Lithuania 1 Scotland 0

“HOW LENIN GOT ZAPP’ED IN THE BALTICS
Frank statue is giant con

Some town squares have statues of kings and queens, some of battlefield heroes. Vilnius has Frank Zappa.
Is it just me, or do you know you’re in a cool place when the guy they put up on a pedestal brought out a record called Lumpy Gravy and called his kids Moon Unit and Dweezil ?

Especially when you find out HOW they got him up on a pedestal.
First up, if you’re wondering who Frank Zappa was, you’re not alone.
Most Lithuanians who signed a petition to get him immortalised after his death in 1993 had never heard any of his stoned, anti-establishment albums either.
Commercial he wasn’t.

An interviewer once put it to him that he could have written songs that sold millions if he’d really wanted to. “Yeah,” he said “but who wants to go through life with a tiny nose and one glove ?” So he’d have loved the tale of how he ended up being a national hero in a country where his records were banned until the Iron Curtain was torn down.

When Lithuania was still communist, a sculptor called Saulius Paukstys used to meet secretly with mates in the Uzupis area and play Zappa’s music all night. Outside their rendezvous stood a statue of Lenin. But then the Soviets got the push, Lenin got binned and Pakstys thought: “Hey, cats, I’ve got a groovy idea. We’ll, like, get The Suits to replace it with one of Frank, man.” Trouble was that, like I say, hardly anyone knew who the hell he was. So here’s the clever bit….Paukstys FAKED letters from Zappa to non-existent relatives and friends in Vilnius and got them exhibited at the city’s art gallery, along with books, a watch, clothes, you name it, that were supposed to have belonged to the singer.
Of course, it was all cobllers. But back then the newly-free Liths were going mental for anything American, so they bought it. Next, Paukstys starts the petition. He gets thousands of signatures. The Government’s official response is that it’s an absurd idea – but then, to their credit, they shrug: “Why not ?”
And so, since 1995, there he’s been. Larger than life and a damn sight better to look at than the grumpy face of Queen Victoria that bugged me every time I walked through Dunn Square in Paisley as a kid. OK, so on the surface the whole episode was a con pulled by some beatnicks trolleyed on wacky baccy. But it’s surface thinking that has made sure nine out of ten statues around the world are of rulers or warmongers.

To Paukstys and his pals, Frank Zappa represented the free spirit Lithuania had so long been denied. The quote on the plinth says it all: “Never stop until your good becomes better and your better becomes best.” He stands where he does for no better reason than the idea made people happy. Better that than to mark a life spent keeping people in their place. Oh, and by the way – for their next trick, Saulius Paukstys and his mates spliffed up again and decided that Lithuania becoming a nation in its own right wasn’t enough. So they declared Uzupis an independent state within Vilnius. Can’t wait for their entry in the Eurovision Song Contest.”