Frank Zappa : the negative dialectics of poodle play

Watson, Ben

ISBN 10: 070430242X / ISBN 13: 9780704302426

Published by Quartet, London, 1995

About this Item

Octavo in pink and black wraps (black spine); 597 p., 21 cm. **A larger book. Extra shipping charges may apply.**. Very Good(+), gently used copy. foxing to the foreedge; lightly bumped corners of wraps; light sunning to edges of pages; else very nice, secondhand copy; pages are free of marks and creases; binding is tight. Seller Inventory # 83784

Bibliographic Details

Title: Frank Zappa : the negative dialectics of ...

Publisher: Quartet, London

Publication Date: 1995

Binding: Paperback

Condition: Very Good(+)

Edition: First paperback edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

A guide to the music of Frank Zappa. It seeks to examine every recorded song in his catalogue to date, and acts as a consumer's critical guide. Shaped like a CD box, it is designed to sit alongside the reader's existing CD collection.

Review:

There is probably no figure of modern popular music who so deserves the sort of scholarly exercise undertaken by Ben Watson in this book, and I am personally convinced that Zappa will be regaled by 21st Century music historians as a "crux of the biscuit" of 20th Century music.

And this 700 page tome will certainly be cited by our music historian descendants. In fairness, it may confound today's Zappa fans with it's copious references to Adorno, Freud, and Marx, but is likely to delight the erudite with its excerpts of the playfully situationist lyrics of Zappa, completely deconstructed by Watson. There is no doubt that Zappa was a genius--albeit a peculiarly American sort--and there is no doubt that no book has yet attempted such a thorough (albeit peculiar) analysis of his genius. Highly Recommended.