The Sheep Pen

[diamond den™]

Originally posted by bueno bob
I can understand that, but I also want you to likewise understand that the Pen (and myself, being one of the shepherds) is specifically for SBC (Sheepish Behavioral Correction).

Dude, we just got done with something like a 13 page argument that totally derailed the purpose of this thread. Is it too much to ask to at least take this to a separate thread so that the Pen doesn't get sidetracked again??

I'm being nice and giving all due respect...if you want to bash others for whatever reason, feel free, by all means...like you said, it's none of my concern...as a new Pen Admin, I'm just trying to keep it on track.

You don't get it.......I have fucking OWNED™ this whole already(Back in the day).

Got banned from the LINX after 3 fucking posts,

Spammed, Trolled and OWNED™ about a dozen sites in Internet Land.

THOSE are my Credentials.........

Now you were saying something about respect?????

[rustoffa]

I think the majority of sentiment towards the "money grab" thing was about throwing a couple afterthought songs together and slopping the hogs.

Dave and sam at least had a proper press conference and somewhat of a mantra about the whole thing. Both undertakings turned out kinda lackluster, unlike an original VH reunion would have.

Ask yourself one question, which "moneygrab" would have been better?

[bueno bob]

Originally posted by Jesse Jane
YES, I have a question. Roth toured as Roth, Not as Van Halen, and Sammy toured as Sammy not as Van Halen, sooo your cute little 3 post tour does not answer the question... Why would the fact that Roth CHOSE to tour with Hagar make him any less of a pRIKK than the majority of ARMY posters state the Van Halens are for touring with Hagar. Everyone claims the Van Hagar tour was all about money, does that mean the Roth?Hagar tour was as well? If so what you're basically saying then is that Hagar is the draw here not Roth or the Van Halens...

The fact that Roth chose to tour with Hagar was for two simple reasons:

1 - The fans needed some Van Halen music desperately; and
2 - It finally gave David the opportunity to show up the Assmaster on stage for once and for all.

The Roth/Hagar tour was about money, sure, but it's not like David needed it. Christ, it's not really like Sammy needed it either.

After six years of inactivity, VAN HALEN NEEDED THE MONEY. The catalog wasn't exactly selling hotcakes, they didn't have a record label and they were living off of royalties, 80% of which was going to Alex's numerous alimony payments or straight down Ed's thirsty throat.

This tour isn't proving anything, it's not promoting anything other than a half-assed best of album that isn't selling anywhere near what was expected, it isn't about getting them back in the spotlight because the band, as a whole, has done their damnedest to either give canned interviews or avoid the spotlight entirely.

Jesus, even HAGAR HIMSELF said that "Other members of this band aren't doing this for the fans"! What more do you need???

Hagar has confirmed that this tour was just a money grab and that's all.

[bueno bob]

Originally posted by diamond den™
You don't get it.......I have fucking OWNED™ this whole already(Back in the day).

Got banned from the LINX after 3 fucking posts,

Spammed, Trolled and OWNED™ about a dozen sites in Internet Land.

THOSE are my Credentials.........

Now you were saying something about respect?????

Yeah, I was saying that I started off by asking you RESPECTFULLY (in a fun manner) to take personal shit elsewhere so that The Pen doesn't get derailed again. As far as "respect" goes, you just lost mine. I don't really give two shits about your wonderful "credentials" and if you expect I'm going to kiss your ass because of them, you're sadly mistaken.

As far as keeping The Pen settled for what The Pen was designed, I'm not the only one who feels that way, so I think I'm pretty justified in asking.

'Nuff said.

[diamond den™]

Originally posted by bueno bob
Yeah, I was saying that I started off by asking you RESPECTFULLY (in a fun manner) to take personal shit elsewhere so that The Pen doesn't get derailed again. As far as "respect" goes, you just lost mine. I don't really give two shits about your wonderful "credentials" and if you expect I'm going to kiss your ass because of them, you're sadly mistaken.

As far as keeping The Pen settled for what The Pen was designed, I'm not the only one who feels that way, so I think I'm pretty justified in asking.

'Nuff said.

Ok.....I've decided this is my fucking Thread and I am going to post whatever the fuck I want in it......ok, sonny???






Have a Nice Day™

[diamond den™]

[diamond den™]

[diamond den™]

I hope you people have DSL/Cable......

[diamond den™]

[diamond den™]

[bueno bob]

Anyway, moving right along...

For those of you not in the know, Robonez is this weeks official SOTW He's joining in good company with the other Hagar-heads, and his behavioral correction is going as planned.

Should you happen to see Robonez posting in any thread, please direct him back to this site, as it will be home to him for the next week.

Thank you for your attention!!!!

[diamond den™]

[bueno bob]

Furthermore, disregard anything not sheep related

[diamond den™]

Originally posted by bueno bob
Anyway, moving right along...

For those of you not in the know, Robonez is this weeks official SOTW He's joining in good company with the other Hagar-heads, and his behavioral correction is going as planned.

Should you happen to see Robonez posting in any thread, please direct him back to this site, as it will be home to him for the next week.

Thank you for your attention!!!!

Bob Marshall Interviews Frank


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Article 3479 of alt.fan.frank-zappa:
From: phineas@anarky.tch.org (Phineas Narco)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.frank-zappa
Subject: Bob M./FZ Interview (very long)--with footnotes!
Date: 1 Aug 93 22:23:29 GMT
Organization: The Canned Ham, San Jose, CA (408) 971-8530

This interview took place during a 7-hour visit with the
very hospitable Frank Zappa at his home between 8:00P.M.,
Oct.21 and 3:00 A.M., Oct.22, 1988. Dr. Carolyn Dean and
Gerald Fialka assisted Bob Marshall in conducting the
interview. We thank Loren Gagnon for transcribing the
original audio tapes.

[Note--footnote numbers that refer to other Zappa interviews
and texts are in brackets. The footnotes that these refer
to are at the end of this document. This interview was
transcribed from hard copy onto disk by Phineas Narco and
posted with the permission of Gerry Fialka--Phineas Narco]



BM In your mini-manifesto on JOE'S GARAGE where you say
"Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not wisdom,...
etc.", at the end you say "Music is THE BEST". What is
Music?

FZ Well, in the terms, I would use two different
definitions for it, one in the clinical sense and one in
the sense that applies to that little statement on the
album. In the sense of the statement on the album, it
would mean whatever you happen to think music is. That's a
statement to other people and they would plug into that
statement their concept of what music is. I'll recite it
for you just for the people who don't have the albums:
"Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not wisdom,
Wisdom is not truth, Truth is not beauty, Beauty is not
love, Love is not music and Music is THE BEST". So, you
get to figure out what your idea of music is and plug it
into that.

BM I find that little manifesto resonates so much with
many points that you have said through the years in your
interviews. For example, I don't know of it any earlier
but in the Fall of '79, in Rolling Stone, was one of the
first times that you talked about yourself as a
"journalist" [1]. Am I wrong? Did you talk about it in
earlier interviews I'm not aware of?


FZ I don't know whether or not I talked about it in
interviews earlier, but there's always been a journalistic
aspect in my work even from the first album because if a
person writes a song about a current event that's a
journalistic technique. And I would say certainly a song
about the Watts Riot, which was on the FREAK OUT! album,
qualified as some for of journalism because a lot of people
don't even remember what the Watts Riot was, and so, at the
point where you make the song, the Watts Riot was a recent
journalistic event, it was recently in the news, but over a
period of years, people forget what the news was and now it
just becomes folklore. The fact is Channel 5 in Los
Angeles, which showed the pictures of the riot, did have a
story about a woman sawed in half by 50-caliber machine gun
bullets from the National Guard that was down there taking
care of the riot. And that may be the only lasting
monument to the woman who got sawed in half. There's a lot
of things like that in songs that go from journalism into
folklore with people and the events that they are involved
in. The songs were news at the time that they happened but
over a period of time, who cares about the news anymore and
then it's just folklore.

BM I see that and that's the opening word - "Information".
I relate that to your statement in Life magazine this
summer that you "hum the news" [2]. There seems to be a
metaphor that you're replaying here as music. Your work is
journalistic yet you're turning the news as folklore into
some kind of musical artform.

FZ That's an interesting way of juggling this stuff around
and there's a certain aspect of it, but I would say that
the only part of the news that turns into the music is the
lyrics. It's pretty hard to convert something like
election statistics into something that you can hum,
really.

BM So you mean the news lyrics is what you hum. But don't
you include the news of musical trends? Where you do your
satire of musical styles, isn't there a trendy newsy level
there?

FZ Usually by the time I'm making fun of it, it's no longer
news because in order to make fun of something everybody
has to know the ground rules for the joke to work, so it
would be ridiculous to make fun of punk orchestration,
everybody else had some idea of what punk sounded like so
that you can make a parody of it. You can't be newsworthy
like in a timely fashion, with a musical parody

BM But when it becomes an environment, a cliche.

FZ Yeah, it's when it has saturated the cultural environment
and everybody knows that people, with hair sticking up in a
certain direction, with guitars totally out of tune,
banging a couple of chords for one and a half minutes
constitutes a musical form. Then you can make fun of it.

BM So when you say "I hum the news", you mean the lyrics.

FZ Yeah I'm talking more about the lyrics rather than the
notes.

BM Is there an ethical question there about humming the
news? Are you satirizing people's involvement in the news?
I mean, people would see that you're entertaining the news,
putting it in an entertainment form. Some people might see
it that way.

FZ No, actually what I do with the news is I have the
ability to watch news from all different kinds of sources
and remember the details, and collate the details, and come
up with a conclusion other than which the people who own
the media want you to come away with. If you watch only
one news service you're not getting the full picture. They
try and tell you major world events in ten seconds, and you
can't do that. So what you have to do is compare different
outlets, compare their spins, compare that to print, and
then draw your conclusions. And also reinforce that by
first-hand conversations with people who might be there or
might know something about it. I generally don't have
access to those kinds of people when it's applied to U.S.
politics, but in terms of things going on in other
countries the information we receive here about what
happens outside the U.S. is really quite thin. And since I
do travel around it's easy for me to talk to people in the
different countries and say what really happened. And to
that extent I know more about foreign events than the
average guy in the United States because I have some way
to...

BM Direct access to the experiences.

FZ Yeah, to develop the picture a little bit. In fact, I
got some extra information just last night on things that
are happening in South America. It puts me in a situation
where the political part of my brain is looking at the
world and saying, "I see trends developing and they're
really horrible", and the musician part of my brain says,
"I would really like to be just sitting in that room in
there working on the Synclavier because that's more fun
than anything else". And I spend my day trying to put
these two parts of my brain together, and usually what
happens is that at the end of the work-period there will be
a product that comes out that is a combination of those two
parts of my brain: what I know about what's going on in
the world, plus what I like to do with music

BM That's the process of resolving the dilemma of being a
musical specialist in an information surround that makes
you in touch with so many things.

FZ Yeah.

BM And then you add your particular slant to it through
your own sources.

FZ Yeah.

BM That's what I was interested in, you as a journalist,
and I was wondering which was more prominent: the
political or the musical. But you're saying you're not
sure, you work out where you...

FZ At this point they seem to be about 50-50. It's not
exactly like being Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but it's hard
for me to go in there and just work on music and forget
about what's really going on in the world. I can't do it.
I can't take what I know and throw it away and say, "Well,
I just won't care anymore because I can't do anything about
it." First of all, I think I might be able to do something
about it, and just because I might, I have to keep thinking
about it. So, there's no easy way to dispose of it.

BM So your activity dealing with the PMRC, I guess from '85
to '87, was not a radical departure from your interests. It
was how you manifested that dilemma for yourself. That was
the most immediate concern that you could deal with. You
had to go political at that point.

FZ I wouldn't say that was even going political. That was a
civic obligation because I saw...

BM Well, that's what I mean by "political". Do you mean
something else? Do you mean propagandistic by "political"?

FZ No, we have a little semantic problem here because
usually the way I talk about politics is in one sense and
I've said this many times in interviews: politics is the
entertainment branch of industry. When I talk about my
political thoughts, I'm not talking about being part of the
entertainment branch of industry. I'm talking more about
policy in action. In other words, somebody has to decide to
do certain things or not do certain things, and hopefully
the person makes that decision has made the decision based
on accurate information. The problem with most of the
decisions of the last eight years in the Reagan
Administration is they're all ideologically based and very
seldom have the policy decisions been based on practicality,
or far long-range thinking. It's just been based on whether
or not the rhetoric that appears in the news that day is in
phase with conservative ideology, or appeasement to certain
interest groups. It's not good politics in the true sense
of the word. And another political act that you have to
bear in mind is as long as people have the right to vote,
the vote should be cast in a situation where the person with
the ballot in his hand has access to enough information to
make a practical decision. And that's where I come in. If
I can provide an extra dimension of information which may,
through this interview or through a record or some other
way, get out to a person with a ballot in his hand, I'm
doing a public service by providing compilations of data
that the news won't give you. It's not that they can't give
it to you, they won't give it to you. So, that's the way I
think about politics the way I'm involved in it.

BM Taking a statement that you made to Warner Brothers in
1971 in a pamphlet called "Hey, Snazzy Execs": "We make a
special art in an environment hostile to dreamers" [3]...

FZ That's right. The environment that is hostile to
dreamers is always the environment that is run by right-wing
administrations because in order for the right-wing
administration to maintain its fiction, it has to be
ideologically pure and that ideology does not admit for
creativity. There is nothing creative about a right-wing
administration. The whole goal of it is to freeze time and
to move things backward. So, obviously the people who are
most at risk, whenever there is a right-wing administration
sitting in place, is anybody who is an intellectual dreamer
or creative person in any field. They are at risk because
they pose a threat to the administration.

BM But you were quite vocal about certain left-wing
elements in the Sixties.

FZ I don't think that the left wing is anything to invest
in. I think that the left wing has probably done as much
damage as any other kind of political force. I think common
sense is the way to go. There's no ideology for common
sense. It's easy to talk about politics in terms of right
and left wing because that's the way the news portrays it.
And so to a degree, if I talk about political things I have
to use the common parlance so people understand it. But I
think of myself as a person devoted to practical and
commonsense solutions to things that are real problems, and
they oftentimes sound weird if suggested simply because
people are so attached to the ideological ramblings of the
right or the ideological ramblings of the left. They think
that you have to choose between these two extremes. On the
left you've got Communism. Well, Communism doesn't work.
It absolutely doesn't work, and on the right you have
Fascism and that doesn't work either.

BM So both environments are hostile to dreamers. Both
political ideologies...

FZ No, because the difference here is that the left has
often employed artists and creative people in order to
further their goals. For the right-wing administration, the
artists and dreamers are a threat to their way of life. And
for the left-wing guys, the artists and dreamers are
propaganda. So there's a danger coming from both
directions. One side would like to snuff you out and the
other side would like to co-opt you and usurp you in order
to have you do stuff and promote their ideals. So, anybody
who's got an imagination has to watch out for both sides.
There's only one place where you're safe and that's in the
middle.

BM You think you could work with a creatively sympathetic
group like the leftists and keep them on their toes. You
wouldn't be co-opted and it'd be better than a
right-wing...

FZ I'm not interested in working with any leftist
organization I tell you the truth. I've said it many
times...

BM No, I mean work in their environment.

FZ No, fuck their environment because I refuse to be used
by any of those people.

BM But you emphasized at the beginning that the right wing
was more threatening for you.

FZ The right would like to put you out of business and the
left would like to hire you, and I'm not for hire. I don't
think that anybody who has a truly individualistic way of
evaluating the world of a creative urge to do unique stuff
needs to be snuffed out or hired. You should be free to do
what your abilities will allow you to do because it is only
when you are free to do that, the benefits of what you can
build will be distributed to those parts of the society who
will find your work useful. Really creative people don't
work good as employees.

BM But you're saying there is more of a threat in the
right-wing environment.

FZ Yeah, that's the threat of death.

BM You think of yourself as having common sense. Would you
define the word "art" as a sensory training for common-sense
perceptions or is that too dramatic?


FZ I think the word "art" has been pretty much flogged into
porridge. Today you hear the word "art" and you think of
people who do paintings and have their work admired by rich
people at cocktail parties, and it conjures up a world of
phony stuff, and I don't participate in that world. I'm
happy that it's there for the people who like it. It's a
nice form of entertainment for them but to me that's not
what it's all about. I don't think that training people to
consume art in that sense makes them any more sensitive, or
more highly developed or refined in any way. It doesn't
make them a better person, it just makes them a dupe for a
bogus way of life. That art world really is a way of
abusing the people who made the art in the first place. The
best example is the common Soho gallery split of 60-40: 60%
for the gallery owner, 40% for the artist. I mean, in the
worst rock and roll record contract you don't get that kind
of a reaming. So, so much for the art world.

BM I think way back about 1970 in the New York Times you
said that "my work is art" [4]. I think you meant "art" in
a different way there.

FZ Yeah. If I think of it as being a pure expression of who
I am, what I do and what I think, that's fine and I'll call
it "art", but I'll call it "art" privately. I mean, you've
gotta understand, I'm not walking around with an art banner
in my hand. The problem with communicating with anybody in
the English language is that so much damage has been done to
the language itself by advertisers, by political campaigns,
that the words themselves have been mutated to the point
where you have to choose them really carefully because even
if in fact it is "art", you don't way to say it's "Art"
because the negative connotations of calling it "art" puts a
weird spin on what you're saying. So I generally try and
avoid any connection with that word just because it impedes
the process of trying to get your point across. If you're
going to talk to somebody, you want to talk to them in a
language they can understand using words that they're
familiar with. That should be a goal for communication and
"art" is one of the bad words these days.

BM In other words, you target an audience for the point you
want to get across.

FZ Yeah.

BM That's the traditional art of rhetoric in classical
education. I don't know if you came across that. It's a
rhetorical technique.

FZ I didn't have a classical education so I don't know it
from these things.

BM Alright. So, one would say that your emphasis is
rhetorical, not in the modern propagandistic sense, but
targeting an audience, not necessarily for the whole album,
but particular songs, in a musical sense.

FZ Well, "targeting" is the wrong word because that
presumes that it's narrowcasting. It's not. What I have to
do is make an assumption about the comprehension abilities
of the people that would be the likely consumers for what I
do. In other words, I have to conjure up in my brain an
imaginary picture of who the guy is, how smart he is, how
many references he might have that I can make through
metaphorical references in a work. I have to have some sort
of a plan, O.K. And then once I've made that model, I can
then decide, as I'm writing the piece, if this is going to
whiz over his head, going to whiz past him, or what it is.
And if so, should it go in there anyway or should I change
it and say it blunt?

BM That's part of your composing process?

FZ Yeah, and in order to arrive at that imaginary model of
the person who is listening to the stuff, it's not based on
thin air. I mean, I actually talk to the people who are
fans for what I do. I've met them, I've talked to them, I
have some idea of what their desires are. I know what they
like, what they don't like, and to the extent that I have
personal contact with them, that's the data that went into
building the model.

BM Although, you do say that all your music is an extension
of you, but you also say that the audience is the employer
in other quotes.

FZ That's true, but the music is an extension of me but the
"me" is an entity that knows certain things. Part of what I
know is what the audience is interested in and so that
doesn't seem incongruous at all. The audience employs me to
entertain them. By purchasing an album, you have hired me
to entertain you for forty minutes, or whatever it is that's
in the album, and my goal is to do that in a way that is
going to be useful to you.

BM I remember there was a quote back about 1970: "Someone
is getting off on this beyond his or her wildest
comprehensions" [5]

FZ I've had letters from people saying, "It was me! It was
me!"

BM I think I claimed that to you in 1985 myself

FZ "Look at my head! The top of my head is gone! It was
me! I can prove it!"

BM "I'm dead!" (both laughing). What did you think you
meant in targeting that or was that just a general
principle?

FZ You have to have an average of what is going on out
there and when you opt to do the thing that is going to whiz
over most people's heads, you know that there's going to be
a certain percentage in there that will be tall enough where
it's going to get them right in the middle of their head.

BM That's targeting.

FZ Yeah, that's the targeting. You see, I don't know too
many of those kinds of people who really get it all. That
would be the truly rare individual. Because in order for
them to get it all they have to know what I know. Which
means, not that I'm so smart, but I've had experiences that
they haven't had just because people are unique. So, nobody
gets 100% but if anybody ever got 60%, they'd be in big
trouble.

BM "Big trouble"? Is that a facetious remark?

FZ Yeah.

BM I think it was on HOT RATS that you said: "This is a
movie for your ears". Do you remember that phrase.

FZ Yeah.

BM A rather intelligent critic at that time, not known by
many people, described your work up to that point as "a
visualization of a kaleidoscope of textures" [6]. If one
juxtaposes the word "visualization" with your early
statement that your work "incorporates any available visual
medium, consciousness, of all participants (including
audience", which we've talked about, "all perceptual
deficiencies", and a few other points, why do you say "any
available visual medium" Since most people would think of
you as a musician. [7]

FZ That's only because they don't know what I can do in the
other medium. I've always been able to manipulate pictures
since I first got hold of a pencil and paper. I started off
drawing before I could...

BM Before you had music in your head?

FZ Yeah, and there was no music in our household when I was
a kid. I came to it late, but I've always been interested
in the way in which pictures work with music and the problem
about doing more of it is that a visual medium is a far more
expensive medium that the audio medium. An independent guy
can afford to make an album easier than he can afford to
make a movie, or then he can afford to make a video, and
have some quality in it. So there's only occasionally that
i can scrape up enough money to do a project that involves
pictures and music. So that part of my work is less known
than the records that I have out and that's one of the
reasons for putting Honker Home Video together because at
least with that company, some of the things that I've done
working with visual stuff can be gotten out to the public.

BM But with the phrase "movie for your ears", you emphasize
the visual. Is the "conceptual continuity" a movie?

FZ No, because in order to make it complete, you have to
involve what you see. It's a total sensory thing.

BM Is that your definition of music? It includes all
senses?

FZ If you get to the other definition of music that I use
when I'm working on my stuff, it means the organization of
any data.

BM Visual, acoustic, smells...

FZ Yeah, choreography, anything, any data. So long as you
say to yourself, "I'm now making a musical composition of
this stuff", the composition can include stuff that's living
in this ashtray, whatever it is. So long as you willfully
organize it into that object that you're making. That's the
criteria that I would use.

BM That would be a criterion that's modern, a product of
television because television uses all data. I always
thought it was interesting that you had yourself in a TV
screen on FREAK OUT! The cover image has always struck me
as a colour TV image, the colouring...

FZ Oh yeah. Well, that's not what the intent was, but go
on.

BM You had the lines, it looked like a damaged colour TV
(laughs), the colouring. But you did not intend that?

FZ No.

BM O.K., I projected that anyway. But I find it
interesting. I don't think earlier composers would talk
about using all data in the way you're doing unless there
have been... you can correct me.

FZ As far as I know, I don't think there's anybody that has
worked in contemporary composition that has the familiarity
with the technical side that I do. I'm not talking about
electronic music composers. I'm talking about just a
general knowledge of all different...

BM Media?

FZ Yeah, just every tool that you can use. If I can't get
in with a soldering iron and fix it or build it, I certainly
know how to use it and what some uses might be of the tool
that the guy who invented it never imagined. One of my
specialties is taking existing off-the-shelf stuff and
twisting it to do something that the guy who manufactured it
never thought it would be used for. That's a hobby.

BM Weren't you asked to name the band "Mothers of
Invention"? You were asked to add on "of Invention"?

FZ Yeah. Well, we were just told we couldn't use the name
"Mothers".

BM So you suggested "Mothers of Invention".

FZ Yeah.

BM But that was an accurate statement of your talents - to
be able to work with many technologies. Were you aware of
that at the time?

FZ That wasn't the reason for sticking it on there. It was
just a practical decision that had to be made at the time of
the FREAK OUT! album because they were refusing to release
the album. It was so stupid. You can imagine the A&R
department at Verve Records saying, "We can't release this
record because no disc jockey will play a song by 'The
Mothers' on the radio". Well, no disc jockey would play the
content of the record no matter what the name of the group
was. You could have called it "The Smelts" or something,
they still wouldn't have played it. But that's the way it
was. People were just afraid. I guess they're still
afraid.

BM I'm going to move into your role as a symbolist. Do you
know the Symbolist group in art history?

FZ No, I'm not familiar with Art history. Tell me about
it.

BM Well, the Symbolists broke up normal images and reformed
them, juxtaposed them.

FZ Is this based on Jung?

BM No, this was before him. This was a hundred years ago
with poets like Rimbaud and Baudelaire. Literary
historians grouped them into this movement called the
Symbolists. There was a man who wrote a book at the turn of
this century called "The Symbolist Movement in Literature".
He tagged that name on them, but it was the emphasis on a
symbol as the primary focus or motif in one's art.

FZ Well, I suppose I belong in there. Anybody who has said
as much as I have about poodles ought to have some sort of a
recommendation in that group. But it wasn't because I
decided to join a movement.

BM Maybe there are historical forces, ways of thinking that
you tapped into and continued a tradition unconsciously. I
mean, from the critic's point of view. I think it was Miles
who was the first one who wrote about your repetition of
motifs in his early articles in the late Sixties. I
remember one of his questions from International Times where
he asked "Is there an IDEA behind your work?" [8]. It was
capitalized in the newspaper. And I think that's what I'm
trying to get at.

FZ That's simple. It's that the Emperor's not wearing any
clothes, never has, never will.

BM What is the Emperor?

FZ Fill in the blank. (laughs)

BM So the idea is that you're making a symbol that allows
other people to participate in it.

FZ That's audience participation on a grand scale. It's
like name your poison. Why, that's almost elegant.

BM What is?

FZ Structuring something the way that people get to
participate in it by adding their missing ingredient. It's
like, be your own catalyst.

BM That is a tradition that T.S. Eliot, Joyce and Pound
articulated. When people asked Eliot the meaning of the
poem, he would shrug his shoulders, and then they would give
what they thought it meant and...

FZ He would say they're right.

BM Yes, Eliot would say, "You're right".

FZ Well you see, I didn't have that kind of an education.
I have no knowledge of the history of art or poetry, or any
of that kind of stuff. It never interested me. I think
that it's nice that it's there for people who want it, but I
never studied it. I don't know anything about that. I just
did my own stuff. If it happens to be similar to other
things that other people have done, fine. I can't help
that. But it's not like I went to college to learn about
all these people who did bitchin' stuff through the years
and decided to go out and do that. That is not interesting
to me. All I can say is, "Yeah, they're doing it right".

BM You would agree with that method. You don't know why you
wanted to create in that method. Is it because you wanted
to say, "I'm a nice guy. I'll include you". Is there a
democratic impulse there?

FZ No. I think the jury's still out on democracy as a...

BM Viable institution?

FZ That's right. You know, I keep referring back to the
book that I had when I was in high school in our civics
class. It was called "Democracy: The American Experiment"
and...

BM We're still studying...

FZ I think we're still experimenting and right now it looks
like some of the ingredients they put in don't really work.

BM People might ask, "Why the dog image?"

FZ I don't even know how that got started. There are
certain absurd things about a poodle as a species unto
itself. What especially women have decided to do to poodles
is probably something that if there were a big guy on the
cloud who meted out punishment at the time of your demise,
that there would be a lot of women that would be tortured
forever in the Lake of Fire for things that they have
decided to inflict on poodles. So, that's a pretty good
metaphor there if you really think about...

BM For perverse creativity?

FZ No. Look, a poodle is born. It's got hair evenly
distributed all over its small, piquant, canine-type body.
Figure it out. They don't start looking weird until some
woman decides that she wants to shape all that stuff to make
it look like a walking shrubbery. Now, that tells you two
things: that the dog's co-operative and that the woman's
got some problems.

BM The "mother of invention" has some problems. She's
inventing.

FZ Yeah, but did she invent something good? Do you think a
partially denuded, small animal is good?

BM It seems some people like it, so we have to allow them
to have that choice or enjoyment.

FZ Yeah, but doesn't the poodle have some rights here? I
mean, we're trying to save the whales. They're stuck up
there. There are three whales with their noses sticking out
of a hole. Now the Russians want to send an ice-breaker.
It's three hundred miles away, the Russians are going to
save the whales. What about the poodles? Who's doing
anything for the poodles?

BM Right, save the poodles?

CD Who's plucking the poodles?

FZ What?

BM Who's plucking the poodles? Who's plooking? Who's
plucking? (all laughing). To me that's a symbol of your
journalistic work of putting out information for Americans
who are getting plooked and need to be...

FZ Unplooked?

BM Yeah.

FZ I think they do need to be unplooked, but the problem
with Americans is they have this self-image of "We're so
nice, we're so fair, we're so honest, we always take the
high road." If only it were true, this would be heaven on
earth, but it's not true. And when you see two hundred and
forty million people willingly deluding themselves with this
idea that they're somehow God's chosen people, I find that
to be a huge... Continental bad mental health is what it is.

BM That's the "cheese" that you talked about in your
Newsweek "editorial" they wouldn't print? [9]

FZ Yeah. How can we be so foolish as to think that we've
got it all? We certainly don't. And anybody who ever
travelled for twenty minutes and kept his eyes open must
realize that no country has got everything. You just don't
have it. The major deficiency in the United States seems to
be that it's got a history that only goes back a couple of
hundred years and that history itself is riddled with
corruption, it is riddled with exploitation. You name it,
we have exploited it and it's not exactly something to be
proud of. If whatever we have achieved we had come by it
honestly we'd be in a lot better shape, but really we
haven't. We've abused a lot of people not only here in our
own country but around the world, and then gone to church to
smooth it over and had some guy say, "Yes, we're God's
chosen people and this is our Manifest Destiny - to be the
peacekeepers for the world". I wonder, with this aesthetic
that they have in the United States, whether we don't have
the right to inflict in on anybody else. I believe that we
certainly don't have the right to inflict it. But even if
we had the right, would that other person benefit from
becoming more like us? Countries that have cultures that go
back thousands and thousands of years, and we walk in and we
want to give them Coca Cola. Why?

BM You're speaking as an American Citizen. There would
probably many people in other countries who feel that their
fellow citizens are a bit deluded, too patriotic about their
cultural values. So you're speaking as an American citizen.

FZ Well, I think that the American situation is probably more critical
than, say, the guy from Borneo who believes that we are where it's at.
At least the guy from Borneo isn't going around doing some tricks in
Central America and wherever else we've got little covert operations
going on. He's not trying to inflict his values on another society.
Whereas, especially through the missionary procedure coming out from
the United States, we have spread the poison of our ignorance to other
cultures, to the detriment of those cultures, almost since this place
was founded. America was founded by the refuse of the religious
fanatics of England, these undesirable elements that came over on the
Mayflower. Ignorant, religious fanatics who land here, abuse the
Indians, and then go to bed with a board down the middle, you know,
the bundling board, so they don't have sex. That's how we got
started. And when we think back to our Founding Fathers, they don't
ever talk about the Founding Mothers. It might be a little bit too
risque. They didn't want to have too much to do with them, anyway.
Because what kind of a woman wants to take a ride on a wooden boat in
the middle of winter, anyway? Not probably something you want to see
in Playboy magazine. The way we got started and what we have turned
into, and our desire to inflict it on other people all over the world,
I think is a tragedy. And something big is going to happen in 1992
when Europe, ifthey can get their act together, if they can organize
themselves the way that they are trying to do and kind of be the
United States of Europe, as a consumer bloc and as a manufacturing
bloc, is going to be larger than the United States. That's three
hundred and thirty million people or something like that, that make
products that work.

BM Yes, and that is the impetus for "free trade". I think
the Canadian businessmen know that they've got to get
together with the United States to compete with this bloc
that's coming up.

FZ Well, here's the thing. What they make in Europe, those
products seem to be more desirable than the products that
are made elsewhere, except for Japan. Japan, as we all
know, makes stuff that everybody wants.

BM You mean now, on the world market, Europe's products are
very desirable?

FZ Yeah. And if the United States continues the way it's
going, like thriving on rhetoric rather than on practical
solutions, in four years when they've got their United
States of Europe, we will have slid even further. And the
United States is going to be in a very vulnerable position,
even if it makes an alliance with Canada in order to make a
large bloc, because the size of the bloc doesn't increase
the quality of your product. It just means more people
sharing the absence of trade barriers to buy more stuff from
someplace else. Right now the United States is two hundred
and forty million people dumb enough to buy anything that
anybody sells them and smart enough not to buy their own
stuff, O.K. And that is not something that you can continue
for a century. You can't go for a hundred years just buying
everybody else's stuff. Sooner or later you're going to
have to redevelop the product base in the United States so
that we buy our own stuff and that our commodities become
valuable to people elsewhere. This trade imbalance is not a
joke. It has long-range implications that could be very
severe. And for every American that dreams of the American
way of life and owning your own little home with the white
picket fence and living next door to somebody who looks like
Jimmy Stewart, they ain't going to get it.

BM I remember you talking a few years ago about theinability
of Europe to come together - the tribal hostilities that go
back centuries. [10]

FZ That's right.

BM And you preferred the basic unity in America. That was
a value you admired in Americans who are in the structure
here. You are talking again as a citizen about the threat
of what's going to happen in Europe. It may help you, might
be good for you if you buy the products and it helps your
musical apparatus but...

FZ No, I didn't say either of those two things. I'm
talking generally about the difference between Europe the
way it is now, haking it out with intertribal debates that
have been going on for a couple of thousand years, and
having the opportunity to blend some of that stuff together
in 1992 to give that whole region the kind of cohesion that
the United States would have under ideal conditions. I'm
making a comment about that. And meanwhile, I would say
that the reverse is happening in the United States. We are
breaking up into regions. It's the North versus the South,
and the East versus the West, very much in politics and
every other thing. We're moving apart.

BM I saw a book that came out a few years ago, "The Nine
Nations of North America." It breaks it down like that, the
different regions. And Marshall McLuhan predicted this
fragmentation that would come to the United States and doom
the United States to be a bunch of little bickering mini-
states. You see that coming, also.

FZ I see it. Let me tall you about another trend that I
see as long as we're talking trends here. The amount of
money that is generated by cocaine that flows directly into
the hands of the cartels that make the cocaine is, right
now, translating into political power. And over the next,
say, twenty-five to fifty years will translate into even
more political power for those people. They will transcend
governments. Because there is something that I heard about
last night, that I imagined could happen, and it turns out I
was right. This friend of mine who's spent some time in
Brazil verifies the fact that the cocaine cartels have gone
into the worst slums in Brazil and played Robin Hood to the
people there. They're giving them cocaine profits to give
them clothes and set up these little fiefdoms. Basically
what they've created is an army of people who are willing to
protect them. The police can't even go into those slums
because they're at risk. Those slums are literally under
the control of the guy from Colombia with a bag of money in
his hand. Now as a test balloon, I would say what's
happened in Rio with that would indicate to any good
businessman, and I would presume that these cocaine guys are
good businessmen, that that's the way to go. Think of every
place in the world where you have an underclass - it's poor
and it's being pushed down by the middleclass, directly
above in the case of the United States, or the upper crust
that does all their bad stuff. Who is going to take care of
these people? In the United States you've got a homeless
underclass that's developing that is unprecedented. If the
cocaine cartel came into the United States and helped the
homeless, what do you think would happen to the War on Drugs
here? Playing Robin Hood is easy when you got that kind of
a profit base. It is so peculiar to think about that and I
predict that there is going to be more of that happening all
over the world. It doesn't cost that much to give people a
little something to eat and a little something to wear.
When they've got nothing, anything looks good. You don't
have to be a major benefactor - just give them a little
present and you're a good guy.

BM Two people who predicted that, too, were Mae Brussell and
a person who is running for President of the United States,
Lyndon LaRouche. He has mapped that out. His magazines are
very good for charting these cocaine cartels. Would you
support a President who wants to fight that trend or a
Presidential candidate who's honest about that?

FZ I certainly wouldn't support Lyndon LaRouche. I'll say
that if he has information that backs up what I just heard
from a guy who was down there, then I credit him for having
at least one piece of good information. That seems a little
better than saying that the Queen of England is involved in
the drug traffic, which is another one of his favourite...

BM That's the way the media present him. I've read his
literature and he doesn't say that. He says that those old
banking networks allow this laundering of dope money to
happen through their banks and don't take action which he
claims he would do.

FZ Well, what he's done, he's taken some things which
actually are facts and said them in a way that makes them
sound ridiculous. Because of the banking laws in England it
is possible that especially British banking concerns and
British off-shore banking concerns have been deeply involved
in money laundering. In fact, some of their branches set up
in Miami are involved in it. We're just now beginning to
see how this stuff works, but the other thing that ought to
be said is that these people who make the billions from
cocaine also finance right-wing governments. You know why?
Because as long as the right-wing governments are in
operation, their drugs are going to be illegal and as long
as they're illegal, they're going to make more profits. It
is so twisted.

BM Like the pornography racket.

FZ That's right.

BM But what if LaRouche is taking on this issue? He's the
only politician who's doing that. That's commendable, isn't
it?

FZ No. I wouldn't say that Lyndon LaRouche is commendable
by any stretch of the imagination. I believe, although he
hasn't been convicted yet, that the whole business with the
credit cards and the rest of that scam, that's not
commendable. That's the end justifies the means. That's
not commendable.

BM Right. But what if certain people have a control over
the media and can distort the public's perception of
LaRouche, and that there are even people infiltrating his
organization to do the credit fraud because he's the only
one taking on this most present, pressing problem that you
predicted or that you see coming?

FZ I don't think that he's really taking it on. I don't see
him taking it on. I see him stating some facts that any
trend spotter could state if you saw it. The way I arrived
at it was: I just start with the premise - follow the
money. You know, the old Iran-Contra "follow the money".
(Both laughing) Now, if somebody's got money, what do you do
with it? Answer number one: you go for power. Now, where
do you get the power? Power comes from might. The might is
either going to be in large armaments or in large armies.
Now, where's a man, with a buck in his hand to spend who
wanted power, going to get an army? The answer is simple:
any slum. And then, just by chance, last night I talked
with this guy who had been in Brazil and he said that's what
they're doing down there. O.K., why? Now, Lyndon LaRouche
may see this same trend. I don't see Lyndon LaRouche out
there fighting it. I see Lyndon LaRouche doing a credit
card scam. That's what I see. If I had other information,
I would see something else. I don't.

BM But you're relying...

FZ I've seen LaRouche on television. I've seen him being
interviewed and he does not come across to me as a guy that
I would trust at all. I don't buy Lyndon LaRouche.

BM This is an example of a political concern of yours that
you wrestle with daily that we talked about at the beginning
of the interview. How much do you want to take on to deal
with this trend? Do you have any personal strategies for
stopping that or do you think that the force is so large
there is little you could do?

FZ The only way that I can see to reduce the influence of something
that would behave like a government, cross international boundaries
but not be a government in the sense that people elected it, the only
way that you can reduce the influence of that creeping mess is to
legalize the substances and cut their economic base. Now, let's talk
about the drug problem. 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.
That's a drug problem. I believe that people have the right to commit
suicide. You can stick a gun in your mouth. You can stick a needle
in your arm. You can do whatever you want, but you own your own body.
I think you do. Drugs become a problem when the person who uses them
turns into an asshole, and they also become a problem when the person
who manufactures and distributes them turns into a politician. That's
the drug problem. Now, you want to fight the drug problem. You have
to be realistic about what the problem is. The substance itself is
not immoral. Without cocaine you're going to have a hell of a time at
the dentist's office. You can't say, "We have to burn ever coca
plant". Otherwise, no more Novocaine, buddy.

BM The dental hygiene dilemma

FZ Yeah. So there are things that you have to consider. There are
the fine, little points. The problem is that the public gets
saturated with the rhetoric about "just say no to drugs, there's a
drug problem", and this and that and it puts it into a context where
it becomes a moral menace. It's not a moral problem. It is an
economic problem. It is a social problem. It is a mental health
problem. And it can be a matter of physical danger to you when you
have people who have life-and-death control over other people, who are
users and they can endanger the life, like a physician, who might use
drugs, who might give you the wrong kind of an operation. Or
different ways the person who uses the chemical can fuck up your life.
That's what you've got to look out for, but the substance itself is
neither here nor there, and the person has as much right to drink a
beer as he does to use the substance. The only difference is we have
prohibition now of these certain substances. If you'll let your mind
drift back to the time there was prohibition against alcohol, think of
what happened. Remember: those who forget history are doomed to
repeat it. Without Carry Nations, every Italian in the Mafia would be
out of business right now. It was Carry Nations who put them into
business. Because there was the law of supply and demand. People
wanted to drink beer. They wanted to drink gin and a few guys say,
"Hey, I don't care, I'm going to supply the demand", and they became
billionaires. And they eventually found out and people got killed for
years all during Prohibition. The machine gun was busy. People were
dying because they wanted a beer, and the government literally could
not enforce the prohibition on alcohol. And in the time that they had
this moral law to keep people from drinking alcohol, they managed to
create the empire of organized crime. And the same thing is happening
with cocaine. A guy in the jungle with a swami shirt on some place is
going to wind up ruling half the world because somebody decided that
cocaine was a moral problem. Cocaine used to be an ingredient in Coca
Cola. Was it a moral problem then?

BM That's well-spoken, and that distinguishes the
difference between you and LaRouche because he thinks the
solution is to continue banning them.

FZ It won't work.

BM And that feeds the problem. Yes, you've made that
clear. I'd like to go into the satire you do. You
emphasize and you're known for, a polyrhythmic approach to
composing. I read a recent interview where you talked about
working with harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements [11],
but in earlier interviews I've noticed you emphasizing the
mutirhythms, the polyrhythms. Do you see that society is
hypnotized by a beat, by a rhythm, by a hypnosis that you
feel that you can shake up with your polyrhythms?

FZ It's real simple but real complicated at the same time. There are
certain basic natural rhythms. How often does the moon become full?
Once a month, O.K. That's a rhythm. When does the tide come in?
When does it go out? That's a rhythm. What is your heartbeat rate?
That's a rhythm. Call those natural rhythms. You don't think about
them but they're there. There is also an average tempo at which
people conduct their lives. That is a rhythm. If that average didn't
exist, then people wouldn't know whether or not they were going fast
or going slow because those are terms which are used to compare to an
average. "I'm having a slow day". That means that you're behaving
less than your imaginary average rhythm. "I'm really getting a lot
done today". You're going faster than your imaginary average. Now,
music, the way in which it connects with human behaviour, takes into
account the implications of these universal natural rhythms. Certain
types of music reinforce them. Disco music, for example, is banging
you over the head and reinforcing your factory rhythm. Anything that
deviates from that reinforcemen

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