"It must be a Camel": what next?

King Kong - Jean-Luc Ponty plays the music of FZ

that's the best track on Hot Rats and the best, maybe the end of that good period .. so jump to "I Come from Nowhere" from Ship Arriving Too Late .., from 1981

Yeah? Is that one worth getting?

"Eli the Camel" - Ferlin Huskey

jazz from hell - synclavier nonsense incl best electro hit ever "g spot tornado" pre aphex aphexry. aswell as stuff nearly in metre or melody quite spazly. also check bits offa the yellow shark -it has cheese on it but also some superb thing from a docu on the exxon valdez oil spill & "get whitey" has that ever revolving dissolution /resolution thing going for it and the uncle meat themes sound super pompous in a great way when the ensemble modern do them.
you'd like lumpy gravy too at a guess (60's orch arrangements instru)

I love the Uncle Meat themes (and the album as a whole)! DOes Yellow Shark consists of Ensemble Modern covers?
I heard bits of Jazz From Hell and was severely bored/unimpressed. Maybe I have to give it another shot.

"Yellow Shark" shows up the paucity of Zappa's talent when he tries really hard to be a "proper composer" - all that sub-Boulez stuff is arid, derivative and dull dull dull. The best things on it are the arrangements of his "pop" music. He wrote good tunes.

um, yes the catchy theme-sharing "songs" on Uncle Meat are very good, which makes up for the dull instrumental endless "King Kong" variations on the second lp/cd

all the Mothers' material from their first incarnation is very good (except maybe portions of Freak Out and Absolutely Free which seem to put concept first and music third)

cf: all of Zappa's '70s material, where suddenly he had already proved his cred. and so proceeded to destroy it with cheap and nasty "satire".

people disagree about the merits of all the '70s stuff (and all the endless live documents, official boots and smart-ass muso showoff repetitions of vibraphone rip-offs of all the good jazz/ rock music that so many other bands were doing better at the same time), but how many people could disagree that zappa had spent his best musical/ artistic ideas by then and was spreading what little he had left across far too many patchy-at-best albums to be bothered with ?

I quite like old Frank but I hate the idea that we're all supposed to be impressed that a rock 'n' roll guy can compose "clever stuff" too. Fair enough if the clever stuff is as good as the rock 'n' roll stuff - but it isn't, frankly ('scuse pun). However I don't think he was washed up by the 70s, in fact he continued to put out good things among all the dross.