Zappa.com

How do you do it? Eventually the fan base that was alive during FZ's recording period is going to die off. While there is still going to be new fans, it probably won't equal what it would with an alive and producing artist.

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You gotta give the people something good to read, on a Sunday

Indeed. It is impossible.

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"Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform, and don't kid yourself" - FZ
http://www.myspace.com/kirnehness

I've tried to come up with a half-way decent answer to that Cal, but couldn't think of anything that made much sense. But I'll try again...

The best music (as well as literature and film) stands the test of time. As long as there is an older generation of people who love quality music, they will probably pass it down to their younger siblings, children, or grandchildren.

With the technology of the internet, it seems that the music of FZ will aquire even more fans as time goes by. There is also the marketing aspect of it as well. I think the ZPZ are doing a terrific job of getting the word out and expanding the fan base.

If a person can join a social networking site and gain tons of "friends" overnite, it stands to reason that similar things could happen for works of FZ.

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Zappa will be deservingly be appreciated for the next centuries to come... :foresee:

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

That's a good question. I would venture to guess that it all depends on the willingness of the proprieter's and their budget to promote the legacy. If were talking Zappa, I'd say it will survive to an extent, but mainly as underground. If we're talking Michael Jackson, he is truly an individual who could "cut a fart in stereo" and turn it to platinum, even after death. It's too bad that the art culture in America has devolved into mass produced mediocrity.

I happen to think there's about 5 songs that Michael sings that I would say are near great/great. I still listen to Off The Wall probably every other month.

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You gotta give the people something good to read, on a Sunday

Zappa's music will be rediscovered by curious music lovers and musicians and even studied academically to a certain extent as time goes on just because it is of such high quality and it is so unique. That's my opinion anyway.

waiting for the space-cruiser when we can put aside our gas-masks and gloves

what have we done to our only home

4-5ooo meter biosphere for 7 ooo ooo ooo monsters for circa 123 permanent years every atto second equals ... no wonders ..no more. Aliens will s'ay 'away'.

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Ga na het werk and wirk
bring a thing into effect tha' is
Leave madchic to hau' cuisine
HyFlyRadio alongside chap

KillUgly, I agree with you and hope you're right. You just never know how this stuff is going to work. Some artists that never sold a lot of albums while they were around, like the Velvet Underground, Big Star, or even the Ramones, are far more appreciated once they're gone. And then a lot of music that is hugely popular in its time sounds absurd just a few years later.

By the way, my father just got tickets to see the Glenn Miller orchestra. Miller died in 1944, and they're still playing his music, so there's hope for the Zappa legacy!

The owners of the music are what the whole thing is about. If the trust owns the whole catalogue and dedicates the time and effort to take care of it, things will work. If not ... might as well let it die. And the history of artists that tried and got nowhere is littered with folks that got nowhere.

But there has to be some other things happening, and I can only give my own father's work as an example. Since his passing a few years ago, more work has been published by others and my mom than he ever got in his own lifetime.

How? Well, at least in the Portuguese, Spanish and Brazilian literature areas there is a much wider appreciation for the literary studies and ideas regarding the works. And my dad's work was "quotidian" -- which is about the work in relation to the time and place.

In general, the American cultural milieu is not condusive to "good studies" on the music and its work. And Frank Zappa falls into that area as easily as anyone else in the history of American music other than Copland ... for example ... how many others can you mention right off the bat other than Rogers and Hammerstein, for example? ...

All in all, and you can see it in this board, the mentality about the music and the work is strictly commercial and fan based. There is no intelligent discussion of the work, and when there is it gets buried and insulted with comments that someone is being a smart ass and then you get the fan that feels that they are being insulted for their intelligence ...

For the most part, and a board like this can go a long way to help this ... it all has to go a little bit beyond the just having fun ... if all you want to do about life is going along having fun and not giving a cahoot about music, you would not be named Frank Zappa. In 10 thousand ways, the way it was done in fun, was a way to make it lighter and easier for people to relate to it ... which, of course, we're worried about the ponchos instead of the music under it! And in the end, it defeats the purpose of the music and the proper understanding of it all.

The legacy is not about "fame" ... it's about the work.

For this reason, I want everything released and the videos and the movies as well, because it will help cement the legacy ... as long as these things are buried and someone thinks that no one could like that or this (a la Jimi Hendrix -- only 2nd rate crap released!) ... instead of letting Guernica stand out on its own ... you will never know ... NEVER ... and the bottom line, Gail and Dweezil ... is this ... do you have the guts? Because taking the chance is what Frank did, even when others didn't like it!

But there won't be a legacy if all the stuff remains under lock and key. Keeping it locked is preventing more studies and higher and better appreciation ... that's all! It's just difficult to write these things, even here, and hope that I didn't get someone's feathers upset ... but it is important that we give the work a chance ... fans come and go, speaking of michelangelo! ... you decide if you want to be a part of an important life and legacy or just a nobody. I like the idea of helping and am doing my best to stand up for the works in rock music that are totally ignored by the music scene, specially the classical music scene all over America ... that won't even consider a Zappa, Vangelis, Oldfield or Sakamoto ... it's not classical for them! And those people need to go ... we need to take over and show there is more music and better music than a lot of the shlock that the bruhaha Pops is playing!

You can't create a scene, or a legacy, by bitching about it ... but we certainly can help by raising the standards of the discussion of the whole thing ... not just one fun part of it.

Wait.....89 official releases and his legacy isn't cemented? What exactly is there in the vault that is going to be radically different from what is already out there? Dance Me This? The Rage And The Fury? What exactly do you mean by "everything?" If the Trust stopped releasing anything right now and future generations can't figure out what the man is about, then either they are incredibly naive, or don't deserve to appreciate FZ or his music. I guess I'm just asking you to clarify what you mean. Will people 50 years from now ask "They didn't release Dance Me This, so I have no idea what to think?" In my opinion, there's more than ample evidence.

Also, as Gail told me in chat one time (I'm name dropping), releases are always going to be motivated by budgetary concerns. Which I think is a large part of why you don't get one of the lesser known recordings, since they won't sell as well and won't finance future products as much as a Wazoo or a Odeon. So I don't think guts would be the right word.

Anytime you want to start some serious discussion, please do. By and large the people here won't piss on it.

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You gotta give the people something good to read, on a Sunday

While I agree with what Cal just said in his post^^^



This is a great and thoughtful post Moshkito and while there are people who study Frank in lots of different ways, most of them don't do it here or show their results here
But I totally agree with what I gather is the point of your argument.
Nice! Keep 'em comin!

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" . . . On the outside now . . ."

I think the legacy is in excellent hands under Dweezil. His dedication, hardwork & passion is inspiring.

The problem is Gale. She's an analog mind in a digital age. Its an absolute disgrace that Frank's music is not on itunes and other legal outlets. Gale says its for artistic reasons but let's be honest - its about $$$.
Recorded music is all but worthless now. There are generations who have never paid for the music they download. We can go round and round about the rights and wrongs of this but the fact remains that the cat is out the bag. Zappa's music should be out there in every channel possible to reach as many people as possible. Frank's art is worth far more to humanity than its worth $ to Gale.

I dread to think how many potential new Zappa fans search itunes and only find beat the boots. What the fuck was Gale thinking to make this the only available legal representation of Frank Zappa? She needs to swallow her pride and stop thinking about the recordings in terms of monitory value.

Why should she not think in terms of monetary value? It's a business, isn't it? More money = more releases, doesn't it? Anyway, this is what she said:

"Ok, this is a very big answer to what seems to be a pretty straightforward question. First of all, what the studio audience doesn’t know and what’s behind the curtain, is that there is a lawsuit where certain parties are claiming many rights, digital rights being among them. I can tell you, absolutely, that it was never Frank Zappa’s intention that anyone would control the digital rights of his music other than his heirs, so its not anything he ever told me to sell. The fact of the matter is he published a paper on how music would be delivered in the future in 1983 and copyrighted it and just bemoaned the fact that he didn’t have the budget to hire programmers to make that happen. So he was way out there and he certainly knew. Although the term “digital rights”, at the time of his death and the time of the sale, didn’t exist, that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t thinking about them and planning ahead for what would best serve the value of the copyrights that remained with me. So he was thinking about his family at the time and he wanted to protect those rights. That’s part A. Part B is that I am not a fan of iTunes. I am not a fan of their growth through their overbearing means by which they have a reduced value of music. First, they taught everyone how to steal it and then they said,” Oops, sorry here’s how you can pay for it really cheap!” So you know, I’m not a fan of that and I’m not a fan of price-fixing, which is something they do. You don’t have a lot of choice in what you can offer and how you can offer it. I mean they just have rules and I understand that it is probably just a by-product of some of their programming issues but there should be other choices. I believe that the future is that there will be other choices and they will be on every artists own fan site or a conglomerate consortium of artists’ fan sites that’s not controlled by an outside party that does not respect artist’s rights. The part C of this answer, is that up until fairly recently and even still today, the sounds are massively compressed, they are not the way the artist intended them to be presented to an audience for an audiophile experience. So there was a reason for me to engage in that. Now I don’t care so much about Beat the Boots on iTunes because that’s not a recording made by Frank Zappa. Those are bootlegs as opposed to counterfeits."

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You gotta give the people something good to read, on a Sunday

Good post Moshkito. I enjoy reading posts where the mindset is outside-of-the box. Off the top of my head, and as an American who admittedly isn't as studied in classic literature and music as one really should be, I can name Aaron Copeland, Leonard Bernstein and John Cage off the top of my head.

I recogognise that American culture, speaking in generalities, is short on the attention span side of things. There are certainly a lot of people in our culture who do look beyond the consumer mindset of what is "fashionable" in popular, or not-so-popular entertainment. As Americans, our culture has been under an assault of intellectual sensabilities in favor of built in obsolecence.

The questions was about keeping the Legacy alive. What Dweezil is doing makes money. I doubt ZFT releases make much money anyway.


There's always a lawsuit isn't there! Its GZ's way or no way even if it harms the legacy like her stupid stance on tribute bands and festivals.



Mmm, its easy to speculate but if I owned Ryko and paid FZ $20 million for the catalog I'd be expecting to own the fucking catalog what ever the format. She's spending huge amounts to fight this. Roxy could have been finished ten times over!



WTF? How did Apple teach everyone how to steal music?
The record industry fucked up and while they were in denial Apple saw an opportunity. Fair play to them I say.



This is my point. She's not a fan. Well that's fine but tens of millions of people are fans and that's why Frank's music should be there.


That's fine for existing fans but to reach new ones you gotta be in the loop. A simple compromise would be to allow a best of and 2 or 3 of Frank's most popular albums onto itunes and other legal sites. At least Frank's music would have some representation that might draw in new fans to do a little further exploring.



This is an excuse. I've heard great sounding mp3 at low (128kps) bit rates. Sure quality can be better but the music is still great. It's like saying you won't put out a 16bit CD because 24bit formats are sonically Superior. Fuck, the cassette was ok for Frank.



Like I was saying, an analog mind in a digital age. She just doesn't get it and see the amazing opportunity.

I don't know if ZPZ makes money, or should I say enough money to make a difference. Other people are smarter on that score than me.

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You gotta give the people something good to read, on a Sunday

My son has gotten at least a dozen kids into Zappa since he started going to school here.

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And that's what needs to be done. There's already a huge body of work to be heard by new fans. We need to get fresh ears to hear the greatness that is Frank's music.

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I'm not bald; I'm taller than my hair.

So what I do to help this is to burn "best of" Cd's for his friends and he knows of at least 8 or 9 Zappa CD purchases made because of my giving the stuff away for free. If some people would only realize that occasionally it's ok to give stuff away because it will create return buyers! (You're Welcome Gail).

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Let's face it, most people are sheep. That doesn't necessarily mean they're bad people. But they're sheep nonetheless...and they don't buy Frank Zappa albums. Knowing this will always be the case, it provides a few clues as to how to keep the FZ musical legacy alive. There will always be a certain basic percentage of music fans who will discover and/or be attracted to FZ's music, no matter what. Compelling evidence points to this conclusion. And despite some older fans that have stopped listening to FZ's music, a younger audience have replaced these former fans in basically equal #s. We know this because of a few reasons. Firstly, we know that the average FZ fan age range is 45-50. Secondly, the first annual Zappa Plays Zappa tour in 2006 matched FZ’s final concert ticket sales grosses in the 1980s. And even though there weren’t and still aren’t a lot of younger fans at these shows, there still were/are some younger fans in attendance nonetheless. And I know that ZPZ aren’t matching those #s today but that’s because of over-saturation as well as there being virtually no alumni in the line-up anymore. Thirdly, despite decreasing sales per year, mainly due to downloading, album sales figures show us that between 200,000-400,000 copies of FZ’s back catalogue are sold annually worldwide. As far as the posthumous releases are concerned, I doubt any of them have sold more than 10,000 copies each worldwide - but these titles appeal to diehard fans only. Who are buying these copies? Mostly new fans of course. And a chunk of these new fans are younger fans.

So the key to keeping FZ’s musical legacy alive is a) continuing to encourage fans to turn their friends onto FZ’s music through various means of interaction, electronic media, etc., so that they’ll eventually become major fans and buy FZ product (I’ve been successful at this) and b) to let the ZFT keep doing what they’re doing. Don’t get me wrong, I agree the business aspect of FZ’s music could be handled better, no doubt (ala, the FZ:OZ fiasco, the extremely long wait for The Roxy DVD, etc.). And we all can continue to offer suggestions, criticisms, etc., that might be and/or has been considered by the ZFT. But the same goes for just about every business I can think of. So there’s no point getting too upset with some of the questionable choices the ZFT have. According to Gail, long before FZ passed away, he had things planned well in advance regarding how to deal with the business. And we all know how smart of a businessman Frank was. Remember, the market for this music has already been thoroughly assessed and they know there’s always going to basically be an x amount of fans buying FZ product. And hence what gets released in the future is what their current budget can handle. And I also think we’re damn lucky considering we’re still getting 2 or 3 releases per year, not to mention annual ZPZ tours…

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ONE NATION UNDER SOCIALISM



Because of Obamination's spending & socialist BS, America and much of the world will endure one of the worst depressions in history in 5...4...3...2...

The obvious:

ZPZ needs to play more (youth-oriented) festival shows.
ZPZ needs to play shittier venues, 25 bucks max, no one over 40 permitted.
Do that for a couple years while at the same time resolving the Ryko digital dispute....make the songs available on the big sites.

I just wanted to thank Calvin for this most beautius thread....brings the brain level of this place just a wee bit above "what's yer favorite version of Dinah Moe Humm". As far as i'm concerned, the day i see "Civilization Phaze III" presented on broadway or elsewhere, in the form that FZ outlined, that will be the proof that he has been accepted as the great composer that he was. And i'm not talking about an ZFT production, i'm talking about a formal classical production scheme. (heck, maybe someday my grand children could watch a "Gregory Pecary " movie produced by Disney!!...in 5D no less)

the first attempt at this stature was made in the "Yellow Shark" series of concerts. People whom i've met, that did not know Zappa music, tell me how amazed, and overwhelmed they were during these shows... being patrons of the opera sphere they could have just left, but where completely "entertained". That is the key word here isn't it?



Just what do you mean by Fiasco.? The Vauternative label has allowed fans to get a peak at what's in vault and continues to be the best eyepiece we have.... And i've got my name in that little sucker too. I hope it becomes very very rare.....



You betcha ass! We could have had a Jimmy Hendrix situation and that would not have been good at all No??

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"You can fly like a Penguin when you're dealing with Turkeys."

That's great Huck...
The twins can sing "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow" already. We have a good laugh everytime they do it.

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"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

That's it! Start 'em young. Maybe they'll get to see the Roxy DVD.

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I'm not bald; I'm taller than my hair.