Tilting at windmills?

I'm not a Frank Zappa fan, though I agree he was an interesting personality. If you ARE a fan, you'll probably enjoy Neil Slaven's biography of FZ, ELECTRIC DON QUIXOTE (1996), which is the first book on music that's held my interest all the way through in quite awhile.
There've been other books on Zappa. FZ wrote one himself, THE FRANK ZAPPA BOOK, which I thought was a little silly and scattered, along with skipping whole sections of his life. Barry Miles's ZAPPA, which I read and reviewed here a couple of years ago, wasn't bad -- but it soon bogged down into recapping album-tour-album-tour-album-tour until Frank died. It could have used more detail, more interviews.
But Miles was great at catching Good Stories -- one leads off his book, a story from Frank's early years that maybe explained the direction FZ went for the rest of his life. It's such a great story that Miles repeats it again almost word-for-word a few chapters later.
Slaven -- a producer at Decca/Deram in the early '70s -- maybe doesn't have such a nose for great stories, but he compiles a ton of period quotes from newspaper and magazine articles, and adds a ton more info from interviews he did with Zappa. Slaven also comments in some depth on the music itself, something Miles never did. Slaven gets across some of the obsessiveness that would push a man to record and release more than 60 albums in a nearly-30-year career.
Slaven also picks up some of the sarcasm of his subject. He clearly has his own opinions on how Zappa was treated, which of FZ's albums are worth re-hearing, and how much of Frank's work will continue to be heard.
There's also detailed coverage of FZ's later trips to DC to argue against rock censorship. This section made me think it's too bad FZ and Hunter S. Thompson aren't around today to call "Bullshit!" on so much of what's coming out of DC. Actually, I think FZ and HST woulda made a great ticket for Prez and VP.
But hypocrisy, fascism and greed never die. Musicians do. There's a long chapter on all the work FZ got done while his health was declining.
There's also detail on the many fine musicians who performed as FZ's backing bands -- among them Terry Bozzio, Adrian Belew, Steve Vai, George Duke, Jean-Luc Ponty, Ian and Ruth Underwood, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, Eddie Jobson, Patrick O'Hearn, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Captain Beefheart, the Original Mothers, and many more. Their opinions -- usually very favorable about FZ -- come across strongly.
None of this changes my opinion of FZ's music -- for most of which, I've never been able to get past the stupid, silly, grade-school-level lyrics. They seem too close to the things FZ was trying to make fun of. But maybe I've just heard the wrong stuff. I heard a chunk of HOT RATS while in a Tacoma record store awhile back, and it sounded pretty good. Maybe I need to hear more of that and the WAKA/JAWAKA-GRAND WAZOO period....

I've also been eating up parts of the annual BEST MUSIC WRITING series from DaCapo Books. Each volume I've found so far has something in it worth holding on to -- a long piece about a guy who discovered "numbers stations" on short-wave radio and ended up compiling a four-CD set of what they broadcast, which turned out to be code-messages to spies -- some of this stuff was later used on a Wilco album; a hilarious/disgusting piece on how Warner Brothers Records treats artists who never earn back their advance; a long piece on how Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" still works today, 50 years later; looks back at Phil Ochs, Bettye LaVette, Nina Simone, Anita O'Day and others; meeting The Shaggs; the importance of Big Country; an obituary for great English DJ John Peel; and much more.
Well worth your time if you find a copy at Goodwill.
More eventually....

Art for art's sake

Here's a sort of out-take from that new book I maybe started writing a few days ago....

OK, now here's a surprise. Was thinking recently about all those old science fiction stories and novels I read back when I was growing up, and realized that half of the stuff I read I got sucked into because of the great artwork. Like the artists were working their asses off trying to get me (and other readers) to notice or read something we might normally have passed by.
This was especially true in science fiction magazines in the '70s and '80s, where the quality of the stories varied, but the artwork was usually of pretty high quality. And back in the '60s, the artwork was almost always top notch, even if some of the magazines were sometimes kinda shoddy. No matter how far to the Right the old '60s ANALOG went, the art was always amazing -- there was a feeling of freedom and exploration (and even comedy) there that even iron-handed old editor John W. Campbell couldn't spoil.
Though I sold a ton of old SF magazines a few years ago when I was short on cash, I still have a cabinet-full left. So I went to that cabinet last night to maybe get nostalgic about the old days through some great art, and discovered ... most of that art disappeared out of my house a long time ago.
I think when it became clear to me that I was A Words Guy -- because I was never going to be An Artist -- I think I started hanging onto the words that meant the most to me, and let most of the artwork go. And now I miss it.
Exploring the net earlier today, I found a couple websites that do a pretty good job of preserving some of this stuff. They maybe short-change some great black-and-white interior illustrations for the more dazzling color cover stuff, but at least they know who the artists were -- eye-opening artists like Kelly Freas (who could go from cartoon-like comedy to gorgeous stuff that would take your breath away), Rick Sternbach, Mike Hinge, Vincent DiFate, Steve Fabian, John Schoenherr, Jack Gaughan, James Odbert, Val Lakey Lindahn, Janet Aulisio, Broeck Steadman, Roger Dean, Rodney Matthews, Angus McKie, David Hardy, Ian Miller, Patrick Woodroffe, Virgil Finlay, Paul Lehr, Richard Powers, Ed Emshwiller, Ames, and so many others.
Only a couple of these guys are well-known names. Most of them never broke through to the mainstream like Frank Frazetta or Jack Kirby did. They didn't get paid very well, most of them, especially back in the old magazine days. Some of them died broke. But their gorgeous work is really timeless. And I'm sorry now that I don't have more of it around.
About the only art book I still have in the house is Hipgnosis's gorgeous and hilarious book of album covers they did for Pink Floyd and other rockers back in the '70s, WALK AWAY RENE. And it's a classic that you'll never get away from me. Once I had a copy of Roger Dean's gorgeous VIEWS portfolio -- but I never figured out what the lengthy text was raving on about, and I already had most of the album covers, so....
Here's the weird thing -- science-fiction/fantasy/horror has never been bigger on movie screens and TV. But for most of the artists listed above, their work seems to have almost vanished, and I think something unique has disappeared. It's not quite "retro" yet -- in some ways it's the world all around us today -- only BETTER.
Meanwhile, science fiction magazines are just barely holding on. The most recent issues of ANALOG and ASIMOV'S I've seen over the last couple years are WAY thinner than the old days, and they hardly run any artwork beyond the cover. FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION never did run interior art. INTERZONE is pretty flashy and art-filled, very current -- but the fiction doesn't grab me much.
The good old stuff is pretty-much gone.
What all this babbling means is the next time I go to Half-Price Books or Goodwill, I'll probably be grabbing all those old science-fiction magazines up on the CLEARANCE section's top shelf that I can hardly reach. And I'll pay a buck apiece for them. Just to have the art around again....

Hacked?

Greetings. It looks like my three-month-old laptop may have been "killed" as part of the ongoing worldwide cyberattack. I keep getting what my son used to call "the blue screen of death" as the machine tries to start and load-up. This started happening after five minutes on Facebook early this morning. Ghod knows if I've been infected, but I don't like the timing.
Luckily, I still have this eight-year-old laptop as backup. No complaints from me, at least I'm still "connected," except now this machine seems incredibly SLOW....
Will be working to see what the hell's wrong, but in the meantime it looks like any Silly or Political stuff will be posted at my old TADs-Back-Up-Plan page on Facebook. Will of course announce there if I have any new reviews to post here.
Haven't been doing much lately -- may even have started ANOTHER new book a couple days ago, sort of by accident. More about that eventually.
More here soon, and be careful with your computers out there....

...After giving it 12 hours to recover, the new laptop FINALLY came back to life and -- after cleaning up and defragmenting the hard drive -- it SEEMS to be working normally again, for now. I'll keep you posted. Thought I was a goner for sure. Back to normal status, apparently. Safe Computing, everyone....

UPDATE -- It happened again on May 19th, while I was trying to write a post here. Since then I've "restored" the system to its condition before May 13th, cleaned-up and defragged the hard drive again, and as of this morning it seems to be working normally. Whatever that means.
But what's with this fragile new technology? Already I've had more "fun" with this machine than I ever had with the old laptop. The old machine's been dropped at least twice and been knocked off of desks a couple times, and it still works. More or less. Maybe they made them tougher eight years ago. Or maybe the viruses out there now are just meaner. Anyway, onward.