Who IS Frank Zappa

I listened to Thing-Fish thoroughly the other day and frankly I was shocked by the track 'Briefcase Boogie'.

darkshade wrote: Thing-Fish is one of the few Zappa albums I don't have or am not familiar with, but I got YCDTOSA vol. 4 recently and it features the song The Evil Prince, which I found to be extremely enjoyable. I'm going to get Thing-Fish sooner or later. On the topic of Zappa's 80s albums, I think Frank Zappa Meets The Mothers Of Prevention is the best one, pre-'88 band.

I find it to be more for completists.  Many of the songs are rehashes of previously released tunes, and the story is written to be as offensive as Frank could get.  It was recorded and released during his well-publicized battle with Tipper Gore and the PMRC, who wanted to censor and label albums.  It's funny in some places, cringe inducing in more, and the original songs, while well played by Zappa's excellent band, are mostly forgettable.

Man With Hat wrote: I highly like both Meets The Mothers... and Thing-Fish.

The latter even makes a couple of cameo appearances on the former!

The Yellow Shark is such a great album. It's breathtaking at times, and doesn't get all tense and nervous like LSO does (which is a totally different beast of an album anyway). The case it came in is beautiful, and the pictures in the giant booklet are great; some are funny, some are just plain cool, but there's one that makes me sad, it's the last one, with some of the guys Frank worked with around that time, like producers and mixers, and they're sitting around him and everyone is smiling, but Frank clearly hadn't shaved for months, meaning the pic was taken not too long before he passed.

I always put The Yellow Shark off because I wasn't ready for it and other orchestral albums because I just wanted the rock and fusion stuff back when I first got into his music. And then when the reissues started coming out and I started collecting them, I still held off on getting The Yellow Shark (and Civilization Phaze III still), but now I realize that was a major error on my part, and I've been keeping myself from listening to one of Zappa's last great works, and it really is one of the best projects he ever put together. If only he had even a few more months to cherish it. He always said he made music for himself, and if others liked it, cool. But us fans have had more time to digest those last couple of releases than he ever did, even though he wrote the music. Point is, The Yellow Shark is magnificent, and I only wish I got it sooner, but now I can listen to it whenever I want.

I posted a review http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=329276
though I guess I rated it back in 2010 for some reason (I only heard it once maybe 6-7 years ago).

Scratch that, I got HIOS? and Cucamonga too.

Thing-Fish arrived in the mail today, and I'm currently listening to it for the first time. Not sure how I think about it yet, though I'm only up to The 'Torchum' Never Stops and I've already laughed out loud twice.

The Harry and Rhonda bits are uncomfortably funny. 

It's interesting how you don't really hear Frank himself on the album, what with all this dialogue.

OMG I'm up to Briefcase Boogie

"Harry you're a worm"

I actually bought Thing Fish before I bought a lot of FZ albums.  It was actually one of my first!  I got into him in the early/mid 80s and only the more recent albums were still in print (and no CDs yet).  So my first time hearing "Mudd Club" , "Meek Shall Inherit Nothing", and "Torture Never Stops" were from the Thing Fish album.  I still interject Ike's asides in my head when I hear these songs.

Edited by HolyMoly - March 08 2013 at 16:12