| 423 | ** "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" was from the cover of a magazine. The piece is about exactly that, apparently. |
| 424 | ** ''Music/BurntWeenySandwich'' comes from a sandwich that Zappa enjoyed eating. ''Music/ZootAllures'' is a play on the French exclamation "Zoot alors!" |
| 425 | * YourLittleDismissiveDiminutive: "Dancin' Fool" from ''Music/SheikYerbouti'' |
| 426 | -->I am really something\ |
| 427 | That's what you'll probably say\ |
| 428 | So smoke your little smoke\ |
| 429 | Drink your little drink\ |
| 430 | While I dance the night away. |
| 431 | ---- |
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