C O M M E N T S
From: patrick.gaumond@fsa.ulaval.ca (Patrick Gaumond)
The best book in french available. Lots of pictures never seen before.It
has the translation of 2 orchestral absurdities. A mode d'emploi from A to
Z with topics like: Argent (money), Discipline, Drogue, Recrutement. After
that you have some texts on important musicians ( Belew, Ruth, Ian and Vai).
Followed by Discography with impressions. Fillmore: Old fans are sleeping,
Wazoo: a master piece, Bongo Fury: It sucks, Zoot: Zappa was too busy playing
"all" the instruments and like all the frenchies that had ever listen to
Thing Fish, he didn't like it...
After that you have maybe 10 articles by Frank. The end of the Mothers,
What I listen to and others. At the end you have a bibliograhy, a
filmography and some fanzines information.
From: "Wilson, Andrew F" <AFWilson@iee.org.uk>
Viva Zappa. This is an English translation, by Matthew Screech, of _Viva
Zappa: Un Alchimiste Delirant - Mode d'Emploi_. The book starts off with a
brief biographical run-through, that peters out at 'Sheik Yerbouti'. Next
come some short sections on particular topics and musicians who Zappa has
worked with. The main part of the book is a 'critical discography' which
describes each LP in turn, from 'Freak Out' to 'Does Humor Belong in Music?'.
The next part of the book is by far the most interesting, being reprints of
seven magazine articles written by Zappa between 1967 and 1981. Curiously,
there is no acknowledgement of Zappa's copyright of these pieces. The text
is well illustrated with slightly dark black and white photographs and a small
number of colour photographs. This is probably one of the books which Zappa
had in mind when he refers in _The Real Frank Zappa Book_ to a 'proliferation
of stupid books (in several languages) which purport to be about me'.
From: onthecornr@aol.com (OnTheCornr)
VIVA ZAPPA by Dominique Chevalier is disjointed and full of inaccurate
facts and sloppy translation (unless it was the original writing that was
sloppy). Good pictures, though, and invaluable reprints of some of FZ's
own writings for various magazines.
From: Vladimir Sovetov <sova@kpbank.ru>
D'accord :-) I second last opinion. Short and very accurate.
From: spb0377@ocvaxa.cc.oberlin.edu (Pat Buzby)
In spite of the odd translated-from-French writing style, I found this
to be a fairly useful "from one fan to another" type of bio when I was
getting acquainted with FZ's music. The album-by-album commentary is worth
checking out. Also, I don't recall there being that many inaccurate facts
in the book, especially compared to Gray and Watson.
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