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popvulture wrote:REALLY surprises me you like Zappa, DoS. But then again you like the Dead (and so do I).

I dunno. I love Inca Roads. I just hate goofy music. Except for Ween.

All right I accidentally wrote an essay about why you should listen to We're Only In It For The Money.

Be warned:


My personal favorite era of Zappa is the original Mothers but I have a soft spot for most of his discography. Dude was a genius, full stop. Not everything about him has aged particularly well (his acerbic wit that shows up a lot in his late 80's early 90's interviews is pretty played out now, but he's also been dead for two decades). I would recommend checking out the first three Mothers records: Freak Out, Absolutely Free, and We're Only In It For the Money.

Particularly We're Only In It For The Money. I think it might be hard to get into now because, you know, critical pastiche doesn't play in a world where "alternative" music isn't an "alternative" to anything -- no one buys record X because it actively isn't record Y anymore, in other words -- but look at some of the radio hits from 1967 and the whole Summer of Love thing then realize that this is the first song on a record came out a year later (plus that album art)... on Warner Brothers:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYGyySCI9kE[/youtube]

(And this one is killer, too,
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS6YdNtXVYk[/youtube])

(I still go around saying "golly do I ever have a lot of soul," "punk, I think I love you," and "I can't even wait until our record comes out and teenagers start to buy it," and "it's wonder to feel that I'm doing something for the kids, because I know the kids are where it's at. I'm proud to be part of this gigantic mass deception.")


I mean I heard these songs (as in understood [at least generally, I had no idea what getting the crabs was ] ) for the first time when I was like 10 or 11, and I used to sing it to myself every fucking day when I lived with all the modern day trustafarians forty years later, you know?

Or this one, which is my favorite of their (what we would now call) "oldies":
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lydGG1RnooI[/youtube]
Like, that's more effective than a lot of the "protest" music of today. And the arrangement is way better than it has any right to be.


More gems from those first few records hidden in the NSFW:

Goddamnit Pop now you've got me listening to the whole album.

AND ITS A MASTERPIECE.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Ci7IeHRA8[/youtube]

...Diamonds on velvets on goldens on vixen
On Comet on Cupid On Donner and Blitzen
On up and away and a-far and a go-go
Escape from the weight of your corporate logo....

Hahaha such enthusiasm!

Look—I don't hate him, or at least I don't dislike him as much now as I did at other points in my life. I heard his stuff when I was pretty young as well, probably about the same age, and I LOVED it. I definitely dug deep into WOIIFTM in high school, plus whatever else I could get my hands on.

I just tried to put into words why exactly I had a change of heart, and I realized that I can't really do it. All I know is that at a certain point, he started REALLY getting on my nerves. I found a lot of his stuff just weird for the sake of being weird, deliberately obtuse without much substance. I found it especially frustrating that his seemingly tossed-off lyrics were put on top of such deeply considered music—I suppose I felt like it was a wasted opportunity, especially from such a smart guy.

ANYWAY. I know a lot of people would tell me that's exactly the point, and that's fine. Over the past year I decided to dive back into his discography and give it another chance—I do in fact like a lot of it. There will always be parts of it that very much rub me the wrong way, but I suppose that's just a testament to it being challenging music.

My favorite stuff of his will always be the more instrumentally-focused shit. Listening to Waka/Jawaka as we speak. It's great.

And I just put on We're Only In it...

... is this phase one of lumpy gravy?

But seriously it's amazing in a way that you couldn't do with modern music culture today (mostly because it doesn't exist as a cultural force in the same way).

Zappa Rulezzz, no need to have feels about justifying...

Haha there aren't a lot of bands/musicians for whom I have as complicated feels.

The early shit's indeed a lot more straight-up subversive. This record is cracking me up.

I guess it's maybe a little later when I start getting annoyed with the lyrics. Around Apostrophe.

Which I have never listened to beyond the hits.

Confession: When I was 10-11, my favourite record of his was Joe's Garage. Man, some of those melodies and lyrics are still stuck in my head.

Parody (or pastiche) can only elevate itself to the level of what it's parodying. I enjoy Weird Al, but is his music genius? No, but it celebrates it's silliness and absurdity. Zappa innately demands more without any promise of a worthwhile return musically (most importantly) and lyrically (less importantly but you brought it up). Why would "a genius" waste time writing bitchy songs about the-kids-you-don't-like when he could actually just make good music? Zappa was a contemporary of Captain Beefhart, Robert Fripp and late era Miles Davis. Does his music challenge me in any similar way? No, not at all. His composed melodies trail on and on and on without gravity or development and never seem to correlate the mismatched rhythm sections. His lyrics seem preachy and full of himself while being as equally frivolous and lacking as what it parodies. The jam sections (on Hot Rots) are so suddenly lacking in self-awareness that it completely invalidates any attitude he previously attempted to affect.

All in all, you could make the same case for WOIIFTM and just exchange Zappa with 21 Pilots.

Nein.

Sample great lyrics:

He stopped eating pork
He stopped eating greens
He traded his dashiki
For some Jordache Jeans

Classic.

Look into your heart DOS, you know if Zappa were around today, he'd be going on rants on YouTube about how "Normies" are retweeting his memes without really getting them.

Zappa was a twisted genius, and a king of improv. This is my favorite Zappa album, because it's the kind of improvisational playing I aspire to. And it's so weird, I mean who else would put out an album of nothing but live guitar solos? Even without lyrics, it embodies his weird genius.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIUKUghqK08[/youtube]