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Product Description
For nearly thirty years Frank Zappa (1940–1993) pursued an idiosyncratic but influential course in music—rock, jazz, and classical composer (releasing over fifty albums); founder of the Mothers of Invention; guitarist, conductor, and producer; as well as social satirist, sonic scientist, First Amendment champion, and all-around iconoclast. This updated edition of David Walley's cutting-edge classic includes a new foreword, a substantial chapter carrying the Zappa saga through his death from cancer, an afterword, bibliography, discography, videography, and guide to Zappa on the Internet. From 1960's Freak Out! to the posthumous Civilization Phaze III, No Commercial Potential offers converts and connoisseurs the most practical and penetrating book ever written on the musical phenomenon known as Frank Zappa.
Amazon.com Review
Once considered the best biography on American composer Frank Zappa available, David Walley's No Commercial Potential: The Saga of Frank Zappa still contains the most compelling and accurate portrait of Zappa at the beginning of his career. The latest edition has been updated by the author--which is odd, as Walley seems almost completely disenchanted with Zappa in the closing chapters--to quickly gloss over the last two decades of Zappa's life up to and including his death in 1993. The gold of this biography is still the original material from the seventies, which Walley wrote after spending a great deal of time with his subject. Anyone interested in Zappa and his music will not want to miss this fascinating, firsthand account of the man in what many consider to be the prime years of his career. Anyone interested in a broader view of Zappa's life will also want to investigate Ben Watson's astounding intellectual analysis of Zappa's work, The Negative Dialects of Poodle Play, the collected offerings of The Frank Zappa Companion, and the word from the man himself, The Real Frank Zappa Book.
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