Lancaster

Lancaster is a city in California, close to the Mojave Desert and Edwards Air Force Base.

Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa lived in Lancaster between 1956 and 1958, where he attended the Antelope Valley High School, played in the bands The Blackouts and The Omens and had a relationship with Sandy Schwanekamp and later Kay Sherman.

During this period, he also made a phone call with Louise Varèse and Edgar Varèse and received a letter from Varèse. Zappa also met Don Van Vliet, with whom he recorded Lost In A Whirlpool and The Search For Tom Dooley. Other significant people from his career whom he met during this period were Denny Walley (a friend of Bobby Zappa at the time), Jim "Motorhead" Sherwood (a classmate of Bobby Zappa) and Ian Underwood.

In 1958, Zappa's family and him moved to Claremont, California.

Frank Zappa about Lancaster

Matt Groening: You were in a band at that time, too, right? So you were just a degenerate.

Frank Zappa: "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."

Don Menn: How old were you?

Frank Zappa: "Seventeen."

Matt Groening: So what happened?

Frank Zappa: "I got out, and we had the dance."

Quoted from: The Mother Of All Interviews (Part 2), 1992, by Don Menn and Matt Groening.

References to Lancaster in Zappa's work

• Billy The Mountain: Billy the Mountain and Ethell the Tree destroy Edwards Air Force Base.
• Village Of The Sun: "I went to high school in Lancaster, which is not very far from Palmdale."
• Be-Bop Tango: Zappa says Brenda the stripper performed at Edwards Air Force Base, earlier.

Quotes

"Lancaster was just a barren town, it seems like all the misfits from Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties were sent up there to get out of everybody else's face. There wasn't really anything to do there. You spent most of your time just wandering around through the desert, trying to occupy yourself with anything. That's probably why most people got into music or drinking all the time. On weekends that's about all there was to do. One boring town, believe me." - Jim "Motorhead" Sherwood in BBC Television Tribute (1993).

See also

• Antelope Valley High School
• The Blackouts
• Captain Beefheart
• Edwards Air Force Base
• Mojave Desert
• The Omens

External links

• Wikipedia: Lancaster,_California