Barbara Flaska, a longtime contributor to rockcritics.com (she has also been published at PopMatters), has been posting all sorts of stuff about Zappa on her long-running blog, Flaskaland. What she’s been writing there — and the best way to find the stuff, which is voluminous, is to keyword-search her site for “Zappa,” “Frank,” “Beefheart,” etc. — is not criticism of Zappa per se, but rather, her memories of growing up with Frank in Claremont, CA, circa the late ’50s/early ’60s — a few years before fame and fortune came a-knocking at Frank’s door. Given my recent, somewhat obsessional curiosity about FZ, I thought it would be fun to engage her in a conversation about all this. I called her at her home in Fallbrook, CA, on Sunday, Sept. 22, and we chatted for more than an hour. I’ve sliced the discussion here into three time-manageable parts. Thanks to Barbara for taking the time to share these stories with me.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Stuff Referenced:
- Claremont, CA
- The Blackouts
- Ronnie & The Pomona Casuals
- Cucamonga/Studio Z
- Art Laboe
- “Mr. Clean“
- Zappa on Steve Allen (1960)
- The Johnny Otis Show
- Droodles
- 1960 Election/JFK
- General Dynamics
- 1985 PMRC hearings
