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Frank Zappa: The Complete Guide to His Music
The indispensable consumers' guide to the music of Frank Zappa - the genius of the absurd, and one of the most prolific and unpredictable characters of 20th century music. A thorough analysis of Zappa's complete recorded output, from the early days of the Mothers Of Invention, through his more avant-garde compositions to his most recent posthumous releases. The guide An album by album analysis A full Zappa bibliography Details of when and where the music was recorded, including all collaborating artists A special section concerning compilation, archive and bootleg releases Sixteen pages of full-colour images
- GenresMusicNonfiction
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 19, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 28, 2018
Please note that this is not a "700 page tome". My copy was 192 small pages, including photos and album covers.
It's a "complete guide" only in the sense of it dedicated a few paragraphs describing every album, but a book of this length can only summarize, which is exactly what I wanted anyway, being as I borrowed this from someone who told me exactly what it was. This is a cute pocket guidebook to give you a taste of what you can expect from each album.
I agree with the reviewer who said the writer seemed full of himself. Bonus smarm-points for recommending TWO of his own books in the bibliography amidst authors like Kafka, Joyce and Zappa himself. Maybe this guy is a bigger deal than I thought, but seriously? There are some strange words I had to look up, but an absolutely embarrassing amount of typos littered among them, including the gem: "If Baby Snakes was just a momento of Zappa's film of that name, Them or Us was a full-scale album." Momento.
The font used for the album titles is one of those fonts you have to take longer than you'd like to be able to accurately decipher the words, (sometimes I just read the album cover on the photo - it was easier) on account that the font uses martini glasses to represent the letter "Y", snakes to represent "L", among other weird things which look ugly and make reading difficult.
It's alright. I enjoyed it all the same. It's cute, brief, and gave me what I wanted. I liked the photos, although it would also have been even better if the album covers went along with the descriptions with them in the descriptions, and were in colour too.
I would recommend this to someone perhaps just starting out with Zappa - someone who has maybe heard and enjoyed a few albums, knows a little of what he's about, and is keen on exploring more.
It's a "complete guide" only in the sense of it dedicated a few paragraphs describing every album, but a book of this length can only summarize, which is exactly what I wanted anyway, being as I borrowed this from someone who told me exactly what it was. This is a cute pocket guidebook to give you a taste of what you can expect from each album.
I agree with the reviewer who said the writer seemed full of himself. Bonus smarm-points for recommending TWO of his own books in the bibliography amidst authors like Kafka, Joyce and Zappa himself. Maybe this guy is a bigger deal than I thought, but seriously? There are some strange words I had to look up, but an absolutely embarrassing amount of typos littered among them, including the gem: "If Baby Snakes was just a momento of Zappa's film of that name, Them or Us was a full-scale album." Momento.
The font used for the album titles is one of those fonts you have to take longer than you'd like to be able to accurately decipher the words, (sometimes I just read the album cover on the photo - it was easier) on account that the font uses martini glasses to represent the letter "Y", snakes to represent "L", among other weird things which look ugly and make reading difficult.
It's alright. I enjoyed it all the same. It's cute, brief, and gave me what I wanted. I liked the photos, although it would also have been even better if the album covers went along with the descriptions with them in the descriptions, and were in colour too.
I would recommend this to someone perhaps just starting out with Zappa - someone who has maybe heard and enjoyed a few albums, knows a little of what he's about, and is keen on exploring more.
September 3, 2023
Watson's goal of extreme literacy outshines, and often clouds, his analysis of the subject matter. That being said, I really enjoyed his Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play. This volume started out promising, but ran out of gas about halfway through/
September 30, 2024
An amazingly fairly detailed book on Frank's discography. Of course it is not an encyclopedia like Ulrich's 'The Big Note', but very compact and illuminating.A nice read.
June 9, 2014
The main problem with this book is that if you click on the Kindle version of Watson's The Negative Dialectics of Poodleplay, *this* is what you get for the e-book. I thought there was some mistake with the differing page counts, since they are linked as the same book on Amazon.com. However: THEY ARE TWO SEPARATE BOOKS!
That said, this is an okay look at Zappa's oeuvre, though the author is a tad too full of himself, loves dropping names, and apparently thinks Làther is the end-all and be-all of Frank Zappa's music. I guess; I mean, it *is* a good album, but not one of my personal faves. To each his own.
Like anyone, the author has his likes and dislikes in Zappa's discography, but glosses over many cuts on many albums otherwise discussed in great detail. There are numerous discographies on the internet that will give you the same, and some more insightful information about Frank Zappa's music. This e-book just seems slapped together; I'm assuming NDoPP was a bit more detailed.
I would've liked to read the entire original work, but I'm not sure I could swallow the smarm for 597 pages. It was tough to get through 96 the way it was.
That said, this is an okay look at Zappa's oeuvre, though the author is a tad too full of himself, loves dropping names, and apparently thinks Làther is the end-all and be-all of Frank Zappa's music. I guess; I mean, it *is* a good album, but not one of my personal faves. To each his own.
Like anyone, the author has his likes and dislikes in Zappa's discography, but glosses over many cuts on many albums otherwise discussed in great detail. There are numerous discographies on the internet that will give you the same, and some more insightful information about Frank Zappa's music. This e-book just seems slapped together; I'm assuming NDoPP was a bit more detailed.
I would've liked to read the entire original work, but I'm not sure I could swallow the smarm for 597 pages. It was tough to get through 96 the way it was.
July 14, 2012
Although this is a thin book, I never finished it. It is written by a zappologist to other zappologists, but does not work as well for normal music fans. There is too much commentary on the record covers, for example.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews