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From: jablow@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Eric Robert Jablow)
Newsgroups: net.music,net.misc
Subject: Re: Re: Frank Zappa and Rock Music
Message-ID: <13563@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Fri, 2-May-86 03:49:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.13563
Posted: Fri May  2 03:49:34 1986
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In article <410@uvacs.UUCP> dsr@uvacs.UUCP (Dana S. Richards) writes:
>
>>      ...waitasecond!!! Is Frank Zappa really intent on swaying peoples'
>>      views on this PRMC scene??? You gotta be kiddin'!! I thought he
>>      went to those hearings just to cut up and mess around and generally
>>      expose them for the farce that they really were.I didn't believe he
>>      was actually going to make himself a "spokesman for the cause" or
>>      anything mindless like that!!!...
>> 
>>      ...Say it ain't so!!!!...
>> 
>>                                        Larry Palena
>
>It is so.
>I believe it was Mencken who said "One horselaugh is worth a thousand
>syllogisms."  Frank has for a very long time used satire to make his
>point, sometimes in very irritating ways.
>But you should never assume that he is aloof; and this PRMC thing
>has a direct impact on his ability to make and distribute his music.
>
>I don't feel he went to the hearings to "cut up". He was very
>deliberate and prepared. He did make some remarks, though, that
>struck the congressmen as out of place, which undercut his message.

Frank Zappa is the wrong type of person to try to persuade a congressional
committee while undercutting his message.  Official Washington is just
too scared of people like him to understand him.

Other people can do something like that and get away with it.  The most
famous example is Casey Stengel, who blitzed a Senate committee for
45 minutes, destroying its decorum, entertaining the audience, and left
very subtle hints and ideas about the committee's proposed legislation
that was quite useful in its later deliberations.  See *Stengel, His
Life and Times*, by Robert Cramer.  The best comment on this was Mickey
Mantle's: "My views on this situation is about the same as Casey's."

			Respectfully,
			Eric Robert Jablow
			MSRI
			ucbvax!brahms!jablow