Actually, Zappa-wise, the less lyrics, the better I like it. The earlier albums have lots of great instrumental pieces, some long, some short. Fascinating little chunks of music.
He often maintained that his real idea of a good time was to write classical stuff, and then get a good orchestra to play it. That cost money, and early on, he didn't have much. He insisted that in order to make money in this country doing music, you had to attach lyrics to the music. So that's how he got money to make classical type albums, by making rock albums that contained questionable social commentary. Man, there were hoardes of people that bought into the concerts and albums cause he was saying "****" onstage. Pretty heady stuff for those times. I question whether he was really manipulating people into spending bucks for his rock albums so he could make instrumental albums, or did he really enjoy the life of a rock icon?
Really makes no difference in the long run to me, as long as I can listen to his classical and big band type stuff.
Almond, Toasted/MSgt, USAF
