DECEMBER 17, 1995 – A statue of the late Frank Zappa was unveiled in Vilnius, the capital of the Republic Of Lithuania. It had been organized by Zappa fan club President Saulius Pauksty, who’d briefly met Zappa after a 1992 concert in California. He, like a surprising number of young Eastern Europeans, connected with the experimental musician’s style. The way Zappa pushed boundaries in music and in life was inspiring to the culturally adrift youth of the newly “liberated” countries of the former Soviet Bloc. Statues of Marx and Lenin had been torn down, and their plinths stood empty.
