Dangerous Kitchen: The Subversive World of Zappa

by Kevin Courrier

There’s a fine line between insanity and pure genius …The name Frank Zappa often conjures up the image of a deranged satirist. But for close to thirty years, between 1966 until his untimely death from prostate cancer in 1993, Frank Zappa was one of the most influential, innovative, and controversial musicians in contemporary and popular music (despite little radio airplay). Beginning with his band, the Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa built a formidable career in rock and roll by combining a wide range of styles, including serious contemporary music, jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, and social and political parody. Yet Zappa was often portrayed as a drug addict (even though he denounced drug use) and a fetishist (despite a normal married life). In Dangerous Kitchen: The Subversive World of Zappa, Kevin Courrier explodes those myths by illuminating the facts about this outrageously gifted composer. Courrier examines how Frank Zappa's emergence in American popular culture during the eclectic and experimental sixties was no accident. Courrier argues  that Zappa's musical career — which poked fun at middle-class conformity, the hippie sub-culture, disco, the rock industry, and the Reagan era — had its roots in the artistic rebellion against Romanticism in the nineteenth century. The book draws links to the musical and cultural antecedents of Frank Zappa's career, including Erik Satie, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Igor Stravinsky, Charles Ives, and Zappa's true hero, Edgard Varese, who was as much a scientific inventor of electronic sounds as he was a dynamic avant-garde composer. This book examines Frank Zappa as a composer, performer, political artist, and American original. 

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction

500 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2002

Reviews

[PMB · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just recently finished this after starting it years ago when I was beginning my obsession with Frank’s music. I was kind of in Zappa-overdrive at the time and impulsively grabbed the only bio I could immediately get my hands on. I should have waited. While not necessarily a bad book, it seemed at times simply too academic. It’s filled with great quotes, some fun facts, and an in depth discussion of Zappa’s influences (most notably Igor Stravinsky), but too much of the book is a cut and dry analysis of the music. It hammers away track by track; album by album; decade by decade. It’s almost as if Courrier loaded up Frank’s discography, hit play, and wrote what he heard. This pace sort of puts you in auto-pilot mode as a reader. If you know the music, you know exactly what’s coming; which, unfortunately, kept my expectations in check as I plugged along page by page. Of course, for fans (and Courier is clearly a fan) that isn’t all bad; however, I was left wanting more (dirt?) on the man himself. I suppose if I had to do it over again I would have held off and sought out The Real Frank Zappa Book.

[David Melbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my second time reading this and, as usual when I read a book again, I took my time and really absorbed it.

One thing that amazes me about almost every author who's written about Zappa -- they still insist that Lather was an afterthought! Even with Gail Zappa saying otherwise right in the liner notes of the booklet accompanying the CD released in 1996!

Lather always was, and always will be, the quintessential work by the greatest composer of the 20th century. Amen. --From A Reader's Journal, by d r melbie.