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Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American guitarist, composer, and bandleader. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed Rock music, rock, Pop music, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and ''musique concrète'' works; he additionally produced nearly all the 60-plus albums he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. His work is characterized by wikt:nonconformity, nonconformity, Musical improvisation, improvisation sound experimentation, Virtuoso, musical virtuosity and satire of American culture. 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. As a mostly self-taught composer and performer, Zappa had diverse musical influences that led him to create music that was sometimes difficult to categorize. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for 20th-century ...
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Ekeberghallen
Ekeberghallen, also known as ''Ekeberg idrettshall'', is an indoor sports arena located at Ekebergsletta in the neighborhood of Ekeberg in the Nordstrand, Norway, Nordstrand district of Oslo, Norway. Ekebergsletta is part of the Oslo park system and is used primarily for sporting events. History Ekeberghallen was opened in 1973 and expanded in 1981 when adjacent office localities named ''Osloidrettens Hus'' were opened as well. The court size is 46 × 75 meters, and the audience capacity is 4800. The facility is divided into badminton courts, handball courts, tennis courts, volleyball courts and is fully equipped for athletics. It has wardrobes, sound system, stage / table and chairs for alternative use. It is used, among other things, in connection with the Norway Cup. The hall is owned by Oslo Idrettskrets. It is mainly used by Bækkelagets Sportsklub and other sports clubs in the city, for indoor sports such as basketball, handball, volleyball, badminton, indoor athle ...
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Experimental Music
Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions. Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, institutionalized compositional, performing, and aesthetic conventions in music. Elements of experimental music include Indeterminacy in music, indeterminacy, in which the composer introduces the elements of chance or unpredictability with regard to either the composition or its performance. Artists may approach a hybrid of disparate styles or incorporate unorthodox and unique elements. The practice became prominent in the mid-20th century, particularly in Europe and North America. John Cage was one of the earliest composers to use the term and one of experimental music's primary innovators, utilizing Indeterminacy (music), indeterminacy techniques and seeking unknown outcomes. In France, as early as 1953, Pierre Schaeffer had begun using ...
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Straight Records
Straight Records, self-identified simply as Straight, was a record label formed in 1969 to distribute productions and discoveries of Frank Zappa and his business partner/manager Herb Cohen. Straight was formed at the same time as a companion label, Bizarre Records. Straight and Bizarre were manufactured and distributed in the U.S. by the Warner Bros. Records family of labels, which also included Reprise Records. Straight recordings were distributed in the U.K. by CBS Records. Frank Zappa chose the majority of the artists for the Straight label. His original intention was to release albums by avant-garde artists on Bizarre, and recordings by more mainstream artists on Straight. However the original concept failed to work out as expected due to issues with record distribution and artist management. Frank Zappa, the Mothers of Invention, Wild Man Fischer, and Lenny Bruce certainly fit in at Bizarre, but all others ended up on Straight. This led to some very unusual albums ...
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Bizarre Records
Bizarre Records, self-identified simply as Bizarre, was a production company and record label formed for artists discovered by rock musician Frank Zappa and his business partner/manager Herb Cohen. History Bizarre was originally formed as a production company. In 1967 Zappa's label, Verve Records, missed the deadline to renew their option on Zappa's recording contract after his second album, '' Absolutely Free'', recorded with his group the Mothers of Invention. This gave Zappa and Cohen the upper hand in negotiating their own production deal with Verve. The purpose of forming his own production company was to give Zappa complete creative control over his work and the works he planned to produce for others. The first albums associated with Bizarre were released in early 1968. These included '' We're Only in It for the Money'' by the Mothers of Invention and '' Lumpy Gravy'', Zappa's first solo album. Other Zappa-related releases were '' Cruising with Ruben & the Jets'' (1968) a ...
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Verve Records
Verve Records is an active American record label owned by Universal Music Group (UMG). Founded in 1956 by Norman Granz, the label is home to the world's largest jazz catalogue, which includes recordings by artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Cal Tjader, Nina Simone, Stan Getz, Bill Evans, Billie Holiday, Oscar Peterson, Jon Batiste, and Diana Krall among others as well as a diverse mix of other recordings that fall outside of jazz including albums from disparate artists like the Velvet Underground, Kurt Vile, Arooj Aftab, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and many more. It absorbed the catalogues of Granz's earlier label, Clef Records, founded in 1946; Norgran Records, founded in 1953; and material which was previously licensed to Mercury Records. The label has continued to be the home to an eclectic mix of modern artists, including Kurt Vile, Everything But the Girl, Samara Joy and Arooj Aftab. The restructured Verve Records is now part of the Verve Label G ...
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Frank Zappa Discography
This is a list of albums by Frank Zappa, including all those credited to the Mothers of Invention. During his lifetime, Zappa released 62 albums. Since 1994, the Zappa Family Trust has released 68 posthumous albums as of May 2025, making a total of 130 albums/album sets. In 2012 the distribution of Zappa's recorded output moved to Universal Music Enterprises. In June 2022 the Zappa Trust announced that it had sold Zappa's entire catalog to Universal Music, including master tapes, song copyrights and trademarks. A list of albums of Zappa's music as performed by other artists is also included here. Official albums Posthumous official albums ''Beat the Boots'' series Compilation albums Singles Videos * '' Frank Zappa's 200 Motels'' (Cinema 1971, VHS 1984, DVD 2009) * ''A Token of His Extreme'' (TV 1976, DVD 2013) * '' Baby Snakes'' (Cinema 1979, VHS - edited version 1983, VHS - complete version 1987, DVD 2003) * '' Live at the Palladium / The Torture Never St ...
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Musique Concrète
Musique concrète (; ): "[A] problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic, with a readiness to see material for study in terms of highly abstract dualisms and correlations, which on occasion does not sit easily with the perhaps more pragmatic English language. This creates several problems of translation affecting key terms. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the word ''concret''/''concrète'' itself. The word in French, which has nothing of the familiar meaning of "concrete" in English, is used throughout [''In Search of a Concrete Music''] with all its usual French connotations of "palpable", "nontheoretical", and "experiential", all of which pertain to a greater or lesser extent to the type of music Schaeffer is pioneering. Despite the risk of ambiguity, we decided to translate it with the English word ''co ...
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Electronic Music
Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means (electroacoustic music). Pure electronic instruments depend entirely on circuitry-based sound generation, for instance using devices such as an electronic oscillator, theremin, or synthesizer: no acoustic waves need to be previously generated by mechanical means and then converted into electrical signals. On the other hand, electromechanical instruments have mechanical parts such as strings or hammers that generate the sound waves, together with electric elements including pickup (music technology), magnetic pickups, power amplifiers and loudspeakers that convert the acoustic waves into electrical signals, process them and convert them back into sound waves. Such electromechanical devices in ...
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Comedy Music
Comedy music or musical comedy is a genre of music that is comical, comedic or humorous in nature. Its history can be traced back to the first century in ancient Greece and Rome, moving forward in time to the Middle Ages, Medieval Period, Classical period (music), Classical and Romantic music, Romantic eras, and the 20th century. Various forms of comedic musical theatre, including "musical play", "musical comedy", "operetta" and "light opera", evolved from the comic operas first developed in late 17th-century Italy. Popular music artists in the 20th century interested in comedy include Allan Sherman, Frank Zappa, Tiny Tim (musician), Tiny Tim, Barenaked Ladies, Randy Newman, and "Weird Al" Yankovic. Artists in the 21st century include Tenacious D, Flight of the Conchords, The Lonely Island, Ninja Sex Party and The Axis of Awesome. Comedy music is often associated with counterculture, due to the subversive messages it displays. This informative nature of comedy music also contrib ...
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Doo-wop
Doo-wop (also spelled doowop and doo wop) is a subgenre of rhythm and blues music that originated in African-American communities during the 1940s, mainly in the large cities of the United States, including New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Baltimore, Newark, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. It features vocal group harmony that carries an engaging melodic line to a simple beat with little or no instrumentation. Lyrics are simple, usually about love, sung by a lead vocal over background vocals, and often featuring, in the bridge, a melodramatically heartfelt recitative addressed to the beloved. Harmonic singing of nonsense syllables (such as "doo-wop") is a common characteristic of these songs. Gaining popularity in the 1950s, doo-wop was commercially viable until the early 1960s and continued to influence performers in other genres. Origins Doo-wop has complex musical, social, and commercial origins. Musical precedents Doo-wop's style is a mixture of p ...
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Avant-garde Music
Avant-garde music is music that is considered to be at the forefront of innovation in its field, with the term "avant-garde" implying a critique of existing aesthetic conventions, rejection of the status quo in favor of unique or original elements, and the idea of deliberately challenging or alienating audiences. Avant-garde music may be distinguished from experimental music by the way it adopts an extreme position within a certain tradition, whereas experimental music lies outside tradition. Distinctions Avant-garde music may be distinguished from experimental music by the way it adopts an extreme position within a certain tradition, whereas experimental music lies outside tradition. The biggest distinction between avant-garde and experimental music was how it relates to tradition. Other distinctions include subject matter, as well as having a superficial idea to avoid diving into serious subjects. Even though avant-garde and experimental music have many distinctions, experi ...
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Pop Music
Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom.S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street, eds, ''iarchive:cambridgecompani00frit, The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), , pp. 95–105. During the 1950s and 1960s, pop music encompassed rock and roll and the youth-oriented styles it influenced. ''Rock music, Rock'' and ''pop'' music remained roughly synonymous until the late 1960s, after which ''pop'' became associated with music that was more commercial, wikt:ephemeral, ephemeral, and accessible. Identifying factors of pop music usually include repeated choruses and Hook (music), hooks, short to medium-length songs written in a basic format (often the verse–chorus form, verse–chorus structure), and rhythms or tempos that can be easily danced to. Much of pop music also borrows elements from other styles such as rock, hip hop, urban contemporary, ...
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