Frank Zappa

Here is the schedule for the remaining films for the Baltimore Film Forum's 26th annual Baltimore International Film Festival.* "The Cow" (Czech Republic, 1993), today, April 21, 7:30 p.m.* "Half the World" (Austria, 1993), today, April 21, 9:30 p.m.* "Jupiter's Wife" (U.S. 1994), Saturday, April 22, 7:30 p.m.* "Frank Zappa" (Britain, 1993), Saturday, April 22, 9:30 p.m.* Selected winners from the 1995 Black Maria Film and Video Festival, Sunday, April 23, 7:30 p.m.L * "The Land of the Deaf" (France, 1992)

Here is the schedule for the remaining films for the Baltimore Film Forum's 26th annual Baltimore International Film Festival.* "Exotica" (Canada, 1994), today 7:30 p.m.* "City on Fire" (Hong Kong, 1987), today 9:30 p.m., 11:30 p.m.* "Le Petit Museee De Velasquez" (Canada, 1994), Saturday, April 15, 7:30 p.m.* "Flesh Suitcase" (U.S., 1995), Saturday, April 15, 9:30 p.m.* "My Life and Times with Antonin Artaud" (France, 1993), Sunday, April 16, 7:30 p.m.* "Woyczeck" (Hungary, 1994), April 20, 7:30 p.m.* "The Cow" (Czech Republic, 1993)

Even from the grave, Frank Zappa continues to intimidate rock critics.Facing the Zappa legacy is an enormous -- and, to some degree, thankless -- task. Not only does it involve days upon days of listening, it also requires far more thought and analysis than most rock music. Zappa wasn't like other rock stars, and his music has to be judged by a unique and idiosyncratic set of standards.In the 27 years he spent making albums, the Baltimore-born Zappa indulged in everything from soundtracks and concept albums to orchestral works and concert recordings.

Unless you're fanatically devoted or unusually well-off, odds are you won't be investing in all 53 of the Frank Zappa albums recently reissued by Rykodisc. That means you'll have to make some choices. But how? Here's a brief glance at a few of the more worthwhile titles in the Zappa discography:"Freak Out!" (Ryko 10501) Originally released in 1966. Zappa's first album with the Mothers of Invention. Though the performances are amateurish in comparison to his later work, the songs are as close to traditional rock and roll as Zappa ever got. Highlights include the bluesy "Trouble Every Day" and the sly, pop parody "You Didn't Try to Call Me."

These are the other acts being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The induction dinner takes place this evening at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York but is not being televised.* The Allman Brothers. Formed in Macon, Ga., in 1968, the Allmans mixed down-home blues and gospel with British Invasion rock and psychedelic-era jamming. Their sound laid the foundations for Southern boogie.* Led Zeppelin. Although Led Zeppelin is synonymous with heavy rock, this English quartet drew on everything from Celtic folk and blues rock to Egyptian pop and samba drumming.

CBS, the last network to detail its fall schedule, finally unveiled its plans yesterday, which makes the viewing patterns for September much more clear. What it means, basically, is that the summertime TV blues, currently alleviated only by NBC's "TV Nation," are about to wane. One week from tonight, ABC premieres "My So-Called Life," the best and most realistic family drama series in years. Tonight, though, what we're faced with is Our So-Called TV Schedule, and there's not much.* "Mad About You."

FRANK Zappa, the Baltimore-born musician who died last month of prostate cancer, was not just another guitar-wielding sociopath coughed up by the American rock scene. This point was reiterated most convincingly in the Dec. 20 New Yorker magazine by Czech president Vaclav Havel.In his brief piece, Mr. Havel recalls his impressions of Mr. Zappa -- "one of the gods of the Czech underground" during the 1970s and '80s -- upon meeting him a few years ago:"[Zappa] was the first rock celebrity I had ever met, and, to my great delight, he was a normal human being, with whom I could carry on a normal conversation.

A lot of younger country stars like to talk about the difference rock bands made in their musical life, from Lynyrd Skynyrd to the Eagles to Kiss. But Doug Stone may be the first country star to have been influenced by Frank Zappa."

LOS ANGELES -- Baltimore-born rock musician Frank Zappa, who rode to fame in the late 1960s as leader of the eccentric Mothers of Invention, died Saturday evening at his Los Angeles home from the complications of prostate cancer he had been battling for years. He was 52.A family friend, Jim Nagle, said he was buried yesterday in a private ceremony in Los Angeles.The prolific guitarist was one of rock's premier iconoclasts. In an era of increasing commercialism, he never tired of composing, strumming, singing and philosophizing to the beat of a wildly different drummer.

There was a story Frank Zappa liked to tell about the time in the late '60s when he and the Mothers of Invention were booked, along with Woody Herman's big band, to play a dinner for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.Seeing as these were the same folks who gave out the Grammy Awards each year, it should have been a real prestige gig. But the Baltimore-born Zappa wasn't so flattered once he saw the programs: "Music by Woody Herman and His Thundering Herd. Entertainment by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention."

F rank Zappa has a friend in high places, which is why today is Frank Zappa Day in Baltimore. The late musician was born in Baltimore on Dec. 21, 1940, but never rated a government proclamation in his hometown until August 2007. The official reason for Baltimore's first Frank Zappa Day: his eldest son, Dweezil, was performing Dad's music in town. The real reason: Jeanette Garcia Polasky works in City Hall. She is Mayor Sheila Dixon's deputy director of correspondence and constituent services.

Earlier this month, the city of Baltimore accepted a generous gift from the Republic of Lithuania: a 15-foot statue of avant-garde rock legend Frank Zappa. Because of that country's love of classical music, the artist's symphonic, idiosyncratic compositions are highly regarded there. His Lithuanian fan club calls him a "voice of freedom." But it's a safe bet that most mainstream American pop fans probably can't name one song by Frank Zappa, who died in 1993 of prostate cancer at age 52. And it's an even safer bet that few know the musician was born in Baltimore, where he didn't stay long.

Frank Zappa gave Maryland more than just the first 10 years of his life. He also gave his home state one of its most memorable moments in legislative history. Never before, nor since, I'm guessing, has someone testified to the state Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, "I like nipples." That was back in 1986. My excuse for revisiting this tawdry episode all these years later: Baltimore is preparing to erect a statue of Zappa, yet another of its offbeat natives. Zappa and his family left Maryland while he was a grade-schooler.

The letter arrived, mayor to mayor, wishing the newly elected Sheila Dixon the usual "cordial congratulations" and wishes of "great success" on the "demanding and challenging" task she faced. Then the note veered from boilerplate municipal correspondence into far stranger territory: The mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, wanted to send his Baltimore counterpart a statue of someone he considered among the greatest artists of the 20th century, someone with ties to both their cities, someone who would unite the citizens of two otherwise far-flung towns in a lasting bond.

"What's new in Baltimore?" Frank Zappa used to sing at the end of a long, characteristically off-the-wall rock jam he called Clowns on Velvet. What's new in Baltimore, the city in which the late rock star was born in 1940, is evidently a public sculpture of Zappa himself, and the strange tale behind the 15-foot statue that a public art panel accepted as a gift to the city last night is as incongruous as Zappa's genre-bending music career. Most Baltimoreans are aware of their hometown's claim on Edgar Allan Poe, H.L. Mencken and John Waters, but fewer know that Zappa, who made more than 50 records between the late 1950s and his death in 1993, was born in Baltimore, the son of immigrants from Sicily.

ROCHESTER HILLS, Mich. -- The star at center stage, his dark hair slicked behind his ears, works a wild rock riff on an electric guitar. The flute and synthesizer behind him shriek in sync, notes weaving into three-part harmony. A pounding percussion whirls. The tension crests and resolves, 5,000 or so roar, and as the final notes of "Advance Romance" come crashing down, Dweezil Zappa -- a smaller, more neatly scrubbed version of his famous father, the late, great counterculture rocker Frank Zappa -- takes a deep and humble bow. Dweezil Zappa -- and yes, that is his legal name -- is grateful for the adulation that fans have for his father's work, which spanned three decades, filled 80 albums and embraced genres from classical to doo-wop and jazz.

Heard back from Frank Deford the other day, responding to my column about his Smithsonian magazine piece on Charm City. You may recall that Deford had lamented the lack of white luminaries in the Baltimore of his youth: "It is both ironic and instructive that in the first half of the 20th century, the two most illustrious Americans to come from Baltimore were Thurgood Marshall and Billie Holiday - African-Americans who rose up out of a segregated society;...

American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies by Michael W. Kauffman. Random House. 509 pages. $29.95. No one, it is fair to say, has been decided upon as the most glorious person in Maryland history. But the most despised, the most loathed? That award still goes to John Wilkes Booth, of Harford County, Ford's Theater in Washington and Green Mount Cemetery. Booth, professional actor and Abraham Lincoln's assassin, is the subject of this definitive biography. Michael Kauffman, of Owings, is a historian who has devoted 30-plus years to his subject, and even leads tours of Booth's escape route.

Louie B. Nunn, 79, who as governor of Kentucky oversaw a revamping of the state's mental health care system and the outlawing of housing discrimination, died Thursday in Versailles, Ky., after suffering a heart attack. Elected in 1967, he was the state's last Republican governor before Gov. Ernie Fletcher was elected in November. During Mr. Nunn's four-year term, Kentucky took strides in caring for the mentally retarded, the mentally ill and juvenile delinquents. He called the revamping of the state's mental health treatment system his proudest accomplishment.

Even from the grave, Frank Zappa continues to intimidate rock critics.Facing the Zappa legacy is an enormous -- and, to some degree, thankless -- task. Not only does it involve days upon days of listening, it also requires far more thought and analysis than most rock music. Zappa wasn't like other rock stars, and his music has to be judged by a unique and idiosyncratic set of standards.In the 27 years he spent making albums, the Baltimore-born Zappa indulged in everything from soundtracks and concept albums to orchestral works and concert recordings.