Zappa Disagrees With Einstein

Why disagree?

In the “Zappa Disagrees With Einstein” interview where Bob is imitating Frank taunting nuclear scientists, “Yeh you guys built a bomb so what you got it wrong” is hilarious. I’m trying to figure out why Frank Zappa would disagree with Einstein? I think it has to do with music. At an early age Frank realized something special about musical “notes.” Music has a magic ability to cut through everything, politics, norms, beliefs, you name it music can cut through it all. On the Paul McCartney episode of Car Pool Karaoke Jame Cordin was brought to tears singing Penny Lane WITH Paul ON Penny Lane. Paul looks at tearful James and says, “See the power of music.” Paul knew. Frank knew.

Here is the interview clip of Bob Dobbs talking to Tommy Mars about Frank disagreeing with Einstein. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh8nFYU3kSk
This interview has so many inside references and Bob he talks fast, so I thought I would make a transcript. After you watch the video you can read the transcript here http://www.bogart9.com/zappa.html

My theory is that the universe is made out of stupidity because it is more plentiful than hydrogen, why shouldn’t we talk about it?

— Frank Zappa on Late Night Special BBC, 1993

Our approach

When we are born we just automatically assume the world is what it is from our 5 senses. We see, smell, hear, something we just assume that is real reality, the same reality as everyone else senses. It’s not real reality, and even that, is not the same for everyone. How could it be? That’s only our first clue. When Einstein was 12 years old his pop gave him a Compass. He was fascinated by this. That got him thinking things are not adding up. Am I out of phase? When I joined the Army I couldn’t figure out in Boot Camp why everyone acted a little differently to this draconian situation that is Boot Camp. My first thought was Don’t Argue with a Drill Sergeant it’s not gonna end well for you pal. My second thought was how come some folks just don’t get it? Great googilly mooglely. Something aint riite.

Frank Zappa looked at music down to the frequency level, notes pushing air molecules.

Bruce Lee looked at fighting as a “situation” not a confrontation. Frank saw something about music that broke the rules of reality, rules that Einstein had already broken. Bruce Lee saw Karate Tournaments and Traditional martial arts as a made-up human social construct as if humans wrap themselves in like a cocoon bubble showing them what they think they want to see. He stripped all that off and built his philosophy off reality rather than tradition or illusion. It’s not for everyone. Reality never did have a good reputation.

“If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mother, your Dad, your priest, to some guy on television, to any of the people telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.”

(The Real Frank Zappa Book, 1990)

Frank makes it sound easy. But his teenage friend was Captain Beefheart. What about us regular folk who might wear an occasional set of Python Boots we don’t know that we don’t know. So of course we listen to our parents, our priest, some guy on TV, Tik Tok, Instagram, commercial corporate propaganda, we don’t know. Frank has albums of music trying to tell us this to help us figure it out. Help I’m a rock. We are dumb all over yes we are. You are what you is.

Communism doesn’t work because it is out of phase with human nature. Are we going to wake up one day to find this statement equally true when applied to the concept of Western democracy?
(The Real Frank Zappa Book, 1990)

Frank said that in 1990. “Out of Phase”? He’s always talking musical. What would he say today in 2024 seeing how “human nature” was so out of phase it was 1812 since that last time this happened. Human nature is a crazy dynamic that can overthrow it’s own definition. Have we always been crazy, or does human nature change over time? Nobody knows what is right we just know when we’re out of phase. Einstein thought about what stays the same when he saw mind and matter always changing but the speed of light remains the same. No matter what. This made Einstein question our notion of reality as in space and time. I had that same notion when I saw Noah’s Space Ark.

Perhaps Frank had some sort of similar epiphany when he looked at musical notes. He certainly had epiphanies when he saw society and how illogical it is. His views would be deeply offensive to conservatives and certain political folks, the funny thing is none of them know about Franks music. When he was on CSPAN testifying and on Shows talking about the PMRC Music Labels issue, he’s arguing with these conservatives who know evil Heavy Metal and they know how super bad Rap is and sexual Pop song lyrics but none of them were concerned about “Dinah Moe Hum” or “Bobby Brown.” Frank was defending Twisted Sister, Prince, John Denver, his own music was not commercially known. Probably the first time in his career he was happy his music wasn’t known by the commercial masses.

It’s all a bunch of poppycock. When you ask Congress, “What is Pornography” their answer is, “I know it when I see it” which means it is whatever anybody thinks it is on that day in that year. Lenny Bruce was brought to court 7 times.

In the The Real Frank Zappa Book he said, “Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.” I so wish we could have seen Frank and Albert Einstein discuss this. Albert dies in 1955, Frank was 15 years old.

“In Zappa-land everything is paradoxical.” – Alex Winter

 FRANK ZAPPA ON ART
I think the word “art” has been pretty much flogged into porridge. Today you hear the word “art” and you think of people who do paintings and have their work admired by rich people at cocktail parties, and it conjures up a world of phony stuff, and I don’t participate in that world. I’m happy that it’s there for the people who like it. It’s a nice form of entertainment for them but to me that’s not what it’s all about. I don’t think that training people to consume art in that sense makes them any more sensitive, or more highly developed or refined in any way. It doesn’t make them a better person, it just makes them a dupe for a bogus way of life. That art world really is a way of abusing the people who made the art in the first place. The best example is the common Soho gallery split of 60-40: 60% for the gallery owner, 40% for the artist. I mean, in the worst rock and roll record contract you don’t get that kind of a reaming. So, so much for the art world.

I think Frank is talking about the art world in New York. I think you can paint art for rich people at cocktail parties and make dough and avoid Soho galleries. Just don’t live in New York. Don’t be a hostage. Time and Space remember,. Well Frank said in these interviews you get what you get for that day at that time. It will be different next year. The media, that’s a different story.

In 2024, the summer time, I would say the Media has been pretty much flogged into porridge. Only Jesus knows what Frank would say about The Media we have today. It would be something like, “Flies all green and buzzin’ in this porridge of despair, stinks so bad the stones been chokin’ ‘N weepin’ greenish drops, a CNN midget with a bucket and a mop .. .. as the News goes down the drain “

I think today everything has been flogged into porridge. Frank said, “The problem with communicating with anybody in the English language is that so much damage has been done to the language itself by advertisers, by political campaigns, that the words themselves have been mutated to the point where you have to choose them really carefully because even if in fact it is “art”, you don’t want to say it’s “Art” because the negative connotations of calling it “art” puts a weird spin on what you’re saying. So I generally try and avoid any connection with that word just because it impedes the process of trying to get your point across. If you’re going to talk to somebody, you want to talk to them in a language they can understand using words that they’re familiar with. That should be a goal for communication and “art” is one of the bad words these days.

Then Frank said about music, “If you get to the other definition of music that I use when I’m working on my stuff, it means the organization of any data, choreography, anything, any data. So long as you say to yourself, “I’m now making a musical composition of this stuff”, the composition can include stuff that’s living in this ashtray, whatever it is. So long as you willfully organize it into that object that you’re making. That’s the criteria that I would use.”

FZ said, “The word “art” has been pretty much flogged into porridge.” What would he say about the word “art” today? Arf she said, that’s the dog talkin’…
Evelyn the modified dog.

Back in 1991 Frank said: -right now the United States is two hundred and forty million people dumb enough to buy anything that anybody sells them and smart enough not to buy their own stuff, O.K. And that is not something that you can continue for a century. You can’t go for a hundred years just buying everybody else’s stuff. Sooner or later you’re going to have to redevelop the product base in the United States so that we buy our own stuff and that our commodities become valuable to people elsewhere. This trade imbalance is not a joke. It has long-range implications that could be very severe. And for every American that dreams of the American way of life and owning your own little home with the white picket fence and living next door to somebody who looks like Jimmy Stewart, they ain’t going to get it.

How did he know today it’s almost impossible for young people to get a house? George Carlin said, “The table is tilted, folks, the game is rigged.” George said, “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.” Marshall McLuhan predicted fragmentation would come to the United States and doom the United States to be a bunch of little bickering mini- states.

In 1991 Frank said, “In the United States, we are breaking up into regions. It’s the North versus the South, and the East versus the West, very much in politics and every other thing. We’re moving apart. The amount of money that is generated by cocaine that flows directly into the hands of the cartels that make the cocaine is, right now, translating into political power. And over the next, say, twenty-five to fifty years will translate into even more political power for those people. They will transcend governments. Because there is something that I heard about last night, that I imagined could happen, and it turns out I was right. This friend of mine who’s spent some time in Brazil verifies the fact that the cocaine cartels have gone into the worst slums in Brazil and played Robin Hood to the people there.

They’re giving them cocaine profits to give them clothes and set up these little fiefdoms. Basically what they’ve created is an army of people who are willing to protect them. The police can’t even go into those slums because they’re at risk. Those slums are literally under the control of the guy from Colombia with a bag of money in his hand. Now as a test balloon, I would say what’s happened in Rio with that would indicate to any good businessman, and I would presume that these cocaine guys are good businessmen, that that’s the way to go. Think of every place in the world where you have an underclass – it’s poor and it’s being pushed down by the middleclass, directly above in the case of the United States, or the upper crust that does all their bad stuff. Who is going to take care of these people?

In the United States you’ve got a homeless underclass that’s developing that is unprecedented. If the cocaine cartel came into the United States and helped the homeless, what do you think would happen to the War on Drugs here? Playing Robin Hood is easy when you got that kind of a profit base. It is so peculiar to think about that and I predict that there is going to be more of that happening all over the world. It doesn’t cost that much to give people a little something to eat and a little something to wear. When they’ve got nothing, anything looks good. You don’t have to be a major benefactor – just give them a little present and you’re a good guy.”

Frank said all that in 1991. Ok, who is giving who a little present today in 2024? He said, “In 20 to 25 years . . .” He died 25 years ago. His 25 year prediction is pretty close to real.

He also said, in that same interview, with Bob Marshall, he said -the most interesting music as far as I’m concerned is music in which dissonance is created, sustained for the proper amount of time, and resolved, it was an itch and you got your scratch. So, the concept of dissonance in my work works on a lot of different levels. You can have rhythmic dissonance. Any rhythm which goes against the grain of a natural rhythm is going to be disturbing for the period at which the dissonance exists. But once you get back to that downbeat, you can then look back and say, “Hey, that was quite fascinating what happened there. I didn’t know that you could squeeze all those beats into that one factory cycle”. O.K

When he’s saying, “against the grain of a natural rhythm” he’s referring to an earlier reference that is not here, he describes it as a natural rhythm every person has. Like your default rhythm, that gets disturbed, then it feels good. Some people are fast. Some people are slow, like pajama people po jama people special.

Frank said you might be related to a Jellyfish

Same thing with harmony. Certain chords, when you hear them, it’s like, “Ah, we’re now relaxed because all the harmonics have lined up from here to there and it’s all complete, and it’s like a nice big C major chord.” Like the drone that they give you in the New Age music that just makes your brain sit still. That’s the reason it makes your brain sit still. It’s like, it’s all there, there’s nothing else to do. It’s done. Now, how long can you listen to that. A long time if you’re closely related to a jellyfish.

But if you, in that harmonic environment, include some irritating notes, notes which are not part of the harmonic structure, so long as the note then moves to one of the partials in that static chord – like certain notes want to move upward, some want to move downward, some can actually live in there at a lower volume and just be like a pollutant in the chord, giving texture to the chord. All that stuff is part of the skill of writing music. But unless you understand why you’re doing it, and how long it lasts is very important too because it’s only interesting for a certain period of time, then after that it’s obnoxious. That’s what I do when I put stuff together.

It’s interesting FZ considers everything revolves around sound waves. Is that not vibrations? Molecules they vibrate, with little electrons spinning around the nucleus.

[Atoms and molecules vibrate. Even in the lowest energy level at absolute zero, the atom or molecule will still have a non-zero energy which will cause it to vibrate. A molecular vibration is excited when the molecule absorbs energy]

He says his guitar can push air molecules. So it makes sense that he could view everything revolving around frequencies. We know the frequency that dissolves Kidney Stones, he says there could be all kinds of frequencies we don’t know about. Out of range above and below our spectrum, that could effect different parts of your body, or even kill you.

Frank says, “same thing with words. You have to understand the overall concepts of natural rhythms, things which exist that people take for granted, and the idea that one can create an artificial irritation for a certain period of time to give a pleasurable sensation when it stops. It’s like the kid banging himself with the hammer: “Why are you doing that” – “Because it feels good when I stop.” And in medicine it’s like people who want to be young again, they go in and get their face sand-blasted. That probably doesn’t feel very good, but when it’s all over, they look like Mick Jagger.”

He says, “artificial irritation” and “pleasurable sensation” well we know that for some people different music greatly irritates them, and other music fits their natural rhythm and they dig it. And we all know people who “feel” that any and all music is irritating to them. Many people don’t care about music, they could take it or leave it, out of their life and not miss it. I can’t even imagine a world without Music. The Central Scrutinizer makes music illegal.

Nature Reviews Neuroscience says- When listening to music, we actively generate predictions about what is likely to happen next. This enactive aspect has led to a more comprehensive understanding of music processing involving brain structures implicated in action, emotion and learning. Music perception, action, emotion and learning all rest on the human brain’s fundamental capacity for prediction — as formulated by the predictive coding of music model.

Psychology Today says -Listening to music engages the reward system. The experience of intensely pleasurable music can cause dopamine release in the mesolimbic reward system. However, not everyone experiences chills in response to music. A small portion of the population (about 3 to 4 percent) suffers from musical anhedonia. These individuals do not enjoy or appreciate music, but they still find joy from other things that activate the reward systems. Research shows that musical anhedonia occurs because of the absence of interactions between auditory networks and the reward system.

Musical pleasure is triggered by expectations and surprises. Much of music’s pleasure comes from the patterns of melody, rhythm, and sudden changes. An unexpected change in intensity and tempo is one of the primary means by which music provokes a strong emotional response in listeners. Composers can play with these expectations: meet expectations, violate them, or even put them on hold.

THAT is exactly what Zappa is talking about when he says you can “insert” irritable notes then insert pleasurable notes thus increasing the reward dynamic. But uh, timing is everything, that’s the caveat. 

Frank says about time, “time depends on the point from which you’re looking at it.” I think he might have said that because he was never home. He lived on the road always in a different location. 200 different Motels.

FZ said -You have to realize is time doesn’t start here and end over there. Everything happens all the time. Everything is happening all the time. And already happened before. Everything’s happening all the time. The reason I can say that is time depends on the point from which you’re looking at it. It only appears that things are transpiring because we are here. If we were someplace else, they would not have transpired yet. If you could move your point of reference to the event taking place, you could change the way in which you perceive the event. So, if you could constantly change your location, you could live the idea that everything is happening all the time.

This is thinking way outside the box. Albert Einstein said something real similar, about motion and the speed of light and observing things from different speeds from different locations. Einstein said our human senses do not show us the reality outside our body, like space, time, matter. It doesn’t magically appear to us self-evidently. Our senses only show us the effects, the exhaust fumes, the shadows of that reality out there. We jus fill it in with made-up socio human constructs and that to us is reality. It is not reality. Frank and Albert both agree on that, so far. 

Frank said Time is separate and up above, space and matter is below on a Möbius strip. Albert said no, no, no, Frank said yes, yes, yes, Albert said matter, space and time are intertwined and have never existed as separate factors in the universe of our experience. Only the single notion of physical space time is our reference. Well,,,,,, Albert needs to go listen to Inca Roads from the One Size Fits All album. “did ah, did a vehicle, dida vehicle come from, somewhere Out there,,..”

This isn’t the right Sofa, that is on the original album. I didn’t have that Sofa so I had to get this couch. The people who know the album will know this and the people who never heard that album won’t know this couch took the place of the Sofa. Ich bin ien Sofa.  

Since we know our human senses do not show us the reality outside our body, Frank and Albert could each accuse the other of mistaking, of making up, socio human constructs to fit the viewpoint. But Einstein wasn’t a rock musician so he pretty much scientifically proved his point. Frank hasn’t done any experiments backing up his idea about time besides Inca Roads and some other songs that’s all he’s got. And thats good enough for me. Einstein couldn’t play guitar, or even sing. Physicists pffft yeh you made a bomb so what you got it wrong.

Hypothetical Interview With Frank Zappa Written by Frank Zappa As Told To Suzie Creamcheese & Rodney Bingenheimer 

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In an interview piece from 1971 Phonograph Record Magazine Frank describes how the band views time. This sounds like why Frank might disagree with Einstein~

“On the road, time is determined by when the road manager wakes you up, when the plane or bus leaves, when you set up equipment at the hall and check your sound system, when you play your concert, and what you do for recreation after the show, Space is indeterminate. Motels resemble each other. The same for planes and buses. Concert halls may vary a bit, but over a period of years they also blend together. Audiences vary/blend is a similar way.”

Frank said about his idea -You could demonstrate it if you were a really good mathematician, I’m sure, which I’m not. That is something that I just take on intuition. It seems to me that it is a fact, and I will behave accordingly that everything is happening all the time. And the only way that I could attempt to aim somebody in the direction to prove it is: when an event is taking place, it has a lot to do with the position of the observer, and so if the event as a fact of reality is to be discussed or dealt with, you must always remember that the perception of the event is a byproduct of the position from which the event was viewed, the position in time and space. If you could modify your position in time and space, then the event becomes something else. It becomes a future event, or it becomes a past event, depending on where you are. These are all relative descriptive factors which have nothing to do with the actual event. That’s only words used to describe the event. So, if we can just hop out of the bullshit for a minute and imagine ourselves located someplace else observing the event, the mystic procedure of telling the future, and the rest of that stuff, looks a little bit easier just because a person was able to relocate their consciousness and perceive it from a different angle

Frank gets serious about musical notes. He said something about the “frequencies” and the space, matter, time dynamic.

Frank says -the largest organ in the human body, correct me if I’m wrong, is your skin, and your eardrum is only part of your skin, folks. So, that may be the most sensitive part of the skin. But I believe the whole skin responds to sound, and different parts of the skin over different parts of the body have different resonant frequencies. In other words, frequencies that strike them better. Because of the size of the eardrum, it has a centre frequency susceptibility at around 2K. That’s why telephones sound like telephones. Your ear is most sensitive around 2 kilohertz. It can hear other things, but that’s the real sensitive range. So, maybe other larger patches of skin resonate with other different frequencies.

There’s been research done that showed that certain frequencies of certain amplitudes produce physical effects. Ten cycles of a certain amplitude stops your heart. You can die from sound. You wouldn’t even “hear” the ten cycles, in the traditional sense of the word, because your ear doesn’t go down that low, but a couple of good boops and you’re dead. And there are frequencies that will make you piss, and frequencies that will make you shit, and frequencies that will make you do all kinds of things. I don’t think they’ve discerned the entire range of them, but there is a connection between human organism and the way moving air molecules affect that organism
So, we shouldn’t be so short-sighted as to rule out the possibility that therapies for different kinds of conditions, as well as the ability to kill people, could all be induced by sound. And the clue to that might be the soothing effect that certain types of music have on certain individuals. And the trick is, what passes for nice music in one culture, is radically different than nice music in another culture. I doubt seriously that most Americans would find it soothing to listen to six hours of Chinese music, but I don’t think that the Chinese would find it too soothing to listen to six hours of Barry Manilow, either. So, each culture has a different ideal of what constitutes good music. But the thing that is existing in music, that transcends the style, the orchestration, or the timbre of the music, is the pitches of the notes. So that may be the determining factor.

Timbre is the texture of a sound quality. In other words, is it being played by a snare drum? Is it being played by an oboe? Is it being played by a tuba? That’s the timbre. The pitch is the vibrational frequency of the note being played no matter what instrument is playing it. That’s pitch. Rhythm is the rate, the period, the distance between one note and another. That constitutes the rhythm. And the harmony is – there’s an implied or explicit harmonic domain in which all the action takes place. It’s like the canvas on which everything happens. The same melody line, with a major chord supporting it, is a different story when a minor chord is supporting it. The message that comes through is different. So, that’s how the things interact. Harmony tells you how to perceive the melody. That’s the compass that shows you which way North is. The rhythm determines how fast the piece is going. So, you can determine whether or not the piece is above your factory rate. Or the rhythm determines the distance, the periodicity between one start time and another of each of the pitches in the melody line. That’s how it’s interacting. And the timbre is going to send your message about certain other qualities of the line. For example, the dumbest example of all time is: “Purple Haze” played on an accordion is a different story than “Purple Haze” on a fuzztone guitar. You play exactly the same notes, but there’s two different messages. So, one of the main differences, culturally, from place to place, in the music, is in the timbre of the instruments which are playing the music. Chinese music, to use an extreme example, has certain types of flues, certain types of little, stringed instruments, and little, bowed instruments that have a certain nasal quality to them which would not be an admired texture in a Western society. But to the Chinese that is their music and it’s perfect, and it’s wonderful, and they think that’s the way things ought to be. Whereas we in America think that Bruce Springsteen is the next best thing to Michael Jackson.

I’m saying if we allow ourselves to consider the possibility of audio being used as a tool for therapy, really what you are doing is using certain frequencies aimed at certain parts of the body in order to set up a resonance. In other words, you can knock down a bridge with the right resonance because you’ll find a resonant frequency of the concrete that’s holding it up, and it’s going to crack. And the same thing could be true of a crystalline situation in the human body. If you want to crack it, you’ve got to find the resonant frequency of that crystal, and then it’s gone. Like the right note could be a cure for gout where you have uric acid crystals located in the joint someplace. How are you going to get in there? The guy can’t move his joint anymore because the crystals have kept his joint from moving. So, you find the right frequency, aim it at it, turn up the volume, and they’re gone.

Frank said -Pauline Oliveros’s work with sound, above the audible and below, created something audible. It produced a sum and difference tone which happened to be located within the audible frequency range. By combining something so high you couldn’t hear it and something so low you couldn’t hear it, it yielded something in the middle that you could hear. Whether or not you like what you hear in the middle is another question. The concept is brilliant.

If you buy the idea that the vibrational rates translate into matter, and then if you understand the concept of vibrational rates above perception and below perception combining to create a reality, that opens up the door to some pretty science-fiction matter possibilities. If you can create an audible reality by a sine wave above the range of what your ear can hear and another one from below, and you put them together and suddenly it creates something that your ear can detect, is it not possible that solid matter of an unknown origin could manifest periodically because of frequencies of some unknown nature above and below which, for short durations, manifest solid objects? It could explain a lot of strange things that people see. UFO’s who knows.

Okay that’s the end. We’ll end it right here. Ace is shaking his leg. It’s over. I don’t know any of the stuff below this line. Careful now don’t git any on’ya. Looks like spammy ads and honey traps.