I've always considered Zappa Experimental Rock, but the more I listen I think he is Prog. So, from now on I am amending MY Big 5 to include Zappa.
Yes
ELP
King Crimson
Frank Zappa
Kansas
The new Big 5!
I've always considered Zappa Experimental Rock, but the more I listen I think he is Prog. So, from now on I am amending MY Big 5 to include Zappa.
Yes
ELP
King Crimson
Frank Zappa
Kansas
The new Big 5!
Duncan's going to make a Horns Emoticon!!!
He's BETTER than prog!
Coolest Progger that ever lived!
Duncan's going to make a Horns Emoticon!!!
When they (whoever "they" are) talk about "prog" in the sense of the Big Five and prog, it's basically symphonic prog; i.e. bands that sound like, er, the Big Five. So artists like Frank were outside that. Cue Scrotum Scissor in 3, 2, 1...
/threadOriginally Posted by Sean
Ian Beabout
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He's his own unique genre of music.....
He still freaks me out.
Crushes all boxes.
Frank's a misfit.
He is and he isn't; some of his music certainly is, and some of it certainly isn't.
Like the Beatles, Uncle Frank is one of those artists who is just too broad, complicated, messy, and undefinable to fit into any scheme of classification. He would put R&B with bad-dirty-joke lyrics, beautifully melodic proggy jazz-rock, odd crabby-sounding blues guitar solos, Fifties rock 'n roll, and almost impenetrable avant-classical music not just onto the same album, but into the same tune, or even all at the same time. And he wouldn't see anything incongruous about it. He was very much an American artist, absolutely considered himself one, yet his aesthetic of mixing the utterly sublime with the utterly cheesy was more French or Italian than anything else. He's often described as absolutely unlike anyone else (other than his on-and-off old friend Captain Beefheart), but I think you could in some ways compare him to Charles Mingus, Leonard Bernstein, and Harry Partch - all three for talent, Mingus and Bernstein for sheer breadth, and Partch for his absolute insistence upon doing it his way and only his way and no other.
Although if you were going to come up with a Big Five of American Musical Eccentrics, he'd certainly fit there, along with Partch and Charles Ives.
Last edited by Baribrotzer; 09-13-2015 at 08:00 PM.
Frank could write prog when he wanted to but he never wrote anything that was just one genre or style. Inca Roads is a great example of prog, jazz, fusion, weirdness, dumbness and brilliance all rolled into one. I agree with Trurl's comments, the "big 5" usually refers to symphonic prog more than anything else and Zappa rarely did symphonic prog if at all (perhaps a piece like Easy Meat or Strictly Genteel). But that shouldn't stop us from loving what he did. Truly a one-of-a-kind mind.
FZ is just so BEYOND the Big 5. Just listing him in the same breath as the Big 5 seems odd since I think of him as inhabiting a diverse stratosphere miles above all that.
[He is and he isn't; some of his music certainly is, and some of it certainly isn't]
Oh, you mean like Genesis.
Calling Frank Zappa prog is like calling Johnny Cash Country.
He transcends it.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
How much FZ are you just discovering? What do you have/don't have?
Although Johnny Cash didn't so much transcend country music as embody it: Around the time of his death, I said to several people, "Johnny Cash did not play country music. Johnny Cash was country music." And he lived it, in all its messy contradiction: between Nashville commercialism and back-porch authenticity, between devout Baptist Christianity and bad-boy Hell-raising, between small-town patriotism and flinty thinking for oneself. The one thing he faked was letting folks think he'd done hard time when he hadn't; he had spent at most a few weekends in the slammer for getting caught with a pocket full of goofballs, or for getting liquored-up and obstreperous.
Why not in the big 5? Because he's a solo artist like Oldfield and Rundgren I guess. Like others have pointed out, 1) he's beyond 'prog'; 2) the big whatever usually only applies to the UK symph bands.
The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off
I don't know why there's even a question. Were it not for Zappa's early Mothers records, progressive rock would not have emerged, nor would it be what it ultimately became.
I think folks today are to fixated on a very limited definition of progressive rock. Let's not forget that, back in the day, progressive rock meant what it said....music that was progressive. So, amongst the bands that would have been considered Prog back in the day but are not so much now:
The Beatles, from Rubber Soul forward
Procol Harum
Deep Purple
Led Zeppelin
Black Sabbath
Smile-era Beach Boys (is "Good Vibrations" not early Prog?)
I know, as I put together my chapter outline for the progressive rock book I hope to be writing, that I'll be taking a much broader view, and one that is both more inclusive and looks to reject the myriad of progressive sub-genres...the plague of all musical styles being the need to find ways to categorize everything, and if it doesn't fit in a small box, to create a new small box for it. I know there are folks who won't agree with me...but truly, is Return to Forever's Romantic Warriorjazz-rock/fusion or Prog? Is Yes' Relayer Prog or fusion? Or both? Or neither?
And what about the bands in the '80s that moved music forward but were not neo-Prog like,Mariliion or IQ? Was Japan, after its first couple records.,not Prog? We're David Sylvian's early records not Prog? Was there not something about Talk Talk that was, somehow, Prog? And if Adrian Belew was accused of sending too much like David Byrne (I don't agree, but) is there not an argument that some Taking Heads albums, pin particular the ones Eno produced, somewhere in the Prog sphere?
Lots to think about....that's for sure.
I'm not a fan, but as far as I know Zappa never claimed the name for himself. The same can be said for The Residents. Both participated in the same progressive zeitgeist of the '60s & '70s, but never claimed the mantle worn by Genesis, Yes, ELP, etc.
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.
Why do people feel they need to lump their favorite bands into the Prog genre?
And why do they seek others approval to do so?
In the 70's when Prog was first defined, no one thought of bands like Rush, Queen, or Frank Zappa as Prog.
Over the years lines get blurred, definitions get stretched, the prog genre has been diluted, filtered, watered down, expanded, trampled, mis-labled, mis-concieved and mis-represented to the point that the actual prog genre is a joke.
So if it helps you sleep at night to pile in a bunch of rock bands in the prog genre, please go right ahead...
Music. A fluid, evolving continuum. Not a set of discrete elements that can be fit into one box or another. Genres and tags, including "progressive", work best as descriptors.
.02
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He's prog, he's rock, he's modern classical, he's novelty, he's fusion, he's jazz, he's avant, etc...
He's Zappa, a universe unto himself
Check out my solo project prog band, Mutiny in Jonestown at https://mutinyinjonestown.bandcamp.com/
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Correct, he defies categorization.He's prog, he's rock, he's modern classical, he's novelty, he's fusion, he's jazz, he's avant, etc...
He's Zappa, a universe unto himself
no tunes, no dynamics, no nosebone
He would have been if he had stuck to making instrumental music, instead of looking down his nose at everyone through his lyrics.
Agreed - he's definitely different and above progressive rock.
Zappa wouldn't be in my "Big 5", but everyone is entitled to have their own Big 5. As to whether he was or wasn't "prog", I thought that had pretty well been done to death.
Big six: Krimso, GGiant, HCow, Magma, allthings Dave Stewart - and Zappa.
Not by "commercial success" - but by proxy and heavy duty innovation; primary Prog virtue and denominating component.
"Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
"[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM
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