I would also go with hot rats (album) as it's the closest to 'accessible' and before stuff got really weird.
Every time I think of Zappa, I can't get out of my head the line in Dynamo Hum " applied rotation on her sugar plum!"
I would never get rid of my vinyl. Buying a CD player to rival my Linn turntable would be prohibitively expensive to start with, before I even contemplated the cost of replacing my largely immaculate vinyl with inferior digital recordings.
Audiophile, huh? How delightful! Not getting involved, I paid my dues in the format wars during the '90s
Joe's Garage is a good one. That's highly accessible - somewhat more so that some of the jazzier bits of Hot Rats, in fact.
all a question of personal opinion on that one - got both when they came out (saw Van Vliet at Guildford Civic Hall when no-one had ever heard of him) and would describe parts of J.G. obscure for me. EDIT Really ought to be more confident when replying - just skipped through J.G. memory lane - highly accessible?? you have to be joking no you really do..
I'm sure CDs are great now - just not cost-effective solution for me now with around 1200 vinyl albums and an awesome Linn/Musical Fidelity/Monitor Audio set-up. I believe Linn make an amazing CD player but at 10 grand?!? Maybe in another life ...
Loved Frank Zappa back in the day , also captain BeefH , ( sorry to hear about his death ). Must dig up some of their stuff again .
Frank Zappa eh, never thought there would be a thread on here, but here goes. I'll pin my flag to the mast straight away, at 56, i've been a fan of his since i was about 10 or 11. One thing that i have always known about Frank's work, you either like it or you don't......................he knew that as well and to be honest he didn't give a toss. Apart from when he went through his guitar solo stage, ALL of his work was experimental. He constantly looked for ways of pushing boundary's and would often go back on work that he had done years before and rework it if he thought he could improve it, in fact he was going through his back catalogue and re-mastering some of it when he died. I had the pleasure of being part of the crew on the European leg of the "Titties n Beer" tour, so finally got to work with someone that i was a fan of. He was exactly as i expected him to be by his reputation, completely irreverent of any authority figure, corporations and politicians in particular...........................my sort of man lol. I don't know if any of you realize it, but Frank would regularly release 4 or 5 albums a year in the 1960's and would still release a couple a year in the 1970's. Quantity dosn't equal quality i know, so did he....................but his mind was just full of music and ideas ALL the time, so he made the albums. In all my years in the music industry, i havn't ever come across a musician that wouldn't have given there right arm to have worked with Frank if they had been asked.
Just be careful where you go, and don't you eat that yellow snow! You've got to love the song " valley girl"
Zappa was a true genius and maverick, he didn't care what people thought and didn't take himself too seriously. At high school he was considered a genius as he had the IQ of a genius (guess they must have made him sit a test) I have heard a lot of stories about him and his behaviour on stage. But my favourite is told by his son Dweezil, who found a burnt out guitar under the stairs in their house. Asking Frank what it was, he replied 'that's Hendrix's old guitar, didn't know I still had it' Dweezil, a pretty good guitarist himself, now plays it on stage. Zappa hey.
