Frank Zappa (for light-weights) appreciation thread

[Mr. Botch]

It took me years to finally catch the pun of Sheik Yerbouti

I have about 2/3rds of his material, and still listen to it.

[Rudolf von Hagenwil]

Purely out of curiosity, Angelo, why do you post here?

 

 

possibly because I knew Frank

 

and the assumtions of the fans make no sense to me

[KB Gunn]

I remember, doo doo, I remember, doo doo, I remember, doo doo, they had a swimming pool. I remember, doo doo, I remember, doo doo, I remember, doo doo, they had a swimming pool. And they thought it couldn't happen here, no no no no no no they KNEW it couldn't happen here, they were so sure.... Suzy Suzy Creamcheese.......

[Karma1]

I'll never forget my first exposure to Zappa. I was in college in NY in 1967 and some guys in the dorm were listening to Freak Out. I hadn't "turned on" yet and was still mainly into Motown and soul music. When I heard stuff like Help I'm A Rock and Suzy Creamcheese, I thought WTF? I had never heard anything like that and couldn't understand why anybody would want to listen to it. But a year later I became "experienced" and started listening to Hendrix, Cream, Doors, etc. Then when I revisited Zappa, I "got" it. The man was a genius - it just took me a while to catch up. I've enjoyed a lot of his music over the years and watching a concert on TV recently of Zappa Plays Zappa, only deepened my appreciation.

 

I don't know if this one's been mentioned yet, but I remember being blown away by his Hot Rats album, which is one of my favorites of his.

[UstadKhanAli]

possibly because I knew Frank and the assumtions of the fans make no sense to me

 

 

Angelo, I mean, why do you post HERE...at SSS? What do you get out of it? Do you feel you're contributing to a meaningful discussion? Do the discussions here at SSS interest you? Why are you posting here?

[blue2blue]

I remember, doo doo, I remember, doo doo, I remember, doo doo, they had a swimming pool. I remember, doo doo, I remember, doo doo, I remember, doo doo, they had a swimming pool. And they thought it couldn't happen here, no no no no no no they KNEW it couldn't happen here, they were so sure.... Suzy Suzy Creamcheese.......

It's a lot better in context...

 

[Raymar]

I like his interviews alot more than his music. Sure I've had a few of his albums like Roxy and Elsewhere, Jazz From Hell (which inspired me to get an Atari ST with EditTracks sequencer for my low budget rendition of a Synclavier), The Yellow Shark, and Omnibus Wind Ensemble's Music by Frank Zappa.

His reason for being was to create and record music along with commenting on the human condition. I'm now at the age that he died and haven't written anywhere near the volumous amount of stuff he did but my stuff has varied in styles over the years. You do what you can. Its odd being older than your dead idols like Hendrix, Lennon, and eventually Zappa and still regard them as older sages.

[Rudolf von Hagenwil]

Angelo, I mean, why do you post HERE...at SSS? What do you get out of it? Do you feel you're contributing to a meaningful discussion? Do the discussions here at SSS interest you? Why are you posting here?

 

 

That is an interestin question, at least for me. It is 04:12 AM here and I am still controlling the CDA masters who ship to the pressing plant next week, as well controlling the rendering farms of the transcodings and meta-data aggregation.

 

 

why do you post HERE...at SSS?

 

- I have a temperament.

- I post what comes to my mind.

- I improved my English a little bit with 12,569 lessons (posts).

 

What do you get out of it?

 

- i don't get much out of it.

 

Do you feel you're contributing to a meaningful discussion?

 

- Very seldom.

 

Do the discussions here at SSS interest you?

 

- More often then not, no.

 

Why are you posting here?

 

- I have the time, because I must listen to a lot of music almost every day, dozens of productions, dozens of CD, dozens of new songs selectiing what gets produced, controlling dozens of CDA masters. This however will change in January when I start my new engagement as producer in a new production facility, then I have people doing this work, respectively I have to concentrate on my job as producer.

 

- And of course I am addicted as most here who have a large amount of posts, I may make a withdrawal treatment before January 2010.

 

 

Does that answer your questions?

[UstadKhanAli]

Absolutely, thanks!

[Jimbroni]

Freak Out

Absolutely Free

Hot Rats

Apostrophe

Overnight Sensation

We're only in it for the Money

Ruben and the Jets

Uncle Meat

 

are my favorites.

[Lee Knight]

I've never been much of a Zappa fan. I'm too pop-centric I think. But I did buy One Size Fits All back in '75 and have always liked that. I loved the tuned percussion work of... Ruth Underwood? Was that the name? And George Duke's falsetto, singing the crazy words Frank wrote always worked for me.

 

So... One Size Fits All is my favorite. Or rather, the only one I really know or care to.

 

Mother Mary and Joseph! I wish they all go away! Po-jama people Po-jama people people. Warp 'em up. Roll 'em out... hey!

[bp]

Big vote from me for "One Size Fits All".

 

[coyote-1]

He spoke of why the pedantic stuff existed. To paraphrase, he composed music. Pop music needs mouth-noises, otherwise called lyrics. They often make no sense anyway ("doo wah diddy diddi dum diddy doo"), so he decided to write stuff that amused him - regardless of how stupid it might be.

My opinion on Zappa was that he was an intelligent guy who frequently wrote complex music coupled with frequently pedantic, obvious humor, frequently lampooning easy obvious targets. I have releases such as "Joe's Garage" and the London Symphony playing some of his stuff, but never listen to it.

 

[kurfu]

[YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE]

[PBBPaul]

This interview is good too.
[YOUTUBE]cNJy-OgCzB0[/YOUTUBE]

And this one is classic!
[YOUTUBE]8ISil7IHzxc[/YOUTUBE]

[Guitarmonkey55]

im a huge zappa fan - definitely far from a lightweight. i have a whole shelf of zappa albums in my room, not sure how many but i have everything i can get my hands on. my all time favorite zappa album is and always has been overnite sensation, i just love that album. zomby woof or im the slime are my favorites on that album. in fact at a recent ZPZ tour i spent a few weeks transcribing every note of every instrument on zomby woof and took it to get the band to autograph, have it hanging on the wall now!

I think that his more popular oriented stuff was even the more genius because of the fact that he successfully took his whacky, complicated and often difficult to listen to style and made it listenable to a pretty wide audience. thats not an easy task - how many of us are even capable of getting radio play with what is considered commercially acceptable music?

[Rabid]

When I first heard of Zappa some friends were listening to him because they thought it made them cool. Zappa always seemed to push that idea. That was reason enough for me not to listen. A few hundred lp's in my collection, over 2000 CD's, quite a few 45's and cassettes. Nothing by Zappa.

[kurfu]

When I first heard of Zappa some friends were listening to him because they thought it made them cool. Zappa always seemed to push that idea. That was reason enough for me not to listen. A few hundred lp's in my collection, over 2000 CD's, quite a few 45's and cassettes. Nothing by Zappa.

If you could get past your initial prejudice and give some of his stuff a fair chance, you may find that most of his music is highly complex and interesting.

[panthalassa]

I refuse to torrent music, so I've been getting his albums one by one.

I wish I could post the early-nineties interview with Matt Resnicoff in Musician Magazine; that started me in on listening to him. Hardly ANYBODY of my generation listens to him in depth.

Having no one to guide me, I started with "We're Only In It For The Money" whilst browsing at the record store, and then when "Strictly Commercial" and "Strictly Genteel" became available after his passing I jumped on those. After that, I bought "Freak Out," "Weasels Ripped My Flesh," and - interestingly - three weeks ago I received "Absolutely Free" in the mail. Wow. That's a really good one; better than "Freak Out" a worthy predecessor to "We're Only In It For The Money." I was just listening to it today, in fact.

Like someone else mentioned on here, I'm a "pop music" kinda guy at heart, but I'm working to become like the musicians Frank wrote for and admired.

For example, I had to sight-read the guitar part for a "West Side Story" production last week - with all of Bernstein's Ornette Coleman-isms. That's the hardest book I've had yet; still, its difficulty must pale in comparison to what Frank wrote for his musicians.

[Rudolf von Hagenwil]

Frank Zappa is one of the very few American Geniuses, another is Miles Davis, only Miles didn't talk much about politics and war and peace...


Frank toured the whole world for decades, and he was

a trustworthy and confidential US Ambassador for Peace

and highest moral values, short, for this part of America

we all like and respect worldwide.

[Magpel]

I'm a fan of the early Mothers of Invention. I'm a fan of Zappa's instrumental compositions for orchestra (I saw the semi-ill-fated Mothers/LA Phil match up at UCLA for a performance of 200 Motels). But I have to say that from the early-mid-70s on, the juvenile, simplistic humor of much of the Zappa-dominated later stuff drove me right out the door -- particularly when contrasted with the often brilliant match up of over-the-top but still point-on social commentary of the first 4 Mothers albums. ( Freak Out, Absolutely Free, Lumpy Gravy, We're Only in It for the Money... I love those albums.)

 

 

This pretty much speaks for me, though it was the mid-70s stuff that I most liked at the time. I've had a long, long relationship with FZ, but there's something in the lyrics and the cheaper parodical element of what he does that has always kept me at arm's length. The perpetual, knowing sneer...

 

Maybe that's why I consider one of his most beautiful songs--as opposed to his many wonderful compositions--to be the one written in German: Sofa #2.

[Magpel]

I refuse to torrent music, so I've been getting his albums one by one.

 

 

Just as an aside, try Rhapsody. For the cost of 1 CD per month, you get pretty much everything except the same blanks that all the online streamers and iToons have.

[eeglug]

 

Just as an aside, try Rhapsody. For the cost of 1 CD per month, you get pretty much everything except the same blanks that all the online streamers and iToons have.

 

 

I don't think Zappa or the Mothers are on Rhapsody.

 

I like the early stuff but the recording quality is so crappy, especially for Zappa's kind of music. The sound quality starts to get better on Hot Rats, Burnt Weeny Sandwich and Weasels Ripped My Flesh - the music is great too.

 

Once Flo & Eddie join, it starts becoming juvenile. He did however have a nice oasis of goodness when he had Napoleon Murphy Brock & George Duke in the band which is partly what makes One Size Fits All (& Roxy) so great. If you like this edition of the band you must acquire You Can't Do That On Stage Vol 2.

 

Overnite Sensation and Apostrophe don't do much for me - it could just be that Napoleon Murphy Brock is absent from these.

[panthalassa]

Just as an aside, try Rhapsody. For the cost of 1 CD per month, you get pretty much everything except the same blanks that all the online streamers and iToons have.

 

Thanks! I'll give it a shot. Although I'm a fan of the living, breathing CD, his works are so unwieldy and numerous that it's definitely worth going the download route, which I usually reserve for the flavor-of-the-month DJ stuff that I do (currently UK Funky, FWIW).

[Magpel]

 

I don't think Zappa or the Mothers are on Rhapsody.

 

 

Correct you are! Yep, you hit these gaping holes on Rhapsody but frankly, after a year of use, I am surprised how few there are. And of course Rhapsody's reach is pretty comprehensive--if you want to check the oldest of old blues or the newest obscure Indie band, it's there.

 

The caveat is this: to really get the most out of Rhapsody you need to be one of two things: like me, a home computer-tethered freelancer who sits at a private workstation most of the day (bought a decent set of Edirol monitors for my listening pleasure) or, unlike me, a portable player junkie.

 

For me, Rhapsody has been GOD. I have sat in the very seat making prolonged studies of Ravel and Brahms and Reich and Sonny Boy Williamson and, you know, Blossom Dearie, Paul Desmond, The Elephant 6 bands, Belle and Sebastian, the Small Faces, blah blah blah. It almost feels illegal, how much I get out of Rhapsody for less than 15 bucks a month.

 

For me the lack of the physical artifact is a blessing too, as I have always been a very poor curator of LPs and CDs. Now I've got a laptop with a decent Echo Indigo interface in the living room running through my main stereo.

 

And I've never been an audiophile. Audiophiles might have more qualm with Rhapsody (and every other compressed delivery system, I suppose).