but his playing just doesn't move me.

As for his sense of humour, even at eighteen - thirty-three years ago, now - it struck me as puerile.

These points are merely my opinion, mind - most of my friends loved him on both counts...

...he might have sounded a bit like this:

and had a knack of picking great sidemen

BUT... I cant handle his puerile sense of humour and I find his singing voice irritating.

I occasionally make the effort to play his instrumental stuff but the cons usually outweight the pros for me.

the man's nuisnance and I think his works over blown and over exposed.

I second all of this.

Never understood his appeal...

Or that of Captain Beefheart for that matter. Music for Un*ut readers to stroke their beards to appreciatively.

Never got him. Too contrived, indulgent with purile adolescent humour. Captain Beefheart? Pure genius. Without him no late Tom Waits ( at his best ) either.

Oh yeah hilarious.

I bow to no man in my admiration for Lord Ellen of Wordshire and so I place his oft expressed enthusiasm for Zappa and Beefheart a gentle eccentricity in the make-up of a great man

OK then - I'll never mention him again.

I'll just listen to Inca Roads and wonder what's wrong with me.

There will be some callow youth fidgeting behind the record racks who'll know what I mean.

Fantastic album. No tiresome whacky stuff. Just shit hot, engrossing playing. Never quite figured out what else of his to go for though.

Hot Rats is a fantastic album. As Tadorna says, nothing whacky, just shit hot. Apostrophe comes pretty close as well and I play "Roxy & Elsewhere" quite a lot. "Black Napkins" is one of the best guitar solo's ever committed to vinyl. Or cd even.

The thing with Zappa was that as a total control freak, he had little ability to critically evaluate or edit what he released. He was unapologetically self indulgent. So there's plenty of dross out there, along with a some gems.

I often thought the humour got in the way, but it made a change from the po-faced "my art is such a burden to me" attitude so popular both then and now.

I just received from Amazon a birthday gift from a Dutch friend in the form of Bongo Fury.
I bought the ellpee on import last century but no longer use my TT, he was over recently and I was bemoaning the fact I couldn't play Muffin Man for the assembled Goths. Now I can.
I was a major Zappa fan from Hot Rats to Joe's Garage, after that I couldn't take the noise he was making and he did seem to repeat himself an awful lot. I was fortunate to see him on the Zoot Allures and Sheik Yerbouti tours, the ZA one had a particularly stunning line up: Terry Bozzio, Patrick O'Hearn, Ray White and a quite brilliant Eddie Jobson. There's no doubt the man was a genius adept in many musical styles, just choose the one that fits - one size does not fit all.

& have got a full set of vinyl to prove it.

(from "Joe's Garage Act 3") is the single most awesome guitar piece ever. Buy it, download it, listen and cherish it. "Hot Rats" is superb. "Bobby Brown Goes Down" is deliciously rude. I'm a fan but I'd admit that a) you have to be in the right mood and b) I see why people don't like it and c) I'll admit it's a patchy canon of work. But what a canon!

Zappa with being a fantastic technical guitarist and composer, but somehow when he translates that into actual songs, they leave one totally cold, as does his , shall we say, rather childish sense of humour.

...so I will go as far as to say that any of Zappa and the Mothers first 5 albums are right up there at the pinnacle of what anyone (and I do mean anyone)was doing in the mid to late 60's and far more inventive and technically accomplished than most.

Add Hot Rats, Bongo Fury and Apostrophe and, for me, you have pretty much what you need. Not to write off the rest of the man's career, of course, but I think you have to be a die-hard fan to live with much of the later stuff.

My own personal favourite is Absolutely Free (Bongo Fury is a close second) but overall I don't think anyone should be dismissing one of the most influential artists of his (early) time. You can trace a lot of Zappa's attitude and the rules he broke through many of the people he directly and indirectly influenced.

Interesting the conversation is centred after Hot Rats. It's his earlier work I find the most satisfying.
Uncle Meat, We're Only in it For The Money, Absolutely Free were and still are remarkable works. I never fail to enjoy the glory that is Weasels!!

but some inspired moments, of which just a few are:

Early Mothers albums
Hot Rats
Apostrophe
Zoot Allures

and then individual songs like
Ya Hozna - wacky backwards masking and truly bizarre lyrics
The Dangerous Kitchen
Jesus Thinks You're Jerk - a nice little pop at TV evangelism
Dinah-Moe Humm
The Torture Never Stops
In France - puerile, but still funny

and that's not including the straight guitar playing

And, just the number of artists and musicians he brought along with him was a wonderful thing. Every December I kind of think that the world's poorer for his absence. Imagine a US if he'd ever have been president!

most artists. Whenever I'm going through a Zappa phase, I find it very difficult to get settled back into other artists. Everything I love about Zappa - the density, the intensity, the melody, the wit (well, some of it), the timing, the instrumentation, the jaw-dropping technical proficiency just leaves other musicians sounding a bit thin and demo-ish.

He's also the only artist I could ever revise listening to - I never had any distractive urge to pick up the guitar and play along - because I just couldn't.

Yes, there's a lot of stuff to wade through, but the nuggets make it worthwhile.

....most of the people here seem to be focussing on one or two aspects of Zappa (namely the puerile humour and whether or not he was a good guitarist). But I think he wrote some stunning music, and sometimes it helps to listen to other people's interpretations of it. Try the Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Ambrosius, the Ed Palermo Big Band, or (a particular favourite of mine) Le Concert Impromptu and Bossini - if you can get hold of a copy. You'll find a lot of different styles of music and interpretation of the same compositions, ranging from baroque instruments, woodwind quartets and big band jazz - even an operatic baritone singing "The Idiot Bastard Son", which is surprisingly affecting. How many other rock musicians can you name who have been re-interpreted in as many ways and as often?

Whether he was a genius or not (he certainly thought he was, other people are entitled to their own opinions) he was an original composer who wrote many complex, interesting and - I think - beautiful pieces of music. I've listened to his work for years now (I think Hot Rats was probably the second LP I invested in as a student and I still play it regularly nowadays, unlike the first LP I bought (Court of the Crimson King) which only really has one track I can still bear to listen to.