Frank Zappa Why is he so great?

fat_fleet said:
But honestly, why not just listen to a bunch and decide for yourself?
No one else can sell you on something you're closed off against, or turn you against something you like, and it's your own ears you have to satisfy.
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I will do that at some point. I remember listening to him a long time ago and not enjoying it. Mostly because I didn't get it and I was too stuck in mainstream music. Right now I'm on hotel internet and don't want to deal with the slow download times.
 
jimistone said:
He went on to form Little Feat....

So, I am grateful to zappa for making that happen since I'm a huge Little Feat fan
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Tangent: I saw LF at the Backyard outside of Austin, back in the day. An absolutely awesome show. I still remember it.
 
Chili said:
Tangent: I saw LF at the Backyard outside of Austin, back in the day. An absolutely awesome show. I still remember it.
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.that's really cool Chili!
Man, I never got a chance to see them but I have see a lot of concert footage and have loved their music. In their heyday there weren't many bands that could touch them!
 
I saw the Feat twice within a year before Lowell's passing. Amazing live band. Two of my more memorable concert experiences.
 
It's been said that you're supposed to automatically dislike any music your parents like....when you're a rebellious youth....
But my mom loved the Feat doing "Dixie Chicken" from the "waitin' on Columbus" live album. She would always say: "Now THAT'S good music. So, at least you have one good record in your stack of awful sounding stuff."
LMAO.
I miss my mom.
 
Sounds like you're mom and I would've gotten along, except when it came to how to raise her son. :D

---------- Update ----------

There's a fat man, in the bathtub, with the blues...
 
The second jack goes direct to the soundboard. It comes from a piezo pickup under the bridge. The output gets mixed in to taste. The "Gibson" in the background is his SG clone. Not a Gibson at all.
 
No...that's a Hagstrom Swede Patch 2000 guitar...those were early synth-capable guitars. The second cable (DIN plug) goes to the synth unit. That Swede model never gained any serious following. The standard Swede was/is the more desired, and when you see a Swede Patch 2000 on eBay, it just lays there.
There was a guy a few months back trying to sell one for $7000 as a "rare" model....I laughed and told him he was lucky to get $700. The price kept coming down and down and down... every time I saw the listing.

One of the problems with finding these on sale, is that without a working Patch 2000 synth unit (rarer than baby hen's teeth) to go with the guitar...all the extra electronics on the guitar and the extra routing becomes a major negative for vintage collectors who just want the standard Swede guitar.

Here's a video demo from the late '70s for the Patch 2000.

 
miroslav said:
No...that's a Hagstrom Swed Patch 2000 guitar..
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Okay. I'll defer to the Hagstrom expert. I know he used the piezo on other guitars - it may actually have been in the neck 'cause he was after fretting noise but I don't remember exactly and don't feel like looking it up. lol

This is not a Hagstrom:FrankZappa.jpg
 
Sky Blue Lou said:
I know he used the piezo on other guitars - it may actually have been in the neck 'cause he was after fretting noise but I don't remember exactly and don't feel like looking it up. lol
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I'm sure you are right about that...and I wasn't implying he never used a piezo pickup on some guitars.
I was just saying that the one in the pic I posted is a Swede Patch 2000.
Listening to the Patch demo...I can certainly hear Zappa putting some of those synth sounds to use....but like I said, the Patch 2000 never took off with players in any meaningful way that would keep it in production and promote design improvements.
 
don't like to show up where I am not wanted but I have to weigh in on this one.
Some musicians are Hendrix deaf
Some musicians are Sinatra deaf, I fall into that catagory
and
Some musicians are Zappa deaf.
 
Zappa is an acquired taste for sure. But he was skilled and brilliant. You can like him or not, but should at lesst respect him, if even only for his prolific body of work.
 
Frank Zappa, what can I say. Well, some of his music just wears me out, it is so involved and complicated I get tired listening to it. But then theres the classics, Yellow snow, Valley Girls, Joe's Garage, dancing fool, the list just goes on. When people ask me about Zappa I tell them that the music ability is way beyond anything that I could achieve.

If anyone wants to get into Zappa I recommend the best off album "Strictly Commercial" Zappa detested best off albums but this was released 2 years after he died as a tribute to some of the great music he had made over the years and contained some of the more accessible songs remembering that he released 68 albums while alive and since his death there have been 38 releases of archives. I think he would have got the joke with "Strictly Commercial".

Alan.

Frank_Zappa_Strictly_Commercial.jpg
 
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