“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 a public sculpture of Zappa himself, and the tale behind the 15-foot statue that a public arts panel accepted Wednesday night as a gift to the city is as incongruous as Zappa's genre-bending music career.
Most residents of Baltimore 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 Italian immigrants from Sicily.
Zappa's father, a chemist and mathematician, worked at Aberdeen Proving Ground. The family moved to California when Frank was 10.
Until they met Wednesday night, some members of the Baltimore Public Art Commission, which voted unanimously to accept the gift of the bronze sculpture -- valued at about $50,000 -- were unaware of Zappa's connection to Baltimore.
However, the donors of the bust, who come from much farther afield -- in fact, from a nation Zappa never visited -- are well aware of his background.
“We're honored to have a chance to present this Frank Zappa monument to the city of Baltimore," said Saulius Paukstys, 43, president of one of the biggest and, arguably, most dedicated Frank Zappa fan clubs -- in, of all places, Lithuania. “As an artist, and much more than that, he has meant a great deal to the Lithuanian people."
For more information contact All About Jazz.
