ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Frank Zappa's recording and, specifically, raise some issues that are central to its complexity and incomparability. The durability of a number of Frank Zappa's recordings arises out of more than the music alone. From the start of his ascendance in the recording industry with Freak Out! in 1966, he routinely employed the packaging of recorded sound as a platform for communication in forms not limited to the acoustic. While it might be something like an act of terminological overkill, Zappa can be said to have aspired to reanimating Richard Wagner's ambitious conceit of the Gesamtkunstwerk: the total work of art. Zappa frames Wild Man Fischer's repertoire in a deliberate and schematic fashion on the two LPs, as each side features a separate and distinguishable element of the material. The chapter focuses on tracks Why I Am Normal, Balling Isn't Everything, Circle, and Larry Under Pressure.
