Frank Zappa's music and his ideas and opinions are inspirational. He was a guitar virtuso, and a very creative and inventive composer. Frank died in 1993 from prostate cancer. Frank's main musical influences where 50's do-wop music which he both imitated and parodied, and 20th century 'classical' composers like Edgard Varese, Stravinsky and Anton Webern.

These days I prefer his orchestral music, but I do also listen to the jazz and rock stuff. The Yellow Shark and Lumpy Gravy would be my favourite albums, though Apostrophe still gives me goose bumps, and some of the guitar solos leave me flabergasted at his playing - especially his mastery of feedback and the fact that he played so FAST. One thing that stands out is the sense of fun that runs through his music - not just in the outright comedy material but all through his oeuvre.

Frank's music and persona defy definitions and labels. His motto for composing was "Anything, anytime, anywhere, for no reason at all". He covered the spectrum of 20th century music genres and styles - so called serious music, jazz, rock, do-wop, blues, disco, spoken word, satirical, etc etc. He managed to make somthing like 60 albums while he was alive, but recorded a large number of concerts so there's vaults of unreleased stuff under his house. There were also apparently 500 works in progress on his synclavier when he passed away! Prolific is a common appellation for him.

There is so much that can and has been said about FZ. I recommend the Real Frank Zappa Book, and what he himself said, as being far more interesting than what other people had to say about him - me included. Part of his importance to me is that he was an Outsider who solved the 'Outsider Problem' for himself. He was a true individual.

There are two important FZ websites -
the Official FZ site, and
The Friendly Little Finger which is an encyclopedic list of other FZ sites.

Also see
The FZ Mp3 website

The number of website dedicated to FZ is enormous - as prolific as the man himself - you shouldn't run out of things to look at. But most of all you should listen to his music!