Andmoreagain

Dear James,

At the moment I'm reading Barry Miles' "Frank Zappa". Miles' McCartney biography "Many Years From Now" was great, but this one's harder going. Probably because it's about Frank Zappa. When we were in Concepción at the weekend, Funseeker's niece Ana asked me to read to her, so I read her some of this. She's only four. That'll stay with her forever.

I've got up to the bit where young Frank moves to Hollywood and figures out that a) the freaks (what the hippies were before they were called hippies) like the Byrds; b) the Byrds are popular; c) therefore, if he can get the freaks to like him, he'll be as popular as the Byrds. Clearly an oversight on Zappa's part, as Miles writes:

Zappa's music was never as danceable as the Byrds' and required a lot more concentration. They couldn't just flow with it because Frank was always changing the time signature or introducing spoken parts.

It's also just mentioned that Arthur Lee and Love were also on the Sunset Strip scene at the same time, which is handy as it means I can post this video instead of looking for a listenable one by Zappa.