Frank Zap­pa was kind of a con­trol freak. But the way he tells it in a 1968 Rolling Stone inter­view, if he hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have had much of a career. In the mid-six­ties, he took over the mer­chan­dis­ing and adver­tis­ing of his albums. “We wouldn’t have sold any records if we had left it up to the com­pa­ny,” he says, “They fig­ured we were odd-ball. One shot nov­el­ty a‑go-go. But we weren’t. We had to show them ways they could make mon­ey on the prod­uct.”

It’s that entre­pre­neur­ial atti­tude and abil­i­ty to take over that makes Zap­pa one of the most suc­cess­ful cap­i­tal­ists in exper­i­men­tal music. In 1967, he even found­ed his own ad agency, called Nifty Tough & Bitchin’, and made print and radio ads for Hagstrom Gui­tars, Pan­ther Com­bo Organs, and Rem­ing­ton Razor Blades. (He also record­ed a bizarre radio ad for Remington’s elec­tric razor with Lin­da Ronstadt—see a fan-made video below).

That same year, ani­ma­tor and film­mak­er Ed See­man hired Zap­pa to score an ad for Luden’s Cough Drops. You can see the pre­dictably weird results up top. Accord­ing to See­man, Zap­pa “request­ed $2,000 plus a stu­dio for a day with a wide vari­ety of instru­ments plus a guy to do cough sounds.” The ad went on to win a Clio award for “Best Use of Sound.”

After the ad wrapped, Zap­pa tapped See­man to shoot 14 hours of footage over two years for a film project Zap­pa intend­ed to pro­duce called Uncle Meat (not to be con­fused with the album of the same name). The film was nev­er com­plet­ed, and Zap­pa only released the footage on video in 1987 (it has yet to see a DVD release).

The growth of the award-win­ning ad into a rare cult film—that doesn’t real­ly exist in any final form—goes to show how Zappa’s musi­cal tal­ent for free asso­ci­a­tion extend­ed to all of his cre­ative endeav­ors. Every­thing he touched took root and grew into sev­er­al oth­er branch­ing projects, all of them fas­ci­nat­ing to vary­ing degrees. He joked that he was in it for the mon­ey, but the mon­ey he made in com­mer­cial ven­tures seem­ing­ly gave him the free­dom to pur­sue any idea that popped into his head.

See­man, who became a great Zap­pa admir­er, went on to edit footage from Uncle Meat into a “40 minute impres­sion­is­tic col­lage” set to Zappa’s “Who are The Brain Police” that Dan­ger­ous Minds describes as meld­ing “Zappa’s cyn­i­cal world view (per­haps prophet­ic) with a spook­i­ly psy­che­del­ic sound that cre­ates a per­fect para­noid whole” (see an excerpt above). Zap­pa didn’t do much more ad work after this com­mer­cial­ly cre­ative burst, out­side of the pro­mo­tion of his own records. That is, until two years before his death from can­cer. In 1991, Zap­pa appeared in the iron­ic anti-ad for Port­land Gen­er­al Elec­tric in which he says he told the com­pa­ny “I refuse to sell your prod­uct.” Four years lat­er, we saw the release of a posthu­mous Zap­pa best-of. Its title: Strict­ly Com­mer­cial.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In One of his Final Inter­views, Frank Zap­pa Pro­nounces Him­self “Total­ly Unre­pen­tant”

Stream 82 Hours of Frank Zap­pa Music: Free Playlists of Songs He Com­posed & Per­formed

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Giv­en the efforts of peo­ple like Mal­colm McLaren to turn punk rock into a viable com­mer­cial product—or at least a quick cash grab—it’s a lit­tle sur­pris­ing it took as long as it did for “pop punk” to find its prof­itable 90s/oughties teenage niche. Always a catch-all term for an eclec­tic vari­ety of styles, punk instead fur­ther diver­si­fied in the eight­ies into var­i­ous kinds of post-punk, hard­core, and new wave. The lat­ter devel­op­ment, how­ev­er, quick­ly found a com­mer­cial audi­ence, with its suc­cess­ful fusion of 70s pop, reg­gae, and dis­co ele­ments with punk’s wry, arty-out­sider sen­si­bil­i­ty. Artists like Gary Numan, Blondie, DEVO, Talk­ing Heads, and even The Clash emerged from the 70s with high­ly dance­able hits that set the tone for the sound of the next decade.

But first the pub­lic had to learn what new wave was, and many of them did in a sur­pris­ing­ly main­stream way, in the 1979 spe­cial pro­duced by ABC’s 20/20 in two parts here. By com­par­i­son with the num­ber of awk­ward­ly clue­less or bla­tant­ly sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic news reports on emerg­ing youth cul­tures over the decades, the show is “impres­sive­ly astute,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “for a news seg­ment on new music from one of the major TV net­works.” It fea­tures a num­ber of the above-named artists—DEVO, Blondie, Talk­ing Heads—and makes an inter­est­ing attempt to sit­u­ate the music on a con­tin­u­um with Chuck Berry, Bud­dy Hol­ly, and the Rolling Stones.

The seg­ment claims that new wave both sat­i­rized and updat­ed rock and pop—with DEVO’s cov­er of “(I Can’t Get No) Sat­is­fac­tion” as Exhib­it A. And while new wave would even­tu­al­ly glam it up with the best of the 70s dis­co acts—think Duran Duran or the bub­blegum pop of Flock of Seag­ulls or Kajagoogoo—in its first, post-punk phase, the music stripped things down to 50s sim­plic­i­ty. Elvis Costel­lo gets called in to rep­re­sent the revival­ism inher­ent in the nascent form, herald­ing a “redis­cov­ery of the rock and roll audi­ence.”

There are prob­lems with the his­to­ry: punk gets labeled “an extreme ele­ment of new wave” and “a British phe­nom­e­non,” where it makes more sense to call it a pre­cur­sor with roots in Detroit and New York. It’s a nit­picky point, and one shouldn’t expect too much accu­ra­cy in a top-down net­work news report. The real treat here is the per­for­mance clips and rare inter­views. Even with the poor video qual­i­ty, they’re all well worth watch­ing, espe­cial­ly the extend­ed focus on the Talk­ing Heads in the sec­ond part above. As Dan­ger­ous Minds writes, “it takes an effort of will to remem­ber how weird David Byrne… must have seemed to a main­stream audi­ence in 1979.” Or not. He still comes off as pret­ty odd to me, and the music still fresh and inven­tive.

Note: Elvis Costel­lo has just pub­lished a new auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Unfaith­ful Music & Dis­ap­pear­ing Ink. And he nar­rates the audio­book ver­sion, which you can down­load for free (along with anoth­er audio­book) if you join Audible.com’s 30-day Free Tri­al pro­gram. Get details on the 30-day tri­al here. And get Elvis Costel­lo’s audio­book, by click­ing here and then click­ing the “Try Audi­ble Free” but­ton in the upper right.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of CBGB, the Ear­ly Home of Punk and New Wave

See Very Ear­ly Con­cert Footage of the B‑52s, When New Wave Music Was Actu­al­ly New (1978)

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness