Was frank zappa the embodiment of pretension? Or is his music literally the opposite? Share your thoughts

Was frank zappa the embodiment of pretension? Or is his music literally the opposite? Share your thoughts

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He's much too ironic to really be pretentious. Which is just as bad really.

I like him but Jesus Christ. He was so edgy. Also a lot of his humor was just too much at times. When he didn't make memes he was great.

where exactly he didn't do memes?

this except his ironic irony is the best part

Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar for one

he was a 10/10 guitar player though
and could write some seriously cool stuff when he wanted to

Yeah it's pretty fun when you're 16 but once you outgrow your high school intellectual stage you'll see how much better good music is that doesn't have to hide behind irony and detachment.

He wasn't pretentious because he had the skill to back it up. "Edgy" is a buzzword that'll be gone in 5 years.

Who cares. He's dead and his music was/is released nonetheless.

He was the inventor of post-irony. His music was basically just obscene pornography. Sometimes it ended up being interesting, but only by chance. Talented, but weird.

>how much better good music is that doesn't have to hide behind irony and detachment.
post examples

FZ never put out a bad record in my opinion. That is all.

Notewise he was very careful unless he was improvising. I don't see anything pretentious about taking care of the composition and timbre of things.

For lyrics, he was up his ass most often than not.

Disgust.jpg
youtube.com/watch?v=TUvH3xf0e-I

>post examples
Try the genre of jazz

I like your irony

literally a genre created by junkies for junkies
no, thanks

The opposite of pretension.

Dude had zero pretense and zero self awareness. He just did whatever he wanted to do and whatever he thought was cool, and had the strongest work ethic in all of rock music.

All art is self indulgent. His indulgence happens to sound kind of weird, so people call him pretentious, which is ironically a really pretentious thing to do.

Oh you said "examples".
Anything instrumental that isn't a guitar solo basically. Plenty of his humorous songs are really well composed too, but in 2016, making jokes is considered "being ironic" for some reason.
youtube.com/watch?v=RGQxI0G6mKk
I'm being sincere.
Are pretension accusations the artistic equivalent of rape accusations? They seem to stay with people forever.

>pretentiousness
>bad
WEW

I believe that Zappa's music largely lacks pretension in that he never compromised his craft for commercial gain while retaining such a great level of originality. Whether or not the more parody driven songs are pretensions is up to you, I think but Zappa did have the songwriting and instrumental chops to back the music and image up.

Zappa's music is meticulously crafted

I think he was a shitty songwriter but a good composer

and he just got perverted later on. Mothers > Frank Zappa

He wasn't pretentious at all. He made fun of pretentious rock bands all the time. However, as said, he was ironic, which depending on your taste might be worse.

How was he edgy?

Listen to his instrumental stuff and the experimental 60's stuff

Definitely. But he made great music.

i really enjoy his music despite that sometimes i don't get his sense of humor

Remember that time he punched that baby on live tv? I can't believe he got away with it.

listen to more than two albums and you will know

You mean the genre will no inherent focus on lyrics? I have nothing anything against jazz and I listen to jazz myself, but you really could've picked a better example.

With no*

Hello PMRC!

Source?

/thread

I mostly just listen to his work from the mid-Sixties to the mid-Seventies. I don't really care to go much further for some reason. There's some great Albums in that '66-'76 period but I'd also be open to suggestions for good stuff from his later period desu.

Joe's Garage is possibly his best work and Lather is cool

I think when it came to making fun of rock n roll pretentiousness I like Cheap Trick better
One Size Fits All is his probably my favorite album of his

this desu
if anyone's the embodiment of pretentious it's HHH and he's also the most interesting and likeable figure in music atm

qt

At this point I really don't enjoy Zappa at all.

The guy used to make fun of more mainstream bands for taking concepts from art music that are complex in nature and watering them down, but he did the exact. Same. Thing. Like shit at least the guys he was shitting on remembered that they were rock music in the end so they did still to some extent excel from that perspective. Zappa had none of the energy of rock music nor the legitimate intricacies of the classical/jazz/musique concrete he was influenced from.

Though what really pisses me off is how much his music is aesthetically centered. It's more about the image rather than the music achieving that image somehow. This has led to the absolute worst of post-modernism with being the musical equivalent of a lot of modern artists in art galleries who are selling literal shit as art. Musically he's as a result a huge contributor to the difference between the image and the music itself which has run rampant through popular music these days.

Zappa's not worth listening to. Listen to actual classical, jazz, electronic music, etc. while if you want more rock type stuff that's goofy, just listen to The Magic Band.

Sleep Dirt is great. It's mostly instrumental, so if you're turned off by his later crude lyrics then you might still like it

I don't think you've listened to most of his stuff. A lot of his stuff by the mothers is just shitting on music along with the entire concept of "We're only in it for the money". For example, songs like fountain of love are pretty commonplace in his discography just because Zappa was rebelling against the industry standard for "Sappy romance songs" setforth by the beatles. This created a wave of beatle bands that dominated music venues so he couldn't originally afford being in the Mothers which is why they brokeup after their tour with Duke Ellington. I don't know how you drew the conclusion that he made fun of mainstream bands for attempting things of "complex nature", rather quite the opposite he encouraged it. You also say he was influenced from classical/jazz but his original influences were R&B and blues (check his autobiography). Also, I don't think you can really say that albums like burnt weeny sandwich, the grand wazoo, or echidnas arf are trying to "shit" on anything. As Frank Zappa has said something along the lines "if its bitchen to you its bitchen and thats all that matters" (check his autobiography). TLDR, he was just really upset with the mainstream music of his time period and wanted to rebel against it since his music couldn't be exposed, he has legitimate albums aside from his parody albums.

He had this attitude like he was better than what he was doing, like he was always a level above every note he played. I guess he needed cancer to show him he wasn't.

"You Are What You Is" if you want serious/political lyrics

Sheik Yerbouti

Joe's Garage (my fav)

Studio Tan is probably his best work post '72. Inventive, interesting, and genuinely entertaining, unlike a lot of his other late 70's-80's work, which I just felt was kind of negative and seething without any real payoff. It was really Over Nite Sensation and ' where I felt like he started to slip creatively, but One Size Fits All, Studio Tan, Sheik Yerbouti, and Joe's Garage are all damn enjoyable.

That's my thing though. He's trying to rebel by doing literally the same exact thing but with a slightly funny external aesthetic.

Yes

He's despicable and obnoxious, music is shit too

i think frank was more self aware of his silliness than people give him credit for. in his movie "200 motels" there's loads of self mockery, in this scene especially
youtube.com/watch?v=kzu_4otNtIA

This

Rock and roll should never ever be mixed with art music

This fucker has 102 studio albums, how the fuck am I gonna listen to all of that?!

Yeah, I mean I don't think anyone really would consider things like "fountain of love" to really reflect his work. I mean hes really just trolling and even some people in the comments think its a legitimate song when in his autobiography he even points out how sappy and stupid this song is. I'd say for a more interesting sound from his parodies album listen to things like joe's garage but thats more of a reflection on culture than on music.
youtube.com/watch?v=4sJjUCQXZI8

Lather