Expanded From the Original Classic & Featuring the Coffeehouse Scene Then and Now
224 pages, paperback
$14.95
ISBN 1-879395-22-3
contact: 323/906-0262 or email: calclass@earthlink.net

MY BROTHER WAS A MOTHER: A ZAPPA FAMILY PHOTO ALBUM is aptly titled -- reading this new book by Patrice "Candy" Zappa, Frank Zappa's baby sister, is a lot like stumbling across a Zappa family photo album forgotten and stashed away in an attic. Not only are there more than sixty previously unpublished family photos, but they are illuminated by Candy Zappa's insights into what it was like to grow up with the iconoclastic guitarist, composer, and social critic. As Candy Zappa remarks in her introduction to the book, "You couldn't get any closer to knowing what it was like to grow up in the Zappa household unless you had been there right beside me." Fans of the late musician may not have even been aware that he had a nuclear family. During his lifetime Zappa (who died of prostate cancer in 1993) preferred to turn the spotlight away from them. As a result, more people were familiar with Zappa's children than they may have been with his parents, Francis and Rose Marie Zappa, and his three siblings, Bobby, Carl, and Candy. After reading MY BROTHER WAS A MOTHER, however, no one will ever be likely to forget this fascinating family and their heartwarming story, told with humor and honesty by Candy. She recounts the childhood of her immigrant father Francis Zappa, who spent his early days in Baltimore working in his father's barber shop; tells the hilarious tale of her mother Rose Marie Zappa, who broke off a going-nowhere relationship with a boorish hockey player, then met Francis and consequently changed the course of musical history; and, of course, describes what it was like growing up with an older brother who "loved to blow things up" and who became obsessed with music at an early age. MY BROTHER WAS A MOTHER isn't only for Frank Zappa fans; it's a must-read account of an archetypal Italian-American family struggling to come to terms with their genius son in the turbulent '50s and '60s.And Candy Zappa has the pictures to prove it! PATRICE "CANDY" ZAPPA has performed with numerous bands on both the East and West Coasts and Europe. She lives in Valley Village, California. She will be promoting MY BROTHER WAS A MOTHER jointly with California Classics author Nigey Lennon, whose book BEING FRANK: MY TIME WITH FRANK ZAPPA is being reissued in June. BEING FRANK: My Time With Frank Zappa was released in 1995.Musician/author Lennon maintained a personal and professional relationship with Zappa during the period which is general agreed to have been the composer¹s most creative and she invests her recollections with considerable musical and emotional insight. The new edition has been updated.

"LITERARY L.A."
By Lionel Rolfe
Enlarged Third Edition
isbn 1-879395-22-3

Available online and at fine bookstores
Excerpts from Lionel Rolfe's "Literary L.A.," and music played by his mother the late pianist Yaltah Menuhin, is scheduled to air on Mona Golabek's "The Romantic Hour" Jan. 25 on K-MZT in L.A. and WQXR in New York (that's the classical music station owned by the NY Times). It will also be sent to about 80 stations across the nation. "The Romantic Hour" has a listenership of well over 5 million people.

Click here to see the ROMANTIC HOUR Web site -->

Station List - The Romantic Hours
WQXR invites you to listen online every Saturday night at midnight ET to Mona Golabek's The Romantic Hours - right here at WQXR.com.
The Romantic Hours also airs on these radio stations:

SOME REVIEWS OF "LITERARY L.A."
"Indispensable ..."
  -David Kipen, San Francisco Chronicle

"Racounteur and journalist (Rolfe) ... has compiled an entertaining collection on writers including Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, Malcolm Lowry, Charles Bukowski and Huxley."
  -Duncan Campbell, The Guardian (Great Britain)

"Schoenberg followers will be interested in the just-published book, Literary LA, by Lionel Rolfe. Schoenberg was the inspiration for Thomas Mann's critically acclaimed novel, Doctor Faustus, and the writer even inscribed a copy to the composer describing him as the 'real one'... Rolfe, journalist and nephew of the violin maestro Yehudi Menuhin, gives an enjoyable and insightful account of the feud."
  -S. Suchitra Lata, The Hindu (India)

ORDER FROM FROM SCB AT

 1/800/729-6423

OR ANY GOOD DISTRIBUTOR.

Our shy author has been out and about in the real world. 

(photo by Bonnie Perkinson)	He showed up with Ram Dass at an afternoon event with Laura Huxley in Malibu, also attended by George DiCaprio, father of Leonardo; he went to a concert at the UnUrban Cafe in Santa Monica where Hyla Douglas, his daughter, performed social protest songs out of the '60s; and took a great picture of Lorene and her dog Spot holding up the cover of LITERARY L.A.
And it all began when Michelle Mills did a belly dance for the old man. WE WISH HIM THE BEST!