Cosmic Debris: The Collected History & Improvisations of Frank Zappa
"Congratulations to Greg Russo for a great book and an amazing research work."  --Roman Garcia Albertos, Frank Zappa site administrator, Spain"Greg Russo has done an incredible job of reporting and organizing a gargantuan amount of information about FZ. Extra thanks go out to Greg for his more than rational assessment of Ben Watson's failure to communicate any real idea of what Frank was about in his unreadable attempt at analysis. Many of us hated and rejected the 'Negative Dialectics Of Poodle Play' debacle, and Greg's book is the first time that I have seen anything in print that had the guts to take it to task. 'Cosmik Debris' is an amazing book!"  --Tom Brown, Rhino Records' creator of the "Beat The Boots!" series"I have read the book, and I enjoy it immensely. I'm definitely impressed by it, and I speak as one who has read all the rest of the books. It is a perfect read for both the long-time fan and for the Zappa newcomer. A long-time fan like myself will probably get a pretty worn out copy after a while, and for the newcomer it's a mighty fine introduction to further reading too.It's seldom that I am amazed by reading about Zappa, but this time I was amazed several times. Many facts pointed out in the book were new to me. The biography is simply great too: short, but on the whole, a true rendition of his life, as well as plenty of little-known facts thrown in. The language is easy to understand, even for international readers, and the book avoids those rude subjective remarks littered throughout other books. It's nice when the author has an affection for the subject! Greg Russo should be very proud of this book, because it's a success!"  --Fredrik Johansson, Zappa fanatic, Sweden"It's a reference book, kind of a very elaborate discography, and a very good one. Simply put, I like the book and found it very useful. Now you don't need to pay needless, extra money for Ben Watson's Marxist mind-jerking just to get Greg Russo's real stuff! Hi-ho silver!"  --Vladimir Sovetov, alt.fan.frank-zappa newsgroup administrator"Of all the Zappa books I've seen and read (six or seven), Greg Russo's is certainly the one most worthy of attention, because it's the ultimate Zappa information source. This book has a straightforward brief: 'The facts, ma'am, just the facts' and it fulfils this brief admirably. In other words, if you're interested in a blow-by-blow factual account of Zappa's life and career, complemented by exhaustive listings of recordings, gigs, radio shows and so on... in short, Information, then This Has To Be The Book For You.Russo's research is clearly extremely thorough....Overall, there's a refreshing lack of bull**** about this book. It's unpretentious, written in a simple journalistic style, and straight to the point....When dealing with individual albums, he inserts special box-outs in the text, headed "CCC" for "Conceptual Continuity Clues". These highlight how various tracks - often the lyrics thereof - on the album relate or refer to other points in Zappa's and other people's output. Some of these are quite revealing....If you're a serious Zappa follower, I do strongly recommend that you purchase this book!  --Chris Sansom, Highway 57 Zappa Zone, England