Zappa Recommendations ?

If you want to hear more "traditional" style vocals coming from Frank Zappa, then you should consider The Mothers "Fillmore East, 1971" or even "Cruising With Ruben and the Jets".  Fillmore is a truly fun to listen to album that features Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, aka Flo & Eddie, who were the lead singers with the pop band The Turtles.  Ruben is a carefully crafted recreation of a 50's Do-Wop band sound that actually fooled people into thinking it was a real band.  On both albums the vocals are somewhat stylized, but what elements of Zappa aren't?

BTW,  "Willie the Pimp" is a great vocal done by Capt. Beefheart.  If you think Zappa is out there, then Beefheart is from another solar system.

@middlemass:

"How can you exclude "Don't eat The Yellow Snow" Hello Hello.. Don't go where the huskies go, don't be eatin' that yellow snow.. Hello Hello.."

Yeah-- when that came out I was in HS. . . we used to listen to that one often when we were high. I haven't done either for decades, now. . . 


@onhwy61:

Thanks for the recommendations. I'm not a fan of Doo Wop but I'll check out the Filmore recording. 

I assume FZ would have been highly amused by the very idea that a person might consider himself too UNsophisticated to appreciate his stuff. The deliberate crudeness of much of his lyrical content had every intention to scare away the pretentious ’young sophisticate’. Zappa considered his social commentaries to be ’antropological field studies’, describing situations and characters pretty much as they appeared to him in real life. Politicians and evangelicals were the easy targets, but his insensitivity was pretty evenly spread around.

Back to instrumental recommendations: if electronic music doesn’t scare you, by all means investigate his synclavier compositions, most of all Civilization Phase III. He considered this material as being impossible to play by humans, but the Ensemble Modern proved him wrong by insisting to play several of these pieces live on The Yellow Shark. ’G Spot Tornado’ has remained one of their signature pieces.

Another great recommendation would be The Zappa Album by a bunch of enthousiastic young musicians from Finland called the Ambrosius Ensemble, using baroque instruments. Great stuff!

Apostrophe/Overnight Sensation
Shut up And Play Yer Guitar
Live In New York
Sheik Yerbouti
Guitar
Chungas Revenge
Zoot Allures