Favourite Frank Zappa albums.

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Because Frank Zappa is awesome.

1. Civilization Phaze III
2. Make a Jazz Noise Here
3. You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, vol 3
4. The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life
5. The Yellow Shark

This top five is likely to change, though. At the moment I've got 55 Zappa albums, of which 51 get a 10/10. Of the ones under that, 2 get 9/10 (Cruising with Ruben & the Jets and Baby Snakes), another 2 get 8/10 (Francesco Zappa and Thing-Fish).

Whoooo could imagine, that they could Freak Out somewhere in Kansas?

I was 17 and listening to my cousin's brand new concept, a double album, called Freak Out and it was talking about Kansas, which was just where I was standing. It gave me hope. A week later I heard my first Hendrix. Two years later, I was sitting in the mud at Woodstock.

so, yes, Frank Zappa had quite an influence on my life.

Merle

Zappa in New York. Well it is the only one I listened to so... My dad has the LP. And my favorite song is the first one (can´t tell the title!) oh it is so funny!

Hot Rats. Peaches en Regalia is one of my favorite pieces. Captain Beefheart, who did the vocals on "Willie the Pimp" is one of my favorites too.

That's easy!

Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar.
Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar Some More
Return of the Son of Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar

You gotta be in the right frame of mind to listen to them all at once though.

I haven't really gotten into later Zappa yet, but the early Mothers of Invention were a good contender for my favourite band ever. Everything apart from Cruising with Ruben and the Jets is pretty much awesome. I guess I would rank the early Mothers records:

1. Freak Out!
2. Uncle Meat
3. We're Only In It for the Money
4. Weasels Ripped My Flesh
5. Absolutely Free
6. Burnt Weeny Sandwich

7. Cruising with Ruben and the Jets

"Later Zappa?"

What later?"

He's been dead now for almost 17 years! Everything he did is now veritably "classic."

It's all "late" Zappa now anyway, for all intents and purposes.

By the way, has anyone seen the Zappa plays Zappa concert playing on PBS? With Dweezil playing his father's role of conductor, and playing his father's parts. Awesome show man!

Check out the web page here!

Freak Out
Absolutely Free
Baby Snakes
Tinseltown Rebellion
Shut Up & Play Yer Guitar V.1
You Are What You Is

I broadly refer to most of the music made after the disbandment of the early Mothers of Invention as "later Zappa". I haven't really gotten into what I've heard of his 1970-74 output, though I expect I'd enjoy Waka/Jawaka (which I haven't heard yet) because Hot Rats grew on me some.

Of course, or course. I understood what you meant. All the guys that turned me on to Zappa were a few to several years older than me, and felt the same as yourself.

Maybe it's too early in the game here on WP to start razzing anybody. I've been on other AS forums for so long it's easy to forget nobody here really knows me.

Rule of thumb with me: Don't take me too seriously. I don't!

My Top Five Favorite

1) Uncle Meat
2) Roxy & Elsewhere
3) Bongo Fury
4) We're Only In It For The Money
5) Live In New York

Anyone of you like Project/Object?

People can have favorite Zappa albums?! Isn't there 70 of 'em?

I've only got one (Apostrophe (')) and haven't heard anything outside of that, but you gotta admire the eccentricity of his music, and of course the way he simply enjoyed making it as much as he did.

I think 'Thing Fish' is one of my favorites, although Civilization Phaze III is a joint first.
Thing Fish requires a lot of deciphering though which is very hard work and requires looking at it from a lot of different perspectives. I have been thinking about writting a book on it, although I seriously duobt it would sell more than one copy. I wrote a 17,000 word dissertation on the song the Blue Light, which relates in a big way to Thing Fish.
1) Thing Fish & Civilization Phaze III
2) Absolutely Free
3) You Are What You Is
4) Yellow Shark
5) Burnt Weeny Sandwich & Mothers of Prevention

My favourite thing about Zappa was how he'd reuse ideas in such a creative and visible way (what he called "conceptual continuity clues").
How a snippet of a guitar solo melody, slowed down and warped, becomes the basis of a completely different piece of music ten years later, or when you get a teaser snippet of "Sinister Footwear" inserted here and there. Or the way pop songs get perverted into chamber works.

A good introduction to his way of thinking is the three versions of Black Page on New York, or comparing Trouble Every Day from Freak Out and Roxy.

Which by the way is my favourite. Roxy & Elsewhere. Humour, musicianship and *only* killer songs (no 'disco boy' or 'Dinah-Mo Humm').
The 73-75 band is just awesome, and since both Tom Fowler and Napoleon Murphy Brock is in this year's Grandmothers, I'm going.

I love anything Ruth Underwood is involved in.

my fav is The Apostrophe.

I like the weird one the best.