American composer and bandleader whose vocabulary Bob borrows for the Tiny Note Chart in Dialogue 11. Zappa's "xenochrony" — splicing performances recorded at different times so they stay dissonant yet often sync up — becomes Bob's model for the "strange synchronization" of his own media life, and the Grand Wazoo orchestra and Zappa's "big note" give the chart its title.
Across the dialogues
Supplies the two terms behind the Tiny Note Chart — xenochrony and the Grand Wazoo's big note
Xenochrony is Zappa's term — he spliced a solo from one concert with parts from another, meaning them to stay separate and dissonant, but they often synced up.
"Xenochrony was Frank Zappa's term for he would take, he recorded all his concerts and everything."
The Grand Wazoo was Zappa's 1972–73 orchestra — a jazz-fusion turn from his late-60s direction — whose name titles the chart's "Decad Dance."
"The Grand Wazoo was an orchestra that Zappa formed in 72 into 73, and he toured with it in the fall of 72."
Bob's "tiny note" is a deliberate answer to Zappa's "big note" — the universe heard as one sustained note, miniaturized.
"Zappa talked about the universe being at the ground of it being a big note. So this is my answer to that. This is a tiny note."
Returns not for the chart but for the nobody — his 1966 band as an image of the dissolved individual, rhythm with no locatable source
Zappa's ~1966 New York Times interview furnishes Bob and Cameron's picture of the vanished individual — a band in which no instrument is identifiably "the drummer," the rhythm coming from nowhere in particular.
"nobody knows who the drummer is in the band."
Placed in the satire lineage — Theall's 1971 The Medium Is the Rear View Mirror applies "Menippean satire" to Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, the term Bob first met there
Zappa and the Mothers of Invention are the modern case to which Theall applied "Menippean satire" in his 1971 The Medium Is the Rear View Mirror — the book where Bob first encountered the term, placing Zappa in the same media-satire lineage as Rabelais and the Wake.
"talking about Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention."
Wielded against a bad review — Bob defends Zappa's afterlife ("more famous than he ever was," played by orchestras) to rebut Edmonds's Spotify math, the once-banned composer now the anti-environment that "refuses to be forgotten"
Zappa recruited as evidence against a dismissive review — the once radio-banned composer now "played by orchestras all over the world" and surging on YouTube, so quoting Spotify tallies (Drake, the Beatles, Zappa at a million) is "unacademic"; Bob casts him as the "present-day anti-environment" that "refuses to be forgotten."
"Zappa is more famous than he ever was."
Connections
Zappa coined "xenochrony" — splicing parts recorded at different times so they stay dissonant yet sync up.
The chart's title answers Zappa's "big note" with a "tiny note"; the "Grand Wazoo" and "Decad Dance" name its structure.