Who does not love tying divergent strands together to finish a project as a unified whole? I know I do…

A recent Kickstarter project raised over a million dollars to help finance a documentary about Frank Zappa and preserve his archive of works (known as The Vault).

Zappa died in 1993 but remains ever present (he has been featured in several A to Z posts here) as he has throughout my life since I was thirteen when he made quite an impression…

“Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you’ve got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read.”

One may imagine that had he lived to see the growth of the web he would be all over it. Long before iTunes and MP3s were imaginable he proposed a system where music would be played down a phone line and the recipient would record the music on to tape. Such was his growing resentment towards record companies and their control over the production and distribution of music. And it always returned to the music…

“Information is not knowledge.
Knowledge is not wisdom.
Wisdom is not truth.
Truth is not beauty.
Beauty is not love.
Love is not music.
Music is THE BEST.”

From Cage and Varèse to Tuvan throat singers to Reggae to Doo Wop he was fascinated by it all.

He was one of the first to own a Synclavier but was frustrated by its limitations – things that today one can achieve on even a modest laptop computer.

But why would you believe anything I say…