Frank Zappa: Does Humor Belong in Music?

Frank Zappa: Does Humor Belong in Music?

Frank Zappa: Does Humor Belong in Music?

Share

Frank Zappa: Does Humor Belong in Music?

1985

0h 57m

7.7(5 votes)

Music

Overview

Frank Zappa and his band in a digitally recorded live performance at "The Pier" in New York, NY on August 26, 1984.

Links & Resources

Social & External

Cast & Crew

9 members

Acting

Frank Zappa

Self

Frank Zappa

Acting

Ray White

Self

No Image

Acting

Ike Willis

Self

Ike Willis

Acting

Bobby Martin

Self

No Image

Sound

Allan Zavod

Self

Allan Zavod

Acting

Scott Thunes

Self

No Image

Acting

Chad Wackerman

Self

Chad Wackerman

Acting

Pablo Guzman

Interviewee: WNEW, New York City

No Image

Acting

John Smothers

Self

No Image

Similar Movies

Classic Albums: Pink Floyd - The Making of The Dark Side of the Moon

Classic Albums: Pink Floyd - The Making of The Dark Side of the Moon

Released to coincide with the 30th anniversary of this classic album, learn how Pink Floyd assembled "Dark Side of the Moon" with the aid of original engineer Alan Parsons. All four band members--Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright--are interviewed at length, giving valuable insights into the recording process. The themes of the album are discussed at length, and the band take you back to the original multi track tapes to illustrate how they pieced together the songs. With individual performances of certain tracks from Roger, David, and Richard included, this is an essential purchase for any Pink Floyd fans, and a fascinating artefact for rock historians everywhere.

Puppets & Demons

Puppets & Demons

An anthology of surreal films by Patrick McGuinn featuring Vincent, a puppet who is obsessed with Twinkies and pasta.

Frank Zappa: Music In Review

Frank Zappa: Music In Review

Idiosyncratic composer, unique musician and ground-breaking film director..Frank Zappa packed more into his short lifetime than most men would manage in two. His restless, challenging, creative spirit meant that he never stood still during a career that bought huge critical and commercial success Zappa sold more than 60 million albums both as a solo artist and with the Mothers of Invention. The life and work of Frank Zappa are examined in this superb new critical review, which features new in-depth interviews with industry insiders, rock journalists and respected critics plus highlights from the songs that re-drew the face of rock music.

Rush: Cinema Strangiato - R40+ Director's Cut

Rush: Cinema Strangiato - R40+ Director's Cut

Following the success of Rush: Cinema Strangiato - Director's Cut in movie theaters worldwide, Anthem Entertainment and Trafalgar Releasing give Rush fans around the world the opportunity to experience it again – this time from the comfort of home. In celebration 40 years of Moving Pictures, this global streaming release features the “director’s cut” of 2019's R40+ event that was just shown in cinemas, giving audiences a special look into R40 LIVE, with a setlist including this year’s new additions of bonus tracks "One Little Victory" and “Red Barchetta” as well as "Cygnus X-1 / “The Story So Far” featuring Neil's final recorded drum solo masterpiece.

Zappa Plays Zappa

Zappa Plays Zappa

Zappa Plays Zappa is the name of a concert tour and band led by Dweezil Zappa, the oldest son of the late composer and musician Frank Zappa. The show is a collection of Frank Zappa's rock-oriented compositions from 1960s to 1980s. Features Dweezil on lead guitar, Napoleon Murphy Brock (sax, flute, vocals), drummer/singer Terry Bozzio and electric guitarist Steve Vai.

Opeth: The Making Of Blackwater Park

Opeth: The Making Of Blackwater Park

Studio documentary about the making of the 2001 album 'Blackwater Park'.

Rush: A Show of Hands

Rush: A Show of Hands

For a band with high standards, a perfect show is impossible, and an excellent show is rare. You hope that the norm is "good". To deliver a really exceptional, comfortable performance before a recording truck or film crew has been our unfulfilled dream of many years. Always it seemed that as soon as the machines started rolling, we forgot how to play and our equipment forgot how to work. But for these two nights, the gods smile. And the film becomes not just a concert, but a symbol - for the band a scrapbook, an autobiography, an era frozen in glacial clarity. For the audience, it can be an enduring souvenir, and if it can't quite capture what it was like to be there, it is a way of seeing through many pairs of eyes, of shifting one's vantage-point around and above the players in a way no mortal could. Hands perform, and hands respond. Hands gesture, and hands respond. A show of ears and eyes, a show of hearts and minds. A Show of Hands. - Neil Peart

Dream of a Summer Night

Dream of a Summer Night

Rock musical adaptation of William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

Porcupine Tree: The Making of Fear of a Blank Planet

Porcupine Tree: The Making of Fear of a Blank Planet

A documentary chronicling the production of British prog rock band Porcupine Tree's ninth studio album.

Global Groove

Global Groove

Global Groove was a collaborative piece by Nam June Paik and John Godfrey. Paik, amongst other artists who shared the same vision in the 1960s, saw the potential in the television beyond it being a one-sided medium to present programs and commercials. Instead, he saw it more as a place to facilitate a free flow of information exchange. He wanted to strip away the limitations from copyright system and network restrictions and bring in a new TV culture where information could be accessed inexpensively and conveniently. The full length of the piece ran 28 minutes and was first broadcasted in January 30, 1974 on WNET.

Frank Zappa: The Torture Never Stops

Frank Zappa: The Torture Never Stops

Halloween, New York City, 1981 Live at The Palladium with Ray White, Steve Vai, Bobby Martin, Tommy Mars, Ed Mann, Scott Thunes, Chad Wackerman

Camel: Ichigo Ichie - Live in Japan 2016

Camel: Ichigo Ichie - Live in Japan 2016

Two hours of live Camel from the tour no one thought would ever happen! Ichigo Ichie:'Treasure every encounter for it will never recur' Recorded in Tokyo at the EX Theatre in Roppongi during May 2016 featuring: Andrew Latimer (guitars, vocals, flute, recorder) Colin Bass (bass, vocals) Denis Clement (drums, recorder) Pete Jones (keyboards, vocals, penny whistle)

Porcupine Tree: Rockpalast 2005 - Live Music Hall Köln

Porcupine Tree: Rockpalast 2005 - Live Music Hall Köln

With melodic progressive rock and socially critical lyrics, the British band Porcupine Tree also gained a large fan base in Germany at the turn of the millennium. In 2005, Rockpalast filmed them at their gig in Cologne's Live Music Hall. At their concert in Cologne, the band played a varied set of 15 songs, including their hit at the time, Lazarus.

Opeth: The Making of Deliverance and Damnation

Opeth: The Making of Deliverance and Damnation

Studio documentary about the making of the albums 'Deliverance' and 'Damnation' that were recorded at the same time.

Hypnosis Display

Hypnosis Display

Exploring impressionistic, emotional and sensory environments found within the vast natural and urban landscapes of America. Neither image nor sound takes precedence: the two interact and combine preserving a raw sense of the discovery that field recordings and in-camera edited film rushes often yield.

Frank Zappa: The Freak Out List

Frank Zappa: The Freak Out List

On the liner notes to Freak Out!, the 1967 debut album by Zappa's original band the Mothers of Invention, Zappa listed some seventy-two names on the liner notes and cited them as influences. The Freak Out List intends to explore who these artists are and what influence they had on Zappa's music. This listing encompasses all sorts of music, from classical composer Edgar Varese to R&B star Johnny "Guitar" Watson to jazzman Eric Dolphy to flamenco guitarist Sabicas. You can hear for instance, how the esoteric classical influence of Varese shaped Zappa's long-form epics like "Lumpy Gravy" or how Dolphy's instrumental prowess led Zappa to incorporate jazz-fusion on albums like Weasels Ripped My Flesh! (1970), which even included a song titled "The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue." Interviews with various Zappa biographers and music historians as well as musicians George Duke, Ian Underwood, and Don Preston, all of whom played in the Mothers at one time or another, help add additional context.

Magick Lantern Cycle

Magick Lantern Cycle

Cinematic magician, legendary provocateur, and author of Hollywood Babylon, Kenneth Anger was a unique figure in post-war American culture. His iconic short films are characterised by a mystical-symbolic visual language and phantasmagorical-sensual opulence that underscores the medium’s transgressive potential. Anger’s work fundamentally shaped the aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s subcultures, the visual lexicon of pop and music videos and queer iconography. These nine films form the basis of Anger’s reputation as one of the most influential pioneers of avant-garde film and video art. Fireworks, 1947, 14 min Puce Moment, 1949, 6 min Rabbit's Moon, 1950/1971, 16 min Eaux d'Artifice, 1953, 13 min Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, 1954, 37 min Scorpio Rising, 1964, 28 min Kustom Kar Kommandos, 1965, 3 min Invocation of My Demon Brother, 1969, 11 min Lucifer Rising, 1981, 27 min

Helicopter String Quartet

Helicopter String Quartet

One morning, the late Karlheinz Stockhausen awoke from a dream that told him to take to the sky. Stockhausen envisioned four helicopters swirling in the clouds, with each of a quartet’s members tucked inside his own chopper, communicating through headsets, stringing away in sync to the rotor-blade motors. He immediately set forth to make that dream a reality. In 1995, Dutch film director Scheffer followed Stockhausen in the days leading up to the premiere performance of his Helicopter String Quartet in Amsterdam. The resulting film offers a rare glimpse of Stockhausen as he patiently dictates every agonizingly detailed measure to the Arditti Quartet.

Steve Howe - Beginnings

A short promotional film for Steve Howe's debut solo album "Beginnings".

Sonic Youth: Live at Soundstage

Sonic Youth: Live at Soundstage

Quintessential alternative rockers, Sonic Youth, celebrate free-form experimentalism while reinforcing their performance-art driven tradition in this Soundstage performance, recorded on May 7, 2003 at WTTW Grainger Studio in Chicago. The band, which settles just outside the realm of definition, delivers a part rock, part free-form noise, part avant-garde punk performance which features a new song "Sympathy for the Strawberry."

Recommended Movies

Deconstructing Harry

Deconstructing Harry

Writer Harry Block draws inspiration from people he knows, and from events that happened to him, sometimes causing these people to become alienated from him as a result.

Frank Zappa: Baby Snakes

Frank Zappa: Baby Snakes

Rock artist Frank Zappa hosts a concert in New York City. This movie contains tons of on-stage footage, off-stage footage, and animation.

Titanic

Titanic

101-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story of her life aboard the Titanic, 84 years later. A young Rose boards the ship with her mother and fiancé. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson and Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets aboard the ship. Rose tells the whole story from Titanic's departure through to its death—on its first and last voyage—on April 15, 1912.

All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front

Paul Baumer and his friends Albert and Muller, egged on by romantic dreams of heroism, voluntarily enlist in the German army. Full of excitement and patriotic fervour, the boys enthusiastically march into a war they believe in. But once on the Western Front, they discover the soul-destroying horror of World War I.

Call Me by Your Name

Call Me by Your Name

In the summer of 1983, a 17-year-old Elio spends his days in his family's villa in Italy. One day Oliver, a graduate student, arrives to assist Elio's father, a professor of Greco-Roman culture. Soon, Elio and Oliver discover a summer that will alter their lives forever.

Star!

Gertrude Lawrence rises to stage stardom at the cost of happiness.

PK

A stranger in the city asks questions no one has asked before. Known only by his initials, the man's innocent questions and childlike curiosity take him on a journey of love, laughter and letting go.

Don't Knock Twice

Don't Knock Twice

A mother desperate to reconnect with her troubled daughter becomes embroiled in the urban legend of a demonic witch.

Ex Machina

Ex Machina

Caleb, a coder at the world's largest internet company, wins a competition to spend a week at a private mountain retreat belonging to Nathan, the reclusive CEO of the company. But when Caleb arrives at the remote location he finds that he will have to participate in a strange and fascinating experiment in which he must interact with the world's first true artificial intelligence, housed in the body of a beautiful robot girl.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1991. High school freshman Charlie is a wallflower, always watching life from the sidelines, until two senior students, Sam and her stepbrother Patrick, become his mentors, helping him discover the joys of friendship, music and love.

The Psychic

The Psychic

A woman with psychic powers has a vision of a murder that took place in a house owned by her husband.

Zack Snyder's Justice League

Zack Snyder's Justice League

Determined to ensure Superman's ultimate sacrifice was not in vain, Bruce Wayne aligns forces with Diana Prince with plans to recruit a team of metahumans to protect the world from an approaching threat of catastrophic proportions.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Struggling to find his place in the world while juggling school and family, Brooklyn teenager Miles Morales is unexpectedly bitten by a radioactive spider and develops unfathomable powers just like the one and only Spider-Man. While wrestling with the implications of his new abilities, Miles discovers a super collider created by the madman Wilson "Kingpin" Fisk, causing others from across the Spider-Verse to be inadvertently transported to his dimension.

Sinners

Sinners

Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.

The Peanut Butter Falcon

The Peanut Butter Falcon

A down-on-his-luck crab fisherman embarks on a journey to get a young man with Down syndrome to a professional wrestling school in rural North Carolina and away from the retirement home where he’s lived for the past two and a half years.

Fantozzi Retires

Fantozzi Retires

After thirty years in the big corporation, Ugo Fantozzi retires. Suddenly, he needs things to do in everyday life and he tries a number of activities: helping Pina shopping; babysitting grand-daughter Uga; a trip to Venice; learning golf. He then fakes documents to get a new job, but in the end he becomes a hypochondriac and doesn't even take a long-awaited chance with Miss Silvani.

Pierrot le Fou

Pierrot le Fou

Pierrot escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a girl chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead an unorthodox life, always on the run.

Return of the Hero

Return of the Hero

France, 1809. Captain Neuville is called to the front, leaving his future bride heartbroken. Her sister decides to write letters on his behalf to cheer her up.

Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer

The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer's role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Peter Parker is unmasked and no longer able to separate his normal life from the high-stakes of being a super-hero. When he asks for help from Doctor Strange the stakes become even more dangerous, forcing him to discover what it truly means to be Spider-Man.