Zappa the Musician

While I cannot say I have come anywhere close to listening to the entire Zappa discography, I feel that I have gone through a decent enough chunk of it to have an idea of the character of Zappa as a musical performer. I have to say that while he is unquestionably a man of unique and complex musical ideas, I don't find his guitar playing to be to my taste. I find that his performances lack a soul and passion that is present in some of the music of his peers. That is not to say that I think he is without talent, but I just don't dig his style.

I listened to some of the performances from his later guitar-centric albums like "Trance-fusion" and "Guitar", and while they are technically very skilled I just don't find that the connect with me emotionally. This is obviously not the case for everyone, as indicated in the comment sections of the youtube links that I viewed.

I once again see a very direct connection between the style and approach Frank takes towards music, and the style and approach taken by modern day "progressive rock" bands like Dream Theater. Technically, the music is very advanced, but I think it comes at the expense of the emotive power that can be achieved by simple, raw music. Sometimes all it takes is a few chords... I think that music does not have to be complex to be powerful. But again, this is a matter of taste and opinion.

Where I find Zappa more interesting is not in his skill as a solo guitarist, but in his capacity as a composer and as a band leader/conductor. While watching the Baby Snakes video, as well as the footage from his performances on Saturday Night Live, you can see the guy playing large groups of people with gestures and physical symbols. I do not find it surprising that Zappa eventually moved on to digital music... I feel like the types of gestures he extracts from his players are quite similar to much of what I do in my music, although I use much simpler means to extract them.