Frank Zappa: Classic or Dud?

Oh yeah, I remember that, voted Thunes

Ftr I think Zappa is a great guitarist but not as good as McLaughlin

Actually listening to The Grand Wazoo and MO' Birds of Fire this afternoon and getting retroactivley heated abt Phisheads that act like they are so next level, it's such baby music

I feel the same way about Birds of Fire as some people feel about Horses, I've tried but it don't impress me much (same is true of The Grand Wazoo* and lots of other Zappa)

*poetic!

I am the one who said Frank Zappa is not a great guitarist. Obviously the guy is more than competent. He is hyper competent enough to play his own compositions. My observation I guess is that for a guy with chops, and obvious incredible compositional chops, and great Ambitions and pretensions, I dont think his guitar playing is really totally free to go to places never heard before. If I was going to compare and contrast him with another great guitar player in a band I don't like, I would bring up Jerry Garcia, who was a really interesting guitarist and could do really interesting things in a musical environment I did not enjoy.

I dont think his guitar playing is really totally free to go to places never heard before

Interesting point. I read only one interview with Zappa where a journalist told him in his face that he was repeating himself all the time as a guitarist and that it wasn´t that "sophisticated" what he was doing (or whatever the term was, I don´t remember exactly). And Zappa didn´t deny any of this. He just said "well, it's my turn to enjoy myself". And he was in the position to do that, paying people to accompany him to play endless solos.

Zappa admitted he was the least talented musician of his band. His skills varied from tour to tour too (at least he had the guts to try out different guitar sounds from tour to tour). He did some great work with Vinnie Colaiuta on the "Shup Up.." albums (as far as polyrhythms go). Just the ongoing crazy interaction between the two.

Zappa seemed to have a love/hate relationship with jazz - he needed jazz players with chops to play his music but he couldn´t play jazz himself as a guitarist. He looks down on jazz chord progressions and standards in his autobiography but at the same time loved Wes Montgomery records. No one ever asked Zappa why he didn´t learn to play jazz guitar or raise the bar as a guitar player - he was smart enough to understand the theory behind it. Sometimes I feel that records as "Grand Wazoo", "Hot Rats" and "Sleep Dirt" were made by another person than Zappa (or at least another side of the man - looking beyond the things he was known for, such as the lyrics). Some people argue he loved to sell himself as an outcast rather than someone belonging to a scene, trend or genre - and build a following this way.

It´s interesting to look at Zappa and "roads not taken", such as the Hot Rats band. His answer to such failed instrumental projects for larger audiences were dumb lyrics and vocally-oriented music (as a way of revenge, it seems). He also didn´t believe there was a market for his Synclavier music because there were no lyrics.

Birds Of Fire is amazing but I like Inner Mounting Flame better. Is Phish anything like that? I've still never heard them.

My favorite Mahavishnu album is the live one, Between Nothingness and Eternity. If you buy the remastered box set with all the albums by the first lineup, it's been expanded to a double disc with about an hour of extra material - including versions of a bunch of tracks that showed up on The Lost Trident Sessions - and it's killer.

he was smart enough to understand the theory behind it.
There's a whole lot of shedding going in between "understanding the theory" and actually being any good at it.

OTM

Is Phish anything like that? I've still never heard them.

No

Nah man Phish is like Spin Doctors with 80s King Crimson chops

That's a really great way of describing some of the worst music on Earth.

What are Spin Doctors like?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsdy_rct6uo

80s King Crimson chops

Wait, did Phish ever approach this? (And I like "You Enjoy Myself" fwiw.)

Assuming he was joking

Oh lol. I forgot how much I enjoyed "Two Princes".

FP^

Spin Doctors = the American Reef
Zappa = the American Bonzos, with added mega-chops

http://www.dweezilzappaworld.com/posts/1982286-response-to-my-brother-s-open-letter

Families, eh? Nightmare.

Thinking Prince may have had it right with no family or will.

So, was this obsessive controlling thing Gail had (and Ahmet has inherited) some twisted way of getting back at Frank for his serial infidelity?

Now renamed the "Dweezil Zappa plays whatever the fuck he wants" tour

featuring robby krieger

http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-ca-ms-frank-zappa-legacy/

Ahmet's "I'm just doing what Mom wanted" stuff smells the most disingenuous, but what do I know.

Speaking on the phone from London after a trip to Stonehenge for summer solstice, Diva says that the last year has been difficult on so many levels and that she and Ahmet are doing the best they can with a difficult situation.

Spoken like a person with the keys to the bank vault.

you can hear Dweezil talk about Gail on Marc Maron. it really sounds like she was completely cuckoo, at one point responding to his request to list ZPZ tour dates on the website with "I'm not just some groupie your father fucked!" seems like (as many people have suspected) Gail was a little resentful towards ol' Frank

can't think of any way of better honor frank's legacy that manipulative acrimonious fighting over money tbh

Saw the documentary last night. For a casual fan like me (the kind Zappa ridicules early in the film: the first three Mothers LPs a touchstone since high school--even before I had them, I'd read Lillian Roxon's entry on them again and again--count "Trouble Every Day" as one of the most amazing songs ever, close to no interest after that), very worthwhile. Similar to the De Palma documentary: no one interviewed other than Zappa himself (I doubt if anyone other than Dylan was ever subjected to sillier questions--a Toronto VJ, Jeanne Beker, who used to get flak from everyone here, actually comes across really well). Things like "Bobby Brown" and "Dinah-Moe Humm"...I don't know, where's the line that separates even fans from fans who find those particular songs smart and funny? I did like how, when asked in what appeared to be his last interview if he ever regretted certain songs, he immediately said "No." My friend and I wondered if it would even be possible to be Frank Zappa today and not be chased out of town yesterday.

The Steve Allen and What's My Line clips, which have undoubtedly turned up elsewhere, are great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTj-xNcvfzI

i have this strong suspicion that frank zappa today would be fucking milo yiannopoulos.

That's the guy Alfred posted about a few days ago...You might be right. I'd like to think there'd be room somewhere for a smarter version today.

nah - FZ had a lot of reprehensible opinions/takes but they were pretty secondary to most of what he did. I don't think he conceived of his work as a platform for his opinions, though he also thought it was a fine forum for his opinions, if you can dig that distinction - but his skill set, anyway, included writing interesting and good music (ymmv of course). but the music came first, I think. these milo types are mainly in it to get attention/make people mad, I don't think that's really true of zappa.

I remember reading years and years ago that Frank Zappa and Ronald Reagan were, at the time, the only two recipients of test letters sent with only a photograph of themselves on the envelope in lieu of an address.

Just to clarify my own post, I mean smarter than Yiannopoulos, not smarter than Zappa.

Because the latter would be scientifically impossible!

That's what puzzles me about Zappa: that someone so intelligent about so many things would (presumably) think that something like "Bobby Brown" (put aside the nasty stuff) had important things to say that a smart high school student hadn't already moved past. (As music, I guess that particular song actually is interesting--modern-day doo-wop big in Scandinavia...)

http://variety.com/2016/dirt/news/lady-gaga-buys-frank-zappa-house-hollywood-1201865296/

Nice that they sold it to another Italian.

The doc is interesting. It was mentioned up thread but in regards to Frank's dismissal of the fans who primarily revere his earlier works, it is probably because there's a sincerity to these albums that was rarely seen later. The moment where a female voice chimes in "flower power sucks" on "We're Only In It For The Money" still gives me chills because very few artists back then commented on the superficiality of these movements. I'm still a fan of his later work like "Over-Nite Senasation" and "Hot Rats" but I struggle to see the sincerity in some of it. Perhaps that's the point, Zappa is rarely sincere and a contrarian, but there's glimpses of it in earlier work like "Uncle Meat" and "Freak Out" where his empathy and avant-garde tendencies shine through. The earlier work makes me think he's worth defending, much harder to do with his later stuff.

The strange thing about Zappa is that his juvenalia is his least juvenile work.

I may have posted this upthread but Zappa is truly the ultimate love / hate proposition for me, and I realize I'm not alone here. Saying "I wish all of his albums were instrumental" is almost a cliche at this point (see: Shut Up & Play Your Guitar, etc) but I am firmly in this camp. I love the hell out of Hot Rats, (most of) Apostrophe, (half of) Roxy, and parts of others, but always wish I liked his albums more than I do. I like the early albums fine but they veer more toward novelty to me (I'm including everything up to Reuben here), like above-average wacky psych pop, but not really the sort of thing I reach for.

That said, I expect I will have a "Zappa phase" at some point in my life. There's just so much good shit mixed in with so much dumb scatological nonsense.

A "Non-Wacky Zappa S&D" would be most welcome

I came here to chime in on that same note!

I’d always loathed Frank Zappa based on his persona and the Dr. Demento style songs that he seems to be best known for (?). I didn’t even know Zappa made any non-“novelty” music until Blessed Relief came up on a Spotify playlist. I like it, but I don’t know if I’m supposed to be taking it at face value, or reading it as some kind of veiled dig at Chuck Mangione and smooth jazz in general.

Are the first couple records a good place to start? I too just can't stand the persona and what I've heard but the Mothers of Invention records are liked by so many people

the first couple of records tend to get more liked because one gets the sense from them that zappa hadn't entirely given up on humanity at that point (though he was getting there) and have some moments of sincere and unaffected emotion (see, for instance, the bridge of "what's the ugliest part of your body"). but it's not as if that album is a wacky-free zone by any means.

anyway there's another thread for non-wacky zappa but i don't remember where it is right now.

First album is ok, the songs don't really fall in the novelty category. 2nd album has a terrific first side but also has the yucky "Brown Shoes Don't Make It," a tender ode to being tired of one's wife and fantasizing about fucking a 13-year-old girl instead. Of the original Mothers-era records, I recommend going in this order:

1. Uncle Meat
2. We're Only In It for the Money
3. Burnt Weeny Sandwich
4. Weasels Ripped My Flesh
5. Ahead of Their Time (released 1993, recorded Oct. 1968; half chamber music and not the worst comedy, half Mothers performance)
6. Cruising with Ruben and the Jets
7. Lumpy Gravy
8. Freak Out!
9. Absolutely Free

If you like the more abstract parts of the first 2, bump Lumpy Gravy higher.

2nd album has a terrific first side but also has the yucky "Brown Shoes Don't Make It,"

LOL, I can't stand the first side and think "Brown Shoes" is one of the best things he ever did.

I think "Brown Shoes" is a great sound collage, and the pedophilia is allegedly the dream of some City Hall worker, not Frank himself, but knowing where Roy Estrada ended up makes this one tough to listen to for me.

Non-Wacky Zappa POX, S&D, etc

xp -- ditto