I ran across a little gem today that had escaped me today.\u00a0 It’s by a true American original, the late Frank Zappa.<\/p>\n
Zappa was a complex guy – fiscally conservative, huge backer of free enterprise, believed in limited government.\u00a0 Yet he famously clashed with conservatives in the Reagan administration, finding some of their efforts theocratic and attempts to stifle free speech.\u00a0 (If you’ve ever listened to some of his work, I think you can see just how big a fan of free speech he was.)<\/p>\n
He was also an incredibly talented musician and composer.\u00a0 If you’ve only heard his more popular work, you haven’t really seen the full range of his abilities as either a performer or composer.\u00a0 Find some good headphones and listen to either The Grand Wazoo<\/a> or Jazz From Hell<\/a>.<\/p>\n Zappa also hated the phony, over-commercialized, synthetic, “scratch-the-surface” nature of contemporary US society with a passion.<\/p>\n The American Society of University Composers invited Zappa to give the keynote speech at their 1984 convention in Columbus, Ohio.\u00a0 He accepted.<\/p>\n I don’t think the ASUC realized what they’d done.\u00a0 Essentially, they’d just invited the fox into the hen house.<\/p>\n The result was classic.\u00a0 It was a scathing (and hilarious) commentary on academic tenure, contemporary society, and lack of both relevance and convictions.<\/p>\n Here’s the full text of Zappa’s speech<\/a> that day.\u00a0 An abridged version is available here<\/a> – and is further confirmed here <\/a>in Zappa’s autobiography, The Real Frank Zappa Book.<\/span><\/p>\n Zappa died over 20 years ago, of early-onset prostate cancer that wasn’t caught in time.\u00a0 He was 17 days short of his 53rd birthday.<\/p>\n RIP, Frank.\u00a0 We lost a true American original the day we lost you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"