They appeared on his private record labels, Bizarre/Straight, where his first release was The Berkeley Concert of Lenny Bruce, along with Alice Cooper, Beefheart, The GTO's and Wild Man Fischer. Frank also produced Grand Funk Railroad's best album, not necessarily the best selling one however.
Good make up test. I too am among those who feel that Frank, and his childhood pal Don Van Vliet, were geniuses, their music still sizzles, especially the mutually concocted Captain Beetheart experience, via Trout Mask Replica. The only downside to frank was his somewhat snotty arrogance, but on the Mothers album Reuben and the Jets, they created some of the most exquisitely surreal faux doo-wop in history, especially in tunes like The Air, but its his later, more "serious" material, such as The Perfect Stranger with Pierre Boulez, and later, The Yellow Shark, with Ensemble Moderne, where he showed us his true brilliant atonal genius. And also, we can never forget that he was the producer who brought us The Shaggs.
For me, best Zappa is instrumental Zappa. So Hot Rats and the jazz period such as Grand Wazoo and Waka Jawaka. I saw various high-level groups from this era perform at the Roxy, UCLA, Paladium, SaMo Civic, etc. Some later compositional stuff that Donald mentions is very strong. Also the guitar work is always strong. From the early Freak Out era, Lumpy Gravy is 2 sides of experimental sound collage: everything from surf to modern classical and musique concrete tape stuff. plus Laurel Canyon people madness. I love that one.
I loved The Mothers, who I saw a few times in the 1960s. Most of their albums and Frank's first 3 solo albums are great. He continued to be a musical innovator and excellent arranger, but starting in the early '70s his lyrics morphed from being pointed to being puerile. His music continued to be interesting, partially because he never abandoned tuned percussion like vibes & marimba, but his lyrical obsessions (sometimes bordering on misogyny) increasingly turned me off. Frank was pretty anti-hippie, despite the look. I was agnostic about hippies, but Frank did make some effective criticisms of them, especially on We're Only In It for the Money. You'd probably also like that, as it is pretty song structured.
They appeared on his private record labels, Bizarre/Straight, where his first release was The Berkeley Concert of Lenny Bruce, along with Alice Cooper, Beefheart, The GTO's and Wild Man Fischer. Frank also produced Grand Funk Railroad's best album, not necessarily the best selling one however.
Good make up test. I too am among those who feel that Frank, and his childhood pal Don Van Vliet, were geniuses, their music still sizzles, especially the mutually concocted Captain Beetheart experience, via Trout Mask Replica. The only downside to frank was his somewhat snotty arrogance, but on the Mothers album Reuben and the Jets, they created some of the most exquisitely surreal faux doo-wop in history, especially in tunes like The Air, but its his later, more "serious" material, such as The Perfect Stranger with Pierre Boulez, and later, The Yellow Shark, with Ensemble Moderne, where he showed us his true brilliant atonal genius. And also, we can never forget that he was the producer who brought us The Shaggs.
For me, best Zappa is instrumental Zappa. So Hot Rats and the jazz period such as Grand Wazoo and Waka Jawaka. I saw various high-level groups from this era perform at the Roxy, UCLA, Paladium, SaMo Civic, etc. Some later compositional stuff that Donald mentions is very strong. Also the guitar work is always strong. From the early Freak Out era, Lumpy Gravy is 2 sides of experimental sound collage: everything from surf to modern classical and musique concrete tape stuff. plus Laurel Canyon people madness. I love that one.
I loved The Mothers, who I saw a few times in the 1960s. Most of their albums and Frank's first 3 solo albums are great. He continued to be a musical innovator and excellent arranger, but starting in the early '70s his lyrics morphed from being pointed to being puerile. His music continued to be interesting, partially because he never abandoned tuned percussion like vibes & marimba, but his lyrical obsessions (sometimes bordering on misogyny) increasingly turned me off. Frank was pretty anti-hippie, despite the look. I was agnostic about hippies, but Frank did make some effective criticisms of them, especially on We're Only In It for the Money. You'd probably also like that, as it is pretty song structured.