When and where was Frank Zappa born?
Frank Vincent Zappa was born on the 21st of December, 1940, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was of predominantly Sicilian descent, with Greek, Arab and French ancestors, and grew up in an Italian-American household.
Questions about Frank Zappa
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What was Frank Zappa's Project/Object concept?
Project/Object was Zappa's term for the conceptual continuity that unified his entire body of work. Numerous musical phrases, ideas, and characters recur across his albums, so that every individual album or project was part of a larger connected whole.
What was Frank Zappa's first album with the Mothers of Invention?
Freak Out!, released in 1966, was the debut studio album by Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. It was the second rock double album ever released, after Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, and it mixed R&B, doo-wop, musique concrete, and experimental sound collages.
What happened to Frank Zappa at the Rainbow Theatre in London in 1971?
During an encore at the Rainbow Theatre in London, an audience member pushed Zappa off the stage into the concrete-floored orchestra pit. He suffered serious fractures, head trauma, injuries to his back, leg, and neck, and a crushed larynx that permanently lowered his voice by a third. He required a wheelchair for more than half a year.
What Grammy Award did Frank Zappa win and for which album?
Zappa won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 1988 for the album Jazz from Hell, released in 1986. It was his first Grammy win. He also received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 1997.
What was Frank Zappa's biggest selling single?
"Valley Girl", released in May 1982 on the album Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch, was Zappa's biggest selling single. The song featured improvised lyrics by his daughter Moon satirizing the speech patterns of teenage girls from the San Fernando Valley, and it reached No. 32 on the Billboard charts.