Advice on Frank Zappa

shoedogg · Post by **shoedogg** » Fri May 23, 2003 7:12 am

The only Zappa song I've ever heard is "Valley Girl", and I've always had interest in diving into his material. After Genius in France has piqued my interest in him, my question is what songs would you guys and gals recomend to me for maximum Zappa-ness?

jerrymustbeslaughtered · Fri May 23, 2003 5:06 pm

Don't Eat the Yellow Snow, Nanook Rubs it, St. Alphonzo's Pancake Breakfast, Uncle Remus, Inca Roads, Can't Afford No Shoes, Evelyn A Modified Dog, San Ber'dino Squares, and I'm the Slime were all used in Genius in France in some way, and some other good songs are Brown Shoes don't Make It, It Just Might Be A One Shot Deal, Peaches En Regalia, and G Spot Tornado.

minnick27 · Post by **minnick27** » Fri May 23, 2003 11:29 pm

I started out with Strictly Commercial, which seems to be a pretty good sampler of his work, though it doesnt delve into the earlier stuff from Lumpy Gravy. Cheap Thrills is a good Best-Of. Regular albums, I would say try Over-Nite Sensation

Mike

jerrymustbeslaughtered · Sat May 24, 2003 12:25 am

Though if you want to get the Zappa references in GIF, get Apostrophe (') and One Size Fits All, which most of the styles are from.

Captain Tylor · Post by **Captain Tylor** » Sat May 24, 2003 1:00 am

Try "Dancing Fool" it contains alot of the same musical style that genius in France has, especially the bicycle spokes, weird noises in the background, women singing, etc. grant it most of Zappa'z songs have all of that, but when I heard the Weird Al version I immediately thought of Dancing Fool.

"Dont Eat The Yellow Snow" is another good Zappa Song to try

sarley27 · Post by **sarley27** » Sat May 24, 2003 1:15 am

St. Alfonso's Pancake Breakfast, Willie the Pimp, and the first few songs on Hot Rats are good. Lots of that xylophone action. Woo!!!

Post by **anthontherun** » Sat May 24, 2003 1:50 am

Joe's Garage, Acts I and II. (III isn't essential.)

Phillipemoz · Post by **Phillipemoz** » Sat May 24, 2003 8:19 am

Hello, I myself own a few zappa albums, here is my advice:

Strictly Commercial is a good place to start, even though it only scratches the surface and only has his more "commercial" songs. It has a lot of good songs on it but it isn't a very comprehensive compilation, not showing all of zappa's styles. Still a good place to start.

best songs:

peaches en regalia- an excellent instrumental, zappa did a lot of these. He once said that if words weren't considered by so many people to be necessary, most of his songs would be instrumental. I'm glad that they weren't all instrumentals though, because zappa had excellent lyrics.

Don't eat the yellow snow- excellent song, style simular to Genius in France.

Dancin' Fool- hilarious. Sorry Al, but this song is better than Genius in France.

Cosmik Debris- Hilarius slam on 'Gurus'. Zappa was anti-drug and proud of it, even though he looked like a hippie and was in no way 'conservative'. He poked fun at the establishment and the so-called counterculture, zappa dared to be truley different, a nonconformist.

Trouble Every Day- one of zappa's best, has a political message to it. This is from his from his first album, Freak Out! ( which I believe Al has an autographed copy of . . . when Al met zappa he asked him to sign Freak Out for him, and then zappa asked Al if he would give him an autograph for his son (don't remember if it was Ahmet or Dweezil) because he really liked "Another one rides the bus".)

I'm the Slime-zappa's anti-Tv song, with a familiar guitar riff at the beginning.

Joe's Garage- excellent and funny

Valley Girl- zappa's number one hit, more of a 'novelty' for him- but very popular on Dr. Demento

Muffin Man- funny intro and awesome guitar solo.

of course many other good songs were on this album, I just highlighted the best in my opinion.

A good companian piece is "Have I offended Anyone" - A collection of zappa's most controversial songs. Great zappa humor, but as the title suggests it is offensive to many people and definatley NOT for children.

out of my regular zappa albums my favorite is "one size fits all", although that is mostly for the instrumentals. But it does have San Berdino (which is also on Strictly Commercial) and Po Jama people, one of my favorite songs.

And if you are ready to dive into the world of zappa and don't mind paying a little more, get the 3 CD set "Lather." It is well worth the money, it is zappa at his best. However, it is mostly instrumental, so you have to like zappa's instrumentals to really like this. But how do you know if you like zappa's instrumentals if you've never heard them? The cheap thrills cheezy compilations give you a good taste of instrumentals and humorous songs, without draining your pocketbook too much.

Lather also has a few long songs that are kind of like Albuquerque/Genius In France - The Illinois Enema Bandit, ***ties and beer, and... well that's all I can think of right now, but there is some good humor and definate wackiness on this album.

Well I hope this was helpful for those wanting to explore zappa.

jerrymustbeslaughtered · Sat May 24, 2003 7:30 pm

Willie the Pimp, and the first few songs on Hot Rats are good.

Well, willie the pimp is the third song on hot rats... but yeah, hot rats is excellent. Yellow Shark has some amazing instrumentals too.

shoedogg · Post by **shoedogg** » Sat May 24, 2003 8:24 pm

Thanks for the help! I've thought about buying Have I Offended Someone in the past, but never got it. Thanks to a certain internet file sharing site that i won't name :nervous: , I've now heard Don't Eat the Yellow Snow and Bobby Brown, both are pretty good. I don't know if anybody has mention this yet or not, but Yellow Snow fetures "GREAT GOOGILY MOOGILY!" It was very cool to find where Al got that from. Also from Yellow Snow I can catch some of the vocal style that Al used in GIF. I think that song is where the OUI, OUI.....OUI,OUI (wee wee) part was inspired cause Zappa says WEE WEE in it.

World of Weird Al Yankovic

Advice on Frank Zappa

Advice on Frank Zappa

If you want a good Zappa song that is like Genius.....

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