Speeches and regalia: Zappa fans celebrate rocker
Hundreds come together to honor Baltimore's newest favorite son
September 19, 2010|By Chris Kaltenbach, The Baltimore Sun
Baltimore Sun photo by Algerina Perna
For Baltimore musician Warren Cherry, Frank Zappa was an inspiration — an artist who stubbornly went his own way and fought to protect artistic freedom.
Sunday, Cherry and several hundred other Zappa fans went to Highlandtown to pay homage to the late rocker.
"I've been a fan of Zappa since I was a teenager," says Cherry, 57. "He was just such an iconoclastic guy, and so unique. I mean, my gosh, just with the way he looked, with the hair and the goatee. I was an outsider, I was an artist, I was a musician. … He was our hero."
There was a lot of hero worship going on in Highlandtown Sunday afternoon. A crowd massed at the corner of Eastern Avenue and Conkling Street to cheer as a bust of their hero was unveiled, to rest forevermore atop an imposing pedestal outside his hometown's newest library. Most, it seemed, were wearing T-shirts adorned with Zappa catch phrases such as "Are you hung up?" "You are what you is" and "The world's most plentiful ingredient is stupidity." Though smaller than the 5,000 people organizers had expected, the audience made up in enthusiasm what it lacked in size.
All cheered loudly and lustily as, first, the Lithuanian benefactors who donated the bust of Zappa were introduced, followed by Zappa's wife, Gail, and three of his children, Dweezil, 41, Ahmet, 36, and Diva, 31. The crowd whooped as Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake credited Zappa and his legacy with Baltimore's vibrant alternative music scene, proclaiming, "It is on his shoulders that you stand." And they roared as Dweezil and his band, Zappa Plays Zappa, kicked off a tribute concert with his father's "Stinkfoot," possibly the only ode to smelly feet in the annals of rock 'n' roll.
"Welcome back to Baltimore, Frank," shouted Carla Hayden, CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library.
Few had a problem explaining their devotion to the man who fronted the proudly disreputable Mothers of Invention and famously warned people, "Watch out where the huskies go/And don't you eat that yellow snow." It had been 25 years to the day since Zappa's testimony before Congress against music censorship.
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