For nearly thirty years Frank Zappa (1940-1993) pursued an idiosyncratic but influential course in music--rock, jazz, and classical composer (releasing over fifty albums); founder of the Mothers of Invention; guitarist, conductor, and producer; as well as social satirist, sonic scientist, First Amendment champion, and all-around iconoclast. This updated edition of David Walley's cutting-edge classic includes a new foreword, a substantial chapter carrying the Zappa saga through his death from cancer, an afterword, bibliography, discography, videography, and guide to Zappa on the Internet. From...

Teenage Nervous Breakdown: Music and Politics in the Post-Elvis Era combines music and cultural history and criticism to examine how rock and the rock lifestyle have been merchandised first to a teenage audience and eventually to a worldwide consumer society. Well-known, iconoclastic writer/ critic David Walley examines the entire rock culture and how it has infused all aspects of American (and world) life, from entertainment to politics to academic education. In a series of what he describes as "word-jazz rock and roll improvisations and variations," Walley examines how...

Teenage Nervous Breakdown: Music and Politics in the Post-Elvis Era combines music and cultural history and criticism to examine how rock and the rock lifestyle have been merchandised first to a teenage audience and eventually to a worldwide consumer society. Well-known, iconoclastic writer/ critic David Walley examines the entire rock culture and how it has infused all aspects of American (and world) life, from entertainment to politics to academic education. In a series of what he describes as "word-jazz rock and roll improvisations and variations," Walley examines how...