LINKS

Official sites:

The Real Frank Zappa page
The Zappa Family trust site, including facilities to order scores.
Rykodisc
The FZ CD catalogue, sold by Rykodisc. CD images and descriptions currently available at www.zappa.com.

Reference pages:

St. Alphonzo's Pancake Homepage
Maintained by Robbert Heederik, Amsterdam, Holland. Contains a large songtexts page, interviews, pictures and links.
PlanetZappa
Maintained by Magnus Hoglund and Peder Andersson.
ARF
Maintained by Vladimir Sovetov. Contains an extensive bibliography.
"Information is not knowledge".
An interesting site for fact finding, maintained by Romān García Albertos.

Special subjects:

For giglists: see the Live recordings section.
Louie Louie
About Zappa's covers of and references to Richard Berry's Louie Louie.
Ed Seeman's Zappa site
Ed filmed the Mothers in the sixties and offers some clips in his site.
Arf she said
A collection of guitar tabs.

Photos:

Rock artists
Zappa photo collection by Jorgen Angel.

Opinions:

Mark Prindle's estimations per CD
You can add your comment if you like.

Ensembles and former band members:

The Ensemble Modern
Contains some information about "The yellow shark" and "Everything is healing nicely".
Steve Vai
Vai began working for Zappa as a transcriber, doing the Guitar book, and later contributed with "impossible" guitar parts.
George Duke
This keyboard player of the famous Roxy and elsewhere band has made a succesfull career of his own.
The Fowler brothers
Three of the five Fowler brothers played on Roxy and Elsewhere. Bruce returned in 1988.
Napoleon Murphy Brock
Zappa's lead vocalist and saxophone player from the seventies has in 2006 taken part of the Zappa plays Zappa tours and will be the frontman of the upcoming Project/Object tour.
Project/Object
This tribute band has just announced a U.S.A. fall tour with Napoleon Murphy Brock.
Boguspump
A US tribute band.
Ambrosius Ensemble.
This site contains a study in Finnish about playing Zappa on baroque instruments. The black dots in it are universal.


LITERATURE

At this stage the literature section below is not bibliographical. I've spent most time transcribing, the search for literature has been of secondary importance. I intend to deepen this topic however the coming months, among others with an academic article by Jonathan Bernard.

Biographical:

- Frank Zappa/Peter Occhiogrosso. The real Frank Zappa book. Poseidon press, 1989.
The official biography, spoken on tape and finally edited by Zappa, written out by Peter Occhiogrosso. It's subdivived into subjects, as "Brittania drools" and "A family as a dada concept". Added all up it deals with about all aspects of Zappa's life. It's not restricted to his musical career and also covers his family life and political opinions. It's written in Zappa's personal style, humoristic, unpredictable, allways arguing against things, using a lot of capitals and exclamation marks.

- Neil Slaven. Zappa, electric Don Quixote. Omnibus press, 1997.
A biography as it should be. Elaborate, informative, factual, not spoiled by a wish to publish personal opinions. Neil Slaven has done a good deal of literature research, resulting in a 350 pages work. A lot of journalist response to Zappa's albums gets quoted. In general journalists write positive about Zappa, but if you look at the reviews of individual albums they appear rather abritrary to me regarding content. Someone as saying this or that, but you might as well say the opposite, often it doesn't even relate to the specific content of an album.

- Julian Colbeck. Zappa, a biography. Virgin books, 1987.
Written ten years before Neil Slavens book, this one is less comprehensive. In representing the facts it's plain good. The tone of the book is a bit negative, Julian likes to point at things that didn't work out. Occasionally this works refreshing, but since Zappa is not the type to cover up failures, this tone is also somewhat superfluous.

- Michael Gray. Mother! is the story of Frank Zappa. Poseidon press, 1984 (1st edition) and 1997 (2nd edition).
Michael Gray's book has appeared in two phases. The first edition was written more than half way Zappa's career. The second one was has been published recently and now covers Zappa's whole career.

- Dominique Chevalier. Viva! Zappa. Omnibus press, 1986.
This one is a lot more interesting for its photos than for its text. It contains a fine picture collection, many are high quality publicity photos. Much is in colour.

- Greg Russo. Cosmic debris, the collected history and improvisations of Frank Zappa. Crossfire publications, 2006 (3rd edition).
A biography loaded with factual information. Two third is chronologically written, one third is about specific subjects. The Zappa history continues from 1993 onwards with some 20 pages with activities by tribute bands, the ZFT etc.

- Barry Miles. Frank Zappa. Atlantic books, 2004.
About a dozen biographical works have appeared till now, the last ones getting more and more of a copyist nature. But this one is original and a good one. It's built around many quotes from people who worked with Zappa including his family. Half of the book is about Zappa as a person, at some points you even get the idea of intimacy, like during Zappa's last days. Flaw in the book is that it is thus persistent in portraying Zappa's character negatively that it tends to get inconsistent with other facts. Exactly the same character trait Zappa has in his criticizing others.

Specific subjects:

- Wolfgang Ludwig. Untersuchungen zum musikalischen Schaffen von Frank Zappa. Verlag Peter Lang, 1992.
This academic publication hasn't received the attention it deserves. The general public doesn't read scores, nor do much rock journalists, and it's difficult to commercialize material as this. Wolfgang's study is only available in university libraries. Apart from the black dots, it also deals with sound and recording techniques, subjects that aren't included in my study. I'm giving a summary of it in a seperate section.

- Frank Zappa. Them or us.
The 1984 book by Zappa, shining another light upon the topics that occupied his mind over the past twenty years. Available via the Zappa Family trust site.

- Zappa! Special issue from the publishers of Keyboard and Guitar player, edited by Don Menn, 1992.
This is a tribute issue, published shortly before Zappa's death. It's made up of a dozen interviews. It contains a large one of 40 pages with Zappa himself. Other persons who get interviewed are among others Kent Nagano and Gail Zappa.

- Guitar Player. Issues of Februari 1983 and October 1995.
The 1983 issue has an interview with Zappa about his recent "Drowning witch" album and much more. Also interviewed is Steve Vai, telling about guitar playing and his transcribing work for Zappa. The 1995 publication is about Zappa the guitar player.

- William Morris Price. An analysis of the evolution of Frank Zappa's Be-bop Tango.
A detailed study of the construction of the Be-bop tango. See the Roxy and Elsewhere section for a quote.

- Arved Ashby. Frank Zappa and the anti-fetishist orchestra. The Musical Quarterly, winter 1999.
An academic article about Zappa's orchestration. See the Them or us section for a reference.

- Patrice Zappa. My brother was a mother. California classic books, 2003.
A combination of a photo album and personal recollections of Patrice "Candy" Zappa about her brother Frank.

- Nigey Lennon. Being Frank: my time with Frank Zappa. California classic books, 2003.
An autobiographic book of a woman, who had an relation with Frank Zappa for some years and travelled with the Mothers as a trainee. An interesting angle. Though much of what she describes can't be corroborated, it's consistent with everything else. When you're looking for between the sheets gossip, it ain't there.

- Ben Watson. The negative dialectics of poodle play. Quartet books, 1993.
This is a series of personal interpretations and lyric explainations, meant to put Zappa into a larger social framework. Ben is also the self-appointed judge in the "Best companion to...". I have problems reading stuff like this, it's too much the interpretations and fantasies of the author, it has little to do with the music itself. I prefer factual information. Besides every Zappa fan has his own ideas, favorite albums etc., so you can go on indefinitely publishing texts this way. Zappa himself however seems to have liked it, so that's a pro.