title: Frank Zappa

text: Nasal imagery and references appear in his music and lyrics, as well as in the collage album covers created by his long-time collaborator Cal Schenkel. Zappa believed his childhood diseases might have been due to exposure to mustard gas, released by the nearby chemical warfare facility, and his health worsened when he lived in Baltimore. In 1952, his family relocated for reasons of health to Monterey, California, where his father taught metallurgy at the Naval Postgraduate School. They soon moved to the San Diego neighborhood of Clairemont, and then to the nearby city of El Cajon, before finally returning to San Diego.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa joined his first band at Mission Bay High School in San Diego as the drummer. At about the same time, his parents bought a phonograph, which allowed him to develop his interest in music, and to begin building his record collection. According to "The Rough Guide to Rock" (2003), "as a teenager Zappa was simultaneously enthralled by black R&B (Johnny 'Guitar' Watson, Guitar Slim), doo-wop (The Channels, The Velvets), the modernism of Igor Stravinsky and Anton Webern, and the dissonant sound experiments of Edgard Varese."


title: Frank Zappa

text: R&B singles were early purchases for Zappa, starting a large collection he kept for the rest of his life. He was interested in sounds for their own sake, particularly the sounds of drums and other percussion instruments. By age twelve, he had obtained a snare drum and began learning the basics of orchestral percussion. Zappa's deep interest in modern classical music began when he read a "LOOK" magazine article about the Sam Goody record store chain that lauded its ability to sell an LP as obscure as "The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Volume One". The article described Varèse's percussion composition "Ionisation", produced by EMS Recordings, as "a weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds". Zappa decided to seek out Varèse's music. After searching for over a year, Zappa found a copy (he noticed the LP because of the "mad scientist" looking photo of Varèse on the cover). Not having enough money with him, he persuaded the salesman to sell him the record at a discount. Thus began his lifelong passion for Varèse's music and that of other modern classical composers. He also liked the Italian classical music listened to by his grandparents, especially Puccini's opera arias.


title: Frank Zappa

text: By 1956, the Zappa family had moved to Lancaster, a small aerospace and farming town in the Antelope Valley of the Mojave Desert close to Edwards Air Force Base; he would later refer to Sun Village (a town close to Lancaster) in the 1973 track "Village of the Sun". Zappa's mother encouraged him in his musical interests. Although she disliked Varèse's music, she was indulgent enough to give her son a long-distance call to the New York composer as a fifteenth birthday present. Unfortunately, Varèse was in Europe at the time, so Zappa spoke to the composer's wife and she suggested he call back later. In a letter, Varèse thanked him for his interest, and told him about a composition he was working on called "Déserts". Living in the desert town of Lancaster, Zappa found this very exciting. Varèse invited him to visit if he ever came to New York. The meeting never took place (Varèse died in 1965), but Zappa framed the letter and kept it on display for the rest of his life.


title: Frank Zappa

text: At Antelope Valley High School, Zappa met Don Glen Vliet (who later changed his name to Don Van Vliet and adopted the stage name Captain Beefheart). Zappa and Vliet became close friends, sharing an interest in R&B records and influencing each other musically throughout their careers. Around the same time, Zappa started playing drums in a local band, the Blackouts. The band was racially diverse and included Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood who later became a member of the Mothers of Invention. Zappa's interest in the guitar grew, and in 1957 he was given his first instrument. Among his early influences were Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Howlin' Wolf and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. In the 1970s/1980s, he invited Watson to perform on several albums. Zappa considered soloing the equivalent of forming "air sculptures", and developed an eclectic, innovative and highly personal style. He was also influenced by Egyptian composer Halim El-Dabh.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa's interest in composing and arranging flourished in his last high-school years. By his final year, he was writing, arranging and conducting avant-garde performance pieces for the school orchestra. He graduated from Antelope Valley High School in 1958, and later acknowledged two of his music teachers on the sleeve of the 1966 album "Freak Out!" Due to his family's frequent moves, Zappa attended at least six different high schools, and as a student he was often bored and given to distracting the rest of the class with juvenile antics. In 1959, he attended Chaffey College but left after one semester, and maintained thereafter a disdain for formal education, taking his children out of school at age 15 and refusing to pay for their college.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa left home in 1959, and moved into a small apartment in Echo Park, Los Angeles. After he met Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman during his short period of private composition study with Prof. Karl Kohn of Pomona College, they moved in together in Ontario, and were married December 28, 1960. Zappa worked for a short period in advertising as a copywriter. His sojourn in the commercial world was brief, but gave him valuable insights into its workings. Throughout his career, he took a keen interest in the visual presentation of his work, designing some of his album covers and directing his own films and videos.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa attempted to earn a living as a musician and composer, and played different nightclub gigs, some with a new version of the Blackouts. Zappa's earliest professional recordings, two soundtracks for the low-budget films "The World's Greatest Sinner" (1962) and "Run Home Slow" (1965) were more financially rewarding. The former score was commissioned by actor-producer Timothy Carey and recorded in 1961. It contains many themes that appeared on later Zappa records. The latter soundtrack was recorded in 1963 after the film was completed, but it was commissioned by one of Zappa's former high school teachers in 1959 and Zappa may have worked on it before the film was shot. Excerpts from the soundtrack can be heard on the posthumous album "The Lost Episodes" (1996).


title: Frank Zappa

text: During the early 1960s, Zappa wrote and produced songs for other local artists, often working with singer-songwriter Ray Collins and producer Paul Buff. Their "Memories of El Monte" was recorded by the Penguins, although only Cleve Duncan of the original group was featured. Buff owned the small Pal Recording Studio in Cucamonga, which included a unique five-track tape recorder he had built. At that time, only a handful of the most sophisticated commercial studios had multi-track facilities; the industry standard for smaller studios was still mono or two-track. Although none of the recordings from the period achieved major commercial success, Zappa earned enough money to allow him in 1963 to stage a concert of his orchestral music and to broadcast and record it. In March of that same year Zappa appeared on Steve Allen's syndicated late night show playing a bicycle as a musical using drum sticks and a bow borrowed from the band's bass player he proceeded to pluck, bang, and bow the spokes of the bike, producing strange, comical sounds from his newfound instrument. With Captain Beefheart, Zappa recorded some songs under the name of the Soots. They were rejected by Dot Records. Later, the Mothers were also rejected by Columbia Records for having "no commercial potential", a verdict Zappa subsequently quoted on the sleeve of "Freak Out!"


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 1964, after his marriage started to break up, he moved into the Pal studio and began routinely working 12 hours or more per day recording and experimenting with overdubbing and audio tape manipulation. This established a work pattern that endured for most of his life. Aided by his income from film composing, Zappa took over the studio from Paul Buff, who was now working with Art Laboe at Original Sound. It was renamed Studio Z. Studio Z was rarely booked for recordings by other musicians. Instead, friends moved in, notably James "Motorhead" Sherwood. Zappa started performing in local bars as a guitarist with a power trio, the Muthers, to support himself.


title: Frank Zappa

text: An article in the local press describing Zappa as "the Movie King of Cucamonga" prompted the local police to suspect that he was making pornographic films. In March 1965, Zappa was approached by a vice squad undercover officer, and accepted an offer of $100 () to produce a suggestive audio tape for an alleged stag party. Zappa and a female friend recorded a faked erotic episode. When Zappa was about to hand over the tape, he was arrested, and the police stripped the studio of all recorded material. The press was tipped off beforehand, and next day's "The Daily Report" wrote that "Vice Squad investigators stilled the tape recorders of a free-swinging, a-go-go film and recording studio here Friday and arrested a self-styled movie producer". Zappa was charged with "conspiracy to commit pornography". This felony charge was reduced and he was sentenced to six months in jail on a misdemeanor, with all but ten days suspended. His brief imprisonment left a permanent mark, and was central to the formation of his anti-authoritarian stance. Zappa lost several recordings made at Studio Z in the process, as the police returned only 30 of 80 hours of tape seized. Eventually, he could no longer afford to pay the rent on the studio and was evicted. Zappa managed to recover some of his possessions before the studio was torn down in 1966.


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 1964, Ray Collins asked Zappa to take over as guitarist in local R&B band the Soul Giants, following a fight between Collins and the group's original guitarist. Zappa accepted, and soon assumed leadership and the role as co-lead singer (even though he never considered himself a singer, then or later). He convinced the other members that they should play his music to increase the chances of getting a record contract. The band debuted at the Broadside Club in Pomona, California and was renamed the Mothers since this gig took place on May 10, 1964 - Mother's Day. They increased their bookings after beginning an association with manager Herb Cohen, and gradually gained attention on the burgeoning Los Angeles underground music scene. In early 1966, they were spotted by leading record producer Tom Wilson when playing "Trouble Every Day", a song about the Watts riots. Wilson had earned acclaim as the producer for Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel, and was one of the few African-Americans working as a major label pop music producer at this time. Wilson signed the Mothers to the Verve division of MGM, which had built up a strong reputation for its releases of modern jazz recordings in the 1940s and 1950s, but was attempting to diversify into pop and rock audiences. Verve insisted that the band officially rename themselves the Mothers of Invention as "Mother" was short for "motherfucker"—a term that, apart from its profane meanings, can denote a skilled musician.


title: Frank Zappa

text: With Wilson credited as producer, the Mothers of Invention, augmented by a studio orchestra, recorded the groundbreaking "Freak Out!" (1966), which, after Bob Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde", was the second rock double album ever released. It mixed R&B, doo-wop, musique concrète, and experimental sound collages that captured the "freak" subculture of Los Angeles at that time. Although he was dissatisfied with the final product, "Freak Out" immediately established Zappa as a radical new voice in rock music, providing an antidote to the "relentless consumer culture of America". The sound was raw, but the arrangements were sophisticated. While recording in the studio, some of the additional session musicians were shocked that they were expected to read the notes on sheet music from charts with Zappa conducting them, since it was not standard when recording rock music. The lyrics praised non-conformity, disparaged authorities, and had dadaist elements. Yet, there was a place for seemingly conventional love songs. Most compositions are Zappa's, which set a precedent for the rest of his recording career. He had full control over the arrangements and musical decisions and did most overdubs. Wilson provided the industry clout and connections and was able to provide the group with the financial resources needed. Although Wilson was able to provide Zappa and the Mothers with an extraordinary degree of artistic freedom for the time, the recording did not go entirely as planned. In a 1967 radio interview, Zappa explained that the album's outlandish 11-minute closing track, "Return of the Son of Monster Magnet" was not finished. The track as it appears on the album was only a backing track for a much more complex piece, but MGM refused to allow the additional recording time needed for completion. Much to Zappa's chagrin, it was issued in its unfinished state.


title: Frank Zappa

text: During the recording of "Freak Out!", Zappa moved into a house in Laurel Canyon with friend Pamela Zarubica, who appeared on the album. The house became a meeting (and living) place for many LA musicians and groupies of the time, despite Zappa's disapproval of their illicit drug use. After a short promotional tour following the release of "Freak Out!", Zappa met Adelaide Gail Sloatman. He fell in love within "a couple of minutes", and she moved into the house over the summer. They married in 1967, had four children and remained together until Zappa's death.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Wilson nominally produced the Mothers' second album "Absolutely Free" (1967), which was recorded in November 1966, and later mixed in New York, although by this time Zappa was in "de facto" control of most facets of the production. It featured extended playing by the Mothers of Invention and focused on songs that defined Zappa's compositional style of introducing abrupt, rhythmical changes into songs that were built from diverse elements. Examples are "Plastic People" and "Brown Shoes Don't Make It", which contained lyrics critical of the hypocrisy and conformity of American society, but also of the counterculture of the 1960s. As Zappa put it, "[W]e're satirists, and we are out to satirize everything." At the same time, Zappa had recorded material for an album of orchestral works to be released under his own name, "Lumpy Gravy", released by Capitol Records in 1967. Due to contractual problems, the album was pulled. Zappa took the opportunity to radically restructure the contents, adding newly recorded, improvised dialogue. After the contractual problems were resolved, the album was reissued by Verve in 1968. It is an "incredible ambitious musical project", a "monument to John Cage", which intertwines orchestral themes, spoken words and electronic noises through radical audio editing techniques.


title: Frank Zappa

text: The Mothers of Invention played in New York in late 1966 and were offered a contract at the Garrick Theater (at 152 Bleecker Street, above the Cafe au Go Go) during Easter 1967. This proved successful and Herb Cohen extended the booking, which eventually lasted half a year. As a result, Zappa and his wife Gail, along with the Mothers of Invention, moved to New York. Their shows became a combination of improvised acts showcasing individual talents of the band as well as tight performances of Zappa's music. Everything was directed by Zappa using hand signals. Guest performers and audience participation became a regular part of the Garrick Theater shows. One evening, Zappa managed to entice some U.S. Marines from the audience onto the stage, where they proceeded to dismember a big baby doll, having been told by Zappa to pretend that it was a "gook baby".


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 1967 filmmaker Ed Seeman paid Zappa $2,000 to produce music for a Luden's cough drops television commercial. Zappa's music was matched with Seeman's animation and the advertisement won a Clio Award for "Best Use of Sound". An alternate version of the soundtrack, called "The Big Squeeze", later appeared on Zappa's posthumous 1996 album "The Lost Episodes". This version lacks Seeman's narration.


title: Frank Zappa

text: While living in New York City, and interrupted by the band's first European tour, the Mothers of Invention recorded the album widely regarded as the peak of the group's late 1960s work, "We're Only in It for the Money" (released 1968). It was produced by Zappa, with Wilson credited as executive producer. From then on, Zappa produced all albums released by the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. "We're Only in It for the Money" featured some of the most creative audio editing and production yet heard in pop music, and the songs ruthlessly satirized the hippie and flower power phenomena. He sampled surf music from his Studio Z days in the audio collage "Nasal Retentive Caliope Music". The cover photo parodied that of the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". The cover art was provided by Cal Schenkel whom Zappa met in New York. This initiated a lifelong collaboration in which Schenkel designed covers for numerous Zappa and Mothers albums.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Reflecting Zappa's eclectic approach to music, the next album, "Cruising with Ruben & the Jets" (1968), was very different. It represented a collection of doo-wop songs; listeners and critics were not sure whether the album was a satire or a tribute. Zappa later remarked that the album was conceived like Stravinsky's compositions in his neo-classical period: "If he could take the forms and clichés of the classical era and pervert them, why not do the same ... to doo-wop in the fifties?" The opening theme from Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" is sung in "Fountain of Love".


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 1967 and 1968, Zappa made two appearances with the Monkees. The first appearance was on an episode of their TV series, "The Monkees Blow Their Minds", where Zappa, dressed up as Mike Nesmith, interviews Nesmith who is dressed up as Zappa. After the interview, Zappa destroys a car with a sledgehammer as the song "Mother People" plays. He later provided a cameo in the Monkees' movie "Head" where, leading a cow, he tells Davy Jones "the youth of America depends on you to show them the way." Zappa respected the Monkees and recruited Micky Dolenz to the Mothers but RCA/Columbia/Colgems would not release Dolenz from his contract.


title: Frank Zappa

text: During the late 1960s, Zappa continued to develop the business side of his career. He and Herb Cohen formed the Bizarre Records and Straight Records labels to increase creative control and produce recordings by other artists. These labels were distributed in the US by Warner Bros. Records. Zappa/Mothers recordings appeared on Bizarre along with Wild Man Fischer and Lenny Bruce. Straight released the double album "Trout Mask Replica" for Captain Beefheart, and releases by Alice Cooper, The Persuasions, and the GTOs.


title: Frank Zappa

text: In the Mothers' second European tour in September/October 1968 they performed for the at the Grugahalle in Essen, Germany; at the Tivoli in Copenhagen, Denmark; for TV programs in Germany ("Beat-Club"), France, and England; at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; at the Royal Festival Hall in London; and at the Olympia in Paris.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa and the Mothers of Invention returned to Los Angeles in mid-1968, and the Zappas moved into a house on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, only to move again to Woodrow Wilson Drive. This was Zappa's home for the rest of his life. Despite being successful in Europe, the Mothers of Invention were not doing well financially. Their first records were vocally oriented, but as Zappa wrote more instrumental jazz and classical style music for the band's concerts, audiences were confused. Zappa felt that audiences failed to appreciate his "electrical chamber music".


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 1969 there were nine band members and Zappa was supporting the group from his publishing royalties whether they played or not. In late 1969, Zappa broke up the band. He often cited the financial strain as the main reason, but also commented on the band members' lack of diligence. Many band members were bitter about Zappa's decision, and some took it as a sign of Zappa's perfectionism at the expense of human feeling. Others were irritated by 'his autocratic ways', exemplified by Zappa's never staying at the same hotel as the band members. Several members played for Zappa in years to come. Remaining recordings of the band from this period were collected on "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" and "Burnt Weeny Sandwich" (both released in 1970).


title: Frank Zappa

text: After he disbanded the Mothers of Invention, Zappa released the acclaimed solo album "Hot Rats" (1969). It features, for the first time on record, Zappa playing extended guitar solos and contains one of his most enduring compositions, "Peaches en Regalia", which reappeared several times on future recordings. He was backed by jazz, blues and R&B session players including violinist Don "Sugarcane" Harris, drummers John Guerin and Paul Humphrey, multi-instrumentalist and former Mothers of Invention member Ian Underwood, and multi-instrumentalist Shuggie Otis on bass, along with a guest appearance by Captain Beefheart on the only vocal track, "Willie the Pimp". It became a popular album in England, and had a major influence on the development of jazz-rock fusion.


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 1970 Zappa met conductor Zubin Mehta. They arranged a May 1970 concert where Mehta conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic augmented by a rock band. According to Zappa, the music was mostly written in motel rooms while on tour with the Mothers of Invention. Some of it was later featured in the movie "200 Motels". Although the concert was a success, Zappa's experience working with a symphony orchestra was not a happy one. His dissatisfaction became a recurring theme throughout his career; he often felt that the quality of performance of his material delivered by orchestras was not commensurate with the money he spent on orchestral concerts and recordings.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Later in 1970, Zappa formed a new version of the Mothers (from then on, he mostly dropped the "of Invention"). It included British drummer Aynsley Dunbar, jazz keyboardist George Duke, Ian Underwood, Jeff Simmons (bass, rhythm guitar), and three members of the Turtles: bass player Jim Pons, and singers Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, who, due to persistent legal and contractual problems, adopted the stage name "The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie", or "Flo & Eddie".


title: Frank Zappa

text: This version of the Mothers debuted on Zappa's next solo album "Chunga's Revenge" (1970), which was followed by the double-album soundtrack to the movie "200 Motels" (1971), featuring the Mothers, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Ringo Starr, Theodore Bikel, and Keith Moon. Co-directed by Zappa and Tony Palmer, it was filmed in a week at Pinewood Studios outside London. Tensions between Zappa and several cast and crew members arose before and during shooting. The film deals loosely with life on the road as a rock musician. It was the first feature film photographed on videotape and transferred to 35 mm film, a process that allowed for novel visual effects. It was released to mixed reviews. The score relied extensively on orchestral music, and Zappa's dissatisfaction with the classical music world intensified when a concert, scheduled at the Royal Albert Hall after filming, was canceled because a representative of the venue found some of the lyrics obscene. In 1975, he lost a lawsuit against the Royal Albert Hall for breach of contract.


title: Frank Zappa

text: After "200 Motels", the band went on tour, which resulted in two live albums, "Fillmore East – June 1971" and "Just Another Band from L.A."; the latter included the 20-minute track "Billy the Mountain", Zappa's satire on rock opera set in Southern California. This track was representative of the band's theatrical performances—which used songs to build sketches based on "200 Motels" scenes, as well as new situations that often portrayed the band members' sexual encounters on the road.


title: Frank Zappa

text: On December 4, 1971, Zappa suffered his first of two serious setbacks. While performing at Casino de Montreux in Switzerland, the Mothers' equipment was destroyed when a flare set off by an audience member started a fire that burned down the casino. Immortalized in Deep Purple's song "Smoke on the Water", the event and immediate aftermath can be heard on the bootleg album "Swiss Cheese/Fire", released legally as part of Zappa's "Beat the Boots II" compilation. After losing $50,000 () worth of equipment and a week's break, the Mothers played at the Rainbow Theatre, London, with rented gear. During the encore, an audience member jealous because of his girlfriend's infatuation with Zappa pushed him off the stage and into the concrete-floored orchestra pit. The band thought Zappa had been killed—he had suffered serious fractures, head trauma and injuries to his back, leg, and neck, as well as a crushed larynx, which ultimately caused his voice to drop a third after healing.


title: Frank Zappa

text: After the attack Zappa needed to use a wheelchair for an extended period, making touring impossible for over half a year. Upon return to the stage in September 1972, Zappa was still wearing a leg brace, had a noticeable limp and could not stand for very long while on stage. Zappa noted that one leg healed "shorter than the other" (a reference later found in the lyrics of songs "Zomby Woof" and "Dancin' Fool"), resulting in chronic back pain. Meanwhile, the Mothers were left in limbo and eventually formed the core of Flo and Eddie's band as they set out on their own.


title: Frank Zappa

text: In December 1972, writer David Walley published the first biography of Zappa, titled "No Commercial Potential". Zappa was severely critical, calling it "a quickie, paperback, sensational book". He described Walley's writing as "not quality workmanship" and claimed that Walley had "just slung together a bunch of quotes". Despite Zappa's complaints, the book was later published in an updated edition in 1980 and again in 1996 after Zappa's death.


title: Frank Zappa

text: During 1971–1972 Zappa released two strongly jazz-oriented solo LPs, "Waka/Jawaka" and "The Grand Wazoo", which were recorded during the forced layoff from concert touring, using floating line-ups of session players and Mothers alumni. Musically, the albums were akin to "Hot Rats," in that they featured extended instrumental tracks with extended soloing. Zappa began touring again in late 1972. His first effort was a series of concerts in September 1972 with a 20-piece big band referred to as the Grand Wazoo. This was followed by a scaled-down version known as the Petit Wazoo that toured the U.S. for five weeks from October to December 1972.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa then formed and toured with smaller groups that variously included Ian Underwood (reeds, keyboards), Ruth Underwood (vibes, marimba), Sal Marquez (trumpet, vocals), Napoleon Murphy Brock (sax, flute and vocals), Bruce Fowler (trombone), Tom Fowler (bass), Chester Thompson (drums), Ralph Humphrey (drums), George Duke (keyboards, vocals), and Jean-Luc Ponty (violin).


title: Frank Zappa

text: By 1973 the Bizarre and Straight labels were discontinued. Zappa and Cohen then created DiscReet Records, also distributed by Warner. Zappa continued a high rate of production through the first half of the 1970s, including the solo album "Apostrophe (')" (1974), which reached a career-high No. 10 on the "Billboard" pop album charts helped by the No. 86 chart hit "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow". Other albums from the period are "Over-Nite Sensation" (1973), which contained several future concert favorites, such as "Dinah-Moe Humm" and "Montana", and the albums "Roxy & Elsewhere" (1974) and "One Size Fits All" (1975) which feature ever-changing versions of a band still called the Mothers, and are notable for the tight renditions of highly difficult jazz fusion songs in such pieces as "Inca Roads", "Echidna's Arf (Of You)" and "Be-Bop Tango (Of the Old Jazzmen's Church)". A live recording from 1974, "You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 2" (1988), captures "the full spirit and excellence of the 1973–1975 band". Zappa released "Bongo Fury" (1975), which featured a live recording at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin from a tour the same year that reunited him with Captain Beefheart for a brief period. They later became estranged for a period of years, but were in contact at the end of Zappa's life.


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 1976 Zappa produced the album "Good Singin', Good Playin'" for Grand Funk Railroad. Zappa's relationship with long-time manager Herb Cohen ended in May 1976. After Cohen cashed one Zappa's royalty checks from Warner and kept the money for himself, Zappa sued Cohen. Zappa was also upset with Cohen for signing acts he did not approve. Cohen filed a lawsuit against Zappa in return, which froze the money Zappa and Cohen were expecting to receive from an out-of-court settlement with MGM/Verve over the rights to Zappa's early Mothers of Invention recordings. The MGM settlement was finalized in mid 1977 after two years of negotiations. Litigation with Cohen also prevented Zappa having access to any of his previously recorded material during the trials. Zappa therefore took his personal master copies of the album "Zoot Allures" (1976) directly to Warner, while bypassing DiscReet. Following the split with Cohen, Zappa hired Bennett Glotzer as new manager.


title: Frank Zappa

text: By late 1976 Zappa was upset with Warner over inadequate promotion of his recordings and he was eager to move on as soon as possible. In March 1977 Zappa delivered four albums (five full-length LPs) to Warner to complete his contract. These albums contained recordings mostly made between 1972 and 1976. Warner failed to meet contractual obligations to Zappa, and in response he filed a multi-million dollar breach of contract lawsuit. During a lengthy legal debate Warner eventually released the four disputed albums during 1978 and 1979, one of them in censored form. Also, in 1977 Zappa prepared a four-LP box set called "Läther" (pronounced "leather") and negotiated distribution with Phonogram Inc. for release on the Zappa Records label. The "Läther" box set was scheduled for release on Halloween 1977, but legal action from Warner forced Zappa to shelve this project.


title: Frank Zappa

text: In December 1977 Zappa appeared on the Pasadena, California radio station KROQ-FM and played the entire "Läther" album, while encouraging listeners to make tape recordings of the broadcast. Both sets of recordings (five-LP and four-LP) have much of the same material, but each also has unique content. The albums integrate many aspects of Zappa's 1970s work: heavy rock, orchestral works, and complex jazz instrumentals, along with Zappa's distinctive guitar solos. "Läther" was officially released posthumously in 1996. It is still debated as to whether Zappa had conceived the material as a four-LP set from the beginning, or only later when working with Phonogram.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Although Zappa eventually gained the rights to all his material created under the MGM and Warner contracts, the various lawsuits meant that for a period Zappa's only income came from touring, which he therefore did extensively in 1975–1977 with relatively small, mainly rock-oriented, bands. Drummer Terry Bozzio became a regular band member, Napoleon Murphy Brock stayed on for a while, and original Mothers of Invention bassist Roy Estrada joined. Among other musicians were bassist Patrick O'Hearn, singer-guitarist Ray White and keyboardist/violinist Eddie Jobson. In December 1976, Zappa appeared as a featured musical guest on the NBC television show "Saturday Night Live". Zappa's song "I'm the Slime" was performed with a voice-over by "SNL" booth announcer Don Pardo, who also introduced "Peaches En Regalia" on the same airing. In 1978, Zappa served both as host and musical act on the show, and as an actor in various sketches. The performances included an impromptu musical collaboration with cast member John Belushi during the instrumental piece "The Purple Lagoon". Belushi appeared as his Samurai Futaba character playing the tenor sax with Zappa conducting.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa's band had a series of Christmas shows in New York City in 1976, recordings of which appear on "Zappa in New York" (1978) and also on the four-LP "Läther" project. The band included Ruth Underwood and a horn section (featuring Michael and Randy Brecker). It mixes complex instrumentals such as "The Black Page" and humorous songs like "Titties and Beer". The former composition, written originally for drum kit but later developed for larger bands, is notorious for its complexity in rhythmic structure and short, densely arranged passages.


title: Frank Zappa

text: "Zappa in New York" also featured a song about sex criminal Michael H. Kenyon, "The Illinois Enema Bandit", in which Don Pardo provides the opening narrative. Like many songs on the album, it contained numerous sexual references, leading to many critics objecting and being offended by the content. Zappa dismissed the criticism by noting that he was a journalist reporting on life as he saw it. Predating his later fight against censorship, he remarked: "What do you make of a society that is so primitive that it clings to the belief that certain words in its language are so powerful that they could corrupt you the moment you hear them?" The remaining albums released by Warner without Zappa's approval were "Studio Tan" in 1978 and "Sleep Dirt" and "Orchestral Favorites" in 1979. These releases were not promoted and were largely overlooked in midst of the press about Zappa's legal problems.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa released two of his most important projects in 1979. These were the best-selling album of his career, "Sheik Yerbouti", and what author Kelley Lowe called the "bona fide masterpiece", "Joe's Garage".


title: Frank Zappa

text: The double album "Sheik Yerbouti" appeared in March 1979 and was the first release to appear on Zappa Records. It contained the Grammy-nominated single "Dancin' Fool", which reached No. 45 on the "Billboard" charts. It also contained "Jewish Princess", which received attention when a Jewish group, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), attempted to prevent the song from receiving radio airplay due to its alleged anti-Semitic lyrics. Zappa vehemently denied any anti-Semitic sentiments, and dismissed the ADL as a "noisemaking organization that tries to apply pressure on people in order to manufacture a stereotype image of Jews that suits their idea of a good time." The album's commercial success was attributable in part to "Bobby Brown". Due to its explicit lyrics about a young man's encounter with a "dyke by the name of Freddie", the song did not get airplay in the U.S., but it topped the charts in several European countries where English is not the primary language.


title: Frank Zappa

text: "Joe's Garage" initially had to be released in two parts due to economic conditions. The first was a single LP "Joe's Garage Act I" in September 1979, followed by a double LP "Joe's Garage Acts II and III" in November 1979. The albums feature singer Ike Willis as lead character "Joe" in a rock opera about the danger of political systems, the suppression of freedom of speech and music—inspired in part by the 1979 Islamic Iranian revolution that had made music illegal—and about the "strange relationship Americans have with sex and sexual frankness". The first act contains the song "Catholic Girls" (a riposte to the controversies of "Jewish Princess"), and the title track, which was also released as a single. The second and third acts have extended guitar improvisations, which were recorded live, then combined with studio backing tracks. Zappa described this process as xenochrony. In this period the band included drummer Vinnie Colaiuta (with whom Zappa had a particularly strong musical rapport) "Joe's Garage" contains one of Zappa's most famous guitar "signature pieces", "Watermelon in Easter Hay". This work later appeared as a three-LP, or two-CD set.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa had been known for his long hair since the mid 1960s, but he had Gail cut it short around August 1979. That fall he cancelled tour plans and stayed home to celebrate two of his children's birthdays in September. At this time Zappa also completed the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen (UMRK) studios, which were located at his house, thereby giving him complete freedom in his work.


title: Frank Zappa

text: On December 21, 1979, Zappa's movie "Baby Snakes" premiered in New York. The movie's tagline was "A movie about people who do stuff that is not normal". The 2 hour and 40 minutes movie was based on footage from concerts in New York around Halloween 1977, with a band featuring keyboardist Tommy Mars and percussionist Ed Mann (who would both return on later tours) as well as guitarist Adrian Belew. It also contained several extraordinary sequences of clay animation by Bruce Bickford who had earlier provided animation sequences to Zappa for a 1974 TV special (which became available on the 1982 video "The Dub Room Special"). The movie did not do well in theatrical distribution, but won the Premier Grand Prix at the First International Music Festival in Paris in 1981.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa cut ties with Phonogram after the distributor refused to release his song "I Don't Wanna Get Drafted", which was recorded in February 1980. The single was released independently by Zappa in the United States and was picked up by CBS Records internationally.


title: Frank Zappa

text: After spending much of 1980 on the road, Zappa released "Tinsel Town Rebellion" in 1981. It was the first release on his own Barking Pumpkin Records, and it contains songs taken from a 1979 tour, one studio track and material from the 1980 tours. The album is a mixture of complicated instrumentals and Zappa's use of "sprechstimme" (speaking song or voice)—a compositional technique utilized by such composers as Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg—showcasing some of the most accomplished bands Zappa ever had (mostly featuring drummer Vinnie Colaiuta). While some lyrics still raised controversy among critics, some of whom found them sexist, the political and sociological satire in songs like the title track and "The Blue Light" have been described as a "hilarious critique of the willingness of the American people to believe anything". The album is also notable for the presence of guitarist Steve Vai, who joined Zappa's touring band in late 1980.


title: Frank Zappa

text: The same year the double album "You Are What You Is" was released. The album included one complex instrumental, "Theme from the 3rd Movement of Sinister Footwear", but mainly consisted of rock songs with Zappa's sardonic social commentary—satirical lyrics directed at teenagers, the media, and religious and political hypocrisy. "Dumb All Over" is a tirade on religion, as is "Heavenly Bank Account", wherein Zappa rails against TV evangelists such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson for their purported influence on the U.S. administration as well as their use of religion as a means of raising money. Songs like "Society Pages" and "I'm a Beautiful Guy" show Zappa's dismay with the Reagan era and its "obscene pursuit of wealth and happiness". Zappa made his only music video for a song from this album – "You Are What You Is" – directed by Jerry Watson, produced by Paul Flattery. The video was banned from MTV, though was later featured by Mike Judge in the Beavis & Butthead episode "Canoe".


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 1981, Zappa also released three instrumental albums, "Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar", "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar Some More", and "The Return of the Son of Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar", which were initially sold via mail order, but later released through CBS Records (now Sony Music Entertainment) due to popular demand.


title: Frank Zappa

text: The albums focus exclusively on Frank Zappa as a guitar soloist, and the tracks are predominantly live recordings from 1979 to 1980; they highlight Zappa's improvisational skills with "beautiful performances from the backing group as well". Another guitar-only album, "Guitar", was released in 1988, and a third, "Trance-Fusion", which Zappa completed shortly before his death, was released in 2006.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa later expanded on his television appearances in a non-musical role. He was an actor or voice artist in episodes of "Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre", "Miami Vice" and "The Ren & Stimpy Show". A voice part in "The Simpsons" never materialized, to creator Matt Groening's disappointment (Groening was a neighbor of Zappa and a lifelong fan).


title: Frank Zappa

text: In May 1982, Zappa released "Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch", which featured his biggest selling single ever, the Grammy Award-nominated song "Valley Girl" (topping out at No. 32 on the "Billboard" charts). In her improvised lyrics to the song, Zappa's daughter Moon satirized the patois of teenage girls from the San Fernando Valley, which popularized many "Valspeak" expressions such as "gag me with a spoon", "fer sure, fer sure", "grody to the max", and "barf out".


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 1983, two different projects were released, beginning with "The Man from Utopia," a rock-oriented work. The album is eclectic, featuring the vocal-led "Dangerous Kitchen" and "The Jazz Discharge Party Hats", both continuations of the sprechstimme excursions on "Tinseltown Rebellion." The second album, "London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. I", contained orchestral Zappa compositions conducted by Kent Nagano and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO). A second record of these sessions, "London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. II" was released in 1987. The material was recorded under a tight schedule with Zappa providing all funding, helped by the commercial success of "Valley Girl". Zappa was not satisfied with the LSO recordings. One reason is "Strictly Genteel", which was recorded after the trumpet section had been out for drinks on a break: the track took 40 edits to hide out-of-tune notes.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Conductor Nagano, who was pleased with the experience, noted that "in fairness to the orchestra, the music is humanly very, very difficult". Some reviews noted that the recordings were the best representation of Zappa's orchestral work so far. In 1984 Zappa teamed again with Nagano and the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra for a live performance of "A Zappa Affair" with augmented orchestra, life-size puppets, and moving stage sets. Although critically acclaimed the work was a financial failure, and only performed twice. Zappa was invited by conference organizer Thomas Wells to be the keynote speaker at the American Society of University Composers at the Ohio State University. It was there Zappa delivered his famous "Bingo! There Goes Your Tenure" address, and had two of his orchestra pieces, "Dupree's Paradise" and "Naval Aviation in Art?" performed by the Columbus Symphony and ProMusica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus. Zappa's management relationship with Bennett Glotzer ended in 1984. From then on Gail acted as co-manager with Frank for all his business interests.


title: Frank Zappa

text: For the remainder of his career, much of Zappa's work was influenced by his use of the Synclavier, an early digital synthesizer, as a compositional and performance tool. According to Zappa, "With the Synclavier, any group of imaginary instruments can be invited to play the most difficult passages ... with "one-millisecond" accuracy—every time". Even though it essentially did away with the need for musicians, Zappa viewed the Synclavier and real-life musicians as separate.


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 1984, he released four albums. "" contains orchestral works commissioned and conducted by celebrated conductor, composer and pianist Pierre Boulez (who was listed as an influence on "Freak Out!"), and performed by his Ensemble InterContemporain. These were juxtaposed with premiere Synclavier pieces. Again, Zappa was not satisfied with the performances of his orchestral works, regarding them as under-rehearsed, but in the album liner notes he respectfully thanks Boulez's demands for precision. The Synclavier pieces stood in contrast to the orchestral works, as the sounds were electronically generated and not, as became possible shortly thereafter, sampled.


title: Frank Zappa

text: The album "Thing-Fish" was an ambitious three-record set in the style of a Broadway play dealing with a dystopian "what-if" scenario involving feminism, homosexuality, manufacturing and distribution of the AIDS virus, and a eugenics program conducted by the United States government. New vocals were combined with previously released tracks and new Synclavier music; "the work is an extraordinary example of bricolage".


title: Frank Zappa

text: "Francesco Zappa", a Synclavier rendition of works by 18th-century composer Francesco Zappa, was also released in 1984.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa's mail-order merchandise business Barfko-Swill was run by Gerry Fialka, who also worked for Zappa as archivist and production assistant from 1983 to 1993 and answered the phone for Zappa's Barking Pumpkin Records hotline. Fialka appears giving a tour of Barfko-Swill in the 1987 VHS release (but not the original 1979 film release) of Zappa's film "Baby Snakes". He is credited on-screen as "GERALD FIALKA Cool Guy Who Wraps Stuff So It Doesn't Break". A short clip of this tour is also included in the 2020 documentary film "Zappa".


title: Frank Zappa

text: Around 1986, Zappa undertook a comprehensive re-release program of his earlier vinyl recordings. He personally oversaw the remastering of all his 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s albums for the new digital compact disc medium. Certain aspects of these re-issues were criticized by some fans as being unfaithful to the original recordings. Nearly twenty years before the advent of online music stores, Zappa had proposed to replace "phonographic record merchandising" of music by "direct digital-to-digital transfer" through phone or cable TV (with royalty payments and consumer billing automatically built into the accompanying software). In 1989, Zappa considered his idea a "miserable flop".


title: Frank Zappa

text: The album "Jazz from Hell," released in 1986, earned Zappa his first Grammy Award in 1988 for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Except for one live guitar solo ("St. Etienne"), the album exclusively featured compositions brought to life by the Synclavier.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa's last tour in a rock and jazz band format took place in 1988 with a 12-piece group which had a repertoire of over 100 (mostly Zappa) compositions, but which split under acrimonious circumstances before the tour was completed. The tour was documented on the albums "Broadway the Hard Way" (new material featuring songs with strong political emphasis); "The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life" (Zappa "standards" and an eclectic collection of cover tunes, ranging from Maurice Ravel's "Boléro" to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven"; and also, "Make a Jazz Noise Here". Parts are also found on "You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore", volumes 4 and 6. Recordings from this tour also appear on the 2006 album "Trance-Fusion".


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 1990, Zappa was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. The disease had been developing unnoticed for years and was considered inoperable. After the diagnosis, Zappa devoted most of his energy to modern orchestral and Synclavier works. Shortly before his death in 1993 he completed "Civilization Phaze III", a major Synclavier work which he had begun in the 1980s.


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 1991, Zappa was chosen to be one of four featured composers at the Frankfurt Festival in 1992 (the others were John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Alexander Knaifel). Zappa was approached by the German chamber ensemble Ensemble Modern which was interested in playing his music for the event. Although ill, he invited them to Los Angeles for rehearsals of new compositions and new arrangements of older material. Zappa also got along with the musicians, and the concerts in Germany and Austria were set up for later in the year. Zappa also performed in 1991 in Prague, claiming that "was the first time that he had a reason to play his guitar in 3 years", and that that moment was just "the beginning of a new country", and asked the public to "try to keep your country unique, do not change it into something else".


title: Frank Zappa

text: In September 1992, the concerts went ahead as scheduled but Zappa could only appear at two in Frankfurt due to illness. At the first concert, he conducted the opening "Overture", and the final "G-Spot Tornado" as well as the theatrical "Food Gathering in Post-Industrial America, 1992" and "Welcome to the United States" (the remainder of the program was conducted by the ensemble's regular conductor Peter Rundel). Zappa received a 20-minute ovation. G-Spot Tornado was performed with Canadian dancer Louise Lecavalier. It was Zappa's last professional public appearance as the cancer was spreading to such an extent that he was in too much pain to enjoy an event that he otherwise found "exhilarating". Recordings from the concerts appeared on "The Yellow Shark" (1993), Zappa's last release during his lifetime, and some material from studio rehearsals appeared on the posthumous "Everything Is Healing Nicely" (1999).


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa died from prostate cancer on December 4, 1993, at his home with his wife and children by his side. At a private ceremony the following day, his body was buried in a grave at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, in Los Angeles. The grave is unmarked. On December 6, his family publicly announced that "Composer Frank Zappa left for his final tour just before 6:00 pm on Saturday".


title: Frank Zappa

text: The general phases of Zappa's music have been variously categorized under experimental rock, jazz, classical, avant-pop, experimental pop, comedy rock, doo-wop, jazz fusion, progressive rock, proto-prog, avant-jazz, and psychedelic rock.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa grew up influenced by avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse, Igor Stravinsky, and Anton Webern; 1950s blues artists Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Guitar Slim, Howlin' Wolf, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, and B.B. King; Egyptian composer Halim El-Dabh; R&B and doo-wop groups (particularly local pachuco groups); and modern jazz. His own heterogeneous ethnic background, and the diverse social and cultural mix in and around greater Los Angeles, were crucial in the formation of Zappa as a practitioner of underground music and of his later distrustful and openly critical attitude towards "mainstream" social, political and musical movements. He frequently lampooned musical fads like psychedelia, rock opera and disco. Television also exerted a strong influence, as demonstrated by quotations from show themes and advertising jingles found in his later works.


title: Frank Zappa

text: In his book "The Real Frank Zappa Book", Frank credited composer Spike Jones for Zappa's frequent use of funny sound effects, mouth noises, and humorous percussion interjections. After explaining his ideas on this, he said "I owe this part of my musical existence to Spike Jones."


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa's albums make extensive use of segued tracks, breaklessly joining the elements of his albums. His total output is unified by a conceptual continuity he termed "Project/Object", with numerous musical phrases, ideas, and characters reappearing across his albums. He also called it a "conceptual continuity", meaning that any project or album was part of a larger project. Everything was connected, and musical themes and lyrics reappeared in different form on later albums. Conceptual continuity clues are found throughout Zappa's entire œuvre.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa is widely recognized as one of the most significant electric guitar soloists. In a 1983 issue of "Guitar World", John Swenson declared: "the fact of the matter is that [Zappa] is one of the greatest guitarists we have and is sorely unappreciated as such." His idiosyncratic style developed gradually and was mature by the early 1980s, by which time his live performances featured lengthy improvised solos during many songs. A November 2016 feature by the editors of "Guitar Player" magazine wrote: "Brimming with sophisticated motifs and convoluted rhythms, Zappa's extended excursions are more akin to symphonies than they are to guitar solos." The symphonic comparison stems from his habit of introducing melodic themes that, like a symphony's main melodies, were repeated with variations throughout his solos. He was further described as using a wide variety of scales and modes, enlivened by "unusual rhythmic combinations". His left hand was capable of smooth legato technique, while Zappa's right was "one of the fastest pick hands in the business." In 2016, Dweezil Zappa explained a distinctive element of his father's guitar improvisation technique was relying heavily on upstrokes much more than many other guitarists, who are more likely to use downstrokes with their picking.


title: Frank Zappa

text: His song "Outside Now" from "Joe's Garage" poked fun at the negative reception of Zappa's guitar technique by those more commercially minded, as the song's narrator lives in a world where music is outlawed and he imagines "imaginary guitar notes that would irritate/An executive kind of guy", lyrics that are followed by one of Zappa's characteristically quirky solos in 11/8 time. Zappa transcriptionist Kasper Sloots wrote, "Zappa's guitar solos aren't meant to show off technically (Zappa hasn't claimed to be a big virtuoso on the instrument), but for the pleasure it gives trying to build a composition right in front of an audience without knowing what the outcome will be."


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa's guitar style was not without its critics. English guitarist and bandleader John McLaughlin, whose band Mahavishnu Orchestra toured with the Mothers of Invention in 1973, opined that Zappa was "very interesting as a human being and a very interesting composer" and that he "was a very good musician but he was a dictator in his band," and that he "was taking very long guitar solos [when performing live]—10–15 minute guitar solos and really he should have taken two or three minute guitar solos, because they were a little bit boring."


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 2000, he was ranked number 36 on VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock". 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".


title: Frank Zappa

text: In New York, Zappa increasingly used tape editing as a compositional tool. A prime example is found on the double album "Uncle Meat" (1969), where the track "King Kong" is edited from various studio and live performances. Zappa had begun regularly recording concerts, and because of his insistence on precise tuning and timing, he was able to augment his studio productions with excerpts from live shows, and vice versa. Later, he combined recordings of different compositions into new pieces, irrespective of the tempo or meter of the sources. He dubbed this process "xenochrony" (strange synchronizations)—reflecting the Greek "xeno" (alien or strange) and "chronos" (time).


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa was married to Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman from 1960 to 1963. In 1967, he married Adelaide Gail Sloatman. He and his second wife had four children: Moon, Dweezil, Ahmet, and Diva.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Following Zappa's death, his widow Gail created the Zappa Family Trust, which owns the rights to Zappa's music and some other creative output: more than 60 albums were released during Zappa's lifetime and 40 posthumously. Upon Gail's death in October 2015, the Zappa children received shares of the trust; Ahmet and Diva received 30% each, Moon and Dweezil received 20% each.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa stated, "Drugs do not become a problem until the person who uses the drugs does something to you, or does something that would affect your life that you don't want to have happen to you, like an airline pilot who crashes because he was full of drugs." Zappa was a heavy tobacco smoker for most of his life, and critical of anti-tobacco campaigns.


title: Frank Zappa

text: While he disapproved of drug use, he criticized the War on Drugs, comparing it to alcohol prohibition, and stated that the United States Treasury would benefit from the decriminalization and regulation of drugs. Describing his philosophical views, Zappa stated, "I believe that people have a right to decide their own destinies; people own themselves. I also believe that, in a democracy, government exists because (and only so long as) individual citizens give it a 'temporary license to exist'—in exchange for a promise that it will behave itself. In a democracy, you own the government—it doesn't own you."


title: Frank Zappa

text: In a 1991 interview, Zappa reported that he was a registered Democrat but added "that might not last long—I'm going to shred that." Describing his political views, Zappa categorized himself as a "practical conservative." He favored limited government and low taxes; he also stated that he approved of national defense, social security, and other federal programs, but only if recipients of such programs are willing and able to pay for them. He opposed military drafts, saying that military service should be voluntary. He favored capitalism, entrepreneurship, and independent business, stating that musicians could make more from owning their own businesses than from collecting royalties. He opposed communism, stating, "A system that doesn't allow ownership... has—to put it mildly—a fatal design flaw." He always encouraged his fans to register to vote on album covers, and throughout 1988, he had registration booths at his concerts. He even considered running for president of the United States as an independent.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa was an atheist. He recalled his parents being "pretty religious" and trying to make him go to Catholic school despite his resentment. He felt disgust towards organized religion (Christianity in particular) because he believed that it promoted ignorance and anti-intellectualism. He held the view that the Garden of Eden story shows that the essence of Christianity is to oppose gaining knowledge. Some of his songs, concert performances, interviews and public debates in the 1980s criticized and derided Republicans and their policies—President Ronald Reagan, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), televangelism, and the Christian Right—and warned that the United States government was in danger of becoming a "fascist theocracy."


title: Frank Zappa

text: In early 1990, Zappa visited Czechoslovakia at the request of President Václav Havel. A longtime admirer of Zappa’s commitment to individual freedom, Havel designated him as Czechoslovakia's "Special Ambassador to the West on Trade, Culture and Tourism." Havel was a lifelong fan of Zappa, who had great influence in the avant-garde and underground scene in Central Europe in the 1970s and 1980s (a Czech rock group that was imprisoned in 1976 took its name from Zappa's 1968 song "Plastic People"). Under pressure from Secretary of State, James Baker, Zappa's posting was withdrawn. Havel made Zappa an unofficial cultural attaché instead. Zappa planned to develop an international consulting enterprise to facilitate trade between the former Eastern Bloc and Western businesses.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa expressed opinions on censorship when he appeared on CNN's "Crossfire" TV series and debated issues with "Washington Times" commentator John Lofton in 1986. On September 19, 1985, Zappa testified before the United States Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, attacking the Parents Music Resource Center or PMRC, a music organization co-founded by Tipper Gore, wife of then-senator Al Gore. The PMRC consisted of many wives of politicians, including the wives of five members of the committee, and was founded to address the issue of song lyrics with sexual or satanic content. During Zappa's testimony, he stated that there was a clear conflict of interest between the PMRC due to the relations of its founders to the politicians who were then trying to pass what he referred to as the "Blank Tape Tax." Kandy Stroud, a spokeswoman for the PMRC, announced that Senator Gore (who co-founded the committee) was a co-sponsor of that legislation. Zappa suggested that record labels were trying to get the bill passed quickly through committees, one of which was chaired by Senator Strom Thurmond, who was also affiliated with the PMRC. Zappa further pointed out that this committee was being used as a distraction from that bill being passed, which would lead only to the benefit of a select few in the music industry.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa saw their activities as on a path towards censorship and called their proposal for voluntary labelling of records with explicit content "extortion" of the music industry.


title: Frank Zappa

text: The PMRC proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children, and promises to keep the courts busy for years dealing with the interpretational and enforcemental problems inherent in the proposal's design. It is my understanding that, in law, First Amendment issues are decided with a preference for the least restrictive alternative. In this context, the PMRC's demands are the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation. ... The establishment of a rating system, voluntary or otherwise, opens the door to an endless parade of moral quality control programs based on things certain Christians do not like. What if the next bunch of Washington wives demands a large yellow "J" on all material written or performed by Jews, in order to save helpless children from exposure to concealed Zionist doctrine?


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa set excerpts from the PMRC hearings to Synclavier music in his composition "Porn Wars" on the 1985 album "Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention", and the full recording was released in 2010 as "Congress Shall Make No Law..." Zappa is heard interacting with Senators Fritz Hollings, Slade Gorton and Al Gore.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Zappa had a controversial critical standing during his lifetime. As Geoffrey Himes noted in 1993 after the artist's death, Zappa was hailed as a genius by conductor Kent Nagano and nominated by Czechoslovakian President Václav Havel to the country's cultural ambassadorship, but he was in his lifetime rejected twice for admission into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and been found by critics to lack emotional depth. In "" (1981), Robert Christgau dismissed Zappa's music as "sexist adolescent drivel ... with meters and voicings and key changes that are as hard to play as they are easy to forget." According to Himes:


title: Frank Zappa

text: "The Rolling Stone Album Guide" (2004) writes: "Frank Zappa dabbled in virtually all kinds of music—and, whether guised as a satirical rocker, jazz-rock fusionist, guitar virtuoso, electronics wizard, or orchestral innovator, his eccentric genius was undeniable." Even though his work drew inspiration from many different genres, Zappa was seen as establishing a coherent and personal expression.


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 1980, biographer David Walley noted that "The whole structure of his music is unified, not neatly divided by dates or time sequences and it is all building into a composite".


title: Frank Zappa

text: On commenting on Zappa's music, politics and philosophy, Barry Miles noted in 2004 that they cannot be separated: "It was all one; all part of his 'conceptual continuity'."


title: Frank Zappa

text: "Guitar Player" devoted a special issue to Zappa in 1992, and asked on the cover "Is FZ America's Best Kept Musical Secret?" Editor Don Menn remarked that the issue was about "The most important composer to come out of modern popular music".


title: Frank Zappa

text: Among those contributing to the issue was composer and musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky, who conducted premiere performances of works of Ives and Varèse in the 1930s. He became friends with Zappa in the 1980s, and said, "I admire everything Frank does, because he practically created the new musical millennium. He does beautiful, beautiful work ... It has been my luck to have lived to see the emergence of this totally new type of music."


title: Frank Zappa

text: Conductor Kent Nagano remarked in the same issue that "Frank is a genius. That's a word I don't use often ... In Frank's case it is not too strong ... He is extremely literate musically. I'm not sure if the general public knows that." Pierre Boulez told "Musician" magazine's posthumous Zappa tribute article that Zappa "was an exceptional figure because he was part of the worlds of rock and classical music and that both types of his work would survive."


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 1994, jazz magazine "DownBeat"s critics poll placed Zappa in its Hall of Fame. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. There, it was written that "Frank Zappa was rock and roll's sharpest musical mind and most astute social critic. He was the most prolific composer of his age, and he bridged genres—rock, jazz, classical, avant-garde and even novelty music—with masterful ease". He was ranked number 36 on VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock" in 2000.


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 2005, the U.S. National Recording Preservation Board included "We're Only in It for the Money" in the National Recording Registry as "Frank Zappa's inventive and iconoclastic album presents a unique political stance, both anti-conservative and anti-counterculture, and features a scathing satire on hippiedom and America's reactions to it". The same year, "Rolling Stone" magazine ranked him at No. 71 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 2011, he was ranked at No. 22 on the list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time by the same magazine. In 2016, "Guitar World" magazine placed Zappa atop of its list "15 of the best progressive rock guitarists through the years."


title: Frank Zappa

text: The street of Partinico where his father lived at number 13, Via Zammatà, has been renamed to Via Frank Zappa.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Since his death, several musicians have been considered by critics as filling the artistic niche left behind by Zappa, in view of their prolific output, eclecticism and other qualities, including Devin Townsend, Mike Patton and Omar Rodríguez-López.


title: Frank Zappa

text: In the course of his career, Zappa was nominated for nine competitive Grammy Awards, which resulted in two wins (one posthumous). In 1998, he received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Many musicians, bands and orchestras from diverse genres have been influenced by Zappa's music. Rock artists such as The Plastic People of the Universe, Alice Cooper, Larry LaLonde of Primus, Fee Waybill of the Tubes all cite Zappa's influence, as do progressive, alternative, electronic and avant-garde/experimental rock artists like Can, Pere Ubu, Yes, Soft Machine, Henry Cow, Faust, Devo, Kraftwerk, Trey Anastasio and Jon Fishman of Phish, Jeff Buckley, John Frusciante, Steven Wilson, and The Aristocrats. Paul McCartney regarded "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" as the Beatles' "Freak Out!." Jimi Hendrix and heavy rock and metal acts like Black Sabbath, Living Colour, Simon Phillips, Mike Portnoy, Warren DeMartini, Alex Skolnick, Steve Vai, Strapping Young Lad, System of a Down, and Clawfinger have acknowledged Zappa as inspiration. On the classical music scene, Tomas Ulrich, Meridian Arts Ensemble, Ensemble Ambrosius and the Fireworks Ensemble regularly perform Zappa's compositions and quote his influence. Contemporary jazz musicians and composers Bobby Sanabria, Bill Frisell and John Zorn are inspired by Zappa, as is funk legend George Clinton.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Other artists affected by Zappa include ambient composer Brian Eno, new age pianist George Winston, electronic composer Bob Gluck, parodist artist and disk jockey Dr. Demento, parodist and novelty composer "Weird Al" Yankovic, industrial music pioneer Genesis P-Orridge, singer Cree Summer, noise music artist Masami Akita of Merzbow, the Italian band Elio e le Storie Tese and Chilean composer Cristián Crisosto from Fulano and Mediabanda.


title: Frank Zappa

text: Scientists from various fields have honored Zappa by naming new discoveries after him. In 1967, paleontologist Leo P. Plas, Jr., identified an extinct mollusc in Nevada and named it "Amaurotoma zappa" with the motivation that, "The specific name, "zappa", honors Frank Zappa".


title: Frank Zappa

text: In the 1980s, biologist Ed Murdy named a genus of gobiid fishes of New Guinea "Zappa", with a species named "Zappa confluentus". Biologist Ferdinando Boero named a Californian jellyfish "Phialella zappai" (1987), noting that he had "pleasure in naming this species after the modern music composer".


title: Frank Zappa

text: Belgian biologists Bosmans and Bosselaers discovered in the early 1980s a Cameroonese spider, which they in 1994 named "Pachygnatha zappa" because "the ventral side of the abdomen of the female of this species strikingly resembles the artist's legendary moustache".


title: Frank Zappa

text: A gene of the bacterium "Proteus mirabilis" that causes urinary tract infections was in 1995 named "zapA" by three biologists from Maryland. In their scientific article, they "especially thank the late Frank Zappa for inspiration and assistance with genetic nomenclature". Repeating regions of the genome of the human tumor virus KSHV were named "frnk", "vnct" and "zppa" in 1996 by Yuan Chang and Patrick S. Moore who discovered the virus. Also, a 143 base pair repeat sequence occurring at two positions was named "waka/jwka".


title: Frank Zappa

text: In the late 1990s, American paleontologists Marc Salak and Halard L. Lescinsky discovered a metazoan fossil, and named it "Spygori zappania" to honor "the late Frank Zappa ... whose mission paralleled that of the earliest paleontologists: to challenge conventional and traditional beliefs when such beliefs lacked roots in logic and reason".


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 1994, lobbying efforts initiated by psychiatrist John Scialli led the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center to name an asteroid in Zappa's honor: 3834 Zappafrank. The asteroid was discovered in 1980 by Czechoslovakian astronomer Ladislav Brožek, and the citation for its naming says that "Zappa was an eclectic, self-trained artist and composer ... Before 1989 he was regarded as a symbol of democracy and freedom by many people in Czechoslovakia".


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 1995, a bust of Zappa by sculptor Konstantinas Bogdanas was installed in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital . The choice of Zappa was explained as "a symbol that would mark the end of communism, but at the same time express that it wasn't always doom and gloom." A replica was offered to the city of Baltimore in 2008, and on September 19, 2010—the twenty-fifth anniversary of Zappa's testimony to the U.S. Senate—a ceremony dedicating the replica was held, and the bust was unveiled at a library in the city.


title: Frank Zappa

text: In 2002, a bronze bust was installed in German city Bad Doberan, location of the "Zappanale" since 1990, an annual music festival celebrating Zappa. At the initiative of musicians community ORWOhaus, the city of Berlin named a street in the Marzahn district "Frank-Zappa-Straße" in 2007. The same year, Baltimore mayor Sheila Dixon proclaimed August 9 as the city's official "Frank Zappa Day" citing Zappa's musical accomplishments as well as his defense of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.


title: Frank Zappa

text: The biographical documentary "Zappa", directed by Alex Winter and released on November 27, 2020, includes previously unreleased footage from Zappa's personal vault, to which he was granted access by the Zappa Family Trust.


title: Frank Zappa

text: During his lifetime, Zappa released 62 albums. Since 1994, the Zappa Family Trust has released 57 posthumous albums, making a total of 119 albums. The distributor of Zappa's recorded output is Universal Music Enterprises. In June 2022 the Zappa Trust announced that it had sold Zappa's entire catalog to Universal Music, including master tapes, song copyrights and trademarks.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: Fargo is an American black comedy crime drama television series created and primarily written by Noah Hawley. The show is inspired by the 1996 film of the same name, which was written and directed by the Coen brothers, and takes place within the same fictional universe. The Coens were impressed by Hawley's script and agreed to be named as executive producers. The series premiered on April 15, 2014, on FX, and follows an anthology format, with each season set in a different era and location, with a different story and mostly new characters and cast, although there is minor overlap. Each season is heavily influenced by various Coen brothers films, with each containing numerous references to them.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: The first season, set primarily in Minnesota and North Dakota from January 2006 to February 2007 and starring Billy Bob Thornton, Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks, and Martin Freeman, received wide acclaim from critics. It won the Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Miniseries, Outstanding Directing, and Outstanding Casting, and received 15 additional nominations including Outstanding Writing, another Outstanding Directing nomination, and acting nominations for all four leads. It also won the Golden Globe Awards for Best Miniseries or Television Film and Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film for Thornton.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: The second season, set in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota in March 1979 and starring Kirsten Dunst, Patrick Wilson, Jesse Plemons, Jean Smart, and Ted Danson, received widespread critical acclaim. It received three Golden Globe nominations, along with several Emmy nominations including Outstanding Miniseries, and acting nominations for Dunst, Plemons, Smart, and Bokeem Woodbine.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: The third season, set primarily in Minnesota from 2010 to 2011 and starring Ewan McGregor, Carrie Coon, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Goran Bogdan, and David Thewlis, premiered on April 19, 2017. Like previous seasons, it was met with acclaim from critics, and received Emmy nominations including Outstanding Miniseries, and acting nominations for McGregor, Coon, and Thewlis. It received three Golden Globe nominations, for Outstanding Limited Series, and McGregor and Thewlis for acting, with McGregor winning in his category.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: The fourth season, set primarily in Kansas City, Missouri from 1950 to 1951 and starring Chris Rock, Jessie Buckley, Jason Schwartzman, Ben Whishaw, and Jack Huston, premiered on September 27, 2020, and received generally positive reviews, though was not as highly acclaimed as previous seasons.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: In February 2022, the series was renewed for a fifth season, which will star Juno Temple, Jon Hamm, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Joe Keery, Lamorne Morris, Richa Moorjani, and Dave Foley.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: In 2006, Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) passes through Bemidji, Minnesota, and influences the community – including put-upon insurance salesman Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) – with his malice, violence, and deception. Meanwhile, Deputy Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman) and Duluth police officer Gus Grimly (Colin Hanks) team up to solve a series of murders they believe may be linked to Malvo and Nygaard.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: In 1979, beautician Peggy Blumquist (Kirsten Dunst) and her husband, butcher Ed Blumquist (Jesse Plemons) of Luverne, Minnesota, cover up her hit-and-run and vehicular homicide of Rye Gerhardt (Kieran Culkin), son of Floyd Gerhardt (Jean Smart), matriarch of the Gerhardt crime family in Fargo, North Dakota. Meanwhile, State Trooper Lou Solverson (Patrick Wilson) and his father-in-law, Sheriff Hank Larsson (Ted Danson), investigate a triple homicide at a local diner connected to Rye.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: In 2010, St. Cloud probation officer Ray Stussy (Ewan McGregor) and his parolee girlfriend Nikki Swango (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) dream of a better, wealthier life. To achieve this, they attempt to steal a valuable vintage stamp from Ray's more successful older brother, Emmit (also played by McGregor), the self-proclaimed "Parking Lot King of Minnesota". However, their plans backfire, and the couple soon have to hide their involvement in two deaths, including the stepfather of former Eden Valley police chief Gloria Burgle (Carrie Coon). Meanwhile, Emmit wishes to pay back a shady organization he borrowed money from two years ago, but the company Narwhal and its employees, led by V. M. Varga (David Thewlis), have other plans.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: In 1950, the Cannon Limited, led by Loy Cannon (Chris Rock), threaten to usurp the Fadda Family, led by Josto Fadda (Jason Schwartzman), as the ruling crime organization in Kansas City, Missouri. In an effort to maintain peace, the groups agree to honor a tradition of trading the youngest sons between the two households. However, the alliance is jeopardized by the arrival of Josto's brash brother Gaetano (Salvatore Esposito), as well as the unorthodox actions taken by a nurse named Oraetta Mayflower (Jessie Buckley). Meanwhile, Oraetta's teenaged neighbor Ethelrida Pearl Smutny (E'myri Crutchfield) discovers her parents are in debt to the Cannon Limited, which gets her entangled in the criminal activities of Kansas City.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: Set in the upper Midwest in 2019, the plot of the show's fifth season has been teased with the following questions: "When is a kidnapping not a kidnapping, and what if your wife isn't yours?" Jon Hamm, Juno Temple, and Jennifer Jason Leigh have been cast as lead characters Roy, Dorothy "Dot" Lyon, and Lorraine Lyon, respectively. Additional cast members include Joe Keery as Gator Tillman, Lamorne Morris as Witt Farr, Richa Moorjani as Indira Olmstead, and Dave Foley as Danish Graves.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: In 1997, a pilot was filmed for an intended television series based on the film. Set in Brainerd shortly after the events of the film, it starred Edie Falco as Marge Gunderson and Bruce Bohne reprising his role as Officer Lou. It was directed by Kathy Bates and featured no involvement from the Coen brothers. The episode aired in 2003, during Trio's "Brilliant But Cancelled" series of failed TV shows.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: In 2012, it was announced that FX, with the Coen brothers as executive producers, was developing a new television series based on the film. It was later announced that adaptation would be a ten-episode limited series. On August 2, 2013, it was announced that Billy Bob Thornton had signed on to star in the series. On September 27, 2013, Martin Freeman also signed on to star. On October 3, 2013, it was announced that Colin Hanks was cast in the role of Duluth police officer Gus Grimly. Production began in late 2013, with filming taking place in and around Calgary, Alberta.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: The series is set in the same fictional universe as the film, in which events took place in 1987 between Minneapolis and Brainerd, Minnesota. The first season features the buried ransom money from the film in a minor subplot. Additionally, a number of references are made connecting the series to the film.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: Following the series renewal in July 2014, creator Noah Hawley revealed that the second season would take place in 1979 and focus on Sioux Falls, South Dakota, as referred to by Lou Solverson and others in the first season. The ten episodes are set in Luverne, Minnesota; Fargo, North Dakota; and Sioux Falls. Hawley agreed that this takes place before the events of the film, but he believes all the stories connect: "I like the idea that somewhere out there is a big, leather-bound book that's the history of true crime in the Midwest, and the movie was Chapter 4; Season 1 was Chapter 9; and [Season 2] is Chapter 2," he said. "You can turn the pages of this book, and you just find this collection of stories. ... But I like the idea that these things are connected somehow, whether it's linearly or literally or thematically. That's what we play around with." This book was realized in season 2, episode 9, "The Castle". Production on the second season began in Calgary on January 19, 2015, and completed on May 20, 2015.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: Production on the third season began in January 2017 in Calgary, Alberta. Production on the fourth season was shut down in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The season was originally scheduled to premiere on April 19, 2020, before the shutdown. Filming resumed on the fourth season in late August 2020.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: As with the film, this claim is untrue. Showrunner Noah Hawley continued to use the Coens' device, saying it allowed him to "tell a story in a new way". Hawley has played with the realism of the story further; responding to queries about Charlie Gerhardt, a character from season 2, he stated "If he’s out there, I’d like to get a letter from him someday, telling me how he turned out."


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: At the 2017 ATX Television Festival in Austin, Texas, Hawley further discussed the "true story" series tag: "So what does that even mean—the words 'true story'?" he said. "I really wanted to deconstruct that this year." He recalled one of the lines spoken by Sy Feltz, Michael Stuhlbarg's character: "'The world is wrong—it looks like my world but everything is different.' That's what we're exploring this year."


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: On April 15, 2014, the series made its debut on FX and FXX in Canada; the remaining episodes were shown on FXX. The next day, it premiered in the UK on Channel 4. On May 1, 2014, it premiered on SBS One in Australia, and on SoHo in New Zealand.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: The first season was critically acclaimed; it received a Metacritic score of 85 out of 100 based on 40 reviews, signifying "universal acclaim". The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 97% of 140 critics gave the season a positive review, with an average rating of 8.45 out of 10. The website consensus reads: "Based on the film of the same name in atmosphere, style, and location only, "Fargo" presents more quirky characters and a new storyline that is expertly executed with dark humor and odd twists." IGN reviewer Roth Cornet gave the first season a 9.7 out of 10 score, praising the casting, its thematic ties to the movie, and the writing. "The A.V. Club" named it the sixth best TV series of 2014.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: The second season was also met with critical acclaim. It received a Metacritic score of 96 based on 33 reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim". 100% of 233 reviews are positive on Rotten Tomatoes, and the average rating is 9.1 out of 10. The site's consensus states: "Season two of "Fargo" retains all the elements that made the series an award-winning hit, successfully delivering another stellar saga powered by fascinating characters, cheeky cynicism, and just a touch of the absurd."


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: The third season received acclaim similar to the first two seasons. Metacritic assigned it a score of 89 out of 100 based on 32 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 93% rating with an average score of 8.5 out of 10 based on 223 reviews. The site's critical consensus is: "Thanks in part to a memorable dual performance from Ewan McGregor, "Fargo" mostly maintains the sly wit and off-kilter sensibility it displayed in its first two seasons."


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: The fourth season received generally positive reviews from critics, though less acclaimed than its previous seasons. Rotten Tomatoes collected 56 reviews and identified 84% of them as positive, with an average rating of 7.1/10. The critics consensus for the season is, "Though "Fargo"s ambitious fourth season struggles to maintain momentum, fine performances and a change of scenery make for an engaging—if uneven—departure from the series' norm." At Metacritic, the season got a score of 68/100, based on reviews from 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: "Fargo" has won 51 of its 226 award nominations. The first season garnered 8 Primetime Emmy Award nominations, with the show itself winning the Outstanding Miniseries and director Colin Bucksey winning the Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special. It received an additional 10 Creative Arts Emmy Award nominations, winning for Outstanding Casting for a Miniseries, Movie, or Special. It has received eight Golden Globe Award nominations, with the show winning for Best Miniseries or Television Film, and Billy Bob Thornton winning for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film. The series has also received one Screen Actors Guild Award nomination to Billy Bob Thornton for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie.


title: Fargo (TV series)

text: Additional accolades include: the American Film Institute Award for Top Ten Television Program in 2014 and 2015, the Artios Award for Excellence in Casting, a Peabody Award, seven Critics' Choice Television Awards in which the show won twice for Best Miniseries and five times in acting for Billy Bob Thornton, Allison Tolman, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons and Jean Smart, the Dorian Awards for TV Drama of the Year, the Golden Reel Award for Best Music Score, two Producers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Producer of Long-Form Television and a Writers Guild of America Awards for .


title: Bali

text: Bali () is a province of Indonesia and the westernmost of the Lesser Sunda Islands. East of Java and west of Lombok, the province includes the island of Bali and a few smaller neighbouring islands, notably Nusa Penida, Nusa Lembongan, and Nusa Ceningan to the southeast. The provincial capital, Denpasar, is the most populous city in the Lesser Sunda Islands and the second-largest, after Makassar, in Eastern Indonesia. The upland town of Ubud in Greater Denpasar is considered Bali's cultural centre. The province is Indonesia's main tourist destination, with a significant rise in tourism since the 1980s. Tourism-related business makes up 80% of its economy.


title: Bali

text: Bali is the only Hindu-majority province in Indonesia, with 86.9% of the population adhering to Balinese Hinduism. It is renowned for its highly developed arts, including traditional and modern dance, sculpture, painting, leather, metalworking, and music. The Indonesian International Film Festival is held every year in Bali. Other international events held in Bali include the Miss World 2013, 2018 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group and 2022 G20 summit. In March 2017, TripAdvisor named Bali as the world's top destination in its Traveller's Choice award, which it also earned in January 2021.


title: Bali

text: Bali is part of the Coral Triangle, the area with the highest biodiversity of marine species, especially fish and turtles. In this area alone, over 500 reef-building coral species can be found. For comparison, this is about seven times as many as in the entire Caribbean. Bali is the home of the Subak irrigation system, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is also home to a unified confederation of kingdoms composed of 10 traditional royal Balinese houses, each house ruling a specific geographic area. The confederation is the successor of the Bali Kingdom. The royal houses are not recognised by the government of Indonesia; however, they originated before Dutch colonisation.


title: Bali

text: Bali was inhabited around 2000 BCE by Austronesian people who migrated originally from the island of Taiwan to Southeast Asia and Oceania through Maritime Southeast Asia. Culturally and linguistically, the Balinese are closely related to the people of the Indonesian archipelago, Malaysia, the Philippines and Oceania. Stone tools dating from this time have been found near the village of Cekik in the island's west.


title: Bali

text: In ancient Bali, nine Hindu sects existed, namely Pasupata, Bhairawa, Siwa Shidanta, Vaishnava, Bodha, Brahma, Resi, Sora and Ganapatya. Each sect revered a specific deity as its personal Godhead.


title: Bali

text: Inscriptions from 896 and 911 do not mention a king, until 914, when Sri Kesarivarma is mentioned. They also reveal an independent Bali, with a distinct dialect, where Buddhism and Shaivism were practised simultaneously. Mpu Sindok's great-granddaughter, Mahendradatta (Gunapriyadharmapatni), married the Bali king Udayana Warmadewa (Dharmodayanavarmadeva) around 989, giving birth to Airlangga around 1001. This marriage also brought more Hinduism and Javanese culture to Bali. Princess Sakalendukirana appeared in 1098. Suradhipa reigned from 1115 to 1119, and Jayasakti from 1146 until 1150. Jayapangus appears on inscriptions between 1178 and 1181, while Adikuntiketana and his son Paramesvara in 1204.


title: Bali

text: Balinese culture was strongly influenced by Indian, Chinese, and particularly Hindu culture, beginning around the 1st century AD. The name "Bali dwipa" ("Bali island") has been discovered from various inscriptions, including the Blanjong pillar inscription written by Sri Kesari Warmadewa in 914 AD and mentioning Walidwipa. It was during this time that the people developed their complex irrigation system "subak" to grow rice in wet-field cultivation. Some religious and cultural traditions still practised today can be traced to this period.


title: Bali

text: The Hindu Majapahit Empire (1293–1520 AD) on eastern Java founded a Balinese colony in 1343. The uncle of Hayam Wuruk is mentioned in the charters of 1384–86. Mass Javanese immigration to Bali occurred in the next century when the Majapahit Empire fell in 1520. Bali's government then became an independent collection of Hindu kingdoms which led to a Balinese national identity and major enhancements in culture, arts, and economy. The nation with various kingdoms became independent for up to 386 years until 1906 when the Dutch subjugated and repulsed the natives for economic control and took it over.


title: Bali

text: The first known European contact with Bali is thought to have been made in 1512, when a Portuguese expedition led by Antonio Abreu and Francisco Serrão sighted its northern shores. It was the first expedition of a series of bi-annual fleets to the Moluccas, that throughout the 16th century usually travelled along the coasts of the Sunda Islands. Bali was also mapped in 1512, in the chart of Francisco Rodrigues, aboard the expedition. In 1585, a ship foundered off the Bukit Peninsula and left a few Portuguese in the service of Dewa Agung.


title: Bali

text: In 1597, the Dutch explorer Cornelis de Houtman arrived at Bali, and the Dutch East India Company was established in 1602. The Dutch government expanded its control across the Indonesian archipelago during the second half of the 19th century. Dutch political and economic control over Bali began in the 1840s on the island's north coast when the Dutch pitted various competing Balinese realms against each other. In the late 1890s, struggles between Balinese kingdoms on the island's south were exploited by the Dutch to increase their control.


title: Bali

text: In June 1860, the famous Welsh naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, travelled to Bali from Singapore, landing at Buleleng on the north coast of the island. Wallace's trip to Bali was instrumental in helping him devise his Wallace Line theory. The Wallace Line is a faunal boundary that runs through the strait between Bali and Lombok. It is a boundary between species. In his travel memoir "The Malay Archipelago," Wallace wrote of his experience in Bali, which has a strong mention of the unique Balinese irrigation methods:


title: Bali

text: I was astonished and delighted; as my visit to Java was some years later, I had never beheld so beautiful and well-cultivated a district out of Europe. A slightly undulating plain extends from the seacoast about inland, where it is bounded by a fine range of wooded and cultivated hills. Houses and villages, marked out by dense clumps of coconut palms, tamarind and other fruit trees, are dotted about in every direction; while between them extend luxurious rice grounds, watered by an elaborate system of irrigation that would be the pride of the best-cultivated parts of Europe.


title: Bali

text: The Dutch mounted large naval and ground assaults at the Sanur region in 1906 and were met by the thousands of members of the royal family and their followers who rather than yield to the superior Dutch force committed ritual suicide ("puputan") to avoid the humiliation of surrender. Despite Dutch demands for surrender, an estimated 200 Balinese killed themselves rather than surrender. In the Dutch intervention in Bali, a similar mass suicide occurred in the face of a Dutch assault in Klungkung. Afterwards, the Dutch governours exercised administrative control over the island, but local control over religion and culture generally remained intact. Dutch rule over Bali came later and was never as well established as in other parts of Indonesia such as Java and Maluku.


title: Bali

text: In the 1930s, anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, artists Miguel Covarrubias and Walter Spies, and musicologist Colin McPhee all spent time here. Their accounts of the island and its peoples created a western image of Bali as "an enchanted land of aesthetes at peace with themselves and nature". Western tourists began to visit the island. The sensuous image of Bali was enhanced in the West by a quasi-pornographic 1932 documentary "Virgins of Bali" about a day in the lives of two teenage Balinese girls whom the film's narrator Deane Dickason notes in the first scene "bathe their shamelessly nude bronze bodies". Under the looser version of the Hays code that existed up to 1934, nudity involving "civilised" (i.e. white) women was banned, but permitted with "uncivilised" (i.e. all non-white women), a loophole that was exploited by the producers of "Virgins of Bali". The film, which mostly consisted of scenes of topless Balinese women was a great success in 1932, and almost single-handedly made Bali into a popular spot for tourists.


title: Bali

text: Imperial Japan occupied Bali during World War II. It was not originally a target in their Netherlands East Indies Campaign, but as the airfields on Borneo were inoperative due to heavy rains, the Imperial Japanese Army decided to occupy Bali, which did not suffer from comparable weather. The island had no regular Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) troops. There was only a Native Auxiliary Corps "Prajoda" (Korps Prajoda) consisting of about 600 native soldiers and several Dutch KNIL officers under the command of KNIL Lieutenant Colonel W.P. Roodenburg. On 19 February 1942, the Japanese forces landed near the town of Sanoer (Sanur). The island was quickly captured.


title: Bali

text: During the Japanese occupation, a Balinese military officer, I Gusti Ngurah Rai, formed a Balinese 'freedom army'. The harshness of Japanese occupation forces made them more resented than the Dutch colonial rulers.


title: Bali

text: In 1945, Bali was liberated by the British 5th infantry Division under the command of Major-General Robert Mansergh who took the Japanese surrender. Once the Japanese forces had been repatriated the island was handed over to the Dutch the following year.


title: Bali

text: In 1946, the Dutch constituted Bali as one of the 13 administrative districts of the newly proclaimed State of East Indonesia, a rival state to the Republic of Indonesia, which was proclaimed and headed by Sukarno and Hatta. Bali was included in the "Republic of the United States of Indonesia" when the Netherlands recognised Indonesian independence on 29 December 1949. The first governor of Bali, Anak Agung Bagus Suteja, was appointed by President Sukarno in 1958, when Bali became a province.


title: Bali

text: The 1963 eruption of Mount Agung killed thousands, created economic havoc, and forced many displaced Balinese to be transmigrated to other parts of Indonesia. Mirroring the widening of social divisions across Indonesia in the 1950s and early 1960s, Bali saw conflict between supporters of the traditional caste system, and those rejecting this system. Politically, the opposition was represented by supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI), with tensions and ill-feeling further increased by the PKI's land reform programmes. An attempted coup in Jakarta was put down by forces led by General Suharto.


title: Bali

text: The army became the dominant power as it instigated a violent anti-communist purge, in which the army blamed the PKI for the coup. Most estimates suggest that at least 500,000 people were killed across Indonesia, with an estimated 80,000 killed in Bali, equivalent to 5% of the island's population. With no Islamic forces involved as in Java and Sumatra, upper-caste PNI landlords led the extermination of PKI members.