Zappa - C/D

at least we know where zappa stood on the burning question of ccr's authenticity

Where?

WmC's post was awesome, btw.

does this awesome, ahead of it's time song means i should check out the whole album?, cause i don't like Zappa in general

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=girnJH7tvpM

Lol, possibly not. Legend has it that that's the song they were playing at the Whisky when Tom Wilson saw them and signed them to Verve. He kinda lived to regret it when they went into the studio to record the album, and a lot of the material veered off in a wildly different direction. On the other hand --

Frank Zappa paid this tribute: "Tom Wilson was a great guy. He had vision, you know? And he really stood by us ... I remember the first thing that we recorded was 'Any Way the Wind Blows,' and that was okay. Then we did 'Who Are the Brain Police?' and I saw him through the glass and he was on the phone immediately to New York going, 'I don't know!' Trying to break it to 'em easy, I guess." "Wilson was sticking his neck out. He laid his job on the line by producing the album."[7]

I mean, if it's the avant-garde stuff you don't like, then Freak Out could definitely fool you into getting something you're not. This was not the form that most of his protest music took.

Get "Absolutely Free" then "We're Only In It for the Money"

Hey, lots of Zappa up on Spotify - don't know if it's been mentioned yet.

"Trouble Every Day" is generally one of the few Zappa tunes that even the non-fans can agree on. Other one is "Peaches en Regalia". Freak Out! is an excellent album but believe it Zappa does not usually sound like that!

shame..thanks though

"Anyway the Wind Blows" is a favourite of mine too. Sometimes I think it's the best thing he ever did.

as a pastiche maybe

It's a nice song

maybe. i give up on him. again..

Believe me I'm no big fan either

it's a shame, cause obviously Zappa is talented, but imo he totaly wasted it.

I instinctively hated Zappa for years until like you Trouble Every Day caught my ear. I agree with people here that's it not representative at all, even of that period of the Mothers - and yet it became for me a gateway into Zappa's music.
I would still recommend to anyone to check out 'Hot Rats' and 'We're only in it for the Money'

did taht yesterday (again after several years) and was not convinced..

i dunno if you can say he "totally wasted" his talent. he released like 70 LPs of material while he was alive. there's gotta be something you like among them.

Yeah, "totally wasted" is a ridiculous assertion. His music's not for you, obviously, but he has an important body of work as a composer.

a needle in the haystack?

of course it's all IMO. i appreciate his work, but yeah, it's not for me. the elements that doen't work for me are propably the satire/parody one's.

Con-cen-traaaa-tion-moooooooo-ooooon

What's the ugliest part of your body?
Some say your nose
Some say your toes
But I think it's your mind
I think it's your mind....

ALL YOUR CHILDREN ARE POOR
UNFORTUNATE VICTIMS OF
SYSTEMS BEYOND THEIR CONTROL
A PLAGUE UPON YOUR IGNORANCE & THE GRAY
DESPAIR OF YOUR UGLY LIFE

First time I ever heard "Absolutely Free" it was wonderful. There was that sneering attitude (perfect as i was 16yo), that 60's sound that i loved, needlessly complicated orchestration that rewarded you with every successive listen, etc. Everyone makes a big deal of Brian Wilson's modular arrangement style from this period but in any given early Mothers album there is usually a "Smiley Smile" contained in every 2 or 3 songs.

are you talking about the album or the song? because I had an entire summer where "Absolutely Free" was the only song I could think of. such a brilliant tune.

First time I ever heard "Absolutely Free" it was wonderful.

Had the opposite effect on me, I was like, "Oh just fucking shut up, why don't you". Kinda like it now, in bits.

Not the song, the album.

Every time I want to get into Zappa I just wind up getting massively put off by something (the "shut up" reaction that Tom is referring to) - last time it was the Ahead of Their Time album which included a bunch of dialogue about how "we won't get laid if we play this WEIRD and WACKY music! We should be playing in 4/4! Not this AWFUL 6/13 garbage!!"

Still, he gets points for naming an album Shut Up n' Play Your Guitar!

I don't think I've posted this on any of the other FZ threads, but it's definitely worth a watch, albeit probably more fun the more you know the original.

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

Not the song, the album.

Yeah, that what I was talking about

Well if you are going to hate Zappa you are going to hate him, and that's totally fine. I think more than any other musician I enjoy Zappa is the one that I can understand other people not liking the most. On that tip I feel like if you are going to love Zappa you may as well dive into the most zany classic Mothers sound collage/social commentary/freakout music you can. The trilogy of "Absolutely Free", "We're Only In It For the Money", and "Lumpy Gravy" is like the ultimate litmus test. I couldn't really see someone being in love w, say, "Sheik Yerbouti" while at the same time hating those earlier records.

I couldn't really see someone being in love w, say, "Sheik Yerbouti" while at the same time hating those earlier records.

Really? I could totally see that.

But total fanatical Zappa fans seem to like everything he did no matter what

Nooo.....

I've been buying and loving his work since 1979, but some of it I just can't stand. The Flo & Eddie period is terrible, much of the Synclavier stuff leaves me cold. So much of the misanthropic "comedy" music is horrible.

Now that his catalog is on Spotify, I might make some playlists that accentuate different aspects of his work.

I dislike most of the original Mothers stuff. I like Ruben, Rats & Weasels, but otherwise I'm not on board until Grand Wazoo. But from there through Zappa In New York I'm a bit gonzo over his work even if I cringe at the lyrics as time goes on. The music and musicians he was working with were top notch. It's more hit or miss afterwords, though the Guitar records are straight killer.

Huh, it appears I'm wrong. Tbh i haven't met many Zappa fans irl unless i was listening to "WOIIFTM" and they came up to me and said "Duuuuude! Yessss!"

I like Zappa's instrumental music - my iPod contains The Grand Wazoo, Waka/Jawaka, Hot Rats, Shut Up 'n' Play Yer Guitar, and the recent compilation Finer Moments, and that's it. In high school I liked the late '70s/early '80s albums - Them Or Us, You Are What You Is, the Joe's Garage trilogy - but I don't listen to those anymore. I feel really glad to have seen him on his final US tour - Make A Jazz Noise Here, the mostly instrumental live album from that run, is pretty good, too.

Your original statement was a bit like saying about a Pink Foyd fan, "I couldn't really see someone being in love w, say, "Dark Side of the Moon" while at the same time hating "Piper at the Gates of dawn".

Well "Sheik Yerbouti" always seemed like on the zanier goofy-voices side of his stuff, so i thought it was a more direct comparison.

Can't remember if this was linked up thread : http://www.furious.com/perfect/zappainstrumentals.html

Hadn't seen it before. Great piece.

"Sheik Yerbouti"'s supposedly his alltime biggest seller, so it makes sense that it has lots of fans who have no use for the MOI stuff

^
this is crazy - that album always seemed to be a late career curio (with the Bob Dylan impersonation its sole saving grace). I have trouble imagining a world/period where that was a hit album

It's got "funny" songs on it

true - I might have chuckled a few times when I first heard Flakes, Jewish Princess and Dancing Fool. Can't remember anything else on that album

I always thought Broken Hearts Are For Assholes was pretty funny just because of how weirdly vulgar it gets. Not proud of myself for laughing at that one. But having a disco song that's almost completely undanceable really is funny!

"Dancin' Fool" was a respectable hit (#45) and got plenty of airplay in 1979, even in Mississippi. Grammy nomination, (disastrous) SNL gig... it's not too surprising that SY was his biggest selling album...that was never a high bar to clear.

yeah Sheik Yerbouti was the first album I heard in high school, it and You Are What You Is are maybe the heaviest on the silly voice comedy music (isn't "Bobby Brown Goes Down" on SY? that's def one of the key "silly" Zappa songs, also one of the most offensive)

nowadays the only stuff I can listen to is the Mothers + Hot Rats, but I should prolly try other records

I do think that even when his albums suck they are all at least interesting to some degree. I love the idea of Thing-Fish because you've got this widely respected composer with an incredibly devoted fanbase, and even they have trouble listening to it all the way through. The amount of rampant mysogny and homophobia on his albums is probably the thing that's going to really scar his overall body of work - I know most superfans claim that this is all ironic but after his 50th or so song attacking gay people I kinda wonder how true that is.

yeah, the homophobic jokes (esp on "Bobby Brown") are too mean-spirited and venomous to code as ironic to me

not to mention all the "jokes" about pedophilia when he worked with both a convicted sex offender and a guy who is currently serving 25 years for child molestation. but we have discussed this before. still it does make a lot of his shit tough to swallow.

Weirdly, Bobby Brown was supposedly a popular song in gay clubs in the 70s.