This post inspired by Frank Zappa and brought to you by Steve Jobs

“Mr. Zappa, I must say that I am always in favour of enlarging the horizons … of any field of human endeavour or interest and therefore I  congratulate you on your farsightedness ….” ~Steve Allen, 1963

A recent blog comment from an old cycling buddy and bike shop co-worker, has led—goodness knows how—to a discussion of the enfant terrible of modern music, Frank Zappa.

As I mentioned to my old colleague, I saw Zappa and his infamous band, The Mothers of Invention, perform in the late sixties. In typical Zappa form, he walked onto the stage dragging a large sack of vegetables, into which he poked the hose of the gas mask he was wearing. This peculiar leguminous inspection went on for some time.

When the crowd began to grow restless, hurling insults, debris, and demands for the band’s more accessible and popular tunes (“Play Plastic People!”) the maestro inserted a microphone into the hose and growled “Kinda brings out the animal in ya, don’t it?” launching into a long rendition of Call Any Vegetable (“They keep ya regular; they’re real good for ya”).

I was fond enough of this paean to the vegetable kingdom, that when I was digging the thick greenery from one of my Squamish climbing routes, at Octopus’s Garden, I named it after Zappa’s Opus Veggie.

At a time when the Beatles and psychedelia still ruled the airwaves, Zappa’s music readied me for the jazz-fusion era—the next logical step in my musical education. In fact, his work is not given nearly enough credit in a genre dominated by names like Miles Davis, John McLaughlin and Joe Zawinal.

But listen to the arrangements on classic recordings like Uncle Meat and Grand Wazoo. They are masterpieces.

Zappa succumbed to cancer in 1993, but his astounding music and irreverent wit live on.

‎”A computer is the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.” ~Steve Jobs

As I was readying this little post, the Internet buzzed (in some cases blew a fuse) with another sad eulogy; this time for computer genius Steve Jobs, also taken too young by cancer.

I believe the seeds of Jobs’ success also lay in the fact that he rejected convention. He was a Beatles fan. He did not, to my knowledge, write any obscene code. But I think it was his refusal to follow in anyone’s footsteps that took him on the journey that has benefitted so many.

Frank Zappa could discover the inherent musicality in a bicycle. Steve Jobs took computing out of the world of geeks and made it into something people could use to develop their creativity.

Thanks to Jobs, and the pioneers at Apple, any aspiring musician can record and mix their original composition on GarageBand; amateur videographers use iMovie to edit their first forays into film; budding photographers can organize, edit and publish their images across the Web with iPhoto.

Today, I can call any vegetable, or at least a YouTube video of Zappa’s song, on my iPhone. With a swipe of the hand, the sleek iPad has taken the world by storm, and given us a new word: aps, the shortcut to productivity. With “cloud computing” on the horizon, these compact, minimalist machines will become for many people the only computer they need.

Both Zappa and Jobs were creative iconoclasts who wandered off the beaten path, following their own inquisitive minds. We’re all richer for their explorations.

Frank Zappa plays the bicycle on The Steve Allen Show, 1963

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql_3LS_B4q0[/youtube]

Part 2

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho37arU5-2g[/youtube]

Part 3

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vip0H-I8pTg[/youtube]

Tagged as: bikes, cancer, computing, iphone, macintosh, octopus's garden, squamish