Rush vs Yes vs Zappa

"On the 'Rush vs Yes vs Grateful Dead' thread"

I tend to agree with Steven Tyler that

as long as you can get him (Zappa) to stfu he's the fucking best

Unfortunately, Zappa opened his mouth quite often.

it's true but...for me the leap in quality of Zappa at his best vs. these other two at their best is gonna mean Yes & Rush finish 2nd & 3rd again. "Watermelon in Easter Hay," Burnt Weeny Sandwich in its entirety, Zappa's guitar tone generally speaking - what a thing of beauty. I find his condescension & sexism completely insufferable now (though I can't lie, in the 6th grade I thought he was the funniest guy who ever lived) but the music itself is just tremendous.

I can dig Rush and Yes just fine but I don't think either of them have a "Watermelon in Easter Hay."

Pairing the Dead and Zappa makes since in that they are both loved and loathed by many and have just huge discographys and are kind of polar opposites in one band pretty much anything goes and the other nothing goes unless Frank says so.

Zappa. He has more absolutely horrible stuff than either of the others but I think his peaks are higher too.

Lou Reed on Frank Zappa: "He's probably the single most untalented person I've heard in my life. He's a two-bit pretentious academic, and he can't play rock'n'roll, because he's a loser. And that's why he dresses up funny. He's not happy with himself and I think he's right."

he can't play rock'n'roll

When they were doing their R&B and R&B-influenced stuff, THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION were one of the best white R&B bands of the sixties

strong words from the author of "Junior Dad" xp

Dumb quote, but I love the idea of Lou and Frank indirectly snapping at each over the years.

I mean, pretty much that whole quote could be Lou talking about himself in third person.

I actually love that quote, it's one of Lou's meanest takedowns esp. considering that if you're Louis "Butch" Firbanks and you're calling somebody else out for being uncool you must really have bought into your own line hard

xp lol exactly

This is tough because I hate voting against Rush, but I have to go with Zappa on this one. He has far too many albums I love to not vote for him even though he has more than a few unbearable ones.

I feel like I have to vote for Zappa here even though I dislike a fair amount of his music and find his public persona smug & grating in a way that's difficult to separate from the music. Sorry Yes, I did consider you this time.

Also while 'chops-happy rock-as-composition project' is obv accurate in a lot of ways, I feel it's worth noting that Zappa's output has a lot of him jamming over static chords too, often in a kind of tiresome way.
Here I am slagging the act I voted for, ho-hum.

I guess I like the obvious Zappa bits like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HyTP9sP_aI

Also while 'chops-happy rock-as-composition project' is obv accurate in a lot of ways, I feel it's worth noting that Zappa's output has a lot of him jamming over static chords too, often in a kind of tiresome way.

Yep, this is another serious point against Zappa for me. So frustrating, considering how beautiful "Watermelon in Easter Hay" is.

On the other hand, The Grand Wazoo, you know?

strong words from the author of "Junior Dad" xp

― steven fucking tyler (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, August 5, 2012 10:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

junior dad is a beautiful song.

this watermelon song is really pretty.

Zappas come out of the sky and annoy me....

Zappa has lots of great songs, just listen to them and ignore the dross.

i find zappa's worst music so awful and plentiful that it threatens to eclipse the not inconsiderable body of wonderful shit he did along the way

given the results of the last poll, i figure he'll take it in a walk though

i got advice to just stick to the original Mothers of Invention shit and it's served me well

You need the 1974 Roxy Mothers stuff too.

My favourites are the early 70s fusion/jazz-rock records Hot Rats, The Grand Wazoo, and Waka/Jawaka. Also fond of Lumpy Gravy.

This poll is really hard! Zappa had the greatest compositional range but, as noted, is so inconsistent. I voted for Yes in the last poll on the strength of the stretch from The Yes Album through Going for the One. After that point, they're of very little interest to me though. Rush comes closest of the three to being a regular rock band. Despite some dips in the 80s and 90s, they've been pretty consistently reliable and have done some great things.

Hmmmm. Rush were the best at ripping off Zep back in the day (something I think they don't get nearly enough credit for; if you can name a better Canadian Zep wannabe band than early Rush I'd love to hear it). Yes were one of the only prog bands whose ideas about music extended beyond "let's string together a bunch of random unrelated riffs in 7/4 and then throw in a keyboard solo", and deserve credit for that alone. Zappa could not only play the hell out of a Little Richard song, he could flat-out jam (he did some pretty nice stuff with L. Shankar in the late '70s). On the other hand he never wrote anything worth humming in his entire life, which when you have something like 80 albums has to be considered some sort of demerit.

Yes were one of the only prog bands whose ideas about music extended beyond "let's string together a bunch of random unrelated riffs in 7/4 and then throw in a keyboard solo", and deserve credit for that alone.

Not fair to e.g. King Crimson or Soft Machine, to name just a couple. (Besides, Zappa himself was a prog artist.)

On the other hand he never wrote anything worth humming in his entire life,

This is so, so wrong. At least a couple dozen of the original Mothers songs including everything on Ruben and the Jets. Everything on the 1972 jazz records... "Lemme Take You to the Beach" not hummable? Pssshhhh...

Anyway, my vote is FZ, no surprise to anyone who knows me.

I'm guessing that if Frank had only wrote "Black Napkins" he might have got your vote.

This should be Rush vs. Primus vs. Zappa

heh...

Add "How Could I Be Such a Fool?" and "Blessed Relief" to that and how could I resist? (xpost)

One good key to zeroing in on how good a melodist FZ was would be checking out the records by small chamber ensembles playing his work. The Omnibus Wind Ensemble, Ensemble Ambrosius and Le Concert Impromptu all have great sets -- Embrosius play FZ on Baroque instruments, and their album is on Spotify.... http://open.spotify.com/album/40I3p7zHU7waQwZABZoiPr

My most frequently hummed FZ song is Pygmy Twylyte

re zappa: looking over his discography, i'm surprised HOW MUCH of it i used to known (and own - since sold). i kind of would like to hear some of the sounds again, especially the guitar soloing, but just the thought of the songs and the zappaism kind of puts me off.

tho strangely the whole system of nomenclature seems like an accomplishment itself.

still get a kick out of remembering to say 'central scruuutinizer' to myself every few years.

zappa just barely over yes

Heh...Zappa being accused of doing all this juvenile sexist stuff, yet it's Rush and Yes who put all the bare bums on their albumn covers!

Rush & Yes are just fine, but this is an easy decision, really.

Yeah I don't know about that "not hummable" thing. Those three early Mothers records alone should put that to rest. I'm going back through my Zappa discs and realized just how early this guy jumped off the deep end - as brilliant as "Brown Shoes" is otherwise, the song just makes me physically uncomfortable due to those lyrics. Agreed that Zappa really needed to shut up more often, therefore I think Yes is the better choice overall.

I think Zappa has a TON of great melodies, earworms if not outright hummable, from "You Can Take Your Clothes When You Dance" to "King Kong" to "Peaches en Regalia" to "Cheepnis" and beyond.

The song "Absolutely Free" is one of those real crazy earworms that gets in my head for months at a time

also "Oh No" is such a brilliant tune

kinda wondering what the hell happened to this guy in the 70's

Anyone doubting the singability of Zappa tunes needs to give a listen to The Persuasions Sing Zappa too.

1. FZ the impresario (Alice Cooper, Tom Waits, the GTO's, Jeff Simmons lol) and FZ the filmmaker (200 Motels); his own music suffers

2. Injury and enforced downtime; compositional burst with the jazz albums, "RDNZL," "Inca Roads," etc. -- on the road nearly nonstop with one of his greatest bands, playing this stuff until they knew it backwards, forwards and at any tempo

3. Endless grief with Herb Cohen and Warner Brothers

4. Retrenchment, gathering his resources to create Barking Pumpkin and the UMRK

xpost

Zappa up to and including "Hot Rats" is pretty unfuckwithable, after that up to 75-ish is pretty ok...after that it plunges pretty far and fast, at least to me.

And he wrote tons of catchy/memorable tunes.

Anyway, I love/hate Zappa but the music of his I love far outweighs the Rush I love and Yes is so dumb they aren't even a factor.

For the most part '75 is my Zappa cutoff point, too. I like the later 70s Lather stuff, and I find a few tracks on early 80s albums are worth a hearing. Then I get off the bus.

Until we do Rush vs Beatles, I'm always going to be voting Rush.

I like some Zappa, and I like some Yes. But I love most Rush.

Personally I don't get the hatred of Zappa's lyrics. The first thing you have to learn when listening to prog rock is to ignore the lyrics. Maybe it's because Zappa going off about groupies or enema bandits or whatever for ten minutes is harder to ignore than Yes lyrics, which don't make any sense on any kind of a rational level? I always had a harder time ignoring Rush's whole Ayn Rand fetish thing, and as far as revolting groupie lyrics I find myself more put off by some of the stuff Pete Sinfield wrote for King Crimson, maybe because of the attempt at cloaking the same sentiments as "art".

As to his melodies, they're highly musical, and certainly extremely singable, but they're inaccessible on a performance level to someone without musical talent. In other words they're not the kind of songs you would sing in the shower, whereas something like "Roundabout" has bits of it you could hum in the shower. Whereas with Zappa even the songs that when you listen to them sound tuneful and catchy like "Let Me Take You To the Beach" devolve into flat rhythmic exercises when I try to hear them in my head. Maybe related to the way every single version of "Willie the Pimp" I have heard that doesn't have Captain Beefheart singing sounds turgid and lumbering. I don't know, maybe I'd make an exception for something like "You're probably wondering why I'm here", but it's a very small portion of his catalogue. ("Cheepnis" I always get distracted by Tom Fowler's absolutely monster bassline.)

In terms of King Crimson and Soft Machine, I actually like both of those bands much better than I like Yes. I'm speaking mainly about the aspiration sometimes expressed of "prog" being a synthesis of rock instrumentation and classical-level songwriting. In practice this entailed Keith Emerson turning Ginastera into a bunch of squiggly synth noises punctuated by a drum solo. It's a tremendously enjoyable listen, but it's difficult to say it does Ginastera's original work total justice. I can only think of two examples of prog bands who made some serviceable attempt at classical-style thematic development in a rock context- Yes circa "Close to the Edge", and Egg's "Enneagram". That said I'd much rather listen to "Starless" than "Close to the Edge" pretty much any day of the year.

Has anyone here actually heard the piece that "Toccata" was supposed to be an interpretation of? I always wondered what it was like.

I get what you mean w/r/t Zappa's lyrics, but the difference is that Yes never really forced you to pay attention to them the way Zappa does. I agree that in his better moments the lyrics are easy to ignore, but so much of Zappa's catalogue is stuff like "Bobby Brown Goes Down" or "Sy Borg" or "He's So Gay" where the lyrics are clearly the focal point.

And there's almost nothing to pay attention to otherwise. I meant to add that.

Oh man, "Sy Borg." Joe's Garage is really where I decamp the Zappa train. I would assume Ike Willis was okay with those lyrics, or at least okay with the paycheck he was getting, but jeez...

man when I was 12 years old Joe's Garage was so goddamn clever & great & such a big fuck-you to all the squares who're fucking up the world. that is the problem with Zappa's lyrics: they're the kind of stuff that, if you are a 12-year-old reject, seems really profound to you. there is nothing wrong with being an angry kid and being a condescending angry kid is a common, understandable defense mechanism. it is however generally speaking a bad look as a lyricist. Peart does a similar thing, but less often, and plus who the fuck know what that piercing Lee wail is saying half the time? most people learn their lesson with a Rush lyric sheet early on and just tune out the lecturing

Lol I like how I said that as if the fact that they are tuned to scales somehow makes it less ridiculous

they have that already it's called a piano

it occurs to me that perhaps a lot of zappa fans are happily willing or easily able to separate performance from composition, and relate primarily to zappa as a composer and in an intellectual sense. i find it difficult to do that. when i listen to music, i'm in it for immediate sensual and emotional rewards; the intellectual appreciation of construction comes later and means less.

since it was brought up itt, "peaches en regalia" is a perfect illustration of this. the cello performance/arrangement that dan peterson posted is gorgeous. the sound of the instrument itself is a big part of that. the timbre and tone alone are immediately appealing. the performance is accomplished but not flashy, and it makes visceral, musical "sense" of the relationship between the instrument's natural sound palette and the piece's progress.

the zappa performance on hot rats, however, is just ghastly. horrible sounds thrown together with no seeming attention to timbral/tonal relation, all glopped over with useless ornamentation, and performed with a grating sort of would-be-fluid stiffness. the underlying composition is quite lovely, as it turns out, but zappa doesn't give you much reason to stick around and figure that out.

god, i really wish i could go back and edit my posts. "relate primarily to zappa as a composer" wtf?

i suppose it's also possible that some people simply don't care that much about conventionally "pleasant" sounds & arrangements, or (and i shudder to think) actually prefer the grotesque candyland chaos zappa serves up. it's certainly colorful, and i can see how it might appeal to those with a pronounced fondness for other sorts of action-packed musical zaniness: john zorn, mr bungle, les claypool, residents, etc.

the rabbit hole of chops dudes this thread has taken me down is a place I always, always love gong. Thank you, thread, for getting me to the point of watching 10-minute Steve Lukather videos from 1994.

i want to say that i dislike zappa's embittered sarcasm, but i'm not sure why i should find it so off-putting when i often enjoy something quite similar in scuzzball punk rockers like mark arm and tom hazelmeyer.

Something interesting: Songs About Fucking is arguably as or more sexist/tasteless/unpleasant as some of Zappa's shit. Yet several people have praised it on the 1987 thread and no one has complained about it, whereas not even the biggest fans here have shown much willingness to get behind stuff like "Illinois Enema Bandit", "Titties and Beer", "Sy Borg", "Bobby Brown", etc. I don't love that Big Black album but I do like it. Ditto with a lot of hip-hop. So I think it really is an aesthetic issue in Zappa's case, not a moral one: the obnoxious lyrics on the offending songs are foregrounded so heavily and sit there, sometimes with less to appreciate musically otherwise, and also just that, unlike e.g. ODB lyrics, they're so weak as comedy, with little wit or comic timing. (I guess this is similar to something I already said upthread but I was considering it again with these comparisons.)

actually prefer the grotesque candyland chaos zappa serves up. it's certainly colorful, and i can see how it might appeal to those with a pronounced fondness for other sorts of action-packed musical zaniness: john zorn, mr bungle, les claypool, residents, etc.

I haven't listened to the cello version yet but yes, this is a big part of the appeal of Zappa's instrumental music. "Grotesque candyland chaos" is a great description btw!

I could do without the more squacky moments in "Peaches", but as a whole that arrangement kills

Putting my last two ideas together, I guess one reason Zappa is frustrating is that the music itself can be delightfully humorous, his lyrics and delivery much less so.

zaniness

^

I guess one reason Zappa is frustrating is that the music itself can be delightfully humorous, his lyrics and delivery much less so.

I don't know if I really want to drag the unholy Seth MacFarlane into this, but Zappa's catalogue as a whole is kind of like laughing your ass off at a really funny and clever joke on Family Guy that hits on every level, then getting pissed that the rest of the show settles for so much less.

Something interesting: Songs About Fucking is arguably as or more sexist/tasteless/unpleasant as some of Zappa's shit. Yet several people have praised it on the 1987 thread and no one has complained about it, whereas not even the biggest fans here have shown much willingness to get behind stuff like "Illinois Enema Bandit", "Titties and Beer", "Sy Borg", "Bobby Brown", etc. I don't love that Big Black album but I do like it. Ditto with a lot of hip-hop. So I think it really is an aesthetic issue in Zappa's case, not a moral one: the obnoxious lyrics on the offending songs are foregrounded so heavily and sit there, sometimes with less to appreciate musically otherwise, and also just that, unlike e.g. ODB lyrics, they're so weak as comedy, with little wit or comic timing. (I guess this is similar to something I already said upthread but I was considering it again with these comparisons.)

fwiw one reason I've always been lukewarm on Big Black is the casual sexism trying to hide behind a general-misanthropy mask (I think Albini grew out of that & consider Shellac a much better band). Re: hip-hop, generally speaking with hip-hop I think you either make your peace with sexism to enjoy the music or you check out; I've mainly done the latter, which is exactly what I do with pretty much all vocal Zappa: I tune out right around "Apostrophe" and only come back for the instrumentals ("Watermelon in Easter Hay" is so unbelievable...what the hell is it doing in the same corpus as "Catholic Girls"?)

The problem with vocal Zappa is that like 95% of his vocal melodies are exactly the same as the melody of the song; even his *good* vocal stuff wouldn't lose much if the they were removed altogether.

i suppose it's also possible that some people simply don't care that much about conventionally "pleasant" sounds & arrangements, or (and i shudder to think) actually prefer the grotesque candyland chaos zappa serves up. it's certainly colorful, and i can see how it might appeal to those with a pronounced fondness for other sorts of action-packed musical zaniness: john zorn, mr bungle, les claypool, residents, etc.

Yeah I love early Zappa for the sonics and arrangements (as well as the melodies), and particularly the cheesy, plastic, TV show theme quality of some of his stuff. I don't like any of those other artists you mentioned though. I don't normally go for zany but in Zappa's best stuff there's a darkness that undercuts the zaniness.

BTW, I had no idea until last night that both Roy Estrada and Napoleon Murphy Brock were convicted sex offenders!

well, that complicates the moral-vs-aesthetic thing a little

Something interesting: Songs About Fucking is arguably as or more sexist/tasteless/unpleasant as some of Zappa's shit. Yet several people have praised it on the 1987 thread and no one has complained about it, whereas not even the biggest fans here have shown much willingness to get behind stuff like "Illinois Enema Bandit", "Titties and Beer", "Sy Borg", "Bobby Brown", etc.

this doesn't address the moral component of that argument, but negativity in punk rock sort of "works" on a musical level because punk rock, like a lot of heavy metal, is driven by a kind of violent ecstasy. i was listening to "anarchy in the UK" the other day, and forgive me if this is an obvious point, but it occurred to me that the song has absolutely no political dimension. when johnny rotten sings about wanting to be anarchy, he's talking about the feeling of screaming into an amplified microphone with a band exploding into ecstatic, mile-a-minute chaos around you. what he's really saying is, "i want to be this sound, this moment." it's the same feeling iggy pop addresses in "raw power".

that situation, the situation of the punk singer, turns venom into a positive musical virtue. when the violence of the subject matter matches and conjures a violence in the vocal performance, it enables a transcendent release that turns mere violence into an ecstatic sort of joy. that can't really happen in zappa's musical universe. his venom can't find any kind of emotionally expressive release, so it just sits there festering.

oh man the Greasy Love Songs reissue just came in the mail (Cruising With Ruben & the Jets + extras) - utterly gorgeous package, really A+ production job. Little wallet-size card of what looks to be Zappa's high school graduation photo, bright mylar panels, big booklet with liner notes by Cheech Marin.

Totally bitching piece of product and it sounds SO GOOD.

Ruben has three dogs: Benny, Baby and Martha.

"Bobby Brown" is pretty funny. It is satire. Including a rape joke is not the best idea but the song is a comment on the sort of person that would think a rape joke is funny, how little respect this person has for anybody other than himself. Even as he ascends into sexual deviance and is being used and abuse his thoughts are "Oh God oh God I'm so fantastic". Completely self-obsessed. The shiny teeth and fast car are status symbols to him as much as who he effed and how cool and cutting edge his sexual life is. It's about a villain who is getting his due but not even realizing it because he's so obsessed with his own greatness. The irony in the lyrics is mimicked by the simple, catchy, confident melody and late 70's soft-rock pr0n arrangement.

Bobby Brown is Daniel Tosh.

I think we all get that, Adam. I think it's cheap and heavy-handed, like Sublime's "Date Rape" but even more ott.

yeah, and equating homosexuality and kink with deviance and being a "sexual spastic" is p fucking lame. i mean, sure, it's a supposed to be a satire of a self-obsessed type, but the hinge of zappa's "satire" = "lol, u r a gay fag."

OTM

Also pretty disturbing that the bg vocalist on that album is a convicted rapist

Wait, is that true about Napoleon Brock Murphy? (I see it on Roy Estrada's Wiki, which is pretty creepy.)

Whoa: http://mugshots.com/US-Counties/California/Santa-Clara-County-CA/Napoleon-Murphy-Brock.4542761.html

yeah, I don't see a date on Brock's conviction although the mugshot looks fairly recent right? But Estrada has 3 convictions for child sexual assault dating back to '77!

yeah Estrada was a real piece of work evidently

25 years without parole. I had not heard about Estrada; saw him not too many years ago with The Grandmothers.

Ugh, didn't know that about Estrada. Yick. That poor kid.

I'm really upset to hear about these guys. It's a real shock, especially NMB, who comes across as a fairly likable person. Ugh. This is going to ruin a lot of my favorite songs.

This gives me mixed feelings about zappa himself. On the one hand I always thought he was an asshole for dumping the original mothers, but maybe he had good reasons after all. But on the other hand maybe it wasn't a coincidence that he attracted certain types of people. And given his later lyrics and everything I wonder how much he was complicit in that sort of thing. I always kind of liked the creepy "freak scene" dark side of the Mothers but for some reason I didn't suspect that it actually got THAT creepy.

It certainly puts the lyrics to "Magdalena" in an even more uncomfortable light.

Jesus, I didn't know that song!

Listening to this, with a bit of a beer buzz going, I'm struck by one of the things that makes me uncomfortable about Zappa, that I'm realizing after this discussion. He was clearly a very intelligent man who was very serious about the craft of his music, to the point of obsessiveness. It doesn't make sense that he'd just ad-lib some dumb shit for shock value like the Day-Glo Abortions or someone. When that shit is in there, it seems like it had to mean something to him or something.

It's weird because I've always chosen to listen to zappa's satirical anti-hippy lyrics in a naive way and just take them at face value. Like Absolutely Free is a genuinely great psychedelic song IMO. I don't care if he meant it as a joke or not. But the same seems to be true with some of the creepy sexual lyrics. Was the supposed satire just a cover for him to sing about what genuinely interested him? A lot of his lyrics are full of contradictions, and are clearly ironic in one line and then seemingly genuine in another. I've always thought he seemed like an incredibly insecure dude who tried to mask his insecurities with all of the "jokes."

I'd suppose it is largely context. Big Black goes there it's kind of a horror or true crime movie, you expect it to be there. I suppose Illinois Enema Bandit seems somehow sleazier as it is being played for laughs out of a mid tempo blues that wouldn't sound out of bounds musically on a Doobie Brothers record. And maybe it is that cultural divide where people could just dig the music and not really realize what it is somewhat about is why Bobby Brown was a chart hit in parts of Europe.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

so basically X is going to win any 'X v rush v yes' poll

countdown to some very angry prog fans

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/6e/XLosAngeles.jpg/220px-XLosAngeles.jpg

I'd vote for X in an "X vs Rush vs Yes" poll, even though I quite like Rush. Doe & Cervenka are tops in my book.

was going to move to northern michigan and name my Yes cover band Starship Yooper

late lol @ "Starship Yooper", that song will never be the same to me again

anyway just wanted to chime in and say I listened to "Magdalena" and EWWWWWWWWWWWWWwwwwwwwww, I kind of agree that there's a part of Zappa that must have internalized this stuff to some degree. "Brown Shoes" mostly gets a pass because of what a classic it is but lately that one's made me really uncomfortable too.

Interesting how this poll came back in exactly reverse order of awesomeness.

yes is always the most awesome band in any list of awesome bands