Laughter vs. Tears

I vote Zappa, even though I don't find many of his humorous lyrics amusing and basically wish he'd done more instrumental music. Having said that, he's got lots of purely musical moments that make me smile or even chuckle, so I wouldn't say his sense of humour was completely wasted on me. An absolutely brilliant composer, player and curator of albums. And, of course, an 'original' who was vastly influential in the development of avant-rock.

Edited by Mascodagama - May 08 2018 at 03:41

No contest, Zappa.

Larkstongue41 wrote: mlkpad14 wrote: He's got tons of dedicated fans, and they aren't commenting. It is that simple. Guy's completely awesome; I don't know what you have against him...? Nothing at all against him. Now, you do realize we are talking about an average to good musician and a guy who had a greater impact on 20th century music than you and I can possibly imagine. I mean I do kinda like SWilson but he writes his music based on all the big names of prog and guys like FZ; not too much originality in his work. Personally he's one of the composers with the tiniest range of emotional variety I have yet heard and some of his music sounds uninspired and artificial to me. His most popular stuff in my ears sounds like it's designed for depressive teenage boys. I can understand being reached more easily by SW, his music is overtly emotional but Zappa can be that and so much more. SWilson is cool, I guess he's partly responsible for the "prog revival" of the 90's or so and I think he is one of the rare remaining successful artist who stay true to themselves, I admire that. That being said I believe it's a shame the two names could be compared without Frank having AT LEAST twice more votes than SWilson. I'm sure SWilson himself would agree with me on that one. No hate here, we still probably have more in common taste-wise musically than most people. I respect all of you guys' opinion and would actually be interested in hearing from SWilson fans who are also familiar enough with FZ as to why you could possibly prefer him to Zappa .

Ive been a fan of Frank since the 70's though i did zone out on some of the Joes garage onwards stuff.. I first heard Steven Wilson through a couple of the early Porcupine tree lps in the mid 90's. I was impressed to a degree because he seemed to creating music (or at least name-checking his influences) that was otherwise being buried by the mainstream. Nothing particularly new, nothing particularly 'out there' but very competent, honest and (to me) sincere. And ive seen him in concert a few times and feel the same about these performances. I dont feel particularly strongly about what he is doing now but it does seem that there is quite a bit of invective which i dont really understand as i feel his influence overall is positive.
Not really a level playing field in my view and of course FZ (if only for 'Inca Roads'!!!) wins hands down

I did notice the new SW album already has a 1 star rating it's first day posted. That being said, I have witnessed no abuse of SW fans for simply being SW fans.

Now, us ultra-complexity fans have to wear paper bags on our heads.

I like both Zappa and Wilson. Wilson more.

Edited by mlkpad14 - May 09 2017 at 13:46

Frank Zappa for me. He's hit and miss for me, and I tend to prefer his instrumentals, but he has put out a lot of music that I really like. Wilson has never had much appeal for me.

I've also noticed that his dedicated fans tend to be quite quiet in polls, but I find that with a lot of more mainstream acts, and in some cases I think it's because they vote without knowing the other options. The vocal people here tend to be more hardcore, and tend to know a ton of disparate music in PA -- I waited a year to join this site so that I felt that I knew enough music to engage in discussions.

There has been some Wilson ridicule, but mostly from one exuberant member that I have seen. I would think that truly dedicated fans commonly would be dedicated enough to want to comment and engage in discussion, and maybe turn some more people onto the music that they like. It's a matter of taste.

I for one welcome diversity in discussion. I like a lot of Italo disco, and music that some here have called muzac, and am not ashamed to say so. That said, different people have different comfort levels, some people don't speak English well enough to feel comfortable in writing, and some are not here wishing to socialize, debate, or discuss, which is fine.

As for "He's got tons of dedicated fans, and they aren't commenting. It is that simple." It's not that simple for those of us who are interested in "why". There are always more dimensions to explore, and sometimes I over-complicate things with my thinking, and one could argue that many of us in the interest of having something to discuss overanalize things that are not important, but philosophically I object to such statements and consider it an oversimplification. Why does he so often have phantom voters would the natural extension, and are we right to see a pattern in this? That's the other thing, people always look for patterns, and sometimes those patterns are exaggerated or don't really exist, but our brains are always looking for meaning in sometimes pretty random things.

Wilson fans probably don't want to comment because they are sick of being ridiculed.

It's totally understandable.