Laughter vs. Tears

Ive been a fan of Frank since the 70's though i did zone out on some of the Joes garage onwards stuff.. I first heard Steven Wilson through a couple of the early Porcupine tree lps in the mid 90's. I was impressed to a degree because he seemed to creating music (or at least name-checking his influences) that was otherwise being buried by the mainstream. Nothing particularly new, nothing particularly 'out there' but very competent, honest and (to me) sincere. And ive seen him in concert a few times and feel the same about these performances. I dont feel particularly strongly about what he is doing now but it does seem that there is quite a bit of invective which i dont really understand as i feel his influence overall is positive.
Not really a level playing field in my view and of course FZ (if only for 'Inca Roads'!!!) wins hands down

Larkstongue41 wrote: mlkpad14 wrote: He's got tons of dedicated fans, and they aren't commenting. It is that simple. Guy's completely awesome; I don't know what you have against him...? Nothing at all against him. Now, you do realize we are talking about an average to good musician and a guy who had a greater impact on 20th century music than you and I can possibly imagine. I mean I do kinda like SWilson but he writes his music based on all the big names of prog and guys like FZ; not too much originality in his work. Personally he's one of the composers with the tiniest range of emotional variety I have yet heard and some of his music sounds uninspired and artificial to me. His most popular stuff in my ears sounds like it's designed for depressive teenage boys. I can understand being reached more easily by SW, his music is overtly emotional but Zappa can be that and so much more. SWilson is cool, I guess he's partly responsible for the "prog revival" of the 90's or so and I think he is one of the rare remaining successful artist who stay true to themselves, I admire that. That being said I believe it's a shame the two names could be compared without Frank having AT LEAST twice more votes than SWilson. I'm sure SWilson himself would agree with me on that one. No hate here, we still probably have more in common taste-wise musically than most people. I respect all of you guys' opinion and would actually be interested in hearing from SWilson fans who are also familiar enough with FZ as to why you could possibly prefer him to Zappa .

No contest, Zappa.

I vote Zappa, even though I don't find many of his humorous lyrics amusing and basically wish he'd done more instrumental music. Having said that, he's got lots of purely musical moments that make me smile or even chuckle, so I wouldn't say his sense of humour was completely wasted on me. An absolutely brilliant composer, player and curator of albums. And, of course, an 'original' who was vastly influential in the development of avant-rock.

Edited by Mascodagama - May 08 2018 at 03:41