'It has never mattered to me that thirty million people might think 'I'm wrong.' The number of people who thought Hitler was 'right' did not make him 'right.'
The same principle should be applied to anyone who has an individualistic attitude. Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?'
7 comments:
Reminds me of the Chinese proverb (paraphrased): If a thousand people say a stupid thing, it is still a stupid thing. thanks DB - Love the Zappa.
Yesh FZ was mostly right.
Britney Spears might sell one million CDs a month or something, yet only 100 Stravinsky CDs sell each year (or Zappa for that matter): that pop-appeal has nothing to do with the actual quality and worth of the...Product.
Zappa was enough of a classicist to understand the somewhat platonic implications of great Ahht.
i still say zappa for president
'Stoopid be as stoopid duz', GDM - glad you enjoy it.
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Intrinsic value to the observer is subjective as always, J. - as 'Ryan Seacrest's America's Mongolian throat-singing top 10 dance-off' is unlikely to be a mid season network replacement for 'Dialectics of post-modernist ironical angst interpreted as a Calder mobile made of ripe gorgonzola, hosted by Johnny Knoxville in a tasteful prom dress'.
I've always been partial to the old-school record company axiom that FZ proffered in his book of 'G'wan and put it out there - who knows? I dunno.'
Tastes can be manipulated, but predicting them with consistency is another matter entirely.
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Next space dimension around, DCap.
;>)
Ripe gorgonzola....reminds me of Zappa's Cheese essay on the inside cover of You Are What You Is.
At times FZ may have been attempting to calculate popular taste, but I'm pretty sure he considered his commercial rock-pop-rap stuff (valley girl, joe's garage, etc) secondary to his classical compositions--a means to an end, as it were. (though he also wrote out his rock and jazz pieces...) I've checked out the scores to a few FZ "serious" works (though not going to cough up the hundreds that ZappaCo wants)--and they are quite complex, especially in terms of rhythm, odd meters, etc.
Pierre Boulez for one doesn't offer his praise lightly (check out the Perfect Stranger CD/album). He understood what Zappa was attempting to do in terms of developing modern classical music, ala Stravinsky, Varese, Milhaud (and jazz, I believe); ergo, I think Zappa was aware of something like objective beauty, musically speaking, as any serious composer is; he's not merely doing great jams at the sports bar of the mind--it required a lot of skill and discipline to orchestrate, rehearse and play FZ's music. Many rock fans don't quite get that.
To thine own self be true.
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