Frank Zappa

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Frank Vincent Zappa[nb 1] (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American musician, composer, songwriter, producer, guitarist, actor, and filmmaker whose work was characterized by nonconformity, free-form improvisation, sound experiments, musical virtuosity, and satire of American culture.

In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works, and produced almost all of the 60-plus albums that he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. Zappa also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. He is considered one of the most innovative and stylistically diverse rock musicians of his generation.

As a self-taught composer and performer, Zappa's diverse musical influences led him to create music that was sometimes difficult to categorize. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for 20th-century classical composers such as Edgard Varèse, Igor Stravinsky, and Anton Webern, along with 1950s rhythm and blues music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands; later switching to electric guitar. His 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. He continued this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was rock, jazz or classical.

Zappa's output is unified by a conceptual continuity he termed "Project/Object", with numerous musical phrases, ideas, and characters reappearing across his albums. His lyrics reflected his iconoclastic views of established social and political processes, structures and movements, often humorously so. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship. Unlike many other rock musicians of his era, he personally disapproved of and seldom used drugs, but supported their decriminalization and regulation.

During Zappa's lifetime, he was a highly productive and prolific artist, earning widespread acclaim from critics and fellow musicians. He had some commercial success, particularly in Europe, and worked as an independent artist for most of his career. He remains a major influence on musicians and composers. His honors include an induction into the 1995 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the 1997 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him at number 71 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and in 2011 at number 22 on its list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW4Bm7q_zOc

"Bobby Brown" (Sound-icon.png (song sample, 600Kb)) or "Bobby Brown (Goes Down)" is a song by Frank Zappa released on his album Sheik Yerbouti in 1979. One of his best known songs, it was hugely successful in Europe.

The song describes a wealthy, misogynist student named Bobby Brown, "the cutest boy in town", whose life is the archetypical American Dream until a traumatic sexual encounter with "Freddie", a lesbian involved in the women's liberation movement, leaves him questioning his sexuality.

Bobby transforms into a leisure suit-wearing closeted homosexual working in radio promotions; by the end of the song, he and "a friend" (later implied to be his boss, as he will "do anything to get ahead") have become self-described "sexual spastic(s)" involved in golden showers and S&M, for which he thanks his "friend", Freddie.

This song was more successful in Europe than America (the song's pervasive sexual content made it unfit for broadcast on U.S. radio) and this is why it is only featured on the vinyl and European CD version of Zappa's best of compilation, Strictly Commercial.