Frank Zappa: Too Much or Not Enough?

By the time of his death from prostate cancer on December 4, 1993, Frank Zappa's taste for life on the road had all but vanished. So we can only imagine the resistance he must have felt for what his family characterized as his "final tour" a couple of weeks prior to what would have been his fifty-third birthday. Yes, Zappa's gone, and the world is a less interesting place for it. But why does it so often feel as though we live in a world that might well have been cooked up in the master entertainer's Utility Muffin Research Kitchen?