Frank Vincent Zappa was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. His work is characterized by nonconformity, free-form improvisation, sound experiments, musical virtuosity and satire of American culture. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works, and produced almost all of the 60-plus albums that he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. Zappa also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. He is considered one of the most innovative and stylistically diverse musicians of his generation.
The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the Stasi, was the state security service of East Germany from 1950 to 1990.
Bad Doberan is a town in the district of Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It was the capital of the former district of Bad Doberan. In 2012, its population was 11,427.
Gesine Lötzsch is a German politician of the left-wing party Die Linke. In 2010, with Klaus Ernst, she was elected president of the party.
Edwin "Eddie" Jobson is an English musician noted for his use of synthesizers. He has been a member of several progressive rock bands, including Curved Air, Roxy Music, U.K. and Jethro Tull. He was also part of Frank Zappa's band in 1976–77. Aside from his keyboard work Jobson has also gained acclaim for his violin playing. He won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2017 Progressive Music Awards. In March 2019 Jobson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Roxy Music.
Apostrophe (') is the fifth solo studio album and eighteenth in total by Frank Zappa, released in March 1974 in both stereo and quadraphonic formats. An edited version of its lead-off track, "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow", was the first of Zappa's three Billboard Top 100 hits, ultimately peaking at number 86. The album itself became the biggest commercial success of Zappa's career, reaching number 10 on the US Billboard 200.
The Muffin Men are a British band, based in Liverpool, England, which primarily plays the music of Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. The group formed in 1990, originally to play a one-off concert to celebrate Zappa's fiftieth birthday. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic the band toured for thirty unbroken years around The UK, Europe and Scandinavia, performing Zappa's music as a tribute band, along with some of their own compositions. Until his death in 2008, the band often featured guest vocals and percussion by former Mothers of Invention drummer and vocalist Jimmy Carl Black, with whom they also performed songs by Captain Beefheart.
Napoleon Murphy Brock is an American singer, saxophonist and flute player who is best known for his work with Frank Zappa in the 1970s, including the albums Apostrophe ('), Roxy & Elsewhere, One Size Fits All, and Bongo Fury. He contributed notable vocal performances to the Zappa songs "Village of the Sun," "Cheepnis," and "Florentine Pogen."
The Molli is a narrow-gauge steam-powered railway in Mecklenburg, Germany, running on 900 mm gauge track. It operates between Bad Doberan, Heiligendamm and Kühlungsborn West over a total distance of 15.4 km with a running time of 40 minutes. Within Bad Doberan the line runs through the street, and later along a linden tree-lined avenue.
Isaac Willis 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 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 Rebellion, You Are What You Is, and The Man from Utopia, and as the title character and narrator in Zappa's off-Broadway-styled conceptual musical Thing-Fish.
Rock School is a 2005 documentary film about The Paul Green School of Rock Music.
The Lives of Others is a 2006 German drama film written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck marking his feature film directorial debut. The plot is about the monitoring of East Berlin residents by agents of the Stasi, East Germany's secret police. It stars Ulrich Mühe as Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler, Ulrich Tukur as his superior Anton Grubitz, Sebastian Koch as the playwright Georg Dreyman, and Martina Gedeck as Dreyman's lover, a prominent actress named Christa-Maria Sieland.
TriPod is a rock trio with no guitars or keyboards.
As an icon of counterculture and underground rock the American rock musician and composer Frank Zappa has been featured and referenced in various different media.
Adelaide Gail Zappa was the wife of musician and composer Frank Zappa and the trustee of the Zappa Family Trust. They met in Los Angeles in 1966 and married while she was pregnant with their first child, Moon, followed by Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva. Gail was also the aunt of model and actress Lala Sloatman.
Mats/Morgan Band is a band that features Morgan Ågren and Mats Öberg. Morgan is a drummer and composer and Mats is a keyboard player and composer. The band is a showcase for their virtuosic skills on their respective instruments as well as their compositional skills. Their music is difficult to categorize, containing elements of jazz, electronic music, waltz, dance music, avant garde/free jazz, techno, rock, progressive and modern classical music.
Lutz Heilmann is a German politician of the left-wing party Die Linke. He was elected to the Bundestag in the 2005 federal election as a member of the party list in Schleswig-Holstein. Shortly thereafter it was revealed that he had worked for the Stasi from 1985 to 1990. Heilmann drew national and international media attention when he caused the website www.wikipedia.de to be blocked by a preliminary injunction on 13 November 2008. His Bundestag term ended in 2009, and he failed to be nominated for a second term.
Kimono Draggin' are an American prog-punk band formed in 2003 from New Haven, Connecticut. The lineup consists of Joseph Nolan, Yossi Hatton, and Chris Swirski. Their version of progressive rock is strongly influenced by bands of the 1970s and 1980s including The Stooges, The Mothers of Invention, Talking Heads and Minutemen. As Patrick Ferrucci quotes, "It’s party rock with an edge and an intelligence. There’s wit and wildness just swimming around in Kimono’s music". Mark Suppanz of The Big Takeover describes the music as "...noisy, souped-up rock saturated with a healthy dose of reckless abandon and a raw, unpolished and in-your-face sound".
Jack Dupon is a French progressive rock band. The band's music is created in a "scientific-empirical" way, based on themes, using counter melodies and poly-rhythms performed by one or several of the musicians, and with total improvisations during live performances or recorded and reworked in the studio. They are often labeled by the media as the worthy heirs of Frank Zappa, King Crimson and Gong. Onstage Jack Dupon, a fictionalized character, travels back and forth through time to help in bettering the world.
Diether Dehm is a German singer-songwriter, music producer and left-wing politician. He is currently a member of the Left Party, and has previously been a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the PDS.
