Frank Zappa: Classic or Dud?

I love the music of both but yah of course Don is "cooler" not even a contest. A real ass artist with a real vision. Frank ain't that lol.

I get why some people don't like Zappa.

What I don't get is why some people don't get why other people like him.

The only thing I can think of (and I personally of course have no prob with what people like) is that some people seem to worship him as a first name God. "Frank", a la "Jerry" or the like. Just a little too much reverential adulation. In fact, I think I've noted on this thread before, or maybe the Dead thread, that Zappa and the Dead might be the two most undeniably influential, even music-changing acts where I both totally get it and yet don't really want to hear it.

^Big second to this post.

With acts at that level of popularity, it becomes impossible to dismiss all the fans outright, but also hard to really care and find a way in when all the obvious entry points leave one cold. Too many other artists to pursue, too many Missing Links, DO U SEE?

Seems like this is especially a Zappa thing (particularly in comparison to the Dead), but I feel that Zappa is a fandom that makes it hard to be a casual fan (like me, who digs the '60s stuff and perhaps gets more than most out of Joe's Garage) because any interaction with the hardcore leads to "You gotta hear this...and this..." in an almost belligerent way.

Guy was genius, he didn't play prog rock or jazz rock he played Zappamusic etc.

I definitely see the Waka/Grand Wazoo influence on Magma

at the very least secondhand via Soft Machine who were huge Zappa fans, and maybe the only band Zappa viewed as equals

Never heard this last thing

"Grand Wazoo" bored the tits off me so, at the very least, Magma improved on it.

Actually, now I come to think of it, I have heard Waka/Jawaka, it's Chunga's Revenge I was thinking of.

grand wazoo whips

Feel like with other bands like, say, The Beards, I mean The Byrds, the body has time to build up a healthy immmunity: "Mr. Tambourine Man," Mister Tambourine Man, Turn!, Turn!, Turn!...Notorious Byrd Brothers...Sweetheart of the Rodeo,.....Untitled...., whereas with FZ it just seems like an immediate 24/7 constant barrage of The Central Scrutinizer Two-Minute Hate-smashing a xylophone mallet onto a human eardrum over and over forever and ever.

Tim Smith obviously was
― frogbs, Wednesday, 22 December 2021 01:06 (one week ago)

Of course. For further evidence of this (and more importantly, potential delight) see the Piffol instrumentals (and T.V.T.V. which is also a Piffol) he was doing as a teen. I love that stuff.

Actually, now I come to think of it, I have heard Waka/Jawaka, it's Chunga's Revenge I was thinking of.

― I Can't See Gervais In My Mind (Tom D.), Thursday, December 30, 2021 11:36 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm loath to cast myself as Captain Zappasplainer, especially since I agree with what Grisso / McCain said upthread, but I do think a Magma fan would find much to enjoy in these two albums in particular, so you may wanna give them another go at some point. Mostly instrumental, very few antics or bad jokes, just Zappa doing his version of jazz fusion with some extraordinary playing and genuinely gorgeous tunes, like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-Qk8VxUwuM

wazoo’s “eat that question” and “blessed relief” are the peak of zappa jazz fusion for me

Well, what can I say, does nothing for me.

Waka and Wazoo are big blind spots for me, I need to check those out someday.

Shut Up And Play Yer Guitar is also great for people who just wanna listen to bad ass guitar fusion madness without lyrics

Fired up Läther thanks to this thread. I wish he'd done a full album of mostly-percussion tape-edit pieces like the interstitial bits on this.

i thought i would love the guitar solo edits records but alas they were really tough going. maybe i was tired of zappa by then (iirc i didn’t even get through sheik yerbouti). feel like there’s a single disc reduction that’s perfect that would take way too much effort to assemble

läther is absolutely dope tho. every side of zappa in its most realized permutation

My favourite Zappa guitar solo excursion is "Nine Types of Industrial Pollution (400 Days of the Year)" on Uncle Meat, most of the rest of his solos I can take or leave.

that one is great!!! the worst side effect of my zappa phase was figuring out how to enjoy uncle meat

Shut Up And Play Yer Guitar is also great for people who just wanna listen to bad ass guitar fusion madness without lyrics

I once bought it for exactly that reason, but sadly could not get into it :(

that one is great!!! the worst side effect of my zappa phase was figuring out how to enjoy uncle meat

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Thursday, December 30, 2021 2:02 PM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Uncle Meat is Houses of The Holy compared to Thing Fish, which is one of the worst records I have ever heard

I find it curious that my guitar teacher, who can play anything (more or less), *hates* Zappa's guitar playing. Like, I don't love it, but I've never had a problem with it. I think he saw an old Zappa interview where he was ripping on Motown for being shitty hacks or something and never forgave him for it.

Knew of the quote it the rest of this Lou Reed interview/set of takes is really funny.

Lou Reed, rock critic. pic.twitter.com/kzT8gnYk7A

— Theo Cogs (@realtedcogs) January 23, 2022

My favourite Zappa guitar solo excursion is "Nine Types of Industrial Pollution (400 Days of the Year)" on Uncle Meat, most of the rest of his solos I can take or leave.

― Halfway there but for you, Thursday, 30 December 2021 bookmarkflaglink

This is fantastic!

Lol yeah I was just looking at that Lou Reed bit. The Roxy Music one is spot on imo. Do Warhol next.

Shit, this is getting to what, half an album's worth of good Zappa music? Crazy..

Lou such a liar though, he was slagging off the Beatles a few years later.

Lol yeah I was just looking at that Lou Reed bit. The Roxy Music one is spot on imo. Do Warhol next.

― recovering internet addict/shitposter (viborg), Monday, January 24, 2022 7:36 AM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

click the link to expand the pic and he does below doug yule though i suspect you will be disappointed

His comments on Alice Cooper are funny considering that they shared a producer and guitarists!

xpost

Haha no about what I expected tbh but one can always hope. Jeez I am absolutely failing at reading comprehension right now tho, that’s two for two. Back to lurking.

no worries! it didn't show on the pic

- In Pete Townshend's defence, he does say in "The Seeker" that Timothy Leary couldn't help him, it's the opposite of acid sermonizing.
- Lou obviously went back and forth on Dylan; when Bob said that he wished he had written "Doing the Things That We Want To", Lou sent a flunky to buy all of his recent records.
- Sterling Morrison was also a CCR fan, as well as the Band, I think?

Dylan was a big influence on early Lou, no? Some of these demos before John worked his magic, I mean...

Like you can trust anything Lou said in the 70s.

Indeed. Didn't we talk about how Lou almost got invited to play on the Rolling Thunder Revue? Also:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TURsO0Ho6fc/Um5GcsufA8I/AAAAAAAAFF8/dsca_1iMoog/s1600/1985_25_yr_award_with_Lou_Reed_Judy_Collins_2+-+copia.jpg

this has always sounded very VU to me:

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

I forgot about the whole Al Aronowitz Robbie Robertson Dylan Velvets connection.

Oh, wait this a Zappa thread so we should be talking about FZ making fun of Nico instead.

People's enthusiasm for Reed slagging off Zappa made me think about why that guy conjures up such animosity - my dad was a big Zappa fan but outside of that the only real Zappa lovers I've known are ppl otherwise not much into music. He's been unfashionable ever since I can remember, doesn't even get that much play in Mojo/Uncut type publications and yet ppl HATE Zappa with the sort of passion usually reserved for more ubiquitous artists. I know that he has his hardcore fans but they seem a pretty marginalised bunch within wider music discourse?

My grad program had a Zappa ensemble.

"Frank Zappa: Master Composer" was sometimes offered as a upper year undergrad elective.

Admittedly mostly because of one guy but it's not like he had trouble getting joiners.

To Sund4r's point, there are plenty of musos that like him.

"People's enthusiasm for Reed slagging off Zappa made me think about why that guy conjures up such animosity"

He is very near my interests. I like a lot of 'challenging' classical music, Beefheart etc. and the doc shows that people who make good music like him.

Having said that I am now enjoying Shut up and Play yer Guitar. I couldn't sleep and it was 2am but I am playing some now and its kinda ok to work to. He is not going to get anywhere near my favourite on the instrument but if I think of him as just shredding away and making a soup
of it. I like soup, it's nourishing.

Plus the title is now making sense -- like he is turning the hate on himself. He is definitely doing something a lot of the haters want him to do.

I think I cut off about 1975.
Do love that gamelan influenced thing he was doing a couple of years earlier, think it's gamelan anyway. Some semi ethnic influenced jazz rock thing.
BUt the puerile smut thing is a GTO. The endless look at me look at me.
Do love the Mothers too.
But that might be a cliche.
Anyway 66-75 possibly skipping 71 when he's doing smut too.
So similar to the era of the Grateful Dead I focus on roughly.

an attempt at exploring why FZ so enrages:

i think it's bcz he strongly shares one of the techniques embedded in rock's sense of its best self while remaining powerfully (and in fact annoyingly) sceptical of the shared and idealised utopia it is taken to represent and embody. his shallow refusal to be be persuaded is trollish in form!

the technique is basically "universal collage", meaning the splicing together of sounds and techniques and soundworlds from the recordec tradition into single quilt-form compositions, and also splicing together their associated but clashing ethoses (or whatever the plural of ethos is).

this is a basic technique in prog and it's called prog bcz it's considered progressive, a term with evident evolutionary valence not simply musical, but also political and moralistic, which is -- or was for a season -- assumed to be present in rock's happy experimental combinations of traditions: our experiments will bring a conflicted world together! jaz and classical and raga! ect ect

for zappa the technique is instead an unbendingly snide irritant expressing an amused refusal to believe that things are becoming better via combination: things are NOT becoming better and yr all twerps for thinking otherwise

i think he also throws the combinatorial net wider in a way that unsettles ppl -- or if not wider exactly (there's little to no world music dimension for example and his rhythmic palette is IMO quite a lot sparer than he thinks it is, he has no ear for latin polyrhythm despite where he grew up) then more aggressively and unrepentently inclusive of material that won't easily dissolve into the greater good (puerile smut! but not just this… )

as for his guitar, well, as is often the case in classic prog, it does *somewhat* function as the solvent and the glue, electric blues as the perspective of the self-taught everyman… and it's definitely less irritantly insoluble e.g. than the smut

tho i actually think it's often the least interesting element -- even in compositions that are dynamic and sprightly in their juxtaposition and their stiffnecked precision of rhythmic rigour the arrival of his solos is gnerally kind of a modal mulch-lsump where nothing much happens, especially harmonically, that's relevant to the composition (it's kind of a tell that he can make a project of cutting out his solos and stringing them together as a sequence of CD releases)