Incredibly, I'm posting again on this thread. The brief discussion about Zappa's music we had here a couple of months ago caused me to begin listening intensively again to Zappa's music. This ended up with me scouring the web for Zappa material, getting and reading "The Real Frank Zappa Book" (the closest thing there is to an autobiography) and . . . ultimately to making a Zappa web page:
http://users.aol.com/gburch2/zappa.html
where you'll find a complete discography linked to Amazon and a link for the book, which I highly recommend. In the process I came to a definitive answer to the questions about Zappa's social and political views that were raised: Zappa was pretty much an absolute libertarian individualist and agnostic with very strongly-held views about the positive value of science and critical thinking and the anti-reason effects of organized religion. It would be hard to find a more extropian artist. Especially for our younger subscribers who won't remember Zappa personally, I highly recommend exploration of his music and thought.
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<burchg@liddellsapp.com> Attorney ::: Director, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
"Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must
be driven into practice with courageous impatience." -- Admiral Hyman G. Rickover