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Zappa - Zoot Allures, Lumpy Gravy, Freak Out!, Apostrophe, Bongo Fury.

Black Keys - Thickfreakness, Rubber Factory, and probably Magic Potion.

Acoustic Ladyland.

Where do I start?

(revised and extended) Zappa is particularly difficuly to approach because his career was so long and went through so many wildly different periods. the early Mother of Invention (hereafter "MoI") albums were intentionally brittle and dissonant, a deliberate McLuhan-esque assault on the bright/shiny LA pop aesthetic of the day as well as the entirety of American over- and under-the-counter-culture, and they can be difficult listening today as music objects in isolation from their multi-media aspects, the 12" packaging and Zappa's texts which accompanied the albums ("drop out of school...go to the library and educate yourself if you have any guts" or the instructions to read Kafka's "In The Penal Colony" while listening to a polytonal instrumental piece, at the end of which "the name of your crime will be carved on your back." [emphasis in the original]). all of them have brilliant moments and unlistenable experimental bits, as well as classic satirical bits that fans have been quoting since 1966. my favorite is We're Only In It For The Money, which is among many other things a brutal parody of Sergeant Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band; perhaps the easiest to take all the way through musically is Absolutely Free.

after the dissolution of the original MoI, Zappa's work took a dual track, with a series of largely instrumental LPs beginning with the classic Hot Rats co-existing with a new MoI featuring the inimitable vocal and comedy stylings of former Turtles Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, aka the Phlorescent Leech and Eddie; their picaresque and NSFW set-long routines are best captured on Just Another Band From LA and the extremely graphic Fillmore East, which, erm, climaxes with a scene of Kaylan singing "Happy Together" to a teenaged groupie in the back of a Gremlin to persuade her to consummate her affections. for the instrumental stuff, Hot Rats is essential despite its less-than-optimal production. the other records in this vein are all good but somewhat interchangeable; i particularly like Weasels Ripped My Flesh and Chunga's Revenge. Grand Wazoo features larger arrangements and is interesting and somewhat successful.

the period after Volman and Kaylan's departure saw Frank's greatest commercial succcess, with Over-Nite Sensation and Apostrophe hitting the Top Twenty. i'm not particularly nutty about those records, because i think the material suffers from the weakness that would increasingly hobble Frank's work as his career went on: the tendency to use frat-appeal lyrics as a draw to get people to listen to unusual music to a degree that detracted from the music. the live-with-overdubs Roxy and Elsewhere is much better, and i recommend it highly...in fact, it's not a bad place to start with Frank, with a good balance of silly stuff and brilliant ensemble and solo playing. Bongo Fury is an odd album out because of Captain Beefheart's presence and the unusual ensemble, with slide guitar added to the horns 'n' George Duke sound and less percussion; it's much looser than FZ's other albums from this period and a total hoot, with Beefheart at his most likeable.

his later 70s and 80s albums became less likeable, with a tendency to aim at easy satirical targets like Catholics, punk rockers, cocaine users, and Pat Robertson. the central work of that period is certainly Joe's Garage, Zappa's extended conceptual reaction to the theocratic regime in Iran's making popular music illegal. its flaws as a concept album are at least partially compensated by the real feeling expressed, something rare in Frank's music after the 1960s...the spoken intro and extended solo on "Watermelon In Easter Hay" are heartbreaking. Zappa In New York has brilliant playing and composition, but also exhibits one of the most egregious examples ever of Zappa's puerile lyrics-over-brilliant music dilemma on "Punky's Whips."

for sheer guitar fuckery, the Shut Up And Play Your Guitar compilations will make your head hurt, but i prefer his playing in context. parenthetically, if you listen to the early MoI or solo stuff you may wonder "why is FZ supposed to be such a great guitar player?" he sounded terrible until about 1971...he and the MoI were broke, and had to use whatever they could get endorsement deals for or could afford. in Frank's case that was an old Gibson Switchmaster into Acoustic stacks, an unlovely sound at best. when he went to a Les Paul with P90s it didn't help much. he finally arrived at an enjoyable sound in the early 70s with Marshalls and first an SG and then an SG copy someone built and gave him. his technique, which was painfully over-articulated in his early days in a jazz-goes-rock, Larry Coryell kind of way, smoothed out and acquired a more legato quality around then as well. later he went to Strats, and used to put Barcus-Berry transducers in the neck in the late 70s which he'd use for overtones and fingerboard sounds.

the Yellow Shark recordings of Zappa's music in orchestral settings are really nice. some of those pieces were never recorded in any other context. the reissues and live recordings are a decidedly mixed bag; beware the reissues with overdubs issued before FZ's death.

Aha! Here's a good one: Gorillaz. I know them through their association with Del, and I just heard the new jam they/he/whatever did with Andre 3000, but I've never actually sat down and listened to them.

Direct me, ILF, you're my only hope.

The Fall. or more specifically, where the hell do you go in their humongous catalog after the obvious This Nations Saving Grace and Hex Enduction Hour?

Iron Maiden.

Motorhead after No Sleep Till Hammersmith.

oh, and Fugazi.

For Fugazi, start with Repeater. Here's the title track, but the whole A-side of that album is gold-plated gold.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVCMLWtVN5E[/youtube]



Especially since you dig Mission of Burma, I think you'll find a lot to like. Fugazi tend to work in the "...Revolver" style of song pretty spectacularly. They fall a lot closer to that than, say, Outlaw.

D.o.S. wrote:For Fugazi, start with Repeater.

Yeah, and 13 Songs.

FWIW I went Kill Taker>13 Songs>Repeater, but I hear an awful lot of MoB in Repeater, and I think that thread'll help dubbers appreciate them to the requisite degree. Fugazi kicks ass.

dubkitty wrote:The Fall. or more specifically, where the hell do you go in their humongous catalog after the obvious This Nations Saving Grace and Hex Enduction Hour?

Iron Maiden.

Motorhead after No Sleep Till Hammersmith.

For the Fall try The Frenz Experiment or Slates.

The Cure & Depeche Mode.

GET ME STARTED.

For Depeche Mode: the early stuff with Vince Clarke.

For The Cure: Three Imaginary Boys/Boys Don't Cry, Seventeen Seconds, Faith, Pornography (and also the side project, Cult Hero)

kbithecrowing wrote:The Cure & Depeche Mode.

GET ME STARTED.

Honestly a great place to get started with depeche is the 101 live double cd. the best version of master and servant is on that one. fantastic live recording.

dubkitty wrote:oh, and Fugazi.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNYbKFi8HVM[/youtube]

not the greatest audio quality, but, still a bad ass fucking song.

i am trying to get into more of liz buckingham's work, the other guitarist from electric wizard. haaalp