Captain Beefheart/Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa is cooler than Captain Beefheart. In Judge Dredd there is a Frank Zappa block. there is no Captain Beefheart block.

Also Zappa was caluclating and made sure to rip off the music biz before it ripped him off, unlike Beeefheart who starved for 15 years before giving up up music for art. Reading the small print isn't cool.

Zappa is well worth checking out but he's done lots of different stuff: "Freak out" and "We're Only in it for the money" is best for late 60's gonzoid knock about fun and piss taking - with cool tunes.

"Burnt Weeny Sandwich" and "The Grand Wazoo" have great jazz- rock/modern classical music mixed up in a manner which is actually really listenable, and a doo wop number about drinking port and lemon juice. Similarly "Hot Rats" has his famous jazz rock number Peaches En Regalia (which rules) and a song Beefheart sang called "Wilie the Pimp".

"One Size Fits All" is a very good intro to his music: guitar solos/big ensemble rock numbers and some wacky lyrics.

There's a book out which within its pink cover contains a 500 page Marxist analysis of his work called "The Negative Dialectics if Poodle Play" - if that isn't cool then what is.

Beefheart also has a more compact catalogue whereas with Zappa its easy to start with one of his less accesible albums. And I won't even suggest which is which, some people hate the musique concrete stuff, some the smut, some the guitar solos, some the horn sections etc. etc. There aren't even obvious compilations to go for - Strictly Genteel covers his "classical" stuff and Strictly Commercial his "song" stuff which might be the way to go. The Cheap Thrills comp is cheap and gives you a flavour but isn't the best stuff he's ever done - good version of "Catholic Girls" though.

For Beefheart get Safe As Milk and Ice Cream For Crow, his first and last albums, and then fill in the gaps.

I can't speak for hstencil, but I don't see why if you like one, you must like the other. I like Beefheart's A&M tracks, Safe As Milk, Mirror Man, Trout Mask Replica and Doc at the Radar Station. For the most part these are blues-y recordings, something that's not usually found in Zappa's work. Just because Zappa's voice can be heard on Trout Mask Replica doesn't mean they were doing the same thing.

Freak Out's okay.

I see very very few parallels between Beefheart and Zappa, really.

Eh, not exactly, I think I've met enough Zappa fans over the years who tried to convince me of his "genius" - they all played me different stuff - from "Freakout" to "Sheik Yerbouti" to his later classical stuff just before he died. I hated all of it.

"Doo wop,classical,rock,jazz,opera..."

Doing a lot of different genres doesn't make anyone interesting. It's what you do *with* those genres. Zappa's joke-y song titles, his eternal penchant for "look at me! look at how unpredictable I am!" only makes him that much more predictable.

""his music is all so showy" again you I think you've missed the beautifully subtle zappa moments that are not "showy" they are RAW...."

Could be - but if I've heard a dozen out of his 200+ releases (or however many there are) and didn't like a single one, in fact, detected the abovementioned threads of showiness and blatantly obvious (and thus boring) satire, maybe it just isn't worth digging for those subtle and raw moments.

There's are easy enough answers for me -- I find Beefheart music to be exploratory and organic, and find Zappa's music to be (at its heart) too self-consciously avant-garde. Zappa's lyrics are most frequently quite literal and often smarmy, superior and mocking, where Beefheart's are imagistic, poetic, and humanistic (can you imagine Zappa, even in his most genial moments, that his "smile is stuck" and that he "cannot go back to your frownland"?). Beefheart's compositions are more compact--he writes songs rather than rock operas or album-side orchestral works. Moreover, Zappa never did anything as rhythmically interesting as, say, "Lick My Decals Off, Baby." While Zappa has produced some good stuff (I like "Freak Out," amongst others), nothing he's done even comes close to Beefheart's lesser works (say, "Clear Spot") to me.

And maybe you can mark it down to ignorance on my part, but consider this: my freshman year of college I roomed with a music major who listened to nothing but Bach and Zappa, and I do mean nothing but. Oddly enough, I still enjoy Bach when I hear it.

what is Ben right about then mark?

i love the fact that zappa and beefheart were friends and collaborators, because they have nothing and everything in common. on the one hand, they both take elements from very diverse musics (beefheart - howlin' wolf, albert ayler; zappa - varese, doo-wop), but while beefheart seems to mix them into an organic whole, the seams are always showing with zappa. it's the self-consciousness that other people have touched on up-thread; some can't stand it, others think it's what makes him so compelling. i vote for beefheart in the end not because he's more hip or because zappa was more popular, but because despite all the influences on his sleeve, it's always *him*, and i think zappa sometimes falls down in this respect.

Beefheart just abt makes 'Hot Rats' and 'Bongo Fury' tolerable.

Zappa's music is all over the place with a good portion being somewhere between Varese styled oddball symphonic, twisted jazz fusion and dirty Spike Jones music. Rock and roll happens, but not as often as other things.

I like Beefheart alot more than Zappa, but there are a few records FZ made that are pretty good. I like when Zappa shuts up and plays guitar better than anything else and the first two Mothers albums are cool artifacts.

This is probably what will tip the scales in the Captain's direction as time goes on--Zappa's work, especially the early stuff, is very rooted in the time that it was made. The references to hippies and other 60's/70's cultural phenomena lose quite a bit of their satirical edge as time rolls on and the music(some of which I like) can sound similarly dated as well.

i'm listening for the first time the the collabration between Zappa (which i hate) and Beefheart (love,love,love) - "an evening with"... - it's preety fucking good stuff!
the "bongo fury" collabration lp is also good in parts.the beefheart parts mostly...

Carolina Hardcore Ecstasy is very fine. And Poofter's Froth Wyoming Plans Ahead'd be nothing without Frank and his band backing up the Captain. That sone would work with virtually anyone giving it a quirky vocal. It's one my favorite Zappa albums.

Bongo Fury has a couple of good tracks that I instantly love: Sam with the Showing Scalp Flat Top and Man with the Woman Head. Beefheart is at the centre of those.

At one point I felt a bit sad Beefheart had to debase himself, almost, the music is just so kinda shoddy. I mean it's ok rocking shit I don't really give a fuck about (odd solo aside) but given what Beefheart created in his own music..

Muffin Man is pretty good once it gets into the solo but the contrast between what Zappa writes as a dada type narrative and Beefheart's lyrics on Man with the Woman Head that precedes this is just brutal.

Hot Rats is better, mostly because it's mainly jams and Gumbo variations gets warm...good band. Beefheart's appearance is sadly brief!

The best thing by them together remains Orange Claw Hammer with Zappa on guitar.