Frank Vincent Zappa, born in 1940 in Baltimore, USA. extravagance for a new band in pop music and precursor to the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper album, about twelve months later.

From the beginning, Zappa was an avant-garde, provocative and somewhat exotic figure in the world of rock ‘n roll. His musical influences alone marked him as a maverick, from the contemporary classics of Edgard Varese, Igor Stravinsky and Anton Webern to rhythm and blues artists like Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson, Howlin’ Wolf and the esoteric registers of vocal groups like The Channels. , Don & Dewey, The Penguins and Jackie Dee and the Starlites. His mastery of these and many other different musical languages ​​make him one of the significant musicians of the 20th century.

I have become familiar with much of his output over the past thirty years, and there is now a great deal of his material to evaluate. For this slightly morbid exercise of choosing your own funeral soundtrack, I’ve decided to narrow down to four the Frank Zappa songs that I love and that I think best exemplify him. I’d be interested to hear any other Zappa fan’s picks:

*Strictly Genteel – the ending of the movie 200 Motels, largely sung by Theodore Bikel. Several alternate versions of this piece have been released since the original version recorded in 1971 and one of my favorites is the selection from the Orchestral Favorites album. Amazing.

*Inca Roads – from the 1975 album One Size Fits All, this is a masterful mix of jazz, funk, wildly original electric guitar and the feverish interplay between a group of musicians thoroughly versed in Zappa’s compositional style and woven together by various trial months. and live performance.

*Watermelon In Easter Hay – from the 1979 album Joe’s Garage Acts II & III; a rather conventional musical backdrop for Frank, although the time signature for consecutive bars is 4/4 and then 5/4. Yet he presents him as a quintessential lead guitarist, cleverly abetted by Denny Walley’s slide guitar atmosphere and Vinnie Colaiuta’s sensitive percussion. A monumental achievement.

*The Black Page – from the single album Zappa In New York, originally intended for the monstrous 4-disc set, “Lather”, which sparked a major contract dispute with the Warner Brothers label. A basic 4/4 time signature underpins the entire composition, but the dense polyrhythms that live within this framework make it wildly complex as a percussion piece, made a bit more accessible with the addition of its basic melody. I still have a hard time understanding how an ensemble managed to play this for the first time…