Them or Us. Commercial. Free.

Recently, I bought a copy of 'Them or Us: The Book' from a gentlemen in Utah (no foolin?) and I'm half-way through it. So far, it has tied

• Joe's Garage
• One Size Fits All
• Francesco Zappa
• Sleep Dirt
• Studio Tan
• Just Another Band from LA
• Thing-Fish
  

And some other elements together, with cameos from the Author and his daughter both appearing before chapter seven. The book is three-hundred and fifty pages. It would be a six hour movie that would cost half the GDP of multiple African countries, with a cast of hundreds. It would be banned by all major governments save those really bizarre ones in the fringe parts of Europe, the ones that think they're REALLY HIP. Bootlegs would be shown throughout America in underground coffee shops and pornographic employment agencies, with constant NARC-O crackdowns resulting in multiple arrests and ever-increasing bodycount. Everyone involved with making the movie would have fled the country or face government-sanctioned assassinations. All done before post-production was through.

The big secret about the book is this - it's a giant script. I hate spoiling it for you kids, but your experience is going to be different. I think the rarity of the book alone keeps it from popping up on torrent sites, or someone would have scanned it and put a .pdf up of it. It's out of print - would it be legal? Maybe. Bringing it back in print would drop the price of the used copies of it on Amazon right now. I'd buy a new copy. Maybe they'd include pictures. A revised version with Ralph Steadman (who did the artwork for 'Have I Offended Someone') would totally be worth the thirty-five or fifty-dollar price tag. I'd pay it gladly. But if it was reissued with what it was, a demented script by a man tying all his work together. Well. I've already paid for my ticket. It's your turn.

It took me about thirteen years of this and that to get all the commercial releases. I never downloaded them, since it seemed kind of foolish. And during that period, the access wasn't there. Today, you can find multiple torrents of differenciating quality of all his work. There are sites offering the bootlegs of all the concerts that DIDN'T get packaged into albums (or, still remain waiting for the ZFT and Vault Records' loving caress.)

I've spent a couple days of this holiday without listening to FZ's music or lighting the candle. It's not out of IR-REV-ERANCE but out of the truth that most of us involved in FZ's work know - every day is Zappadan. There's always a three month period of every year, maybe scattered throughout so it's every other Thursday or alternating weekends where there's a Zappa album on our CDs or mp3 players or turntables. We still check zappa.com for possible new releases or get excited when someone exerts the effort to start a new blog/site that seems different or new. Every one of us gets the shithead idea to possibly write a book about the man (I've said this before, right?) but few do it. Fewer go out and play his music, making such great albums like 'Lemme Take You To The Beach: Zappa Surf Instrumentals." When you've got it bad like I do, you spend your time at Amazon buying all the Zappa TRIBUTE CD's.

That's why I hope that 'Them or Us' stays out of print for a little longer. The new day makes it easy to find stuff, where the idle and the devoted would search the poor, infested p2p networks for anything 'Zappa,' finding the videos of concerts or clips of Frank on Letterman, the SNL appearance or the collection of tv-news obituaties put together when FZ died.

Here's a video of FZ, one of his final interviews with a douche of a reporter pulling that ever fuckin' annoying PREFACE THE QUESTION WITH THREE LINES OF STATEMENT. [TILT HEAD] ASK QUESTION technique for EVERY goddamn thing she asks the dying man.



There's some shit out there you can find that is now available due to all the frightening little skills that science has made available. It robs the new Zappa fan of his or her patience. I've listened to a couple of ZFT releases before I've bought them because I was impatient. Before, I wouldn't have. But now it's a click, and there it goes. Keeping something like books away from the instant gratification makes those who stick around for the long term appreciate their own attendence record, even though such things are completely fucking worthless in the grand scheme. It's a good read. One day, when I put it up for sale, I hope you find me and pay the ticket price and you have the same fun. Or, when my idea gets taken and Ralph pens some illustrations and the movie gets made, we all can enjoy it together and this idea of 'out-of-print' goes away, with patience, with collecting, with the idea of limited-access to information. Absolutely free. Yowza.