Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra

Well, this covers the only two things that have bothered me about Zappa:

-Extremely blatant misogyny, and blatant chauvinism. He's never given a good answer to why he does this, and seems to have legit done it to mock women's attempts to seek fair treatment. I do honestly feel this is done almost to the point of bigotry with Zappa, and have personally been sickened by it on occasion.
-Over repetition of a lot of gimmicks(especially doo-wap)

For me, the rest of it is give or take. A lot of what this guy seemingly hates Zappa for is what I personally love him for. Unflinching arrogance, Collaging of modern forms, and undying sarcasm(Why is it really important for him to be a poetic when he's mocking the concept of the arrogance of wannabe poet rockers?). Also, I don't get apparently why Zappa has to bring up moral alternatives to what he criticizes.

Find it weird the writer decided to criticize Zappa for being condescending, and hypocritical in the most hypocritically condescending way. Furthermore, I don't see how 90% of what he's being criticized here for is necessarily a bad thing.

It's like saying "Michaelangelo is a bad artist because he draws penises, and that makes me feel uncomfortable". I'm not saying that Zappa is the musical equivalent of Michaelangelo, but I don't understand how the sarcasm in his lyrical themes effect his legitimacy as an artist either way. ESPECIALLY, when he's very obviously trying to combat the American myth of the importance of lyrics in music. To attack him for being base, and immature is like attacking the Godfather for being too violent. It was necessary to get his point across. Worstly, Coyly attacking his fans for being childish because they aren't turned off by the lyrics/themes of his music shows worlds of pretension. "I couldn't get how somebody over 17..." complete bull****.

Now, I could see how somebody would call Zappa overrated in ways. He wasn't that great of a classical composer, frankly, his classical works are very average when not applied to rock forms. Same could be said about Jazz. In general, I think that's people missing the point as giving rock listeners avenues to these things is just as viable as mastering them yourself. If you see Zappa as a figure of being a master of all of these forms, then he is overrated. Zappa himself didn't however.

I think it's unfair to criticize somebody who so daringly integrated elements of jazz, classical, and avant-garde into mainstream rock in attempts to translate it to a broader audience as overrated. I personally love the man for the fact he ignored the whims of the audience, and commercial world by making himself pidgeonholeable. Plus, his influence on progressive, and experimental rock is unmistakable. I think music would be drastically different without Zappa, and if anything his influence is underrated.

Especially since the Beatles admitted to very much copycatting his style in their later career, and are given infinite words of credit for being innovative when drugs, jealousy, and envy took only five more years to burn them out(breaking off to a series of overexposed hit, and miss solo careers), and Zappa continued to evolve his works, and maintain his works in ways which many MANY rock bands mainstream or otherwise were considered geniuses for integrating. Without the need of praise or people kissing his ass, or continual spotlight exposure.

However, if we're looking into the vein of Zappa, I think if we're looking into overrated we should look into Mike Patton who basically did the exact same thing decades later, and somehow is considered a creative genius. I personally love a lot of what Patton has done, but I've seen so many things unfairly ripped apart by Patton fans for being unoriginal when it's clearly obvious he didn't necessarily invent a single thing he's done. Zappa fans may be arrogant, but I've never seen the sheer level of ridiculous in them tearing apart every single form of music that's even vaguely similar afterwards as Patton fans have.