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ursinator2.0
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Another one from the upcoming overnight sensation anniversary release:
Face Down ("I'm The Slime" Demo)
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ursinator2.0
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Frank Zappa - Over-Nite Sensation Series (Ep. 1: A Conversation with Joe Travers + Michael Mesker)
Dirty Love (With Quad Guitar)
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Frank Zappa - Over-Nite Sensation Series (Ep. 2: Art Direction)
The ZappaCast Presents: The Over-Nite Sensation 50th Anniversary Celebration
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ursinator2.0
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Available August 22, 2024 (new cover)
The saying goes that "God only gives you what you can handle." Well God didn't grow up in my atheist, Wiccan, fame-laden, oversexed, teetotalling,
drug-free, cloistered, chaotic, non-communicative, workaholic, feral-feeling house.
For Moon Unit, daughter of musician Frank Zappa and his 'manager', Gail, processing a life so unique, so punctuated by the whims of creative urges,
the tastes of popular culture and the calculus of celebrity, has at times been eviscerating. But it is her deep sense of humour and unshakeable
humility that keeps her - and this memoir - pinned to the ground.
A child-star at age 14 after her accidental international hit single (recorded with her father), 'Valley Girl', turned her into a reluctant celebrity,
Moon Unit Zappa's life has been utterly extraordinary from her birth in 1967 into a family that was already blessed/cursed as music royalty thanks to
the acknowledged genius of Frank. But what are the consequences of growing up in a family who spend most of their time naked arguing about
sexual/extra-marital liaisons and practising white magic in a free-for-all state of nonconformist, virtuoso abandon?
Earth to Moon is a reckoning with self-esteem, the ghosts of the past and a mother and a father who, in the process of leaving their mark upon on the
world, scarred their first daughter on home soil. Brutally self-deprecating and funny as hell, it belies a rose-tinted perspective on the 70s and 80s
west coast American scene, from within the belly of the beast of the rock and roll world.
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BBP
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Kind of interested in hearing what you think - as I couldn't get through America The Beautiful I'm not sure I'd buy it though.
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Plook
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Sounds interesting and a little cringe worthy at the same time.
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ursinator2.0
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What is the problem with that one? Doesn't she get you hooked by her writing style or don't you simply like the overall concept of transforming FZ
into a semi-fictional character?
Regarding the upcoming book: I don't expect too much for the simple reason that FZ used to be quite invisible to his family - either he was touring or
he barricaded himself in his basement laboratory. On the other hand it could be interesting to learn what exactly that did to his family.
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West Hollywood to Declare June 10 as Frank Zappa Day
The City of West Hollywood has declared June 10, 2024, as “Frank Zappa Day” to honor the legendary musician, activist, and counterculture icon’s
invaluable contributions to music and culture in West Hollywood and beyond.
West Hollywood Mayor John M. Erickson will present the proclamation to Ahmet and Diva Zappa, the children of Frank and Gail Zappa, during a ceremony
at the iconic Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip. The event is scheduled for Monday, June 10, at 4 p.m. PDT.
Frank Zappa, renowned for his pioneering work in music and his outspoken views on social and political issues, left an indelible mark on the cultural
landscape. His band, The Mothers of Invention, played a memorable three-hour concert at Whisky a Go Go on July 23, 1968. Although plans for an album
release from that night were never fully realized, the performance will finally see the light of day with the upcoming release of “Whisky a Go Go,
1968” on June 21. The collection, produced by Ahmet Zappa and Zappa Vaultmeister Joe Travers, includes every note from Zappa’s three distinct sets
that evening.
The proclamation ceremony at Whisky a Go Go not only commemorates Frank Zappa’s contributions but also celebrates the release of this historic
recording, bringing full circle a moment in music history that has remained unreleased for over five decades.
“Frank Zappa Day” is a tribute to a man whose innovative spirit and relentless creativity continue to inspire generations of musicians and fans
worldwide.
The Whisky has been called the first real American discothèque and it’s one of the most famous rock ‘n’ roll landmarks in the United States. It
first opened January 11, 1964, in an old bank building that had been remodeled into a short-lived club called the Party by a former Chicago policeman,
Elmer Valentine. The Whisky a Go Go opened with a live band led by Johnny Rivers and a short-skirted female DJ spinning records between sets from a
suspended cage at the right of the stage. When the girl DJ danced during Rivers’ set, the audience thought it was part of the act and the concept of
go-go dancers in cages was born. Rivers rode the Whisky-born “go-go” craze to national fame with records recorded partly “live at the Whisky.”
The Miracles recorded the song “Going to a Go-Go” in 1966 (which was covered in 1982 by The Rolling Stones), and Whisky a Go Go franchises sprang
up all over the country.
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BBP
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Whooooooo!
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ursinator2.0
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WTF podcast with Marc Maron Episode 1564 - Moon Zappa
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polydigm
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WTF indeed. Who has the life to spare to listen to such things? I could feel myself aging while listening to it and closed it down not long after the
actual talking between Marc and Moon finally started. I may buy the book - I may read it - I don't know - I'll wait and see until I get the results of
my next periodic set of blood tests ...
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Eddie RUKidding
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Wish you well Poly
South of the Border
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polydigm
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I'm fine. I was making a joke.
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Some more stuff to get Poly bored - hope it helps
I Was The Daughter of a Rock Icon—Not all Cults are Bad (Newsweek article by Moon Unit Zappa)
Recently, while strolling in the depths of the San Fernando Valley, I saw a sidewalk stencil that said, "Not all cults are bad." I had to laugh. In my
memoir, I revisited the old territory of growing up the daughter of a rock icon who I always saw as one part Spock and one part Jesus. I didn't just
compete for his affection in my childhood home, I battled the fervent flock he ministered to, his fans, proselytizing to the feverish believers with
his acerbic, satiric siren songs.
My family dynamic was not dissimilar to a cult. I willingly ate, slept, drank, and lived for our larger-than-life leader. Only ours was the good kind
because I couldn't get enough of my father's gallows humor and unending output of creativity. Sign me up for that kind of isolation.
Each album in my father's vast catalog is a time capsule, each tune a memory generator transporting me to a fixed location in space and time.
Sometimes I'm as tall as his tibia listening to playback in his makeshift studio in our basement in what would become our Laurel Canyon compound. Or
I'm tucked in tight in my top bunk in the bedroom I shared with Dweezil, hugging my raggedy Ann and hearing his latest composition warbling through
our intercom system. Or I'm suddenly nine and sitting atop a big metal case on casters on the side of the stage at one of Frank's shows watching my
God-like father I idolized smoke and sermonize on his guitar, in a halo of magenta and chartreuse light.
I received my first journal when I was 5, with an inscription from my blood hero in Frank's beautiful block script in black ink. When I wasn't writing
short stories about my imaginary camels T'Mershi Duween and Sinini, or drawing myself dressed as a nun, I was crudely sketching Gail and Frank
sideways and naked, stacked on a mattress like pancakes from DuPar's. I reported what I saw or hoped to see instead. Or what I feared about UFOs and
aliens since Gail told me her Naval officer father was murdered for what he knew about Area 51.
Later, in my teens, my journals became a record of my father's whereabouts and my subsequent complaints about his absence. Frank traveled all the
time. In a touring cycle, he might stay gone for the better part of a year, with only the briefest returns, a bird alighting on a branch. Gail often
took her loneliness out on me. This only doubled my deep longing for his time, attention, and affection. More accurately, I ached.
Who wouldn't? Frank was tall, charismatic, smart, funny, and wild-looking. Skinny as an eel and effeminate with long black hair, a beak of a nose, and
platform shoes, but also masculine with his signature mustache, chest hair, smoking, cursing, and wearing ball-crushing sailor's pants. His presence,
prolificity, and perfectionism demanded your full attention.
So yeah, early on I knew my family was different. Not just because our house was festooned with overflowing ashtrays, empty coffee cups, an Ouija
board, raunchy comics and magazines covering everything from scientific discoveries to smut. No. other kids I knew could drop f-bombs, stay up late,
watch as much TV as they wanted, and help themselves to a drawer full of Mint Milanos and Nutter Butters.
No one else I knew had a purple living room or a blow-up sex doll in their father's workspace. No one else had an adopted echidna that lived at the
zoo. No one else's father brought a pancake home in his jacket pocket all the way from Europe for Gail to taste, reverse engineer, and recreate. And
not a single adult I knew had a birthday party with their ice-cold pool decorated with more bobbing watermelons than I could count. We didn't
celebrate Gail on Mother's Day, we celebrated the Mother of Invention. And not just one day a year, all of them.
My fatherly worship was baked into bones thanks to my namesake. Plain old Frank and Gail decided on Moon Unit for their firstborn, a daring act of
nonconformity in a 1967 sea of sameness. "Unit" because my birth solidified us as a family unit, and "Moon" because Gail didn't like Frank's other
suggestion—Motorhead.
It made international news. Just like that, family became the most important thing to me, and my father became the fiery star I'd revolve around,
always reflecting his light, never seeing shadow—his or my own. Undoing that conditioning and placing myself at the center of my life would take
some time—about five decades.
As a kid, I was mesmerized. I loved how he could seemingly play any instrument or know how to compose for them. I loved how every sound was a color in
my father's palette, a tool for his experimentations and "air sculpting." I loved Frank's inside jokes and his made-up words like "Gream", the day
between Thursday and Friday. I loved hearing about how far he had come from his catholic upbringing, eating "boiled hot dog water," playing with the
mercury from a broken thermometer, getting in trouble for blowing up his high school's science lab with a homemade concoction, or how he once had a
job drawing rude greeting cards.
Sometimes I would get lucky and I'd get to help Gail choose clothes for Frank in the women's section at IMagnin's at the open-air mall in the
tree-lined flats. My father was like a tall, weird doll to me then. Gail said he preferred women's clothing, especially for stage wear, with its
softer, drapey fabrics in better colors. I loved learning about a-lines and V-necks and how to tell the difference between polyester and cotton, wool
and silk, expensive and cheap.
Frank and Gail liked expensive things. A nubby lavender-colored jacket with pockets got my vote, as did a long camel coat for his upcoming SNL
appearance that I particularly coveted. After Frank had worn these items for a while, I loved breathing in his comforting smells of tobacco, sweat,
and dandruff shampoo. I was proud I looked like him, inherited his long torso, and his passion for stripes.
Then he'd be gone again, just when I was getting used to having him around, and my heart would close up, and all the color left the world.
A technicolor remembrance is a time Frank took Gail and me to attend a live performance of Lily Tomlin. Well, Gail took us because she's the only one
who drove. My father notoriously refused to renew his license as a protest against his requirement to stand in line at the DMV, so Gail was the only
affordable and obliging solution.
On stage all by herself, Lily seemed like a giant—as big as the Statue of Liberty. To me, she looked a little like my dad, tall and skinny with a
long face and wavy black hair. I was therefore doubly captivated. I liked how she moved her body and voice changed each time she became a new
character. I especially loved it when she was a baby in a giant highchair and a snorting telephone lady from the 1940s.
Like Frank, she made fun of common things in an uncommon way. Unlike Frank, Lily had no need for an instrument or a backing band. The whole show was
just her just talking! When I heard Frank laugh, really laugh, a rarity, a seed was planted. I wished I could make him laugh like that, too.
Eventually, I did. Entering middle school, I noticed and mimicked the voices of the popular girls I heard at my school or at a mall where we all
socialized in the heart of the San Fernando Valley called The Galleria. I got some genuine and hearty laughs out of the man I worshipped. Between
missing my father so terribly and this small encouragement, at 13, though shy and covered in acne, I felt brave enough to write a note and slip it
under his studio door insisting we work together since I rightly deduced that is what he clearly liked doing most.
It worked.
Then fate intervened. A private father-daughter moment became a hit song with worldwide recognition and a press avalanche I neither sought nor wanted.
I was suddenly eternally publicly linked with my father a second time and held on a fame and admiration pedestal alongside him. I got fan mail from
girls as far away as Russia and Australia, Tokyo, and Nova Scotia. I was suddenly so known, I was paired with Frank in Sun Signs, Linda Goodman's book
of astrology as a perfect example of compatibility between a Sagittarius and a Libra.
Though Frank and I were relentlessly heard on the radio and seen in magazines and on TV together for a solid stretch of time, a time when I had a lot
of geometry homework I wasn't good at, my father and I got only a little bit closer.
In 1989 my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer and given a year to live he was 48 and I was 22. If I am honest, I found my reaction to his
diagnosis confusing. Of course, I didn't want my father to suffer or leave this world with unfinished work or dashed political dreams when he had so
much more to say. But, oddly, secretly, I also felt gratitude. I still lived for the possibility of uninterrupted proximity to my father and a chance
to finally have my turn at an extended time with him. But to my extreme disappointment, he only became more obsessed with his work given how little
remaining time he had.
As far as his prognosis went, Gail was the mouthpiece, often sharing information with me that she didn't share with him. Gail's reasoning was Frank
was incapable of dealing with disappointment. Dutiful to a fault, I did not discuss my father's health or his feelings with him. Not my siblings, not
Gail's, not my own. Besides, Frank had raised me to believe "Feelings are irrelevant," and "Happiness is not a goal." But also, "Anger is fuel."
Instead, we spent a lot of energy as a family trying to take his mind off of his situation through various attempts at amusing distractions, or by
giving what comfort we could.
On one occasion, we somehow managed to convince him to see a movie in a movie theatre. But I was extra careful not to waste any of the time he could
have spent in his studio so, to stave off any potential disappointment, I pre-emptively prescreened the film it to make sure it was suitable. Sure it
meant I'd have to watch a sci-fi movie twice that I didn't even want to see once, but it was simply too risky to blow the outing on something sub-par.
The film my family took him to was Total Recall starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. He loved it. Especially Kuato. Especially when the mutant baby bursts
from the actor Marshall Bell's stomach. I was so relieved. And happy. Ish.
To alleviate the pain I was in, I had turned to spirituality as my best defense against the anguish and preemptive grief about losing my favorite
person. When my self-identified atheist father found out he said, "If you're going to be a cabinet, be the best cabinet you can be."
I was awash with shame, but it sparked a conversation about beliefs—he had none—about any fear about dying—none, he just didn't think about
it—and about what happens after. He said, "Nothing happens. It probably all goes off. Like a light switch."
A totally Spock response. I was shaken. Maybe he saw that. Maybe he was, too, because the next time I saw him, he surprised me with a picture he had
drawn for me on the back of a large sheet of his butter-colored music paper.
It was a cross with two lines emphasizing energy emanating from the shining top and an arrow coming out of the center of the cross to the left. At the
top of the page, in his beautiful block print, it said: "A picture of God for Moon." My eyes flooded with tears. This was such a loving gesture, but
kind of a weird drawing. I asked him what it all meant. He pointed to the arrow and said, "That's the Kuato extension." Oh. It was visual satire and a
loving gesture. That unstoppable humor and intelligence again. I laughed. He looked so pleased.
I left with that drawing and immediately had it framed like gilded religious art with royal blue velvet and an over-the-top gold frame. I brought it
back to give it to him. When I showed it to him, it was his turn to laugh and my turn to be pleased. That art piece now hangs on my wall and remains
one of my most prized possessions. Seeing his handwriting makes Frank materialize and strangely brings automatic comfort.
Recently I shared this story with my sister-in-law and texted her a photo of the art piece. She had never seen Total Recall, so the Kuato reference
was lost on her. I looked the film up on the internet to and texted her the description I found: "Kuato is a minor character from the 1990's sci-fi
movie, who resembles a deformed infant, fused to the stomach of his conjoined twin."
I read further. Dialog I had forgotten: "You are what you do. A man is defined by his actions, not his memory."
Mic drop. Another time capsule from Frank. This time a hidden message in a drawing he made, not a song, but the ink from the maestro's pen. A holy
magic trick. No need to look back, it says, I live inside you, like a mutant conjoined twin. Now let's go make some art.
The very thing I needed to hear.
Moon Unit Zappa is an actress, singer and author. She is the daughter of Frank Zappa. Her book EARTH TO MOON: A Memoir, is on sale August 20, 2024.
All views expressed are the author's own.
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ursinator2.0
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And but also:
Frank Zappa - Apostrophe 50th Anniversary Series (Episode 1: Inside the Vault)
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Eddie RUKidding
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^^ Nice piece
South of the Border
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polydigm
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Of all the reviews I’ve read, this was the best for me because it’s like a sample of her writing and you can readily discern if you could handle
reading more. I probably will buy a copy of her book.
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Judging by what I've read so far, the book is worth reading. I think she can deal with words and guide the reader in an interesting way through what
she has to say - just my 0.50$
Interviewing Moon Unit Zappa: in-depth and emotional about her memoir “Earth To Moon” 1 hour webcam interview
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Just another article on the new book by Hadley Freeman / the sunday times:
Frank Zappa’s daughter: I was a social experiment for my parents
Moon Unit Zappa was an anxious, pliant, hypervigilant child, the kind who would look for the fire exits when she walked in a room, because she had
long ago learnt that the adults around her couldn’t keep her safe. After all, a parent who names their daughter “Moon Unit” is not one who
prioritises giving the child any kind of normality or even anonymity. Yet she idolised her father, the legendary — and notorious — musician Frank
Zappa, so when he took her and her younger brother Dweezil on a trip to New York when they were in their very early teens, she excitedly thought, “I
want to savour every moment.” But that night in New York, Moon was woken in her hotel room by thumping and noises on the other side of the wall: her
father was having sex with someone who was definitely not her mother. She cried into her pillow, realising she wasn’t her father’s priority on
this trip, or ever.
“It felt like we were a social experiment that my parents were exploring,” she says. “I was being exposed to so much more than I was ready
for.” When Moon was an adult she confronted her mother: why did her parents leave her naked as a small child with strange men and hand her over to
babysitters who were so inexperienced she burnt her feet badly on a radiator? Her mother rolled her eyes and told her daughter off for being too
uptight.
In the extremely large pantheon of celebrity children with eccentric names, the four Zappa offspring still put Brooklyn Beckham, Apple Martin and even
Zowie Bowie in the shade: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva. The names all have a very Zappa-esque rationale behind them. “Dweezil” was Frank’s
nickname for his wife’s tiny toenails and, because his son had similar feet, that’s what he called him. Ahmet for Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of
Atlantic Records and possibly Gail’s former boyfriend. Diva because as a baby she had a loud cry. But first, there was Moon Unit. “If you knew my
dad’s softer side, you’d know my middle name, ‘Unit’, was bestowed upon me because my arrival heralds our foray into becoming a family unit. I
will automatically feel an unspoken, steadfast, ferocious loyalty to my family — the Unit part — and, like the actual moon, [I had] no light of my
own, just an ancillary object in the infinite, reflecting the light of the sun, aka, the light of my heavenly father Frank,” Moon, 56, writes in her
lyrical memoir, Earth to Moon. It describes in evocative detail what it’s like to grow up the child of a famous person — a nepo baby, as people
say today — when your privilege is counterbalanced with having to share your parent with the rest of the world, and the creative drive that made
your parent famous will always take precedence over you. She also writes about why she and her once very close siblings have spent the past
near-decade locked in a vicious battle over inheritance. “It’s been an interesting time, rethinking what family means,” she says, with wry
understatement.
By the time Frank Zappa died in 1993, aged 52, he had released 62 albums. In the 30 years since, there have been a further 66. Originally a classical
composer, he remains one of America’s most astonishingly creative musicians, as happy to write for his rock band — the Mothers of Invention — as
for classical orchestras; in 1983, the Barbican hosted Zappa and the London Symphony Orchestra for a concert so celebrated it was restaged in 2022.
His name is still legendary, his face — all dark moustache and wild black hair — iconic. And yet few can name a single Zappa song. “I’m
famous, but no one knows what I do,” he laughed in an interview captured in the 2016 documentary Eat That Question: Zappa in His Own Words.
That’s partly because his music — funny, angry, discordant and seductive —was indefinable. One of his most successful songs, Bobby Brown, tells
the story of rapist who has sex with a feminist, realises he’s gay and then gets into S&M. What genre do you file that under?
Zappa himself defied any easy labelling. Born in Baltimore in 1940, as a teenager he loved R&B music as much as classical and he composed
avant-garde orchestral music for his high school band. When he was 23, he appeared on the popular 1960s talk show The Steve Allen Show, playing a
bicycle as a musical instrument. Soon after, he and his band found a following in Los Angeles’s underground music scene. He moved to LA’s Laurel
Canyon in the 1960s, just up the road from Joni Mitchell and David Crosby, but he was not part of that sunshine-and-songwriters scene. “I’m not a
hippy but I am a freak,” he said.
In 1969, Time magazine described him as “a force of cultural darkness, a Mephistophelian figure serving as a lone, brutal reminder of music’s
potential for invoking chaos and destruction”. This makes him sound deranged and out of control when in fact he was brilliant and brusque. Vaclav
Havel, Czechoslovakia’s last president, adored Zappa so much he appointed him as his government’s cultural adviser and ambassador. Zappa was also
vehemently anti-drugs, to the point that he sacked band members when he caught them doing drugs on tour. He saw narcotics as antithetical to
integrity, clarity of expression and talent, three qualities he prized above all. Instead, his preferred recreational activity was casual sex. “The
closest I get to drugs is taking penicillin on tour because I got the clap,” he chuckled to an interviewer, also from Eat That Question. This was
less amusing to his wife, Gail, who stayed with him his whole adult life, and their children.
Moon is talking to me from her home in Los Angeles, which she shares with her 19-year-old daughter, Mathilda. “I love old-fashioned names with lots
of syllables,” Moon says (she is divorced from Mathilda’s father, Paul Doucette, the drummer and guitarist in the band Matchbox Twenty). Despite
believing as a teenager that she was hideously ugly, Moon is very pretty, with a warm face and an easy laugh. She adored her father but her feelings
about him are, she says, “complicated”.
“I kind of bristle when I hear [my father described as] ‘genius’,” she says. “It’s so easy to make your kid feel safe, to give comfort, to
be interested in what they are interested in. So how on earth did a genius miss it?”
What does she want readers to take away from the book?
“I want them to ask if being a genius is worth the collateral damage. Because I know my answer.”
Frank and Gail Zappa met in 1966 when he was 25 and had released his first album, Freak Out!, and she was a 21-year-old secretary at the LA music
venue Whisky a Go Go. “They both had an aversion to religion, the status quo and being mislabelled as hippies. They both had a love of sex, civics
and cigarettes,” Moon writes. They also both had peripatetic childhoods — Gail was third-generation German-American with a father in the Navy,
while Frank came from an Italian-American family who instilled in him a love of music and his father worked in defence. They were also both raised
Catholic, but they rejected that and identified instead as “pagan absurdists”. Gail in particular was interested in the wackier side of life:
witches, UFOs, conspiracy theories.
From the outside, Frank and Gail looked unusually stable given his celebrity: they stayed married until his death and their four kids lived with them
in California. Everyone from John Lennon to David Bowie wanted to meet Zappa but, unlike a lot of nepo babies, Moon did not grow up surrounded by
celebrities because her father prioritised talent over fame. And, of course, there were no drugs in the house. But the family was not wealthy —
whatever money Zappa made went back into his music — and their home was dirty and often full of strangers.
Young women were regular visitors. Once, Frank moved out of the bedroom he shared with Gail and into another room in the house with another woman.
Gail would scream at her husband, put hexes on his lovers, get depressed and neglect to take the children to school. Moon describes her parents’
marriage as “f*** and fight and stay together or not f*** and fight and stay together”. When she was 12, Frank woke her up in the night: “Gail
is on a rampage. I need you to hide the gun,” he told her.
Frank prided himself on not kowtowing to social norms. “There are no such things as dirty words. It’s a fantasy manufactured by religious fanatics
and government agencies to keep people stupid,” he said in an interview from Eat That Question. This sounds good in theory, but less so in practice
when he would discuss his preferences in breast size in front of his young daughter: “No one wants to ride an ironing board,” he would say, but
also: “More than a mouthful is a waste.” During one of the many, many fights Moon overheard between her parents about her father’s chronic
infidelity, her father retorted, “It’s just f***ing.”
Did her father’s sexual disinhibition affect Moon’s own sexuality?
“Are you kidding? Of course! I was the kid looking for turtleneck bathing suits because I felt so exposed. The messaging was so bad. I grew up
thinking it’s terrible to be a girl.”
Between tours, Frank spent almost all of his time in his studio and Gail would send meals down to him. For such a counter-cultural figure he ran a
laughably patriarchal home, in which he offered little affection to his family and saved all his energy for his work. “When I was a kid I would
compare him to Jesus and Spock, because he belonged to another world and was logical to the point of being icy,” Moon says. “He was the funniest
person and he could be wonderful. But it doesn’t feel good when your favourite person isn’t choosing you.”
When she was 13, Moon thought she had come up with a solution when she asked her father if she could make music with him. He agreed, and asked her to
do her funny imitations of the Valley girls in her school that made him laugh. He put music to it, released the song — Valley Girl — and it became
his only Top 40 single in North America. Moon — shy and riddled with acne — was wheeled out by her parents on a national publicity tour. At first
this was exciting but, she writes, both her parents seemed infuriated with her and the song’s success. Her father, she thinks, was frustrated that
he was “43 years of age with 35 albums to his name and here, with me, having his first mega hit. And worse, with a light-hearted ditty that in no
way reflected the full depth and breadth of his work”. Even Andy Warhol noted Frank’s defensiveness. He wrote in his diaries that he complimented
Frank on Moon’s talents. “Listen, I created her. I invented her. She’s nothing. It’s all me,” Frank allegedly replied. “If it were my
daughter I would be saying, ‘Gee, she’s so smart,’ ” Warhol wrote. “But he’s taking all the credit.”
As for Gail, Moon thinks she was jealous. Suddenly there was yet another woman in her husband’s life and, worse, it was their daughter. The pair had
always had a fraught relationship and it rapidly deteriorated. The book’s title, Earth to Moon, is what Gail used to shout, exasperated by her
daughter’s complaints about their home life and desires to continue her education (Moon left after high school, as per her family’s wishes).
“When your mother is your first bully, it’s hard to know where you go from there,” Moon says.
She drifted in her twenties. Like a lot of nepo kids, she was torn between wanting to be independent of her parents and believing they were the only
thing she had to offer. She was thrilled when an art gallery offered to include her work in an exhibition but, just as the guests were about to
arrive, the gallery owner whispered to her, “Thanks to your name, people will get to see the genius of the other artist’s work.”
“I had no idea that I was just a foot in the door for someone else,” she says. “That just reinforced the idea that I already had, which was I
didn’t have any value.” She looked for guidance — from therapists, acting coaches and then a guru. “I never use the word cult [in the book],
but it’s definitely implied.”
Moon found the cult in her twenties, and it took her to a Hindu ashram in Vermont where she chanted, meditated and listened to confusing spiritual
guidance. Moon fell for it instantly. “I was already conditioned to put my needs aside and prioritise someone else in a position of power,” she
says. She spent a lot of time there, escaping her confusing parents and the even more confusing real world. Then when she was 22, and her father was
48, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
This shouldn’t have been a death sentence, but Frank initially refused radiation because he worried it would affect his ability to have erections.
Moon saw this as proof that he prioritised sex over staying alive for his family. In any case, he couldn’t afford it. “You cost us $200,000 to
raise, so we need to sell your house to pay for your father’s cancer treatments because he has no health insurance,” Gail told Moon. So Moon sold
her home and moved back in with her parents. Frank died in December 1993, surrounded by his children and his wife, and yet millions of dollars in
debt. The 2020 documentary Zappa presents him as a creative genius who was humiliated by a music industry led by market forces, reduced to spending
his own money — and money he didn’t have — to stage his elaborate rock and orchestral concerts.
“Things like that make me think, OK, he was a genius, if you say so. If ‘genius’ means a person being hyper-focused on what matters to them. But
what gets left behind?” she says.
For all of Frank’s clear faults as a parent, it’s Gail who, Moon says, is “the villain” of the book. “I always knew there was an expiration
date on her cruelty, plus I had empathy for her during her marriage. So I held a lot of conflicting feelings about her.” These feelings exploded in
2015, when Gail died from lung cancer at the age of 70, after Moon had nursed her for a year. Like her husband, Gail died in debt — partly due to
her financial mismanagement as his music manager — and the only thing to leave the children was control over Frank’s music. It was assumed they
would each receive 25 per cent when she died. But at the reading of her will they learnt that she left Moon and Dweezil only 20 per cent each, while
Ahmet and Diva got 30 per cent, meaning the younger two were in charge and the older ones would need permission from the trust before making money
from their father’s music. To Moon, this felt like her mother’s final act of cruelty.
For Dweezil it felt like the end of his career. For years he had been performing his father’s music under the name Zappa Plays Zappa. Now he risked
a $150,000 fine if he played a song without permission. “I am not standing in the way of Dweezil playing the music,” Ahmet said in 2016. “He
would just have to be in accordance with the family trust.” Instead, Dweezil renamed his tour 50 Years of Frank: Dweezil Zappa Plays Whatever the
F@%k He Wants — the Cease and Desist Tour.
In 2019, an agreement of sorts was reached, in which Dweezil agreed to stop complaining about his younger siblings and his mother in the media. Moon
refused to sign it, meaning she remains a beneficiary of the trust, but not a trustee. Like her father, she prioritised freedom of expression over
money — and over her family’s desires.
Is she still estranged from her siblings?
“Since I wrote the book, there have been inroads to connection. You know, these are people I have a shared history with, and no one makes me laugh
harder.” But she has not shown them the book yet.
It would be easy to write Frank and Gail off as bad, selfish parents: they neglected their children in life and then pitted them against each other in
death. But, as always with Zappa, things aren’t that simple. None of the children ever suffered from addiction issues, making them rare among LA
celebrity progeny. “Drugs were seen as an obstacle to clarity of vision. None of us was going to cloud that,” Moon says. They are all stable and
productive: Moon is focused on writing; Dweezil is still a musician; Ahmet is a businessman; and Diva is an artist. As nepo babies go, they are
success stories.
Moon is grateful to her parents for the unique way they raised her, but sad that they made — and left — such a mess. They tried to do something
different, she says, “but they didn’t think about the impact of their choices on us.” Or, as she writes at the end of her book, in a passage
addressed to Frank and Gail, “As a duo, you created the map and destroyed the key.”
‘I’m still mad about all the ladies who tried to steal dad’
My brother Dweezil and I are sitting on the floor of our living room. We are having as much TV and chocolate milk and fruit punch and snacks as we
want because Miss Sparky, Miss Pamela, Miss Lucy and Jackie are over.They all smoke and twirl and flutter around and say, “Hi, doll,” to me. I can
see them in the kitchen and half listen. Even though they are all around the same age as my mother Gail, none of these women seem as grown-up as her.
They wear short skirts and silk slips and feathers and beads and see-through tops and different patterns of eye make-up. Not Gail. She wears dungarees
and no make-up.Some of them are in an all-girl band, the GTOs, which means “Girls Together Outrageously”. Not Jackie. Gail said she is Frank’s
manager’s girlfriend and “straight”, which means boring and not a performer. Miss Pamela and Miss Sparky smile the most and are the nicest to
me. I have wiggly teeth. I am almost six.When the GTOs come over, the house smells like cigarettes and perfume. “A nose circus” is what my daddy
calls rooms with too many smells. I want to go to a real circus. Gail usually only takes us to a stinky carpet store or to pick my dad up from
rehearsal in the middle of the night.When the GTOs and other ladies visit, they listen to Gail because she is married and they aren’t. But I can
tell they are jealous, especially Miss Lucy and Miss Mercy, because they get very wiggly around my dad, and they are frequently taking their clothes
off and laughing when he pinches their nipples to say hi. I don’t think my dad is very nice to Gail when he does that, and I don’t think the
ladies are very nice to Gail when they let my dad do that, but Gail keeps her face plain. She chain-smokes Marlboros and pretends everything is
fine.I’m still mad about all the ladies who have tried to steal my father and break up our family. Gail would never do that and neither would I. I
am not so sure about the GTOs, so I keep a close watch. It seems like the whole world wants my daddy.
© Moon Unit Zappa 2024. Extracted from Earth to Moon by Moon Unit Zappa (White Rabbit £22), published on August 22.
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ursinator2.0
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Posts: 352
Registered: 11-7-2022
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Mood: in between and
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Just another more or less interesting video featuring Moon and Ahmet Zappa as well as two other guys who don't seem to be their attorneys:
Moon Zappa - THE NEW BOOK
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