{"id":16724,"date":"2012-11-29T08:09:12","date_gmt":"2012-11-29T13:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=16724"},"modified":"2012-11-29T08:18:55","modified_gmt":"2012-11-29T13:18:55","slug":"did-frank-zappa-actually-like-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/did-frank-zappa-actually-like-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Frank Zappa Actually Like Music?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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While searching for something completely unrelated I stumbled across this Frank Zappa performance of “Dumb All Over,”<\/a>\u00a0(sorry, the YouTube poster doesn’t seem to allow embedding) a song I’d not previously known existed. As usual, I can appreciate Zappa’s intelligence and wit, but the song raised a question that gets at the root of why I can never embrace Zappa’s records: Did Frank Zappa actually like music?<\/em><\/p>\n

By “music,” I mean the musical elements at the root of songs: melody, rhythm, and harmony. At the 4:20 mark he sits down, shuts up, and fires off an excellent guitar solo. Clearly there was a side to Zappa that at least liked the music that could be made on a guitar. The rest of this song, however, displays no appreciation for music itself. He seemed to have a penchant for hiring shit-hot musicians and then punishing them by making them play stuff they could have been playing had they accepted offers to join Loverboy or a second-rate rock-fusion band. Was this Zappa’s twisted way of punishing dedicated musicians?<\/p>\n

I look forward to other examples of Zappa’s direct connection with music, points in his songs that indicate that the music itself was more than a vehicle for his stand-up comedy act.<\/p>\n

Here’s another video featuring sophomoric humor and dumb rock music<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While searching for something completely unrelated I stumbled across this Frank Zappa performance of “Dumb All Over,”\u00a0(sorry, the YouTube poster doesn’t seem to allow embedding) a song I’d not previously known existed. As usual, I can appreciate Zappa’s intelligence and wit, but the song raised a question that gets at the root of why I […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[378],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16724"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}