What are the 5 essential studio albums for a FRANK ZAPPA's rookie listener?

Z

Zeppelin911

New member
Joined
Jul 13, 2008
Messages
4
Reaction score
0
Points
1
BQ: What are you own favorite 3 albums and 3 songs regarding Frank Zappa (with the Mothers and solo altogether) ?
EDIT: @ Beatle , vtd , David , Abraxas and all of the remaining answers , I feel like an infant in wonderland !!!!! and I thought that I knew my Rock N Roll !!! anyways , thanks for the knowledge providing guys ... God bless you all ..
 
Trying to pick some that don't duplicate what has been posted above, and I will post just 2 if that's OK

"Just another Band from LA"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Another_Band_from_L.A.
"Bongo Fury"- a so called collaboration with Captain Beefheart, though Zappa driven
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bongo_Fury

From the latter: "Advance Romance"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eesW-qZqGo
"Debra Kadabra"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFpFnteGoc4
"Muffin Man"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFIMWRXWY90

Seriously, Zappa (and Beefheart for that matter) are a long hard journey, and you will have hurdles on the way, but eventually it hopefully will prove a journey well worth while. Anyway, you will discover one of the top 5 Guitarists ever :)

One extra? "Fifty Fifty"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYmX3jZvRKY
 
I haven't listened to a lot of his work but I really like Hot Rats and The Grand Wazoo.
 
1. Freak Out.....one of the most ambitious debutsd in rock history, Freak Out! was a seminal concept album that somehow foreshadowed both art rock and punk at the same time. It's four LP sides deconstruct rock conventions right and left, eventually pushing into territory inspired by avant-garde classical composers. Yet the album is squenced in an accessibly logical progresion, the first half is dedicted to catchy, satirical pop/rock songs that question assumptions about pop music, setting th tone for the radical new directions of the second half. Opening with the nonconformist call to arms "Hungry Freaks, Daddy" Freak Out! qickly posits the Mothers of Invention as the antithesis of teen-idol bands, often with sneering mockeries of the teen-romance songs that had long been rock's commercial stock in trade.Despite his genuine emotional alienation and dissatisfaction with pop conventions, though, Frank Zappa was actually a skilled pop composer, even with the rawperformances and his stinging guitar work, there's a subtle sophisticaton apparent in his unrthodox arrangements and tight, unpredictable melodicism.

2. Absolutely Free.....Frank Zappa's liner notes for Freak Out! name-checked an enormous breadth of musical and intellectual influences, and he seemingly attempts to coer them all on the second Mothers of Invention album, Absolutely Free. Leaping from style to style without warning, the album has a freewheeling, almost schizophrenic quality, encompassing everything from complex mutations of "Louie Louie" to jazz improvsations and quotes from Sravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

3. Weasels Ripped My Flesh....a fascinating collection of mostly instrumental live and studio mateial recorded by the original Mothers of Invention, complete with horn section, from 1967-1969, Weasels Ripped My Flesh segues unpredictably between arty experimentation and Traditional song structures.

4. We're Only In It For The Money....from the beginning, Frank Zappa cultivated a role as voice of the freaks - imaginative outsiders who did't fit comfortably into any group. We're Only In It For The Money is the ultimate expression of that sensibility, a satirical masterpiece that simultaneously skewered the hippies and the straights as prisoners of the same narrow-minded, superficial phoniness. Zappa's barbs were vicious and perceptive, and not just humorously so, hhis seemingly paranoid vision of authoritarian violence against the counterculture was borne out two years later by the Kent State killings. Like Freak Out, We're Only In For The Money essentially devotes its first half to satire, and its second half to presenting alternatives. Despite sme specific references, the frst-half suite is will wickedly funny, since its targets remain immediately recognizable. The second half shows where his sympathies lie, with character sketches of Zappa's real-life freak acquaintances, a carefree utopia in "Take Your Cloths Off When You Dance," and the strident, unironic protest "Mother People." Regardless of how dark the subject matter, there's a pervasively surreal, whimsical favor to the music, sort of like Sgt. Pepper as a creepy nightmare.

5. Joe's Garage...Acts I, II, & III....Joe's Garage was orignally released in 1979 in two separate parts: Act I came first, followed by a two-record set containing Acts II & III. Rykodisc's reissue puts allthree acts toether on two CD's. Joe's Garage is generaly regarded as one of Zappa's finest post-60's conceptual works, a sprawling, satirical rock opera about a totalitarian future in which music is outlawed to control the population. .

BQ:

Joe's Garage, Absolutely Free, and Over-Nite Sensation.

Songs would be, Bobby Brown, Catholic Girls, and The Torture Never Stops.

take care
dave
 
I'll give three others:
Freak Out!
Joe's Garage
Sheik Yerbouti

I don't have favorites really.
 
Joes' Garage
200 Motels
Ship Arriving Late To Save A Drowning Witch

He Has some 65 albums but I cant think of any more off the top of my head but "Ship" is great and it features Steve Vai on guitar!
 
These are my 5 album choices:
1) Over-Nite Sensation
2) Apostrophe
3) Zoot Allures
4) Chunga's Revenge
5) One Size Fits All

All of the above are with The Mothers of Invention except for Zoot Allures.

My 3 Fav Songs:
1) Montana
2) Dinah-Moe Humm
3) Cosmik Debris
 
Back
Top