Weasels Ripped my Flesh is awesome, it also has the best album cover ever...

My favorite so far is Hot Rats, but I have alot more Zappa albums to get.

Hot Rats for me.

'One Size Fits All' is just awesome, as is 'Roxy and Elsewhere'. That 74-75 band of his was funky as all hell.

'Lather' is very special too - it has a little bit of all the styles FZ covered.

Of the original Mothers albums, 'Uncle Meat' is pretty hard to beat.

I have all his albums (and then some) and sometimes I feel like I'd be happy enough listening to nothing else. For me, Zappa is the greatest composer of the 20th century. He could be my favourite electric guitarist as well - Hendrix just beats him for a number of reasons, but in terms of the sheer size of his output, Zappa can't be ignored.

A few FZ albums to avoid if you're just starting out: 'Francesco Zappa', 'The Man From Utopia', 'Thing-Fish', 'Jazz From Hell', 'London Symphony Orchestra Vols 1 + 2'. These are full of things that only really make sense if you're familiar with lots of his other work too. Well, that's my opinion anyway. If you're new to Zappa, I reckon you can't go wrong with the first four I mentioned.

Yeah, I never really liked Jazz From Hell, but I certainly did love that name, hence the user name.

I was hoping I wouldn't offend you with that comment!

True, it's a difficult album to get into. It does, however, contain one of the most beautiful guitar solos FZ ever recorded - 'St. Etienne'. Apart from that it's all (electronic) Synclavier music.

The Grasshoppa is so laid back....he's almost horizontal. He's no longer allowed to enter any limbo contests.

We're Only In It For The Money is one of my favorite discs of all time.

I think Were Only In It For the Money is his best. The only things that I really like that he did were his first three albums with the Mothers of Invention. The thing that perplexes me with Frank Zappa though is he is always cited as such an important artist, but then it is said that everything he did was meant as a parody and not to be taken seriously. The irony with an album like Were Only In It For the Money is that it is making fun of the psychedelic movement but it is pretty psychedelic sounding itself with its production and all. The same with Freak Out. I've heard all the songs are meant to be parodies of traditional pop songs and are meant to be unpleasant sounding, but then Freak Out is always considered as one of the most important albums of the 1960s. I always wondered if its lyrics were really meant to be taken seriously as cries of alienation or whatever or if it was all just a big joke. Has anybody else ever noticed this contradiction in Zappas music?

I think Zappa really liked a lot of the music that was coming out around then, he just had issues with the people themselves and the message they were trying to get across. He liked psychedelic music, but wasn't a fan of all the delusional hippies behind it.