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Samizdata quote of the day In every language, the first word after “Mama!” that every kid learns to say is “Mine!” A system that doesn’t allow ownership, that doesn’t allow you to say “Mine!” when you grow up, has, to put it mildly, a fatal design flaw.
– Frank Zappa
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Another great quote, which (I think) comes from the same book:
“The Very Big Stupid lives by eating the future. Have you seen it? It disguises itself as a healthy-looking bottom line, derived by closing the R&D department”.
Yikes! Some Cold War-era boilerplate from Frank, surely. Of course he’s right, but most of the Left feel it’s safe to agree with him these days. That is, until their ideology drags them along to its natural conclusion.
When did the Real Frank Zappa Book (which contained that quote) come out? I think it post-dated the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I’ve never thought of Zappa’s politics as anything other than libertarian, although he never identified himself as such. Didn’t he call himself a “Practical conservative”?
Whether in theory or practice, Tim, it does not matter.
Allegedly, my first world to the waiting world was “Duck”. Curse my luck for being raised by Mallards.
I saw the mothers Of Invention (yep the whole original band) in Bristol around 69/70.
Wonderful. Frank was conducting them like an orchestra, but not with a baton, but with leaps and winks and waves of his guitar.
Course it was wall to wall hippidom and they all thought Frank was on their side. Well look and listen to them. Their weird. Their our kinda people.
Then the words of Plastic People began to sink in…
“Now go home and check yourself,
You think we’re talking bout somebody else”
My first word was “Pasta!”… but my second probably was indeed “Mine!”, with handfuls of spinach flung at any who contested my claims.
My favorite FZ quote is about art being “anything you can put a frame around.”
From his public comments I always throught he was generally libertarian and at the very least attuned to the proper role of profit in society. I think that he was aware that many of his fans were lefty hippy types who might stop buying his records if he shattered their assumptions that he thought like they did so he kept relatively quiet.
And for way too many adults the first thing they say after beholding the government is “Mama.”
Oh, I found some documentation to go with that:
Perhaps this is an example of the third thing that children learn to say: “Gimme.”
The Frank Zappa book was published in 1989. For a quite amusing interview on CNN’s Crossfire in 1986 see Zappa tell some pompous New York Times journalist to kiss his ass when discussing censorship of rock music. (Link)
MarkH – what a champ! I love that guy! (Zappa, not that pathetic NYT twat)
Sorry, Washington Times.
I’m watching the Crossfire video…
Zappa has some prime idiotarian moments. He states that songs can’t be pornographic because they’re composed of words and words can’t be pornographic. There’s his “Reagan’s marching us toward a fascist theocracy” rant. (Where would Nancy Reagan’s astrologer figure in that theocracy?) Above all, he would not acknowledge that songs can transmit destructive culture as any other form of media can.
The Wash Times guy is a lousy interviewer (which is why he works at a newspaper). He gets too emotional and too aggressive. Rule of thumb: don’t be a confrontational jerk when speaking with a confrontational jerk.
Tom Braden was barely present. Novak was that show’s class act. He showed better diplomacy toward Zappa (thus getting a bit more civility out of the guy) and asked good questions.
They woulda done better by replacing Zappa with Dee Snider. I remember those music lyrics hearings; Snider was one of the most civil and most intelligent. No Wash Times guy, either; not sure who I’d replace him with.
And then socialist parents brainwash their children by urging them to ‘share’ their toys.
I was a great believer in sharing my toys (sort of), and I did this by building my brother lego-weapons seeing as our mum wouldn’t buy us “war toys”. Lego-battleaxes and lego-bren guns were my favourite creations (complete with spare “magazines” that my brother could change as my number two).
She eventually surrendered to the inevitable by giving us both really cool “Conan the Barbarian” swords for Christmas when I was 15. We always had to get matching presents or there would be trouble (we all took “mine!” very seriously). Best of all, my sister (10 at the time) was really pissed off she did not get a cool sword too. Result!
Ah, Bell, that is it perzackly. Libbie lefties think gender identify is merely socialized. Usually they don’t have kids yet. My brother and his wife take a special interest in befriending music and theology grad students, mostly libbies, who are yound and childfree and presume to lecture them on raising children androgynously. Well, despite one’s attempts at genderfree parenting, boys want toy soldiers and machine guns and cars and erector sets and firecrackers and other backyard ballistics. Girls want Barbies and baby dolls and dress up and jewelry and kiddie makeup. That socialization resistant, inborn gender tendency just asserts itself regardless!
Yeah, there’s occasional crossover…sometimes GI Joe wants Barbie as a girlfriend, POW, or tortured insurgent (more believable with a hanky burqa to hide her blonde babe-a-liciousness); sometimes the girls like to play the neighborhood war games and play with kiddie ballistics. More firepower to ’em.
Who would want androgynous children anyway? They sound rather bland.
BTW, like the quote. I live in the Appalachian mountains, where the proud hillbillies don’t want any feds to come in and mess with their private lives, unless it’s to give them a transfer payment check from any of a wide variety of programs. These people think that sucking from the government tit comes with no strings attached. Yeah right.
True. But he also threw up some gems, too. And I rather enjoyed the look on the face of that snivelling, pompous Washington Times journo after Zappa told him to kiss his arse.
From an old article about Zappa in Kerrang!
“Local hippies, who had elevated him to the status of chief guru, were horrified to discover that he didn’t really like hippies. Revolutionary students were annoyed to discover that he wasn’t revolutionary.”
Hey, my son’s first word was also “duck”! Or perhaps I misunderstood him…
On war toys, boys will always find a way to fashion weapons. I remember when used to build houses of cards (using a few dominos to support the lowest cards) and shoot them down from across the room with rubber bands.
‘More!’ came before ‘mine’ with my children…. which is hardly more uplifting .
I know; I know – Frank is trying to make a point but his data is wrong, wrong, wrong.
The second word after Mama will be something beginning with a p or b sound. my insomnia curing Roman Jacobson, of the Praque school of linguistics gave the reasons why in his eye-glzaing over monograph Why Mama- Why Papa – originally published in what else – German – but now available in translation.
The reason the m word is more or less universal in all languages is that when babykins is clamped to the bosom for nourishment he/she makes little noises of supreme satisfaction (like a kitten purring) through his/her nostrils.
The p and b sounds when the lips are disengaged stem from the fun with blubber lips experimentation.
I’ll stop now and promise never again to sully the comments with professorial pseudo gravitas.
Frank is a heartbreaking case. Him and Hunter S. Thompson: those guys both had a lot of what it takes to be serious libertarians, but they just couldn’t think their ways all the way through it. Go listen to “Broadway The Hard Way” (1988). He tears off on Republicans and Reagan the way he never did with just about anything on the left. (He lays a pretty good lash on Jesse Jackson, though, in “Rhymin’ Man”. And, a good bit of his attack on the right is right on.) He had the League of Women Voters out on that tour with him — date for date — registering revolutionary pollistas.
All his basic impulses were pretty intensely libertarian, but he sat out a lot of the fight in his lifetime, the PMRC episode notwithstanding.
Of course, when I spin-up nearly anything at all from his body of work, I just don’t have the heart to count it against him too hard.
“The Real Frank Zappa Book” is indispensible, but you might try 2004’s “Zappa”, by Barry Miles. I thought it was pretty good. Glad I read it.
Spot on Billy Beck!
Those two were definately on our side
(Er … if we had a side!)
To be sooo.. misunderstood they Should both be spinning in their graves…
But more likely laughing their asses off.
Drop in any time you’re in Bristol.
We could raise Kane, er do basket weaving…
I’m sure I would not agree at all points with Zappa, but he certainly seems anti-statist, and perhaps Reagan just represented too much state for him. One can’t deny that the debt exploded under Reagan, and one can blame the Dem controlled Congress all they want, but Reagan did not succeed. Public debt is just another form of collectivism, and spurring growth with illusions is the precise problem we have in the US today.
Calling the US economy a state driven fascist-corporate monstrosity may not sit well with average samizdata folk, but that is what has been built over the last seven decades, and the Republicans officially joined, instead of resisting, when it supported huge deficit spending. It needed to kill the beast of FDR in the 80’s when the bill started coming due, but instead just blew different smoke and shined a different mirror.
So was Reagan the second coming of Hitler? No. Did Zappa fall too easily for the left rant? Maybe. But the 20th century was dominated by the rise of Statism and for all of Reagan’s charms, he ended up being much more Statist than his first campaign rhetoric made it seem.
Billy… you done got it all wrong boy! Frank was a republican( with a small r) strictly libertarian. And nearly becoming the sole U.S. contact between the newly liberated Czech nation was hardly sitting out the struggle. In fact the music was tolerated by the eastern bloc dictatorships for much the same reason… a perceived anti capitalist stance. Lazy pigeon holeing is so unattractive.