FM: But what about
those DRUGS? “The Drug Question comes up all the time in interviews because
people refuse to believe that I DON’T
use them … If I tell them I don’t use drugs, they look at me like I’m crazy and
question me about it.” Marijuana? “It gave me a sore throat and made me
sleepy. I couldn’t understand why people
liked it so much.” I can relate. Many – many
– years ago someone “turned me on to” some white powder. It had absolutely no effect. Alcohol?
“People choose an allegiance
to a certain beverage. Like bourbon guys
– they’re bourbon guys and that’s it. And scotch drinkers? Forget it.
[Hear, hear!] They don’t want to
know from ‘pink gin.’
CJ: "I don't think we have
an honest president. I don't think that he is surrounded by honest people. I
don't believe that most of the people in Congress or in the Senate are honest.
I don't think that most people who head up business are honest. We have let
them get away with it because we're not honest enough to face up to the fact
that we are 'owned and operated' by a bunch of really bad people." AMEN!
Preach on brother!! We have to remember that this was penned during the Reagan
administration, and remember that the GOP has now memorialized Reagan right up
there with FDR and Lincoln. In this election season this is forefront in my
mind. I believe that somewhere deep inside democracy can work, however we have
wandered so deep into dishonesty that I think the only way to recover is to
throw the baby out with the bathwater & start over. I'll be voting Tuesday,
not really "for" anyone, but "against" those who I perceive
as the epitome of what Frank just described.
FM: Something becoming increasingly hard to
do!
CJ: Chapter 10 is one that would not make the abridged version of this book. I may have found it amusing when I was 16, but I would have been just fine never having read that material.
CJ: Chapter 10 is one that would not make the abridged version of this book. I may have found it amusing when I was 16, but I would have been just fine never having read that material.
FM: I hear you. Do you think maybe he felt that some of this
kind of subject matter had to be here because, well, after all, this IS a Frank
Zappa Book! The man has an image to
think of! I have always wondered if
there might be a certain element of “mashing the puppy’s nose into his poop” in
Zappa’s art. “Holding up the mirror,” so
to speak – and baiting the critics, in the bargain, perhaps?
CJ: The Sticks & Stones chapter
brings to mind another quote, "the masses are asses." The older I get
the more I see how we run like sheep to the slaughter with every trend. Just
like the Iran Contra issue and Hitler. I try hard to teach my children to stand
on the edge of that abyss and proceed with caution!
FM: The chapter covering music critics is
appropriately titled, “Stick & Stones.”
“Rock ‘journalists’ did not exist in 1965 or 1966 when the Mothers [of
Invention] started out. Anyone who put
out an album back then ran the risk of having it reviewed by a person who wrote
featurettes for the cooking section of the Daily
Whatsis … [today] radio-station programmers and the record-company
executives … decide if a group is ‘good’ by listening to a couple of cuts from
the first album – then if the second album is ‘different’ they write that the
band is f___ing up – it’s not ‘consistent.’
The rock press sends a message to performers that they should stay in
their mold: ‘Don’t change. If you do, we’re
going to say that your new record is a piece of s__t.’” But he goes on to point out: “For each type of music, there are listeners
who think that the reviewers don’t know what they’re talking about … These are the people who have made it
possible for me to stay in music through the years – and I thank them for it.” You’re welcome, Mr. Zappa; you’re
welcome. And I would add that the same
thing is generally true of Movies. The
critics are clueless.
CJ: Chapters 12-14 have so much
good material about life in these United States, I'm not sure where to begin.
Frank discloses the honest, embarrassing truth about the reason the world hates
us. Our reckless behavior with drugs and alcohol, the way we've trained our
children to be consumers and to suppress all natural urges, the way we blindly
follow along: "The person who stands up and says, "This is
stupid," either is asked to 'behave' or, worse, is greeted with a cheerful
"Yes, we know! Isn't it terrific!"
FM: “It isn’t necessary to imagine the world
ending in fire or ice – there are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is
nostalgia. When you compute the length
of time between The Event and The Nostalgia For The Event,
the span seems to be about a year
less in each cycle. Eventually within the next quarter of a
century, the nostalgia cycles will be so close together that people will not be
able to take a step without being nostalgic for the one they just took. At that point, everything stops. Death by Nostalgia.” Zappa is speaking here, not just about
musical trends, but about popular culture in general. Part of the message is that the “captains of
corporate America,” risk-averse to trying anything original, find it a lot
easier and more profitable to simply recycle the style of twenty years
ago. (He wrote this before the prefix
“retro” was made fashionable.)
CJ: His take on Manifest
Destiny and our "Christian Nation" should be posted on every church
door in the country. (Yes, I call myself a Christian, and I agree with him. I
think a lot of folks are going to be sorely disappointed when Jesus asks them
"exactly when did I tell you to stomp all over the other guys??"
FM: When Dweezil was
born, “we had to fill out a mass of papers before they’d let us in, riddled
with irrelevant questions like: ‘What religion are you?’ Gail looked at me and said, ‘What do we put?’ I said, “Musician.” Ha!
Actually, Music as Religion is probably as supportable as most of the
religions that have plagued mankind over the millennia, and a lot less harmful
than most! It was Jimi Hendrix (mentioned
earlier in a different context in this book) who is famously quoted as having
said, “Music is my Religion.” Who am I
to argue? Music has certainly played a
much larger role in my own life than religion does in the lives of most people
– regardless of what they would have you believe!
CJ: The school soliloquy on
page 241 is going to be my Facebook fodder for the week. I think I'll skip
giving Frank credit for a few days. I'm pretty sure my audience will think it
is my writing
Next Week: Conclusion - Chapters 15-19 Join us in July for July’s book of the month; “Prodigal Summer,” by Barbara Kingsolver!
Barbara Kingsolver's fifth novel is a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. It weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, this novel's intriguing protagonists face dispa...rate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place. – Amazon
Kingsolver is one of those authors for whom the terrifying elegance of nature is both aesthetic wonder and source of a fierce and abiding moral vision. She may have inherited Thoreau's mantle, but she piles up riches of her own making, blending her extravagant narrative gift with benevolent concise humor. She treads the line between the sentimental and the glorious like nobody else in American literature. - Kelly Flynn
There is no one in contemporary literature quite like Barbara Kingsolver. Her dialogue sparkles with sassy wit and earthy poetry; her descriptions are rooted in daily life but are also on familiar terms with the eternal. With Prodigal Summer, she returns from the Congo to a "wrinkle on the map that lies between farms and wildness." And there, in an isolated pocket of southern Appalachia, she recounts not one but three intricate stories. - Amazon
There is no one in contemporary literature quite like Barbara Kingsolver. Her dialogue sparkles with sassy wit and earthy poetry; her descriptions are rooted in daily life but are also on familiar terms with the eternal. With Prodigal Summer, she returns from the Congo to a "wrinkle on the map that lies between farms and wildness." And there, in an isolated pocket of southern Appalachia, she recounts not one but three intricate stories. - Amazon
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