MP3some: Frank Zappa

It was only a matter of time before I featured some Zappa on my blog. I've been listening to him since I was about 11 or 12 (thanks to my father's spectacular record collection), and his work (well, his early work) has always been a fascination of mine.

A note or two about FZ before we delve in, however. First of all, my understanding has always been that Zappa was, at heart, a Modern composer whose lack of formal training or pedigree made it extraordinarily difficult (if not impossible) to have his compositions performed. As a result, he was forced to parlay his abilities into the dominant genre of his era. In interviews, he mentions that he never wrote a rock song until he was in his twenties - he had written primarily chamber music up until that point. Think about this for a second. Imagine informing another Modern composer - say Stravinsky, Schoenberg, or Stockhausen - that he would have to abandon his art and start writing music for a teenage audience that had grown up on the likes of "Wooly Bully." It's this tension that makes Zappa's work such a treat to me.

I am featuring two Zappa clips today. The first is a television commercial for his 1969 record, Uncle Meat. The track accompanying the commercial is "Sleeping in a Jar," a short piece from the album. In addition to his work as a composer, FZ was also a film-maker (though admittedly not a very conventional one)...