The Mother Of All Interviews (Part 2) - Revision history

Spider of Destiny at 19:45, 31 July 2026

2026-07-31T19:45:00Z

Spider of Destiny at 17:02, 5 July 2026

2026-07-05T17:02:24Z

Spider of Destiny at 22:08, 1 July 2026

2026-07-01T22:08:15Z

Spider of Destiny at 16:45, 23 May 2026

2026-05-23T16:45:28Z

Jason.Kreitzer at 21:30, 8 December 2021

2021-12-08T21:30:24Z

Jason.Kreitzer at 21:16, 30 November 2021

2021-11-30T21:16:05Z

Jason.Kreitzer at 18:04, 21 October 2021

2021-10-21T18:04:11Z

Jason.Kreitzer: Google only comes up with results about Zappa.

2021-09-23T20:16:12Z

Google only comes up with results about Zappa.

Jason.Kreitzer at 13:24, 18 August 2021

2021-08-18T13:24:02Z

Jason.Kreitzer at 19:14, 13 August 2021

2021-08-13T19:14:26Z

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 '''MG: You were in a band at that time, too, right? So you were just a degenerate.<br>
-Absolutely. The scum of the earth, as far as the people in Lancaster were concerned. See, I didn't know when I moved to Lancaster that, prior to my arrival, there had been an unfortunate experience with "Negroes" in the area. A group of black entertainers had come up from what they call "down below," the evil area below the high desert. They had come up. It was [[Big Jay McNeely]] and a bunch of other entertainers that had come to do a rock show at the fairgrounds, and along with them came people who were selling reefers and pills, and the founding fathers of the city decided never again shall this music enter our fair cowboy area. I didn't know any of this had happened. I moved there from San Diego, and put a rhythm and blues band together, and decided to throw my own dance, and put up little posters just like in the 1950 movies with the help of this lady who ran the local record store. Her name was Elsie. We rented the women's club, and we were going to have our little dance there. And the day before the dance, walking down Lancaster Boulevard at 6:00 o'clock in the evening, I was arrested for vagrancy. They kept me in jail overnight, trying to make sure this dance wasn't going to come off.
+Absolutely. The scum of the earth, as far as the people in Lancaster were concerned. See, I didn't know when I moved to Lancaster that, prior to my arrival, there had been an unfortunate experience with "Negroes" in the area. A group of black entertainers had come up from what they call "down below," the evil area below the high desert. They had come up. It was [[Big Jay McNeely]] and a bunch of other entertainers that had come to do a rock show at the fairgrounds, and along with them came people who were selling reefers and pills, and the founding fathers of the city decided never again shall this music enter our fair cowboy area. I didn't know any of this had happened. I moved there from San Diego, and put a rhythm and blues band together, and decided to throw my own dance, and put up little posters just like in the 1950 movies with the help of this lady who ran the local record store. Her name was Elsie. We rented the women's club, and we were going to have our little dance there. And the day before the dance, walking down [[Lancaster|Lancaster Boulevard]] at 6:00 o'clock in the evening, I was arrested for vagrancy. They kept me in jail overnight, trying to make sure this dance wasn't going to come off.
 '''DM: How old were you?<br>

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 '''MG: Yes. See, I judge the universe by pencil mileage.<br>
 That's a pretty linear kind of thing. And the callus on my finger. I used to get that when I wrote with a pen. In fact, this finger right here has a permanent dent right in that bone from just holding that nub of a pen, and going [''choking, strugging sound''] like with those little dots, and now I get cramps in this arm from holding my thumb like this to do a certain move on the keypad to make the Synclavier do something. But in the larger scheme of things, what's a little nub in your finger or a twisted thumb? So long as somebody gets a laugh out of it, what the fuck?
 [[Category:Interviews with Zappa|Mother Of All Interviews (Part 2)]]

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 '''MG: There also seems to be sort of a backlash against the arts because of a correct perception that most people who are involved in creative selfexpression have contempt for that, or at least they're opposed to the more conservative ideas. And people can't accept that.<br>
-I think the whole idea of a conservative bent in the United States is a media fiction. There are two important media fictions that you have to see through in order to comprehend life in the United States. One of them is the constant drone of these guys, who are basically right-wing operatives, who go on television and complain about the liberal media bias. This simply doesn't exist, because all the media are owned by right-wing guys. There's no liberal media bias there. That's a straw man that has been constructed. When they constructed it, the idea was that, "Oh! If there's a liberal media bias, we must balance it by having more right-wing content in our programming"' thereby giving them the license to saturate and spin-doctor all the news that comes to you. I don't think that the sentiment of the population really is the way that television would convince you things are. The whole goal – especially in news broadcasting – is to convince anybody watching that all things connected with the Republican Party are good and all things not connected with the Republican Party are bad. That's the subtext of all of this. No matter what it is, if it's not of the Republican species, then it is bad.
+I think the whole idea of a conservative bent in the United States is a media fiction. There are two important media fictions that you have to see through in order to comprehend life in the United States. One of them is the constant drone of these guys, who are basically right-wing operatives, who go on television and complain about the liberal media bias. This simply doesn't exist, because all the media are owned by right-wing guys. There's no liberal media bias there. That's a straw man that has been constructed. When they constructed it, the idea was that, "Oh! If there's a liberal media bias, we must balance it by having more right-wing content in our programming"' thereby giving them the license to saturate and spin-doctor all the news that comes to you. I don't think that the sentiment of the population really is the way that television would convince you things are. The whole goal – especially in news broadcasting – is to convince anybody watching that all things connected with the [[Republican Party]] are good and all things not connected with the Republican Party are bad. That's the subtext of all of this. No matter what it is, if it's not of the Republican species, then it is bad.
 '''DM: How do things like ''[[The Simpsons]]'' slip onto television?<br>

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 [[Image:Steve_Brodner.jpg|frame|Illustration by Steve Bodner]]
 '''The Mother Of All Interviews (Part 2)<br>
-by Don Menn, 1992<br>
+by [[Don Menn]], 1992<br>
 This is the second part of the rather excellent interview conducted by Don Menn in 1992. It was also called "''Belgian Waffles in Plastic''". During this second part of the final conversation, cartoonist [[Matt Groening]] ''([[wikipedia:Life in Hell|Life in Hell]], [[The Simpsons]])'' joined in.<br>
 DM = Don Menn<br>

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 Well, in Germany it's different. First of all, it's a very critical audience. Second, we've played there so much, and it seems like everybody in the country bootlegged the shows. They know what we played when we were there. We have some very dedicated fans in Germany, and I'm sure, without being malicious about it, they would listen to what I was doing and just know that it wasn't as good as what I used to be able to do and then, in the typical German fashion, would reject it.
-'''MG: You sang "[[Sofa]]" in German.<br>
+'''MG: You sang "[[Sofa No. 2|Sofa]]" in German.<br>
 We learned it phonetically. The translation was done by a girl who used to be our babysitter. She was from Munich, and apparently not a very good translator. People look at what it means in English, and then listen to the German words, and they've told me that the translation is laughable. And then they tell me what it really should be in German, and it's unsingable.

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 '''DM: What about some of the experimenters, like [[John Cage]] doing silence [a piece called ''4'33"'' in which the performer makes no intentional sounds]?<br>
-I think that's an acquired taste. When I first learned of Cage's work, it seemed like the concept of it was far more entertaining than the audio result, but that could have just been a matter of the performances that were available on record at that time. Because even if you're going to be performing – well, silence is a bad example, but somebody with more abstract notations that require a conscious participation of willingness on the part of musicians to do something constructive in the piece. It's not often that you find musicians who like that idea and who will do a good job with it. I'm pretty sure that early recordings of Cage did not have willing accomplices. [''Ed. Note: According to Barking Pumpkin, Frank performed Cage's'' 4'33" ''on the Cage tribute ''[[A Chance Operation]],'' on Koch International (1933).]
+I think that's an acquired taste. When I first learned of Cage's work, it seemed like the concept of it was far more entertaining than the audio result, but that could have just been a matter of the performances that were available on record at that time. Because even if you're going to be performing – well, silence is a bad example, but somebody with more abstract notations that require a conscious participation of willingness on the part of musicians to do something constructive in the piece. It's not often that you find musicians who like that idea and who will do a good job with it. I'm pretty sure that early recordings of Cage did not have willing accomplices. [''Ed. Note: According to Barking Pumpkin, Frank performed Cage's'' 4'33" ''on the Cage tribute ''[[A Chance Operation - The John Cage Tribute|A Chance Operation]],'' on Koch International (1933).]
 '''DM: You can have a lot of notes on paper but if it's not well performed, it's not good to listen to.<br>

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 '''MG: They ought to be appreciative. Did you ever sing in any other language?<br>
-Dutch. All we had to learn in Dutch was just about a paragraph's worth of this one song, and the audience was so amused that anybody would attempt to do it. That particular tour, I tried to convince [[Mark Volman|Mark]] and [[Howard Kaylan|Howard]] that it was a good idea to learn these things phonetically, because most American groups, if they go and play in another country, make no attempt to communicate in the native language, and I thought it would be a worthwhile gesture and probably a groundbreaking thing to do. In fact, in Germany, it was groundbreaking, because I had reports afterward that people in Germany who were musicians who wanted to do rock and roll had never considered that their language would work for rock. I didn't realize that they weren't doing rock stuff in German. If they did rock, they would be doing bad phonetic English rock lyrics.
+Dutch. All we had to learn in Dutch was just about a paragraph's worth of this one song, and the audience was so amused that anybody would attempt to do it. That particular tour, I tried to convince [[Flo & Eddie|Mark and Howard]] that it was a good idea to learn these things phonetically, because most American groups, if they go and play in another country, make no attempt to communicate in the native language, and I thought it would be a worthwhile gesture and probably a groundbreaking thing to do. In fact, in Germany, it was groundbreaking, because I had reports afterward that people in Germany who were musicians who wanted to do rock and roll had never considered that their language would work for rock. I didn't realize that they weren't doing rock stuff in German. If they did rock, they would be doing bad phonetic English rock lyrics.
 '''DM: In terms of future recordings is it going to be the German event and possibly [[Civilization Phaze III|Phaze III]]? Is that happening?<br>

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 '''DM: Anything that was often out there?<br>
-Some of the greeting cards were often out there. I convinced the guy that I was working for – this place in Claremont, California, called the [[Nile Running Greeting Card]] studio, that specialized in silk-screen, that cards of a floral nature would likely be considered entertaining by elderly Midwestern women.
+Some of the greeting cards were often out there. I convinced the guy that I was working for – this place in Claremont, California, called the Nile Running Greeting Card studio, that specialized in silk-screen, that cards of a floral nature would likely be considered entertaining by elderly Midwestern women.
 '''MG: Very focused on the graphics!<br>

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 '''DM: [[Arnold Schoenberg|Schoenberg]]?<br>
-I've only heard four or five pieces by Schoenberg that I can enjoy listening to. There's the ''Septet,'' and then there's the suite of pieces for orchestra, the one that has "Summer Morning by the Lake" as one of the movements. I think that's really nice. And ''Begleitungsmusik:'' is a parody of motion picture music. I like that. But there's very little else by Schoenberg that I appreciate. And Berg – I like the "Lyric Suite," I like the – there's a piano solo piece, I think it's called ''Piano Sonata'' – it's an early piece. I like that. But, I tried to listen to ''Lulu.'' I couldn't do it. I had the album of Wozzeck. I could not get through it.
+I've only heard four or five pieces by Schoenberg that I can enjoy listening to. There's the ''Septet,'' and then there's the suite of pieces for orchestra, the one that has "Summer Morning by the Lake" as one of the movements. I think that's really nice. And ''Begleitungsmusik:'' is a parody of motion picture music. I like that. But there's very little else by Schoenberg that I appreciate. And [[Alban Berg|Berg]] – I like the "Lyric Suite," I like the – there's a piano solo piece, I think it's called ''Piano Sonata'' – it's an early piece. I like that. But, I tried to listen to ''Lulu.'' I couldn't do it. I had the album of Wozzeck. I could not get through it.
 I like [[Olivier Messiaen|Messiaen]]. Took me a while, but I like that music. He's colorful. But I must admit that the first Messiaen album that I ever got was an Angel recording of ''[[Wikipedia:Chronocromie|Chronochromie]],'' and it baffled the snot out of me. I didn't know what to do with it. I could stay interested for about the first three minutes. I was going, "Whoa, a lot of percussion; that's interesting, but what is this?" It took me years before I could listen to that whole side of the album straight through.

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 I just like the way it sounds. The same reason I like Varese. I like the way it sounds. But I wouldn't go out of my way to attend a Bach concert or buy an album of that kind of music. To me, of that period, that is the most tolerable of the material to listen to. I don't start getting interested in so-called classical music until the early 20th Century.
-'''MG: [[Gustav Mahler|Mahler]]?<br>
+'''MG: [[Wikipedia:Gustav Mahler|Mahler]]?<br>
 No. I actually like [[Richard Wagner|Wagner]]. I think Wagner was interesting. It's too long, but it's interesting. I have very few Wagner albums, but the things that I've heard, if you look at the time at which it was written, and what he's doing with the material, it's challenging. That's the thing that depresses me about most of the music of that period. It's just not challenging, because it was written to spec. There was a king or a duke or a church or somebody who said, "Hey. You need to write something. We have a festival coming up, and it must be something I will like." So everything was written to suit the taste buds of some joker with a towel on his head.