Frank Zappa: Classic or Dud?

it's irritating for actual fans

(Frank from grave): "Mission ... accomplished ... "

sorry i don't know why i'm doing this
Pandemic Holiday etc. stress induced search for novelty as a Way Out, perhaps?

i switched to the "new" kraftwerk joint that just dropped and am currently exploring which corners of my flat don't have wifi or bluetooth coverage as i clean it

I saw Walter Boudreau's Dangerous Kitchen chamber group in 1996. I thought it was incredible at the time, although tbf I was 17.

Duh, I can't believe I forgot about the smallest slice of the Venn diagram between Zappa, prog and jazz: Chester Thompson. Played with Zappa from '73-'75, subsequently joined Weather Report for a bit, then was hired by Genesis and Phil-solo based on Phil's appreciation for his playing with Zappa.

after i ran through his discog this summer, i made a 50-minute playlist intended both as a representation of what i think is his best work and also as a semi-approachable zappa primer. it is almost entirely instrumental aside from the roxy tracks iirc https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4GmFgY6pZynEqNquwTESju?si=0PlUD-2NSRSf3bOS7QD7iw

both and also??? you heard it here first

anyway my playlist is good

good title. but no Watermelon, Pound for A Brown, Blessed Relief, St Etiene, RNDZL, or Black Napkins?!

The Village > Arf > Wash triptych is sorta like Frank's Help > Slip > Franklin huh?

rndzl and black napkins were cut from earlier versions of the playlist bc i wanted to make it short

"watermelon" ruined somewhat by being embedded in the story of joe's garage

oh "blessed relief" was on there too, just felt like too much wazoo with "eat the question" as well

right on. solid primer

The Village > Arf > Wash triptych is sorta like Frank's Help > Slip > Franklin huh?

― Paul Ponzi, Friday, December 25, 2020 12:19 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

also, good call, no wonder they're my favorite zappa and dead things respectively

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqzA1VOiC-M

Sorry, I can’t even look at the titles.

(my life in BradNelson neatly pointing me an unexpected way into 60s colossi i have kinda given up on getting and lazily hate out of habit as much as anything)

A hard habit to break though.

NO SINGING is a very important factor

starting the playlist off with a brief fusion jam called "i promise not to come in your mouth" is me acknowledging there's no such thing as an accessible zappa primer

he really is the guy who dug an entirely different tunnel out of the 50s -- via stan freberg lol -- that paid no fair mind to just about anything that came afterwards (except maybe some TV themetunes and cokerock production techniques)

(i even feel like he got to "fusion" via his own route tbh)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDowitqL1Rc

https://wiki.killuglyradio.com/wiki/Jeff_Beck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H84WlVbCCdo

Music streaming sites are great for exploring artists like Zappa who have way too many albums. Imagine being a die hard fan in the 70s like “aw fuck now I gotta go buy Joe’s Garage vol 2 and 3?”. It broth to mine how much it really sucks that very little of Zorn’s stuff isn on the streaming services because it would be even more ideal for gettting into his work. .

*brought to mind

I really don’t see how you can hold your head up high as a Zappa fan without an appreciation of Joe’s Garage Volumes 2 and 3.

The only salvageable track from the whole trilogy is on Vol. 3!

I agree! I meant before the album is coming out and your the type who buys everything. There are probably better examples.

Maybe I shouldn’t go there but perhaps FZ is not all bad if disdain for or at least indifference to or suspicion of him can unite such disparate posters as unperson, sinkah, Tom D, veronica m, to name but four.

I consider Packard Goose into Watermelon Hay the highlights. “Only salvageable” is a stretch although there are embarrassing lyrics you have to be willing to overlook/compartmentalize. Catholic Girls is a brilliant pop song if you like Ariel Pink imo

Zappa is just dated. There’s nothing all that special about the suspicion of or unwillingness to embrace that..

Music streaming sites are great for exploring artists like Zappa who have way too many albums. Imagine being a die hard fan in the 70s like “aw fuck now I gotta go buy Joe’s Garage vol 2 and 3?”... I meant before the album is coming out and your the type who buys everything.

Does it need to be imagined? Wasn't that life for music fans at any point before the mid-00s?

I guess before the early 00s if you roll p2p into there.

Trying to remember in which epoch the sun turned cold and I would stop dutifully buying every new album by favored artists but yeah.

Zappa is just dated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts9-4jbFWGg

Given how few cds me and most people I knew could afford to purchase when I was in high school and college the uniquely high volume cult artist who releases at least one album a year who on some level tells their audience “you have to buy everything to understand me” seems pretty bad in retrospect

Which artists told their audiences that?

With some artists it was just implicit.

this is silly there were plenty of ways of getting an album you didn't buy, people taped things all the time for each other, and anyway "one album a year" hardly makes for a glut, that used to be the norm

Every artist that releases lots of stuff under their name is doing that unless they explicitly say something like “please don’t feel obligated to buy everything” imo

r u serious

I like Zappa a lot more than mark s does btw!

I don't doubt it, I believe you like the early stuff. I was pretty sure that post would cause some narcissism of small differences to bubble up.

Resisting screenname change impulse right now, will stockpile.

Every artist that releases lots of stuff under their name is doing that unless they explicitly say something like “please don’t feel obligated to buy everything” imo

― “Big” Don Abernathy, Sunday, 3 January 2021 bookmarkflaglink

Lol

Good thing I only got into Tito Puente at the very end.

Every artist... never in the history of art...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZc7E9yx3Ao

there's a lot of good stuff on joe's garage, it's really the lyrics/story that sink the thing

like i think i would love the robot sex track if anything else were happening over the top of it