I’ve been a Zappa fan since hearing Bongo Fury in my dad’s truck when I was a kid. I definitely love his versatility and musical genius, and the way he pushed musical and social boundaries. At the same time, it seems like he was the proto edge lord par excellence, creating some pretty reactionary art and displaying some shitty shitty opinions on women and historically oppressed folks. Damn, now I realized I’m about to ask: should I like him or not, so I won’t do that. Instead I’ll ask: what are ur fave Zappa tracks? One of mine is Watermelon in Easter Hay
Honestly have always hated his musical vibe and the blaring misogyny. He was also a consumate complainer. I never understood boundaries he pushed. Like who cares? Full disclosure, I do associate Zappa entirely with my pedo libertarian uncle so I might be looking through turd-colored glasses.
Zappa is a musical genius, I try not to engage with his politics or opinions outside of his music though. I think he settled on libertarianism, like a lot of Americans do, because it really feeds into his elitist mindset and seems appealing if you have little historical or political education (just focus on yourself and the people you care about, the rest is too complicated, they'll figure it out on their own and if they don't well that's their fault). That said, being a musician and working with people from all kinds of backgrounds and seeing how musicians are regularly screwed over by the record/radio companies pretty much uniformly makes me believe he would be better politically if he were around today. It's also easy for me to see him being incredibly transphobic under the guide of never censoring himself.
Either way, regardless of what you think of him personally, he helped introduce George Duke to the world - which in turn blessed us with Thundercat today. I'm just gonna link a few of my favorite tracks, but I recommend checking out the new remasters they have been releasing lately, especially the remastered Roxy & Elsewhere record called The Roxy Performances.
Frank Zappa could very well be considered one of the great early prophets of what has, through many great ideological upheavals and revolutions, come to be known as Hayekism-Friedmanism-Roganism-Sargon of Akkad Thought; however homeboy could shred and Hot Rats is a masterpiece.
LMAO. Yeah. Dude was a libertarian conservative which in 2020 is pretty fucking cringe, but he died in 1993 so I'll give him some credit. He was a free speech warrior in an era where the rising christo-fascist right was on the warpath to censor popular culture, and he repeatedly owned those nerds on live televised debates. In 1986 he told the nation on CNN Crossfire that "The biggest threat to America today is not Communism, it is moving America towards a Fascist Theocracy. And everything that's happened during the Reagan administration has steered us right down that pipe."
His music was alright, but lyrically, he definitely found himself in a zone which could only be described as "This would never get published today".
Ironically, all the people I've met who worship him are meth-head christian fascist drywall laborers. Goes to show how much they pay attention beyond the 'edge'.
the first song on his pink album was the song i'd listen to on friday evening on my way back from work, it has strong :crab-party: work is over :crab-party: vibes
I think that we shouldn't delve too deeply into music here, as we don't want to foster any definite music subculture. This is mainly because leftists online usually have really shallow hipster-type music taste. Maybe this applies most to the anarchist leaning circles, maybe not.
edit: example: I just listened to the 5 hippest fusion albums once, and now am a super expert on jazz. Im not like the other whites, im actually really cultured
