Hot Rats

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

To me, Bowie and Zappa are my two favorite rock musicians for the simple reason that they reinvented themselves over and over with different styles throughout their lengthy career. Each with about 40 albums! As far as the question, which are Zappa's best sounding album, you can pick any recorded after 1973. Truly a recording master, better than Bowie in that sense.

Great licks in “Imaginary Diseases”.

Mysterioso1, 

The Grand Wazoo and Waka Jawaka are both demo quality, with great dynamics, tone color, and a big open stage presentation, but musically, TGW is the better album with more great songs.  My original 1973 vinyl still sounds great.