I just got Baby Snakes (watching it now) and Does Humor Belong In Music? I just want to know, why hasn’t 200 Motels been released on DVD?
Anyhoo, I’ve been a FZ fan for most of my life. I tend to like his instrumental pieces more than the vocal bits. Peaches En Regalia stands out and, if I recall correctly, a local high school band tried to play it.
Appreciate on!
“Must be a penguin in bondage”
arf arf
basking in the pygmie twighlight
What can I say, the man provided me with a most excellent username. Now if I could only locate my zircon encrusted tweezers…
I’m not really a Zappa fan. I appreciate the complexity of much of his music, and I really appreciate the qualkity of musicianship required to make his records… but it blows my mind just how little of the music he left behind was any good. When a musician produces as huge a body of work as Zappa did, he SHOULD produce a lot more great music just by sheer dumb luck.
Zappa’s output strikes me as pretty weak, on the whole. Often good for a cheap laugh, occasionally brilliant, but usually… well, pretty dull. I mean, listen to his album with the London Philharmonic! Sadly, it’s mighty tepid stuff.
That said, there’s no question that Zappa was brilliant at discovering and nurturing talent. And a stint with Zappa ALWAYS made a musician better. So for that alone, for being a superb teacher of musicians (some of whom went on to make some of my favorite albums), I owe him my thanks.
*I got a cheerleader here, wants to help with my paper
Let her do all the work, and maybe later I’ll rape her
Oh, God I am the American Dream. . .*
That alone is enough to make any high school kid a Zappa fan, and the song has aged well, I think; very funny, but clearly a satire, so the apparent cruelty is ok.
FZ is one of my heroes, he made a living (and a pretty nice one at that) doing EXACTLY what he wanted to do, one of my favorite FZ quotes is (approximately) “so what if you think I am wrong, millions of people thought Hitler was right did that make him right?”.
Unclviny
“Remember, there’s a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.”
I have just about 60 zappa Lp’s including a bunch of boots, that I think about selling every once in while, but then I can never go through with it.
He is quite possibly the best musician who ever lived.
Saaay, Is that a REAL poncho, or a Sear’s Poncho???
I currently have three FZ posters hanging in my room. I was going to put up all four, but I was afraid visitors might think I was a little obsessed.
I really like Thingfish. Only the die-hard Zappa fans know about it. It’s great for long drives.
LOVE! Thingfish. I got to meet Ike Willis a while ago, he was great:)
Fuck me, you ugly sonuvabitch! (You ugly sonuvabitch!)
Some people crave baseball – I find this unfathomable – but I can easily understand why a person could get excited about playing a bassoon.
I’m a big Zappa fan. I love the long, cartoonish, surreal “Adventures of Gregory Peccary” off Studio Tan, and of course all the funny songs. But there was some masterful musicianship going on there, once you get past all the odd instrumentation and comical lyrics. The You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore albums collect classic live performances, and have to be heard to be believed. One I’m particularly fond of is a super-fast medley of “Camarillo Brillo”/“He’s So Gay”/“Muffin Man” that has to be heard to be believed.
Paging Doktor Fluff…
Robin
I love Zappa, especially “Sheik Yerbutti”. When I was a young musician, his music really taught me a lot about how limitless it really can be. I always found it amazing how complex the music was, yet it didn’t seem complicated because it flowed so well.
Of course, it also taught me that it was perfectly ok to have a sense of humor in music.
I mostly go back to the guitar stuff Shut up and Play Your Guitar, Son of. . . etc. Favorite “normal” album would be Sheik Yerbouti. For the most part the humour I find off-putting (am I the only person who doesn’t find Titties and Beer and Yellow Snow amusing?) but I love some of the deliberate stupidity. . .
Aren-nen-nen - aren-nen-nen - aren-nen-nen - arenda
Aren-nen-nen - aren-nen-nen - arenda renda ra
And Dangeous Kitchen even got my parents laughing. I forgot it had the line “who the fuck wants to clean it” I hope they missed that.
And he had probably the best band(s) ever assembled, Adrian Belew, Steve Vai, Terry Bozio. . .
Someone told me that Bobby Brown was a hit in Germany, I guess coz they didn’t understand the words? You’d have a hard time getting it on the radio in an English speaking country 
Love him. I think he had the tightest band in the business. It was amazing how he controlled the rich texture that was his music. A true genius.
I was a big fan in his early days, and still find his music interesting. He was perhaps more musically advanced than anyone on the rock scene, and you’ve got to love a guy who releases a dance single (“Dancing Fool”) that’s impossible to dance to without looking like the geek in the song.
“We’re Only In It for the Money” is not just find musically, but it captures 60s high school life perfectly.