Compositions by Frank Zappa Heikki Poroila Honkakirja 2017 Publisher Honkakirja, Helsinki 2017 Layout Heikki Poroila Front cover painting © Eevariitta Poroila 2017 Other original drawings © Marko Nakari 2017 Text © Heikki Poroila 2017 Version number 1.0 (October 28, 2017) Non-commercial use, copying and linking of this publication for free is fine, if the author and source are mentioned. I do not own the facts, I just made the studying and organizing. Thanks to all the other Zappa enthusiasts around the globe, especially ROMÁN GARCÍA ALBERTOS and his Information Is Not Knowledge at globalia.net/donlope/fz Corrections are warmly welcomed ([email protected]). The Finnish Library Foundation has kindly supported economically the compiling of this free version. 01.4 Poroila, Heikki Compositions by Frank Zappa / Heikki Poroila ; Front cover painting Eevariitta Poroila ; Other original drawings Marko Nakari. – Helsinki : Honkakirja, 2017. – 315 p. : ill. – ISBN 978-952-68711-2-7 (PDF) ISBN 978-952-68711-2-7 Compositions by Frank Zappa 2 To Olli Virtaperko the best living interpreter of Frank Zappa’s music Compositions by Frank Zappa 3 contents Arf! Arf! Arf! 5 Frank Zappa and a composer’s work catalog 7 Instructions 13 Printed sources 14 Used audiovisual publications 17 Zappa’s manuscripts and music publishing companies 21 Fonts 23 Dates and places 23 Compositions by Frank Zappa A 25 B 37 C 54 D 68 E 83 F 89 G 100 H 107 I 116 J 129 K 134 L 137 M 151 N 167 O 174 P 182 Q 196 R 197 S 207 T 229 U 246 V 250 W 254 X 270 Y 270 Z 275 1-600 278 Covers & other involvements 282 No index! 313 One night at Alte Oper 314 Compositions by Frank Zappa 4 Arf! Arf! Arf! You are reading an enhanced (corrected, enlarged and more detailed) PDF edition in English of my printed book Frank Zappan sävellykset (Suomen musiikkikirjastoyhdistys 2015, in Finnish). I try to explain shortly the reasoning behind this yet-another-Frank-Zappa-monograph. The idea of listing all the compositions by Frank Zappa is an obsessive project typical for music librarians. It was matured during the years I was forced to tell many Finnish Zappa fans that the book Zappa äänitteillä [Recorded Zappa, 1995] by me and HEIKKI KARJALAINEN was out of print and in no circumstances was I willing to compile a new edition of its material. There were a lot of useful discographic listings available on the internet in the beginning of 2000 and no real need for a printed book. And it would have been out-of-date in two weeks. Feeling still little guilty I started to figure out another way of approaching the monumental oeu- vre of Frank Zappa. I found out that though there are a lot of discographies, no one seemed to offer a listing of Zappa’s compositions. Of course there are simple lists of “Frank Zappa Songs”available, but from a music librarian’s point of view none of them was really satisfying. OK for an occasional Zappa listener, but not comprehensive enough for more devoted hardcore fans and aficionados . So I decided to do the work by myself. I have dealt with composers’ catalogs quite a lot, even compiled some (Finnish classical composers OSKAR MERIKANTO , ERKKI MELARTIN , and SELIM PALMGREN ). As an active music cataloger I have been using some 50 to 100 work catalogs. I was aware of the general challenges and some more: being a listener of Frank Zappa’s music for about 50 years I had a preconception of the spe- cial problems with his output. I knew that Zappa would not be like his predecessors, who carefully produced more or less complete scores on paper. As we all know, Zappa did not work like this. For him a composition was not so simple and limited concept. For the compiler of a composer’s work list Frank Zappa is just a nightmare. I stopped my initial work for the printed book, when Dance Me This , the last 100 % ready product by Frank Zappa was finally published in June 2015. Of course I knew that there would be more Zappa products in the future, but if one wants to publish something, one has to stop and put the final dot on its place. For me it was quite easy, because I knew that I would be publishing a cor- rected, enhanced and a more complete edition of the content on the internet later. The first edition was a handbook for Finnish Zappa fans, this second one tries to be the same for anybody reading and understanding at least some English. I have tried to compile a preliminary, but still both comprehensive and reliable overview of the musical output of Frank Zappa, not for- getting the enormous amount of “unofficial” and fictional titles the bootleggers and other creepy entrepreneurs have created during the past 50 years. As a Zappa fan I may find this bootleg fiction even funny, but as a music librarian I do not have any respect for these distributers of false, fake and usually also stupid information. In addition I have wanted to offer especially the less specialized readers an easy tool to make a difference between the real Frank Zappa compositions and the motley group of other items Zappa did put on his records in honor of the life on the road. It’s okay with me, if someone wants to listen to the Mothers chatting and singing out of tune in the back of the touring bus. I just want you to know when an interesting sounding title is genuine Frank Zappa music and when it is not. Compositions by Frank Zappa 5 These kinds of listings are always based on the work of earlier enthusiasts and researchers, some of whom I think are real Giants with broad shoulders to sit on. I send my sincere thanks to all of you! I hope my work inspires someone else to carry this work on. Special thanks to MARKO NAKARI , a true Zappa fan and an excellent artist and OLLI VIRTAPERKO , who kindly gave me his time and irreplaceable knowledge of Frank Zappa’s music from a compos- er’s point of view. Viikki, Helsinki, October 2017 Heikki Poroila Compositions by Frank Zappa 6 Frank Zappa and a composer’s work catalog Compiling a comprehensive list of compositions by Frank Zappa is not an easy job to do. The main reason for this is the way Zappa reconsidered and recomposed his oeuvre again and again during his life. Usually Zappa worked with his musical ideas until the results were good enough for a recording or he lost his zeal and put the work aside. The evolution of some compositions is possi- ble to follow thanks to the several audience recordings. It is, however, not so simple to decide, when it is reasonable to talk about versions of the same musical composition and when we are deal- ing with independent compositions. All this is even more difficult, usually impossible, with the ideas that never made their way to the concert repertoire or commercial recordings. Frank Zappa used musical ideas (mostly his own, but not only) very freely and creatively. An in- strumental piece turned quickly to a song and vice versa. Zappa and his singers felt no obligation to stick to the original text, if there was a possibility to enrich the performance with current news, local special features or just for extra fun. Zappa’s habit to use “secret words” was a factory of countless variations, simply too many and complex to be treated each as a new version of a certain composition. Zappa did exploit other unconventional composing practices as well. His “conceptual continui- ty” and “xenochrony” have been documented quite well, but from the catalogers point of view they are mainly scary. When Zappa utilized his material and created connections, which had never ex- isted before, he was not the first composer to do that. But his habit to combine bits from different concert performances to create a new work was something that most composers don’t do. His ret- rospective stories about the conceptual continuity of his works are an endless target for speculation and research. The challenge has become quite unsurpassed, when the original creator is no more available and even while he still was, how you knew, if his explanation of the connections were genuine and credible. Zappa had the right to lie to us, if he felt it necessary. Zappa did also use a kind of reverse xenochrony, when he picked satisfying bits – usually his own guitar solos – and publish them as independent compositions. In theory an improvisation is not a composition, but with Frank Zappa, can you really make the difference? I think Zappa was delighted, when he got a successful solo taped and could use it as such. Zappa’s solos are usually very independent and not so much thematically connected with the “mother composition”. This makes it easier to accept that they are more compositions than just another moment of twanging your electric guitar during a rock concert. The biggest problem is that while there are more than 50 entitled and recorded – sometimes even transcribed for score readers – Zappa guitar solos, the un- released concerts and rehearsal recordings contain hundreds more. From a cataloger’s point of view they do not exist, because they did not pass Zappa’s hawk eyes. Then there is The Vault and the hard disc of the Synclavier. Zappa would probably think that it is ridiculous to look for “compositions” from the Synclavier files; nobody is losing anything, be- cause you do not know, what there is.