You Are What You Is
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You Are What You Is
''You Are What You Is'' is a 1981 double album by American musician Frank Zappa. His 34th album, it consists of three musical suites which encompass pop, doo-wop, jazz, hard rock, reggae, soul, blues, new wave and country. The album's lyrics satirize a number of topics, including hippies, socialites, fashion, narcotics use, cultural appropriation, religion, televangelists and the military draft. Production After the release of ''Joe's Garage'', Frank Zappa set up his home studio, the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen, and planned to release a triple LP live album called ''Warts and All''. As ''Warts and All'' reached completion, Zappa found the project to be "unwieldy" due to its length, and scrapped it, later conceiving ''Crush All Boxes''. ''Crush All Boxes'' would have been a single LP containing the studio recordings "Doreen", "Fine Girl", "Easy Meat" (a live recording with studio overdubs) and "Goblin Girl" on the first side, with the second side being occupied by a suite co ...
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Double Album
A double album (or double record) is an audio album that spans two units of the primary medium in which it is sold, typically either records or compact disc. A double album is usually, though not always, released as such because the recording is longer than the capacity of the medium. Recording artists often think of double albums as being a single piece artistically; however, there are exceptions such as John Lennon's ''Some Time in New York City'' (which consisted of one studio record and one live album packaged together) and OutKast's ''Speakerboxxx/The Love Below'' (effectively two solo albums, one by each member of the duo). Since the advent of the compact disc, albums are sometimes released with a bonus disc featuring additional material as a supplement to the main album, with live tracks, studio out-takes, cut songs, or older unreleased material. One innovation was the inclusion of a DVD of related material with a compact disc, such as video related to the album or DVD-A ...
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Country Music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, old-time, and American folk music forms including Appalachian, Cajun, Creole, and the cowboy Western music styles of Hawaiian, New Mexico, Red Dirt, Tejano, and Texas country. Country music often consists of ballads and honky-tonk dance tunes with generally simple form, folk lyrics, and harmonies often accompanied by string instruments such as electric and acoustic guitars, steel guitars (such as pedal steels and dobros), banjos, and fiddles as well as harmonicas. Blues modes have been used extensively throughout its recorded history. The term ''country music'' gained popularity in the 1940s in preference to '' hillbilly music'', with "country music" being used today to describe many styles and subgenres. It came to encomp ...
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Steve Vai
Steven Siro Vai (; born June 6, 1960) is an American guitarist, composer, songwriter, and producer. A three-time Grammy Award winner and fifteen-time nominee, Vai started his music career in 1978 at the age of eighteen as a transcriptionist for Frank Zappa, and played in Zappa's band from 1980 to 1983. He embarked on a solo career in 1983 and has released eight solo albums to date. He has recorded and toured with Alcatrazz, David Lee Roth, and Whitesnake, as well as recording with artists such as Public Image Ltd, Mary J. Blige, Spinal Tap, Alice Cooper, Motörhead, and Polyphia. Additionally, Vai has toured with live-only acts G3, Zappa Plays Zappa, and the Experience Hendrix tour, as well as headlining international tours. Vai has been described as a "highly individualistic player" and part of a generation of "heavy rock and metal virtuosi who came to the fore in the 1980s". He released his first solo album ''Flex-Able'' in 1984, while his most successful release, ''Passi ...
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Arthur Barrow
Arthur Barrow (born February 28, 1952) is a multi-instrumental musician, best known for his stint as a bass guitar player for Frank Zappa in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Early life Barrow was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1952 and grew up in Alamo Heights, Texas, Alamo Heights. His father played piano and organ, as had his father, Arthur Barrow of Buffalo, New York, a strict piano teacher and organist. When he was 13, he washed neighborhood cars until he had saved enough money to buy his first electric guitar (an Alamo) and his first amplifier (a Kent). He learned how to play music by ear by copying surf guitar records like The Ventures, and later, Jimi Hendrix, and still later, Frank Zappa. He played in local bands through junior high and high school during the 1960s. He began to study classical organ in 1970. While attending Alamo Heights High School, Arthur Barrow cut his musical teeth playing lead guitar in rock bands such as The Restless Ones (Jesse Childs on bass, Mike M ...
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Tommy Mars
Tommy Mars (born Thomas Mariano on October 26, 1951) is an American keyboard player known for his work with Frank Zappa. Mars began piano lessons at age eight, and later his instrument range expanded to various keyboards and synthesizers. Mars graduated in 1972 from the Hartt College of Music in West Hartford, Connecticut. From there he struggled to hold a variety of musical jobs including choirmaster, church organist, movie accompanist and more. In a 1980 interview in ''Keyboard'' magazine, Mars described one of the more unusual jobs he had as follows - "I was working in this revolving organ bar in Kodiak, Alaska, with Japanese and Russian fishermen kicking me in the back if I couldn't play an ethnic folk song to their drunken satisfaction". Knowing nothing about Zappa except for the songs "King Kong" and "Peaches en Regalia", Mars was asked to audition for Zappa's band with the help of percussionist Ed Mann, also a member of Zappa's group. Zappa hired Mars based on Mars' syn ...
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Ray White
Ray White (full name Ray Shirley White Sr) is an American soul vocalist and rock and blues guitarist, best known as a member of Frank Zappa's touring ensembles. He was drafted into Zappa's band in late 1976, being featured on rhythm guitar and vocals, forming a vocal harmony partnership with Ike Willis on later tours in 1980 and 1984. White's vocals can be heard on ''Zappa in New York'' (March 1978), ''You Are What You Is'' (September 1981) as well as others. White can also be found on a '' The Torture Never Stops'' and '' Does Humor Belong in Music?''; the former is a DVD from Zappa's 1981 tour (without Ike Willis) and the latter filmed at the pier in New York in 1984; the video features White and Ike Willis' vocal harmonies. According to Zappa, White, who was deeply religious, was uncomfortable with the atheistic views of some of the other band members, which led to his departure. White has also worked with jam-oriented groups like KVHW, Don't Push the Clown and Umphrey ...
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Ike Willis
Isaac Willis (born November 12, 1955) is an American vocalist and guitarist who was a regular member of Frank Zappa's studio and touring bands from 1978 until the last tour in 1988. He did not tour with Zappa in 1981 and 1982 because he wanted to be at home for the birth of his two children, and returned to touring with Zappa for his final two tours in 1984 (which Zappa intended at the time to be his final tour) and 1988. He currently tours with the Frank Zappa tribute bands Bogus Pomp, Ossi Duri, Project/Object, Pojama People, Ugly Radio Rebellion and ZAPPATiKA. He also performed several times with the Brazilian Zappa cover band, The Central Scrutinizer Band, The Muffin Men, and with the Italian bands Ossi Duri and Elio e le Storie Tese . Additionally, he has appeared multiple times at the annual Zappanale Festival in Bad Doberan, Germany. He is most recognized for his involvement in Zappa records such as playing Joe in ''Joe's Garage'', providing vocals on ''Tinsel Town Re ...
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Tinsel Town Rebellion
''Tinsel Town Rebellion'' is a double live album released by Frank Zappa in May 1981. The album was conceived by Zappa after he scrapped the planned albums ''Warts and All'' and ''Crush All Boxes'', and contains tracks that were intended for those albums. Overview The lyrical themes varyingly focus on human sexuality, popular culture and other topics. The title track is a satire of the punk rock scene, describing a band that adopts the punk style to get a record deal. The album also contains reworked recordings of older Zappa songs, including "Love of My Life," "I Ain't Got No Heart," "Tell Me You Love Me," "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" and the third release of "Peaches en Regalia" (appropriately titled "Peaches III"). Production ''Tinsel Town Rebellion'' was formed out of two albums - ''Warts and All'' and ''Crush All Boxes'' - that Zappa originally planned to release following the establishment of his home studio, the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen. ''Warts and All'' was inte ...
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Overdubbing
Overdubbing (also known as layering) is a technique used in audio recording in which audio tracks that have been pre-recorded are then played back and monitored, while simultaneously recording new, doubled, or augmented tracks onto one or more available tracks of a digital audio workstation (DAW) or tape recorder. The overdub process can be repeated multiple times. This technique is often used with singers, as well as with instruments, or ensembles/orchestras. Overdubbing is typically done for the purpose of adding richness and complexity to the original recording. For example, if there are only one or two artists involved in the recording process, overdubbing can give the effect of sounding like many performers. In vocal performances, the performer usually listens to an existing recorded performance (usually through headphones in a recording studio) and simultaneously plays a new performance along with it, which is also recorded. The intention is that the final mix will contain ...
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Joe's Garage
''Joe's Garage'' is a three-part rock opera recorded by American musician Frank Zappa in September and November 1979. Originally released as two separate studio albums on Zappa Records, the project was later remastered and reissued as a triple album box set, ''Joe's Garage, Acts I, II & III'', in 1987. The story is told by a character identified as the "Central Scrutinizer" narrating the story of Joe, an average adolescent male, from Canoga Park, Los Angeles, who forms a garage rock band, has unsatisfying relationships with women, gives all of his money to a government-assisted and insincere religion, explores sexual activities with appliances, and is imprisoned. After being released from prison into a dystopian society in which music itself has been criminalized, he lapses into insanity. The album encompasses a large spectrum of musical styles, while its lyrics often feature satirical or humorous commentary on American society and politics. It addresses themes of individualism, ...
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Televangelists
Televangelism ( tele- "distance" and "evangelism," meaning "ministry," sometimes called teleministry) is the use of media, specifically radio and television, to communicate Christianity. Televangelists are ministers, whether official or self-proclaimed, who devote a large portion of their ministry to television broadcasting. Some televangelists are also regular pastors or ministers in their own places of worship (often a megachurch), but the majority of their followers come from TV and radio audiences. Others do not have a conventional congregation, and work primarily through television. The term is also used derisively by critics as an insinuation of aggrandizement by such ministers. Televangelism began as a uniquely American phenomenon, resulting from a largely deregulated media where access to television networks and cable TV is open to virtually anyone who can afford it, combined with a large Christian population that is able to provide the necessary funding. It became espec ...
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Cultural Appropriation
Cultural appropriation is the inappropriate or unacknowledged adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity. This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from minority cultures. Fourmile, Henrietta (1996). "Making things work: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Involvement in Bioregional Planning" in ''Approaches to bioregional planning. Part 2. Background Papers to the conference; 30 October – 1 November 1995, Melbourne''; Department of the Environment, Sport and Territories. Canberra. pp. 268–269: "The esternintellectual property rights system and the (mis)appropriation of Indigenous knowledge without the prior knowledge and consent of Indigenous peoples evoke feelings of anger, or being cheated" According to critics of the practice, cultural appropriation differs from acculturation, assimilation, or equal cultural exchange in that this appropriation is a form of colonialism. When cu ...
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