Zappa 1
Zappa Studio- Synclavier
Zappa Synclavier 3
To be Frank Zappa you will need:
-A big Brain
-A lot of motivation
-Talent & Imagination
That’s computer music of more than twenty years ago.
At the time, those infernal machines, the Synclavier, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Now with 50 euros we can make quality music. We are very lucky!
jazz from hell!!!
cribs used to be so much cooler 
How to be Frank Zappa: Don’t do drugs.
this is a great lil interview with zappa. i myself think that zappa is a wee bit overrated in terms of pure smarts but here he is spot on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8ArfMhzPao the clip is especially interesting from around the one minute mark. lotsa zappa fans who are into the whole unreal musicianship of some of the people zappa worked with should see that bit.
ballsy to diss the whole if it’s done on a machine there is no soul in it back then.
Thats the video I put in the first post. Very interesting.
The man made great rock & roll albums (Absolutly free, Hot Rats), great Orchestral Albums (The Yellow Shark) and great “Computer” Albums (Civilization Phase 3 is great).
I dont like some of his music, but he record more than 60 albums!
Besides that, he was a great culture (or contra-culture) icon.
Zappa’s work is great but I wouldn’t think his discography as very extensive since he re-used compositions and songs over and over and over again. About 15-20 different versions of The Black Page. Oh fuck off, Frank.
There’s the awesome first 3 minutes of a song AND after that Frank starts noodling on the guitar for 10 minutes on top of a boring reggae jam. He probably had a reggae version of every one of his songs during the 80’s.
I find his later post-rock’n’roll artsy fartsy post-modern experimentation to be absolute bullshit. I thought he did those recordings only because he was bored of creating music at that point and figured out douchebags would buy that crap regardless.
He had a lot of great ideas, some truly brilliant compositions and he helped the music industry with the development of effects and devices which would become your standard studio equipment. Also: pioneering live recording.
Its true, some songs are in multiple records, but thats songs are used as “standars”, like in jazz, and the musicians improvise upon that, is about improvisation. The same with his solos.
Post-modern experimentation bullshit? what records? If that is crap… 
He very last album was Civilization Phase III, some compositions took 20 years to finish (N-LIte)
I wasn’t aiming on detracting him from his true merits. Frank Zappa’s catalogue goes to the hit and miss bracket IMO and this is coming from someone who has listened Zappa since I was 15 yo. Improvisation is nice and all but the guy just didn’t have good quality control.
Civ Phase 3 is one of those later albums I was talking about. To me that’s not anything special. And the guy himself did confess he wasn’t that interested in creating music during his last years. He was planning on moving to politics if it were not for the cancer.