Sipsey Street Irregulars: Sunday Jams

Sunday, September 4, 2016

Sunday Jams - Zappa

The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.

-Frank Zappa

11 comments:

Anonymous said...: Now you're talking my music language! I first got into Zappa around 72 when i was 15. Muffin Man has one of the greatest guitar solos ever. And he was ahead of everyone in knowing that the TV is a tool of mind control with the song "I'm the Slime"...; September 4, 2016 at 5:07 AM
idahobob said...: Nuffin like a little Frank to start off the day!

Bob
III; September 4, 2016 at 7:11 AM
Anonymous said...: When I was in my late teens and early twenties I would make every effort to see Frank and his traveling horde every time they came to Miami, and they came quite often. In my mind, the best part of the show wasn't the music. It was the way Frank would often spend time between sets sitting on the edge of the stage talking to members of the audience. He often said things that I barely understood, but the parts I did understand were deep. As I get older and more experienced I come to understand more and more of what he was trying to explain all those years ago. The line at the top of this blog entry is just one example. The lyric to "Cosmik Debris" is another.

All that becomes even more relevant in this day and age when our leaders invite us to pick the shiniest turd floating in the punch bowl, act as if it's our highest duty, and horrified if we even think to suggest they've perverted what The Founders intended.

Those of you who may be interested in more should watch his interview with MTV's Martha Quinn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eln3J6BxWN0

And for another insight, here's a very young Frank Zappa "The Musical Bicyclist" on "The Steve Allen Show" from 1963.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MewcnFl_6Y; September 4, 2016 at 7:51 AM
Anonymous said...: Frank Zappa trying to perform Jimmy Page and Robert Plant's masterpiece is borderline sacrilege.; September 4, 2016 at 9:41 AM
Anonymous said...: "Frank Zappa trying to perform Jimmy Page and Robert Plant's masterpiece is borderline sacrilege."

You nailed it.

On the flip side, I doubt Paige and Plant could do very well with the tracks on "Burnt Weenie Sandwich". If you haven't heard that album, you're missing out.

But he lived his life on the edge of so many things including "borderline sacrilege. OTOH, as Frank often said, "There's no accounting for taste."

He just did stuff for people who liked the stuff he did. If you liked his stuff, he just made more for the people who did like it. If you didn't like his stuff, he just made more for the people who did like it.

He started off a David Letterman interview with a comment about doing something to limit the amount of "brown lipstick" in America's corporate suites. One thing you can say about Frank Zappa:

He wasn't a "brown lipstick" kind of guy.; September 4, 2016 at 11:17 AM
Anonymous said...: There's two kinds of people in the world - those who think Zappa was a genius, and those who just don't get him...; September 4, 2016 at 12:09 PM
Moe Death said...: After that great quote about the illusion of freedom, Domino wonders why you didn't include her favorite Zappa opus: "Who Are The Brain Police?"

Scary stuff... I'm more of a "Billy The Mountain" kind of guy.

Bill and Domino
III; September 4, 2016 at 2:20 PM
Anonymous said...: Zappa claimed he "didn't do drugs". So did Prince. By the way. Cigarette smoking is an addiction. (I wonder who inherited his "Zircon Encrusted Tweezers"?)

Yeh...I listened to a little Zappa in my life. But the recordings never belonged to me and the experience was more a test of endurance than entertainment. To me, The Fire Sign Theater was much better entertainment...along the lines of Zappa era stuff.; September 4, 2016 at 6:16 PM
Anonymous said...: Attorney General Loretta Lynch Wants to Welcome UN Control & Involvement in U.S. Affairs

http://www.usatwentyfour.com/attorney-general-loretta-lynch-wants-welcome-un-control-involvement-u-s-affairs/#

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message3278433/pg1

http://www.usatwentyfour.com/attorney-general-loretta-lynch-wants-welcome-un-control-involvement-u-s-affairs/#; September 5, 2016 at 1:45 AM
skybill said...: Hi Matt,
On Frank's First Album that I bought,"Freak Out!!" ...on the back cover it proported that Frank and the Guys were at the "Whiskey a-go-go" a Club in L.A. somewhere, on New Years' of (1959!!!!) (Where were You!!!!) Among other things said," Frank said, If your childeren knew that you are as lame as you are, They would Murder you in your sleep!!!!!!!! {{
BSBD,
III%,
skybill-out; September 5, 2016 at 3:10 AM
Anonymous said...: I saw Zappa do Stairway as an Encore at the Orpheum in Boston back in 84 or so..

Great stuff

You either get Zappa or you don't. I'm happy to be counted among those that do.

"Aber beklecker nicht das sofa, sofa..."; September 12, 2016 at 11:53 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Sunday, September 4, 2016

Sunday Jams - Zappa

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