Hot Rats

Zappa was a genius, a serious atheist (I loved his biography), a great guitar player, a sexist creep, and for my tastes his music is essentially unlistenable pretentious nonsense. 

Oops. What Metheny actually said is "Compared to Bach, we all suck." Zappa lacked even a trace of Metheny’s humility. But I feel for Zappa; loud bravado is often an outward sign of deep insecurity. Just look at Trump ;-) .

I used to do a pretty good job with Dinah Moe Humm on Karaoke night

Zappa in NY gets the most time on my platter with Sheik Yerbouti next. Zappa always has been one of my favorite performers. 

Going off the deep end again, lumping Zappa and Trump together...

@bdp24 

It is always difficult comparing Popular Musicians with Classical Composers.  In FZ case the door is open to do that because he had some aspirations in Symphonic Music.  No, he wasn’t J.S. Bach.  As you rightly note, most Composers are going to pale compared to J.S. Bach.  A more apt comparison may be the Romantics such as Brahms, Dvorak, and Grieg.  These guys had one foot in the door of popular music-most of their income came from sheet music sales from stuff that was comparatively simple—but, like Mozart, they frequently took simple song forms and ran with them, turning them into much more complicated works