180. An old post from AFFZ

The following posting is from AFFZ (alt.fan.frank.zappa) in 2002. It concerns a nanosecond of FZ's breath at a certain point in a certain track on his last major release before his death, CIVILIZATION PHAZE III.

Yeah, that's how crazy we Zappa fanatics are! (Actually, we're much crazier, really.)

So here's Scott's post from 2002:

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This reminds me of my personal favorite tiny little FZ moment.

At 1:20 into "This is all wrong," just after Michael Rappaport says "Hey, yo man ... I don't like all this waterfall action" you can hear Frank laughing quietly through his nose. The first time I heard this, on December 17th, 1994, I remember this sound conjuring an image of Frank in my head. The image starts at the great man's honker. Gradually the camera pulls out and you see Frank's face with a big grin on it. Further out you see him standing in UMRK around the big Bossendorfer. He's smiling because this is what he lives for. For Frank, appreciating that one random non-sequitor from Michael Rappaport is what living was all about. Frank collected all these random moments of moving air. Then he rearranged them temporally for his own amusement (and ours, as a side-effect).

This one act of Nasal Retention symbolizes the whole project/
object for me. It has added poignancy because this was near the end of Frank's life. His joy in the studio is was what kept him going in those years. If we could ask Frank, I bet he would attach as much significance to that brief exhalation of breath, causing the hair in his nostrils (the spherical constant?) to vibrate just ever so slightly, as he would give to the score of Sinister Footwear.

Or maybe not.

-- Scott "Call Any Vegetable" Morrison

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