Tuesday, December 21, 2004
More Zappin at Zappa.
Frank Zappa bio reviewed in the paper of record in Ontario, California, wherein the reviewer ponders whether Cucamonga is just too far out. (Or sometimes it pays to go a bit beyond the obvious).
Daily Bulletin.com
Article Published: Thursday, December 02, 2004 - 6:39:29 PM PST
Cucamonga too far out? Just check Zappa bio
By David Allen
Columnist
"ZAPPA," BARRY Miles' new biography of musician Frank Zappa, doesn't waste time: There's a howler of a mistake in the very first sentence.
An otherwise-evocative description of Cucamonga describes the town as being "about 75 miles west of Los Angeles."
Helloooo, Catalina!
From then on, though, it's fine stuff with lots of local references. In fact, this may be the first biography in history whose index includes citations for Claremont, Pomona, Upland-Ontario, Montclair, Fontana and Cucamonga, as Rancho Cucamonga was known in the 1960s when Zappa was here.
All are towns the iconoclastic musician lived in, performed in or otherwise satirized.
The onetime Chaffey College student, who died in 1993, got his start in the Inland Valley. He owned a small recording studio on Archibald Avenue, then joined a band in Pomona that became the Mothers of Invention.
Among the tidbits in Miles' book:
* Zappa once said of Claremont, where he briefly lived as a teenager: "Claremont's nice. It's green. It's got little old ladies running around in electric carts."
* At Pomona College, he hosted "The Uncle Frankie Show" on KSPC-FM, the college radio station, for a week - until it was discovered he wasn't a student.
* While renting a house at 314 E. G St. in Ontario, Zappa printed business cards touting himself as a "master blues guitarist." He had just begun guitar lessons.
* To survive lean times, Zappa and a friend roomed together in Studio Z, his recording studio. The friend kept them fed by stealing bread, peanut butter and coffee from a Claremont Colleges faculty lounge and got free instant mashed potatoes from a blood donor center.
One other anecdote: The teen-aged Zappa partnered with a Claremont neighbor to make (of all things) puppets, which they entered in the L.A. County Fair, until the pair had a falling out and young Frank went solo.
This saga of early creative differences first surfaced in my column. Miles not only retells it, he gives me credit on Page 393 - my first book citation.
Breaking the story of Zappa's puppets isn't exactly like Seymour Hersh exposing Abu Ghraib. But we all have our niche, right?
Meanwhile, local Zappa fans Derek Miley and Adam Fiorenza are still plugging away on their documentary about the "Freak Out!" musician's early days.
Since their interviews with two Zappa siblings and his mother last year, the pair have talked to five former Mothers of Invention bandmates: Jim "Motorhead" Sherwood, Don Preston, Bunk Gardner, Roy Estrada and Jimmy Carl Black.
Miley and Fiorenza also interviewed "Weird" Al Yankovic, a Zappa admirer. Yankovic said he met Zappa on a radio show and they swapped autographs.
And in a coup, they tracked down Lorraine Belcher, the Ontario woman arrested with Zappa in the notorious Sheriff's Department sting at Studio Z over a racy audiotape.
In its news coverage, the Ontario Daily Report described Belcher as "a buxom red-haired girl of perfect physical dimensions." (That description may be racier than the audiotape.)
Miley said Zappa fans have tried for years to find Belcher -- and no wonder -- but he benefited from a tip from one of the ex-Mothers.
Among the stories Belcher told was how Zappa came to title a 1967 album "Lumpy Gravy."
"When they were an item," Miley related, "she woke up after a nightmare where they were on a cooking show. His name was Lumpy Gravy and hers was Bloaty Bluefish, or something like that."
And here I would have thought "Lumpy Gravy" was a comment on a bad Thanksgiving dinner.
(Note to myself. I just might find a copy of the Zappa book and read it, if only because it's like revisiting my own memory banks and recalling my own youth. The puppets!
The Claremont Colleges dining commons! The student dining hall, which in those environs was more like a granite mansion, had a tradition of leaving out the pots of coffee at the end of the day's meal, out of graciousness as much to better help fuel the students on to academic success, all because the town closed up at five o'clock in the afternoon. They rolled up the streets. A few in-the-know starving artists would stop by the usually deserted commons for a cup of joe and pretend it was our coffee house. Nobody seemed to mind, and the cups then were real ceramic, civilized cups in a very civilized place. And as to why Frank may have eventually decided on that geography as a location for a sci-fi film, aside from the fact he was there thinking about it, I might have an inkling as to why ... everyone else who was brought up around there about that time likely does, too. The clue is at the beginning of a very famous movie, one with great sound effects, and it's so obvious it would ... Don't worry, you'd know it, but I don't want to spoil the surprise of you putting the pieces together and figuring it out on your own.)
¶ 12/21/2004 05:17:00 AM
Frank Zappa bio reviewed in the paper of record in Ontario, California, wherein the reviewer ponders whether Cucamonga is just too far out. (Or sometimes it pays to go a bit beyond the obvious).
Daily Bulletin.com
Article Published: Thursday, December 02, 2004 - 6:39:29 PM PST
Cucamonga too far out? Just check Zappa bio
By David Allen
Columnist
"ZAPPA," BARRY Miles' new biography of musician Frank Zappa, doesn't waste time: There's a howler of a mistake in the very first sentence.
An otherwise-evocative description of Cucamonga describes the town as being "about 75 miles west of Los Angeles."
Helloooo, Catalina!
From then on, though, it's fine stuff with lots of local references. In fact, this may be the first biography in history whose index includes citations for Claremont, Pomona, Upland-Ontario, Montclair, Fontana and Cucamonga, as Rancho Cucamonga was known in the 1960s when Zappa was here.
All are towns the iconoclastic musician lived in, performed in or otherwise satirized.
The onetime Chaffey College student, who died in 1993, got his start in the Inland Valley. He owned a small recording studio on Archibald Avenue, then joined a band in Pomona that became the Mothers of Invention.
Among the tidbits in Miles' book:
* Zappa once said of Claremont, where he briefly lived as a teenager: "Claremont's nice. It's green. It's got little old ladies running around in electric carts."
* At Pomona College, he hosted "The Uncle Frankie Show" on KSPC-FM, the college radio station, for a week - until it was discovered he wasn't a student.
* While renting a house at 314 E. G St. in Ontario, Zappa printed business cards touting himself as a "master blues guitarist." He had just begun guitar lessons.
* To survive lean times, Zappa and a friend roomed together in Studio Z, his recording studio. The friend kept them fed by stealing bread, peanut butter and coffee from a Claremont Colleges faculty lounge and got free instant mashed potatoes from a blood donor center.
One other anecdote: The teen-aged Zappa partnered with a Claremont neighbor to make (of all things) puppets, which they entered in the L.A. County Fair, until the pair had a falling out and young Frank went solo.
This saga of early creative differences first surfaced in my column. Miles not only retells it, he gives me credit on Page 393 - my first book citation.
Breaking the story of Zappa's puppets isn't exactly like Seymour Hersh exposing Abu Ghraib. But we all have our niche, right?
Meanwhile, local Zappa fans Derek Miley and Adam Fiorenza are still plugging away on their documentary about the "Freak Out!" musician's early days.
Since their interviews with two Zappa siblings and his mother last year, the pair have talked to five former Mothers of Invention bandmates: Jim "Motorhead" Sherwood, Don Preston, Bunk Gardner, Roy Estrada and Jimmy Carl Black.
Miley and Fiorenza also interviewed "Weird" Al Yankovic, a Zappa admirer. Yankovic said he met Zappa on a radio show and they swapped autographs.
And in a coup, they tracked down Lorraine Belcher, the Ontario woman arrested with Zappa in the notorious Sheriff's Department sting at Studio Z over a racy audiotape.
In its news coverage, the Ontario Daily Report described Belcher as "a buxom red-haired girl of perfect physical dimensions." (That description may be racier than the audiotape.)
Miley said Zappa fans have tried for years to find Belcher -- and no wonder -- but he benefited from a tip from one of the ex-Mothers.
Among the stories Belcher told was how Zappa came to title a 1967 album "Lumpy Gravy."
"When they were an item," Miley related, "she woke up after a nightmare where they were on a cooking show. His name was Lumpy Gravy and hers was Bloaty Bluefish, or something like that."
And here I would have thought "Lumpy Gravy" was a comment on a bad Thanksgiving dinner.
(Note to myself. I just might find a copy of the Zappa book and read it, if only because it's like revisiting my own memory banks and recalling my own youth. The puppets!
The Claremont Colleges dining commons! The student dining hall, which in those environs was more like a granite mansion, had a tradition of leaving out the pots of coffee at the end of the day's meal, out of graciousness as much to better help fuel the students on to academic success, all because the town closed up at five o'clock in the afternoon. They rolled up the streets. A few in-the-know starving artists would stop by the usually deserted commons for a cup of joe and pretend it was our coffee house. Nobody seemed to mind, and the cups then were real ceramic, civilized cups in a very civilized place. And as to why Frank may have eventually decided on that geography as a location for a sci-fi film, aside from the fact he was there thinking about it, I might have an inkling as to why ... everyone else who was brought up around there about that time likely does, too. The clue is at the beginning of a very famous movie, one with great sound effects, and it's so obvious it would ... Don't worry, you'd know it, but I don't want to spoil the surprise of you putting the pieces together and figuring it out on your own.)
¶ 12/21/2004 05:17:00 AM
