Rush vs Yes vs Zappa

My favourites are the early 70s fusion/jazz-rock records Hot Rats, The Grand Wazoo, and Waka/Jawaka. Also fond of Lumpy Gravy.

This poll is really hard! Zappa had the greatest compositional range but, as noted, is so inconsistent. I voted for Yes in the last poll on the strength of the stretch from The Yes Album through Going for the One. After that point, they're of very little interest to me though. Rush comes closest of the three to being a regular rock band. Despite some dips in the 80s and 90s, they've been pretty consistently reliable and have done some great things.

Hmmmm. Rush were the best at ripping off Zep back in the day (something I think they don't get nearly enough credit for; if you can name a better Canadian Zep wannabe band than early Rush I'd love to hear it). Yes were one of the only prog bands whose ideas about music extended beyond "let's string together a bunch of random unrelated riffs in 7/4 and then throw in a keyboard solo", and deserve credit for that alone. Zappa could not only play the hell out of a Little Richard song, he could flat-out jam (he did some pretty nice stuff with L. Shankar in the late '70s). On the other hand he never wrote anything worth humming in his entire life, which when you have something like 80 albums has to be considered some sort of demerit.

Yes were one of the only prog bands whose ideas about music extended beyond "let's string together a bunch of random unrelated riffs in 7/4 and then throw in a keyboard solo", and deserve credit for that alone.

Not fair to e.g. King Crimson or Soft Machine, to name just a couple. (Besides, Zappa himself was a prog artist.)

On the other hand he never wrote anything worth humming in his entire life,

This is so, so wrong. At least a couple dozen of the original Mothers songs including everything on Ruben and the Jets. Everything on the 1972 jazz records... "Lemme Take You to the Beach" not hummable? Pssshhhh...

Anyway, my vote is FZ, no surprise to anyone who knows me.

I'm guessing that if Frank had only wrote "Black Napkins" he might have got your vote.

This should be Rush vs. Primus vs. Zappa

heh...

Add "How Could I Be Such a Fool?" and "Blessed Relief" to that and how could I resist? (xpost)

One good key to zeroing in on how good a melodist FZ was would be checking out the records by small chamber ensembles playing his work. The Omnibus Wind Ensemble, Ensemble Ambrosius and Le Concert Impromptu all have great sets -- Embrosius play FZ on Baroque instruments, and their album is on Spotify.... http://open.spotify.com/album/40I3p7zHU7waQwZABZoiPr

My most frequently hummed FZ song is Pygmy Twylyte

re zappa: looking over his discography, i'm surprised HOW MUCH of it i used to known (and own - since sold). i kind of would like to hear some of the sounds again, especially the guitar soloing, but just the thought of the songs and the zappaism kind of puts me off.

tho strangely the whole system of nomenclature seems like an accomplishment itself.

still get a kick out of remembering to say 'central scruuutinizer' to myself every few years.

zappa just barely over yes

Heh...Zappa being accused of doing all this juvenile sexist stuff, yet it's Rush and Yes who put all the bare bums on their albumn covers!

Rush & Yes are just fine, but this is an easy decision, really.

Yeah I don't know about that "not hummable" thing. Those three early Mothers records alone should put that to rest. I'm going back through my Zappa discs and realized just how early this guy jumped off the deep end - as brilliant as "Brown Shoes" is otherwise, the song just makes me physically uncomfortable due to those lyrics. Agreed that Zappa really needed to shut up more often, therefore I think Yes is the better choice overall.

I think Zappa has a TON of great melodies, earworms if not outright hummable, from "You Can Take Your Clothes When You Dance" to "King Kong" to "Peaches en Regalia" to "Cheepnis" and beyond.

The song "Absolutely Free" is one of those real crazy earworms that gets in my head for months at a time

also "Oh No" is such a brilliant tune

kinda wondering what the hell happened to this guy in the 70's

Anyone doubting the singability of Zappa tunes needs to give a listen to The Persuasions Sing Zappa too.

1. FZ the impresario (Alice Cooper, Tom Waits, the GTO's, Jeff Simmons lol) and FZ the filmmaker (200 Motels); his own music suffers

2. Injury and enforced downtime; compositional burst with the jazz albums, "RDNZL," "Inca Roads," etc. -- on the road nearly nonstop with one of his greatest bands, playing this stuff until they knew it backwards, forwards and at any tempo

3. Endless grief with Herb Cohen and Warner Brothers

4. Retrenchment, gathering his resources to create Barking Pumpkin and the UMRK

xpost

Zappa up to and including "Hot Rats" is pretty unfuckwithable, after that up to 75-ish is pretty ok...after that it plunges pretty far and fast, at least to me.

And he wrote tons of catchy/memorable tunes.

Anyway, I love/hate Zappa but the music of his I love far outweighs the Rush I love and Yes is so dumb they aren't even a factor.

For the most part '75 is my Zappa cutoff point, too. I like the later 70s Lather stuff, and I find a few tracks on early 80s albums are worth a hearing. Then I get off the bus.

Until we do Rush vs Beatles, I'm always going to be voting Rush.

I like some Zappa, and I like some Yes. But I love most Rush.

Personally I don't get the hatred of Zappa's lyrics. The first thing you have to learn when listening to prog rock is to ignore the lyrics. Maybe it's because Zappa going off about groupies or enema bandits or whatever for ten minutes is harder to ignore than Yes lyrics, which don't make any sense on any kind of a rational level? I always had a harder time ignoring Rush's whole Ayn Rand fetish thing, and as far as revolting groupie lyrics I find myself more put off by some of the stuff Pete Sinfield wrote for King Crimson, maybe because of the attempt at cloaking the same sentiments as "art".

As to his melodies, they're highly musical, and certainly extremely singable, but they're inaccessible on a performance level to someone without musical talent. In other words they're not the kind of songs you would sing in the shower, whereas something like "Roundabout" has bits of it you could hum in the shower. Whereas with Zappa even the songs that when you listen to them sound tuneful and catchy like "Let Me Take You To the Beach" devolve into flat rhythmic exercises when I try to hear them in my head. Maybe related to the way every single version of "Willie the Pimp" I have heard that doesn't have Captain Beefheart singing sounds turgid and lumbering. I don't know, maybe I'd make an exception for something like "You're probably wondering why I'm here", but it's a very small portion of his catalogue. ("Cheepnis" I always get distracted by Tom Fowler's absolutely monster bassline.)

In terms of King Crimson and Soft Machine, I actually like both of those bands much better than I like Yes. I'm speaking mainly about the aspiration sometimes expressed of "prog" being a synthesis of rock instrumentation and classical-level songwriting. In practice this entailed Keith Emerson turning Ginastera into a bunch of squiggly synth noises punctuated by a drum solo. It's a tremendously enjoyable listen, but it's difficult to say it does Ginastera's original work total justice. I can only think of two examples of prog bands who made some serviceable attempt at classical-style thematic development in a rock context- Yes circa "Close to the Edge", and Egg's "Enneagram". That said I'd much rather listen to "Starless" than "Close to the Edge" pretty much any day of the year.

Has anyone here actually heard the piece that "Toccata" was supposed to be an interpretation of? I always wondered what it was like.

I get what you mean w/r/t Zappa's lyrics, but the difference is that Yes never really forced you to pay attention to them the way Zappa does. I agree that in his better moments the lyrics are easy to ignore, but so much of Zappa's catalogue is stuff like "Bobby Brown Goes Down" or "Sy Borg" or "He's So Gay" where the lyrics are clearly the focal point.

And there's almost nothing to pay attention to otherwise. I meant to add that.

Oh man, "Sy Borg." Joe's Garage is really where I decamp the Zappa train. I would assume Ike Willis was okay with those lyrics, or at least okay with the paycheck he was getting, but jeez...

man when I was 12 years old Joe's Garage was so goddamn clever & great & such a big fuck-you to all the squares who're fucking up the world. that is the problem with Zappa's lyrics: they're the kind of stuff that, if you are a 12-year-old reject, seems really profound to you. there is nothing wrong with being an angry kid and being a condescending angry kid is a common, understandable defense mechanism. it is however generally speaking a bad look as a lyricist. Peart does a similar thing, but less often, and plus who the fuck know what that piercing Lee wail is saying half the time? most people learn their lesson with a Rush lyric sheet early on and just tune out the lecturing

It's interesting to watch Zappa's lyrics get uglier and more misanthropic as he got older and suffered real and imagined setbacks and slights.

yeah - like here's Zappa ad-libbing and coming off a little racist in Japan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yWy0iWeltA

like, goddamn, just play some music already dude

man when I was 12 years old Joe's Garage was so goddamn clever & great & such a big fuck-you to all the squares who're fucking up the world. that is the problem with Zappa's lyrics: they're the kind of stuff that, if you are a 12-year-old reject, seems really profound to you. there is nothing wrong with being an angry kid and being a condescending angry kid is a common, understandable defense mechanism. it is however generally speaking a bad look as a lyricist. Peart does a similar thing, but less often, and plus who the fuck know what that piercing Lee wail is saying half the time? most people learn their lesson with a Rush lyric sheet early on and just tune out the lecturing

― steven fucking tyler (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, August 8, 2012 6:21 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean other than they are both aimed at the adolescent mind, i honestly don't see that much shared by peart and zappa, i mean peart is like ULTRA sincere like ultra ultra and really - despite whatever ayn rand crap -- doesn't have a mean worldview at all IMO...peart also isn't sarcastic at all.

jesus this zappa clip, three minutes of bullshit just to hear some turgid BBQ blues crap

naw, there's a real affinity in their ~philosophies~ - I mean they're both libertarians & that shit informs their stuff. Zappa's a snide annoying dude and Peart generally comes off dreamier but you get the impression both of them think they're a loooooot smarter than the people they're singing to

i dunno i read his book and obv what he's gone through with his losses in his life i really think you seem to want to assume the worst about peart anyway:

This is somewhat random, but you were interested in the writings of Ayn Rand decades ago. Do her words still speak to you?

Oh, no. That was 40 years ago. But it was important to me at the time in a transition of finding myself and having faith that what I believed was worthwhile. I had come up with that moral attitude about music, and then in my late teens I moved to England to seek fame and fortune and all that, and I was kind of stunned by the cynicism and the factory-like atmosphere of the music world over there, and it shook me. I'm thinking, "Am I wrong? Am I stupid and naïve? This is the way that everybody does everything and, had I better get with the program?"

For me, it was an affirmation that it's all right to totally believe in something and live for it and not compromise. It was a simple as that. On that 2112 album, again, I was in my early twenties. I was a kid. Now I call myself a bleeding heart libertarian. Because I do believe in the principles of Libertarianism as an ideal – because I'm an idealist. Paul Theroux's definition of a cynic is a disappointed idealist. So as you go through past your twenties, your idealism is going to be disappointed many many times. And so, I've brought my view and also – I've just realized this – Libertarianism as I understood it was very good and pure and we're all going to be successful and generous to the less fortunate and it was, to me, not dark or cynical. But then I soon saw, of course, the way that it gets twisted by the flaws of humanity. And that's when I evolve now into . . . a bleeding heart Libertarian. That'll do.

Yeah, "Enema Bandit" is one of his worst. Embarrassing just to type the title. 76-80 were such sour years. I imagine every target in his songs had a little Warner Bros. logo for a face. Gays, Jews, any sucker stupid enough to be in love, anybody who dared to have sex... a little date rape tossed around just for lolz. I have to compartmentalize like hell to be such a full-on fan of FZ the composer.

xxp

that is sweet - I did read something abt Peart in recent years that made him seem like a nice enuf dude. I'm just talking about his lyrics, I'm sorry man I will never not be laffing about a song actually leading off with "living on a lighted stage approaches the unreal." but it is nicer at heart than, say, "the illinois enema bandit," which is just hateful

what's really annoying to me is like once I aged out of Zappa, like with most of the stuff I aged out of, I never revisited it until recently. but nowadays I'm listening to the Mothers and loving it, just feel like it's the best most interesting music, and I've become a guy who really likes to hear guitarists stretching out and playing, preferably with really good bands who're doing interesting stuff, and that's Zappa all day, except the second he opens his mouth it's just so awful. "white port and lemon juice" seems ok but I wouldn't be at all surprised if on further inspection it, too, turned out to be some bullshit. upper mississippi otm really, I may find Peart laughable but he's not a dick.

That's a cover of an old doo-wop song by the Four Deuces -- here's the original if you got the Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/2DNocU0e1N93twRVwRtBlD

how is "The Illinois Enema Bandit" racist? (not saying it isn't awful in a thousand other ways, but am I not hearing the lyrics correct here?)

not the song, Zappa's intro to the Japanese audience

Yeah, "Enema Bandit" is one of his worst. Embarrassing just to type the title. 76-80 were such sour years. I imagine every target in his songs had a little Warner Bros. logo for a face. Gays, Jews, any sucker stupid enough to be in love, anybody who dared to have sex... a little date rape tossed around just for lolz. I have to compartmentalize like hell to be such a full-on fan of FZ the composer.

― Your sweet bippy is going to hell (WmC), Wednesday, August 8, 2012 4:44 PM (2 hours ago)

i want to say that i dislike zappa's embittered sarcasm, but i'm not sure why i should find it so off-putting when i often enjoy something quite similar in scuzzball punk rockers like mark arm and tom hazelmeyer. perhaps it's the abrasive wackiness of zappa's presentation, running wokka-wokka laps around ween at their worst. perhaps it's that the legitimate pleasures his music offers - compositional and rhythmic complexity, hyperathletic musical brotherhood, and head-spinning textural shifts - don't interest me much.

meanwhile, he has no time for the things i enjoy most. pop melodicism, rock as cathartic release, and direct emotional evocation might help wash the bitterness down, but zappa isn't willing to play those games. he'll stoop to dumb jokes, but rarely to the indulgence of joys too easily had. funny thing is that when i take the time to listen to his early albums, i often do enjoy them (or at least marvel at their prodigiousness), and his live band was amazing well into the 70s, but he ultimately leaves me cold. "tryin' to grow a chin" is pretty badass though. "one more time for the world..."

Contendo otm. Rush is awesome, Yes is awesome. Zappa comes on the stereo and it's time to leave that party.

I can't actually imagine a poll in which I'd vote for Zappa, save "Zappa vs. death by stoning"

"Duke of Prunes" yo

Also, even if you hate Zappa's music, check out the albums he put out:

STS 1051 - Alice Cooper - Pretties for You (1969)
STS 1052 - Judy Henske and Jerry Yester - Farewell Aldebaran (1969)
2-STS 1053 - Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica (1969)
STS 1054 - Lord Buckley A Most Immaculately Hip Aristocrat (1969)
STS 1056 - Jeff Simmons And Randy Steirling Naked Angels (1969)
STS 1057 - Jeff Simmons Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up (1969)
STS 1058 - Tim Dawe Penrod (1969)
STS 1059 - GTO's Permanent Damage (1969)
STS 1060 - Tim Buckley Blue Afternoon (1969)
STS 1061 - Alice Cooper Easy Action (1969)
STS 1062 - Persuasions Acappella (1970)
STS 1063 - Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970)
STS 1064 - Tim Buckley Starsailor (1971)
STS 1065 - Alice Cooper Love It to Death (1971)

That "Enema Bandit" clip sums up most of the aspects of Zappa that I hate: a smug, tedious monologue; lame, juvenile humour; a go-nowhere noodly solo.

I get what you mean w/r/t Zappa's lyrics, but the difference is that Yes never really forced you to pay attention to them the way Zappa does. I agree that in his better moments the lyrics are easy to ignore, but so much of Zappa's catalogue is stuff like "Bobby Brown Goes Down" or "Sy Borg" or "He's So Gay" where the lyrics are clearly the focal point.

This + it's not only that Zappa's lyrics can be genuinely unpleasant but they're so obviously trying really hard to be funny and so often fall so wide of the mark for me, at least. Like, did this shit actually seem clever in the 70s?

Peart's interest in Rand has been discussed pretty thoroughly between this thread, the Rush vs Yes vs Dead thread, and the C/D thread. He was into Rand in a fairly naive way. What are emphasized in the lyrics are atheism, independent thought, and creative freedom. Especially with his earnestness, this can seem adolescent but their lyrics are clearly not right-wing political screeds. In fact, they've demanded that right-wing talk radio NOT use their music.

xpost I voted for Yes in the end: they have a significant string of albums I consider great; at their worst, they're boring or saccharine, not outright idiotic or obnoxious.

Also, it looked like Zappa was going to run away with this.

And there's almost nothing to pay attention to otherwise. I meant to add that.

Yeah, OTM with some of those late 70s Zappa tunes. With e.g. Yes lyrics, it's pretty clear that the words are just something for Anderson to hang a melody on. Not the case with something like "Bobby Brown" where the melody is so basic.

Nah Zappa the guy and Zappa the label man is totally OK by me.

Zappa the purveyor of dick jokes in 15/8 is not OK. Zappa the author of "stick it, stick it, stick it, stick it in her poop shoot" is also not OK, catchy though it is. Zappa the composer, who has zero interest in developing any ideas beyond its expository phase: not OK. "We will have 30 seconds of ragtime followed by 45 seconds of free jazz followed by another Suzy Creemcheeze thing." You know, Uncle Meat Zappa, Hot Rats Zappa. Fuck that Zappa. Draconian rehearsal nightmare Zappa is not OK. "I will write something physically impossible for anybody to sing, get Tina to sing it all night until she gets it, while I deliver a first-take half-written thing about dental floss."

Also I don't like that every time somebody starts talking about Zappa at a party, somebody goes "what? you haven't heard {album}?" and loads it up on the Youtube. After about 30 seconds every girl in the room is making that "...awkward!" glace at each other.

I do confess that I like several instrumental tracks, I like "Freak Out" enough to listen to it once a year. I liked "Apostrophe" when I was 10 and thought I was too cool for Weird Al and "Humpty Dance" wouldn't come out 'til the following year. I love Zappa the dude and like that he was drug-free and sober and ambitious, I've spent a lot of time with his music and it is categorically not my thing and I'm a little sad to think there are people out there who'd favour him over Yes, who are often awesome, and Rush, who are always awesome.

it must be said, the lyric is 'ram it, ram it, ram it…', not 'stick it, stick it, stick it…'. maybe he writes good lyrics after all - they can stick!

also what first won my post-adolescent heart over to zappa was the song about raising up the dental floss.

OTM

Also pretty disturbing that the bg vocalist on that album is a convicted rapist

Wait, is that true about Napoleon Brock Murphy? (I see it on Roy Estrada's Wiki, which is pretty creepy.)

Whoa: http://mugshots.com/US-Counties/California/Santa-Clara-County-CA/Napoleon-Murphy-Brock.4542761.html

yeah, I don't see a date on Brock's conviction although the mugshot looks fairly recent right? But Estrada has 3 convictions for child sexual assault dating back to '77!

yeah Estrada was a real piece of work evidently

25 years without parole. I had not heard about Estrada; saw him not too many years ago with The Grandmothers.

Ugh, didn't know that about Estrada. Yick. That poor kid.

I'm really upset to hear about these guys. It's a real shock, especially NMB, who comes across as a fairly likable person. Ugh. This is going to ruin a lot of my favorite songs.

This gives me mixed feelings about zappa himself. On the one hand I always thought he was an asshole for dumping the original mothers, but maybe he had good reasons after all. But on the other hand maybe it wasn't a coincidence that he attracted certain types of people. And given his later lyrics and everything I wonder how much he was complicit in that sort of thing. I always kind of liked the creepy "freak scene" dark side of the Mothers but for some reason I didn't suspect that it actually got THAT creepy.

It certainly puts the lyrics to "Magdalena" in an even more uncomfortable light.

Jesus, I didn't know that song!

Listening to this, with a bit of a beer buzz going, I'm struck by one of the things that makes me uncomfortable about Zappa, that I'm realizing after this discussion. He was clearly a very intelligent man who was very serious about the craft of his music, to the point of obsessiveness. It doesn't make sense that he'd just ad-lib some dumb shit for shock value like the Day-Glo Abortions or someone. When that shit is in there, it seems like it had to mean something to him or something.

It's weird because I've always chosen to listen to zappa's satirical anti-hippy lyrics in a naive way and just take them at face value. Like Absolutely Free is a genuinely great psychedelic song IMO. I don't care if he meant it as a joke or not. But the same seems to be true with some of the creepy sexual lyrics. Was the supposed satire just a cover for him to sing about what genuinely interested him? A lot of his lyrics are full of contradictions, and are clearly ironic in one line and then seemingly genuine in another. I've always thought he seemed like an incredibly insecure dude who tried to mask his insecurities with all of the "jokes."

I'd suppose it is largely context. Big Black goes there it's kind of a horror or true crime movie, you expect it to be there. I suppose Illinois Enema Bandit seems somehow sleazier as it is being played for laughs out of a mid tempo blues that wouldn't sound out of bounds musically on a Doobie Brothers record. And maybe it is that cultural divide where people could just dig the music and not really realize what it is somewhat about is why Bobby Brown was a chart hit in parts of Europe.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

so basically X is going to win any 'X v rush v yes' poll

countdown to some very angry prog fans

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/6e/XLosAngeles.jpg/220px-XLosAngeles.jpg

I'd vote for X in an "X vs Rush vs Yes" poll, even though I quite like Rush. Doe & Cervenka are tops in my book.

was going to move to northern michigan and name my Yes cover band Starship Yooper

late lol @ "Starship Yooper", that song will never be the same to me again

anyway just wanted to chime in and say I listened to "Magdalena" and EWWWWWWWWWWWWWwwwwwwwww, I kind of agree that there's a part of Zappa that must have internalized this stuff to some degree. "Brown Shoes" mostly gets a pass because of what a classic it is but lately that one's made me really uncomfortable too.

Interesting how this poll came back in exactly reverse order of awesomeness.

yes is always the most awesome band in any list of awesome bands