Prog World Cup-Final: Frank Zappa- Yes

All Rolling Stone's lists are a joke, that's their main purpose, they are clickbait.

M27Barney wrote: Nogbad_The_Bad wrote: M27Barney wrote: Ridiculous final pairing...zappa isn't in the same class as the yes men...Howe a far superior string-smith for a start off... According to Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists Howe is at 69 & Zappa is at 22. Not that I rate RS for anything but to dismiss Zappa's playing in such an offhand way is remarkable. That list is a joke. Right? I would concede that Hendrix was probably no 1 on innovation alone. But after that? All bets are off...

I'm not a guitarist (well, a very amateur player at best), nor have I done diligent research to come to a conclusion, but I would have thought that Howe was a considerably better guitarist from a technical ability-to-play passages perspective (though Zappa's skills on the guitar by the mid-70s at least were very accomplished). Zappa's strength was an ability to improvise and experiment on guitar (not sure how good Howe was with improvisation). That said, for me Zappa's strength is not so much as a guitarist, but as a bandleader and composer, and he certainly worked with many highly skilled musicians (the guitar is not what originally attracted me to Zappa's music). He definitely had a good sense of rhythm and became well versed in music theory.

I would posit that, at least when it comes to classical guitar, John Williams (not the film composer) was better than Howe, but that doesn't mean that I think that his band Sky was better than Yes by any means.

A fun poll might be to compare Howe's 1975 album Beginnings with Zappa's 1975 album One Size Fits All.





Or Howe's album "Guitar Player" vs. Zappa's "Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar" (Zappa really shredded on that one).



Anyway, Howe and Zappa strike me as different enough kinds of musicians/ artists and so are not ones that I would normally readily compare. EDIT to add: Some interesting comparisons can be made with their forays into "classical music", and one can find other musical similarities beyond that they both played guitar.

Edited by Logan - November 05 2018 at 11:12

FZ.

The.Crimson.King wrote: FZ. Yes had one amazing decade where they lead the prog world in the breaking of new musical ground and their trilogy of CTTE, TFTO & Relayer could be the greatest 3 studio album run in prog history...but...Zappa routinely broke musical ground over the 60's, 70's, 80's & 90's in rock, prog, jazz fusion, musique concrete, modern classical, avant garde, etc all the while being a training ground for some of the most skilled musicians of our day.  The only possible opponent that would have caused me to not give this final vote to FZ would have been Crimson.  In many ways, Fripp and FZ are very similar.  Both were clearly the leaders of their respective bands, both ventured into many forms in and outside 'rock', both re-invented their musical directions many times breaking new ground. Yes is an amazing band.  FZ was an amazing composer and I believe his music will live far beyond that of Yes.

Yes, Yes and thrice Yes!

Yes, for sure. When it comes to prog world cups, only a top british band can beat a top british band.
[Football joke removed]

Yes, very easily, for me.

Interesting final matchup. Both Yes and Uncle Frank are worthy of each other. FZ is an artist I admire more than I enjoy - his innovation is only matched by King Crimson (now that would have been a contest). Yes, however, is one of my favorite bands ever, so I had to vote for them.

Isn't that how Trump got in?