The discography Frank Zappa thought every music fan should listen to: “Don’t mind the mistakes”
When you listen to the music of Frank Zappa, you might think that his taste was as complex as that which he put out. Well, yes and no.
Zappa was the kind of artist who really enjoyed the freedom that came with prog rock. He knew that this was a genre he could well and truly experiment within, as it was rock music but with added elements such as different styles, strange time signatures, and bizarre narratives attached. Zappa would use all of these throughout his career, and it meant he put out some records that people enjoyed, and others which people thought left something to be desired.
Ian Anderson was a pretty good representation of the average Frank Zappa fan. He admitted on multiple occasions that, despite Zappa not being a huge fan of Jethro Tull, he was a big fan of Zappa. However, you can’t like every piece of music someone as versatile as Zappa puts out, it simply doesn’t work like that. If you want someone as imaginative as Frank Zappa making music, you need to accept that sometimes there will be albums out there you can’t stand, amongst those that you adore.
“I guess I was always catching up with Frank Zappa,” he said. “The first album by him that I bought was Hot Rats, and I found that a rather irritating album of not very evolved guitar playing. Frank was a bit of a one-trick pony as a guitarist, but as a musician, arranger and bandleader of the traditional sort, he was at the top of the tree, although he wasn’t unique as a bandleader.”
However, regardless of whether you liked the direction that Zappa was going in with a particular style, the one thing that you could guarantee you were going to get was complete authenticity. When you look at what Zappa made and what he liked to listen to, you can always ensure that they were going to be pretty honest reflections of how Zappa was feeling at the time. It’s for this reason that he liked to release records independently, as he knew that a lot of the time, the powers that be can often get in the way of a good recording.
There are a lot of songs out there that Frank Zappa was a big fan of, but he also knew there had been some kind of interference when it came to putting the music out. It didn’t nullify the music, but it was frustrating for him to listen to certain songs and know that an artist’s vision had been somewhat impeded.
There was an entire discography he felt this way about, as while he was a huge fan of the works of Anton Webern, he didn’t think that the record label had funded the project properly. Given that the genre of music was quite outdated, Zappa assumed that the label had probably been hesitant to really commit to the recording process. He would still recommend the entire works of Webern to anyone who will listen, but it is lacking something he can’t quite put his finger on.
“You ought to look into the complete works of Anton Webern on Columbia (K4L-232), conducted by Robert Craft. That’s four records,” he said. “Robert Craft is not always an excellent conductor, and his performances are not always absolutely accurate, but they probably didn’t give him a very good budget because it was modern music, and they wanted to get the job over with, and he was probably under pressure, so don’t mind the mistakes that are on there if you’re following it with a score.”
It’s a pretty common misconception that Zappa was a complicated musician. As long as an artist is given room to be their most authentic self, and that comes across in the music, chances are, Zappa will listen. It’s a shame that he didn’t quite get over the line here, but nevertheless, Webern has a discography that music fans should consider checking out.
