FRANK ZAPPA THREAD

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What do you think is his best album?

Hot Rats for sure.

Cruising with Reuben and the Jets

The Grand Wazoo
His jazz rock stuff is his best, to me. Grand Wazoo, Hot Rats, Waka Jawaka, Sleep Dirt, Studio Tan... All amazing albums.

For me, it's gotta be Weasel's Ripped My Flesh.

Over-Nite Sensations IMO

Probably One Size Fits All for me, even though theres some weak songs. I REALLY like Inca Roads, Florentine Pogen, and Sofa No. 1 and 2
I wish he did more stuff like that

San Berdino is probably my favorite track of that album.

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ITT: Child rapist sympathizers
Jazz From Hell was pretty good though.

>child rapist sympathizers
explain?

>child rapist sympathizers

user, do you know where you are right now?

This is his best But sheik yerbouti is probably 2nd for me

That's unironically in my top 5 Zappa albums. He did doo-wop right!!

We're only in it for the money, joe's garage and civilization phaze III

Three-way tie between Absolutely Free, Hot Rats, and Burnt Weeny Sandwich
You Are What You Is and Mothers of Prevention are very underrated as well
Thoughts on Thing-Fish and Francesco Zappa, arguably his two unqualified failures?

> couldn't decide
> trying to get them all

joe's garage or zoot allures

I like apostrophe, but I have a softspot for The Man From Utopia.

>What do you think is his best album?
The Yellow Shark.

just got into Zappa later into the summer and I currently I own
>Freak Out!
>Hot Rats
>The Grand Wazoo
>Apostrophe (')
>Roxy & Elsewhere
>One Size Fits All
>Zappa in New York
just snagged Halloween 77 today at the record store, really looking forward to listening to it

>I NEVER CRAVED A TOASTER OR A COLOR TV

>WHY DOES IT HURT WHEN I PEEEEEEEEE

I’m new to Zappa, so far have only listened to Sheik Yerbouti, Apostrophe and Freak Out! (multiple times to get to know the music).
Is this a good chart to guide me through? Do you guys have better?

legitimate contenders:

apostrophe

uncle meat

hot rats

overnite sensation

I've found that chart really isn't that useful; there's several good starting places for Zappa in my opinion

I've never understood this chart
Why is Uncle Meat grouped with the Flo & Eddie stuff?
Why is Wazoo grouped with the classical stuff?
Where are Zappa in New York, Baby Snakes, Civilization Phaze III, and everything released between Guitar and The Yellow Shark?
This chart needs a revamp

I have no idea, it’s just the only one I found, besides a messy one I couldn’t orientate in. It’d be cool if a new one was born in this thread, if any one of you has the time.

more proof it's a shitty chart; with Zappa it seems like the best starting point is what you like the most, since he's done everything (eg I like fusion quite a lot so I started with Hot Rats)

Going chronologically would be a better choice than your chart imo

Apostrophe shouldn't be a starter point. Maybe Sheik Yerbuti?

One Size Fits All is pretty good for a starting point too, as is Zappa in New York

Not absymal but that could certainly be better. Why the hell did they put You Are What You Is as a more "progressive" album? It's like a mediocre re-hash of Sheik Yerbouti IMO and nowhere near as good.

Sheik Yerbuti is what made me like Zappa but Overnite is what made me fall in love with his music.

Apostrophe, Overnite Sensation and One Size Fits All tend to get recommended as starting albums. Also, Freak Out and Hot Rats. IMO they all work but I personally wouldn't recommend Apostrophe over One Size Fits All as I rarely find myself revisiting it save for a few songs. I think some people hear the Yellow Snow humor and instantly tune out.

I second that notion of the 'yellow snow' humor as a deterrent; when my friend first got into Zappa he couldn't stop playing Apostrophe, to the point where he nearly made me hate Zappa's music altogether, but I later became a fan

Joe's Garage or Make a Jazz Noise Here

Make a Jazz noise Here is great. I never really hear anyone talk about it.

Lather. It's a shame it was never released as intended until after he passed away.

Joe's Garage is the patrician choice.
>Hot Rats

>an actual thread about a competent musician talking about his musicianship instead of his celebrity status or lyrics trashing another musician
>on Sup Forums

is this a post-christmas miracle?

The whole soundscape with the Synclavier's sampling and the tight horn playing on the record really makes it stand out. It really is vastly underrated

But Zappa did know music theory and the like. There's plenty of evidence of him writing sheet music and knowing his way through an orchestra as well as being proficient in music theory.

In fact there's absolutely no way he could've wrote what he did without knowing music theory.

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>"never formally trained in music"
>Black Page exists
really tinkers with my thinker

We're only in it for the money

He knew the hell out of music theory, but he was never "formally trained"
He taught himself pretty much everything

Exactly. I tend to recommend Hot Rats to people I know who enjoy instrumental, Jazz or Progressive music. I also recommend Freak Out to those I know who enjoy 60s era Rock. Otherwise it's One Size Fits All as IMO it contains the perfect blend of all of Zappa's styles and features more great composition, soloing and music in general and less of the over the top humor of the other albums from that era.

bump

GREAT BOOGALY MOOGALY
Apostrophe

He had 1 semester of community college, then dropped out but he taught himself almost everything he knows from reading.

Zappa: *fart sound, followed by piss joke*
Zappa fanboys: “Wow, profound satire - did I mention he was classically trained??”

This is from Globalia (Joyce is credited on the Freak Out list)
>Joyce
>Joyce Shannon?

>Charles Ulrich, July 22, 2006
>Possibly Joyce [Holly] Shannon, FZ's music teacher at Chaffey College in 1960.

>David Walley, No Commercial Potential, 1996, p. 32
>Back home again, Frank enrolled at [Chaffey] Junior College in Alta Loma, California, where he picked up another harmony course, taught by a Miss [Joyce] Holly, which included required keyboard practice.

>Neil Slaven, Electric Don Quixote—The Definitive Story Of Frank Zappa, 2003, p. 32-33
Joyce Shannon was head of the Music Department at Chaffey and remembered Frank clearly: "He was a very exceptional music student, extremely bright. He had read the text I used on his own, which was amazing to me because it wasn't an easy book to read, and he was contemptuous of a lot of academia. He went out of his way to study both books and musical scores." [Society Pages, 10]

>Barry Miles, Zappa—A Biography, 2004, p. 57
>Another of his instructors, Joyce Shannon, the head of the music department, remembered that Zappa never seemed to have any money at the time. She would often give him a ride home to Claremont because she lived nearby. She told Society Pages: "He was a very exceptional music student, extremely bright. He had read the text I used on his own, which was amazing to me, because it wasn't an easy book to read and he was contemptuous of a lot of academia. He went out of his way to study both books and musical scores." Shannon also got a name-check on Freak Out!.

Found the hip hop loving soyboy.

oof, the obvious bait arrived

Found the neckbeard virgin who thinks Zappa is anything but glorified comedy rock á la Weird Al

Frank Zappa IS comedy rock, no one's denying that. But his compositions were extremly well done and thoughtful. He was mostly making fun of his contemporaries of prog rock, while they were making super serious stuff he was making even more complex music to play but in a light hearted and goofy way.

youtube.com/watch?v=ksnwEsPKO5s
This song is about morning wood; silly and funny as hell. But try and actually play that on any instrument you find there and you'll find that it's some very serious stuff.

>Zappa: *fart sound
>classically trained
Sounds more like he was ASSically trained

>He was mostly making fun of his contemporaries of prog rock
This reminds me a lot of Jethro Tull - how much crossover is there between Tull and Zappa fans? I'm a Zappa fanboy and I dig me some Tull, but every time I suggest Zappa to a Tull fan they aren't interested

personally, I definitely like them both, and as a person, they're kind of similar, but their music isn't very similar at all

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That's reasonable

I absolutely love Tull too as well as Zappa but I'm intrigued. How does Tull come to your mind with that statement? Musically and lyrically Tull doesn't seem all that close to Zappa and they have some serious stuff. Do tell.

not him, but Ian Anderson was just a very cynical humorous guy and wrote Thick as a Brick with poking fun at prog in mind, and it actually turned out to be a great prog album

Really, he did? I never noticed that. Please explain how he was making fun of prog on that album if you could.

>Jethro Tull's frontman and songwriter Ian Anderson was surprised when critics called the band's previous album, Aqualung (1971), a "concept album". He rejected this, thinking it was simply a collection of songs, so in response decided to "come up with something that really is the mother of all concept albums".[2] Taking the surreal English humor of Monty Python as an influence, he began to write a piece that would combine complex music with a sense of humour, with the idea it would poke light-hearted fun at the band, the audience, and the music critics.[2] He also intended to satirise the progressive rock genre that was popular at the time.

from wikipedia

I also probably should have included this part

>Anderson has also said that "the album was a spoof to the albums of Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, much like what the movie Airplane! had been to Airport"[4] and later remarked that it was a "bit of a satire about the whole concept of grand rock-based concept albums".[5]

Zappa's aight. Depending on what you're listening to, you get:

-Inferior version of Beatles rock with less interesting chord progressions
-Proto-prog that aged badly since real prog ended up doing so much more with the "instrumental between rock music" idea
-Jazz rock/jazz fusion that just doesn't match up to the jazz artists that switched to that style of music from around that time
-Hard rock that just didn't have that raw sexual badass feel of the bigger names in that genre around the mid 70s
-Some genuinely entertaining sound collage/concrete pieces that lose their luster because after the jokes they have nowhere near the depths of what they were inspired from
-filler, lots and lots of filler