jesserides2005
Well-known member
To be honest with you, I've never listened to Frank Zappa, & probably never will. However, his word's from this interview are all I really need to understand his genius: "Definitely Truth".
This is a late-1980s interview with US composer Frank Zappa.
Option Magazine: In the past you have said that "art is dying in this country." What do you mean by this?
Frank Zappa: Much of the creative work I find interesting and amusing has no basis in economic reality. Most decisions relevant to expenditures for what gets produced and distributed are made strictly on a bottom line basis. Nobody makes a move without talking to their accountant first. There will always be people who will take a chance, but their numbers
are dwindling. Those who are crazy enough to take the chance on spending money to make some unusual object or event take place are an endangered species. The spirit of adventurousness at any level of American society has been pretty much legislatured away. In the eighties, with a repressive Republican, yuppie-oriented administration installed and ready to perpetuate itself with Supreme Court appointments that will keep us in trouble for the next half century, the prognosis is not good for things which differ from the viewpoint of the conservative right.
Option Magazine: Do you think anything can be done to reverse the trend?
Frank Zappa: Perhaps. I tend to view the whole thing as a conspiracy. It is no accident that the public schools in the United States are pure ****. It is no accident that masses of drugs are available and openly used at all levels of society. In a way, the real business of government is the business of controlling the labor force.
Social pressure is placed on people to become a certain type of individual, and then rewards are heaped on people who conform to that stereotype. Take the pop music business, for example. Look at the stereotypes held up by the media as great accomplishment. You see guys who are making millions of dollars and selling millions of units. And because they are
making and selling millions they are stamped with the seal of approval, and it is the millions which make their work quality. Yet anyone can look at what is being done and say, "Jesus, I can do that!" You celebrate mediocrity, you get mediocrity. People who could have achieved
more won't, because they know that all they have to do is be "that" and they too can sell millions and make millions and have people love them because they're merely mediocre. And that is reinforced over and over and over.
Few people who do anything excellent are ever heard of. You know why? Because excellence, pure excellence, terrifies the **** out of Americans because they have been bred to appreciate the success of the mediocre. People don't like to be reminded that lurking somewhere there are people who can do some **** that you can't do. They can think a way you can't think, they can dance a way you can't dance. They are excellent. You aren't
excellent. Most Americans aren't excellent, they're only OK. And so to keep them happy as a labor force, you say, "OK, let's take this mediocre chump," and we say, "He is terrific!" All the other mediocre chumps say, "Yeah, that's right and that gives me hope, because one day as mediocre and chumpish as I am I can..." It's smart labor relations. An MBA decision.
That is the orientation of most entertainment, politics, and religion. So considering how firmly entrenched all that is right now, you think it's going to turn around? Not without a genetic mutation it's not!
Option Magazine: If you would focus on the message of pop music for a moment, what do you see as the issues of the 1980's that music can address today?
Frank Zappa: It can address anything it wants to, but it will only address those topics that will sell. Musicians will not address topics that are controversial if they want to have a hit. So music will continue to address those things that really matter to people who buy records: boy-girl relationships, boy-boy relationships, boy-car relationships, girl-car relationships, boy-girl-food relationships, perhaps. But safe. Every once in a while somebody will say "War is Hell" or "Save the Whales" or something bland. But if you talk about pop music as a medium for expressing social attitudes, the medium expresses the social attitude perfectly by
avoiding contact with things that are really there. That is the telling point about the society that is consuming the product. If society wanted to hear information of a specific nature in songs, about controversial topics, they would buy them. But they don't. You are talking about a record- buying audience which is interested in their personal health and well-being, their
ability to earn a living, their ability to stay young at all costs forever, and not much else.
Option Magazine: How about the role of music in society outside the pop music industry?
For example, Kent Nagano (conductor of the Berkeley symphony) said in a recent interview that "a composer has a job to do within a culture. Which is not to say a composer should write what the public already wants to hear, but rather that the public is employing the composer to lead them, to show them a direction." What do you think of that?
Frank Zappa: I don't think a composer has any function in society at all, especially in an industrial society, unless it is writing music scores, advertising jingles, or stuff that is consumed by industry. I respect Kent, however I think he takes a very optimistic and naive attitude toward what it takes to be a composer. If you walk down the street and ask anybody if a composer is of any use to society, what kind of answer do you think you would get? I mean, nobody gives a ****. If you decide to become a composer, you seriously run the risk of becoming less than a human being. Who the **** needs you?
A songwriter is different. [in a facetious sing-song voice] You write a nice song, then you're important. Because with a song, now we have a car, now we have love, now we have a this ... but a composer? What the **** do they do? All the good music's already been written by people with wigs and stuff on.
Option Magazine: So the public doesn't need composers. What about composers? Do they need a public? For example [electronic music composer] Milton Babbit, in an essay titled "Who cares if you listen?" has advocated the virtual exclusion of the general public from modern music concerts. What is your opinion on that ?
Frank Zappa: That's unnecessary, they're already excluded; they don't go! Have you been to a modern music concert? Plenty of room, isn't there? Come on Milton, give yourself a break. I hope you're not going to spend money trying to exclude these people. What are you going to do, have it legislated in Congress, like those assholes who wanted to make it a law that
you couldn't put anything backwards on a phonograph record?
Option Magazine: So, given all this, what do you think art will be like 20 years from now?
Frank Zappa: Since I'm not in that business, it's hard for me to really care. [Author's note: Zappa does not think that his work is perceived as art.] I can lament its passing. I don't think anything that a reasonable person would describe as art will be around. Not here. I'm talking about art in terms of valued, beautiful stuff that is done not because of your ego but just
because it is beautiful, just because it is the right thing to do. We will be told what is good and it will be mediocre. There's always a possibility that an anomaly will appear - some weird little twisted thing will happen and there will be somebody who's doing it. But who's going to know? In the dark ages there was art, but who knew?
This is a late-1980s interview with US composer Frank Zappa.
Option Magazine: In the past you have said that "art is dying in this country." What do you mean by this?
Frank Zappa: Much of the creative work I find interesting and amusing has no basis in economic reality. Most decisions relevant to expenditures for what gets produced and distributed are made strictly on a bottom line basis. Nobody makes a move without talking to their accountant first. There will always be people who will take a chance, but their numbers
are dwindling. Those who are crazy enough to take the chance on spending money to make some unusual object or event take place are an endangered species. The spirit of adventurousness at any level of American society has been pretty much legislatured away. In the eighties, with a repressive Republican, yuppie-oriented administration installed and ready to perpetuate itself with Supreme Court appointments that will keep us in trouble for the next half century, the prognosis is not good for things which differ from the viewpoint of the conservative right.
Option Magazine: Do you think anything can be done to reverse the trend?
Frank Zappa: Perhaps. I tend to view the whole thing as a conspiracy. It is no accident that the public schools in the United States are pure ****. It is no accident that masses of drugs are available and openly used at all levels of society. In a way, the real business of government is the business of controlling the labor force.
Social pressure is placed on people to become a certain type of individual, and then rewards are heaped on people who conform to that stereotype. Take the pop music business, for example. Look at the stereotypes held up by the media as great accomplishment. You see guys who are making millions of dollars and selling millions of units. And because they are
making and selling millions they are stamped with the seal of approval, and it is the millions which make their work quality. Yet anyone can look at what is being done and say, "Jesus, I can do that!" You celebrate mediocrity, you get mediocrity. People who could have achieved
more won't, because they know that all they have to do is be "that" and they too can sell millions and make millions and have people love them because they're merely mediocre. And that is reinforced over and over and over.
Few people who do anything excellent are ever heard of. You know why? Because excellence, pure excellence, terrifies the **** out of Americans because they have been bred to appreciate the success of the mediocre. People don't like to be reminded that lurking somewhere there are people who can do some **** that you can't do. They can think a way you can't think, they can dance a way you can't dance. They are excellent. You aren't
excellent. Most Americans aren't excellent, they're only OK. And so to keep them happy as a labor force, you say, "OK, let's take this mediocre chump," and we say, "He is terrific!" All the other mediocre chumps say, "Yeah, that's right and that gives me hope, because one day as mediocre and chumpish as I am I can..." It's smart labor relations. An MBA decision.
That is the orientation of most entertainment, politics, and religion. So considering how firmly entrenched all that is right now, you think it's going to turn around? Not without a genetic mutation it's not!
Option Magazine: If you would focus on the message of pop music for a moment, what do you see as the issues of the 1980's that music can address today?
Frank Zappa: It can address anything it wants to, but it will only address those topics that will sell. Musicians will not address topics that are controversial if they want to have a hit. So music will continue to address those things that really matter to people who buy records: boy-girl relationships, boy-boy relationships, boy-car relationships, girl-car relationships, boy-girl-food relationships, perhaps. But safe. Every once in a while somebody will say "War is Hell" or "Save the Whales" or something bland. But if you talk about pop music as a medium for expressing social attitudes, the medium expresses the social attitude perfectly by
avoiding contact with things that are really there. That is the telling point about the society that is consuming the product. If society wanted to hear information of a specific nature in songs, about controversial topics, they would buy them. But they don't. You are talking about a record- buying audience which is interested in their personal health and well-being, their
ability to earn a living, their ability to stay young at all costs forever, and not much else.
Option Magazine: How about the role of music in society outside the pop music industry?
For example, Kent Nagano (conductor of the Berkeley symphony) said in a recent interview that "a composer has a job to do within a culture. Which is not to say a composer should write what the public already wants to hear, but rather that the public is employing the composer to lead them, to show them a direction." What do you think of that?
Frank Zappa: I don't think a composer has any function in society at all, especially in an industrial society, unless it is writing music scores, advertising jingles, or stuff that is consumed by industry. I respect Kent, however I think he takes a very optimistic and naive attitude toward what it takes to be a composer. If you walk down the street and ask anybody if a composer is of any use to society, what kind of answer do you think you would get? I mean, nobody gives a ****. If you decide to become a composer, you seriously run the risk of becoming less than a human being. Who the **** needs you?
A songwriter is different. [in a facetious sing-song voice] You write a nice song, then you're important. Because with a song, now we have a car, now we have love, now we have a this ... but a composer? What the **** do they do? All the good music's already been written by people with wigs and stuff on.
Option Magazine: So the public doesn't need composers. What about composers? Do they need a public? For example [electronic music composer] Milton Babbit, in an essay titled "Who cares if you listen?" has advocated the virtual exclusion of the general public from modern music concerts. What is your opinion on that ?
Frank Zappa: That's unnecessary, they're already excluded; they don't go! Have you been to a modern music concert? Plenty of room, isn't there? Come on Milton, give yourself a break. I hope you're not going to spend money trying to exclude these people. What are you going to do, have it legislated in Congress, like those assholes who wanted to make it a law that
you couldn't put anything backwards on a phonograph record?
Option Magazine: So, given all this, what do you think art will be like 20 years from now?
Frank Zappa: Since I'm not in that business, it's hard for me to really care. [Author's note: Zappa does not think that his work is perceived as art.] I can lament its passing. I don't think anything that a reasonable person would describe as art will be around. Not here. I'm talking about art in terms of valued, beautiful stuff that is done not because of your ego but just
because it is beautiful, just because it is the right thing to do. We will be told what is good and it will be mediocre. There's always a possibility that an anomaly will appear - some weird little twisted thing will happen and there will be somebody who's doing it. But who's going to know? In the dark ages there was art, but who knew?
