Was Frank Zappa based or cringe?

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Yes.

He was a legit genius, and it comes through in the sit-down interviews he did, especially later in life. Whether you like him or not depends on what he was using his genius on at the time. Sometimes it's freakout edgy songs, sometimes it's composing modern classical music, sometimes it's wildly complicated instrumental grooves that hasn't been matched since.

I think the common dissonance people have when exploring Zappa is the clash between the music and the lyrics. You'll be listening to something zany and interesting, and suddenly Zappa breaks in talking about banging hairy girls, or going blind from eating yellow snow. Even the instrumentals are jarring, you can listen to a 4 minute groove that seems to be building to something, and suddenly it cuts off cold with a 5 second xylophone solo for an outro.

I can't say those choices are bad, and others claim to get it better than me. But even if they're pure genius, they aren't able to be conventionally packaged or appreciated.
 
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On one hand he was such a good musician he made all his lyrics basically shitposts while still being masterpieces, like songs about blinding an eskimo with piss snow for beating his favorite baby seal and needing to go to a breakfast diner to heal his eyes, a song about "ramming it up your poop shoot", a 2 hour rock opera about a guy who's slut of a girlfriend gives him vd so he joins l Ron Hoover's appliance sex cult and bangs and kills a "mechanical pig covered with marital aids" by giving it a golden shower then being sent to music executives prison and once he gets out all music is banned so he goes crazy and plays an imaginary guitar solo thats so good it makes people cry. On the other hand he named his son moon unit.
He pretentious as fuck but talented enough to have earned it, he'd say the best album ever made is trout mask replica but then he would actual make some musical masterpieces with captain beef heart.
 
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At the time, when Zappa was testifying before congress regarding "parental advisory" notices pushed by the PMRC,
Or debating Tipper Gore,
And Rocking The Vote, encouraging youth to be active in politics.

I thought Zappa was sooo based for being anti-establishmentarian at every turn.

But now that I am much older it all seems a little cringe.
 
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As someone who attempted to play drums for a few years, Zappa who started out as a percussionist, wrote some very complex drum parts for many songs and played guitar very well too. As with most musician/ celebrities there are things that you like and dislike about them.
 
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He did have his teenage daughter talk about S&M in “Valley Girl”, and in the same album have a track called “Teen-age Prostitute”.
 
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There was both based and cringe in Frank Zappa.
He was a master at his craft and because he couldn't go any further up, he went every other direction. I maintain he is still criminally underrated as a guitarist.

When it comes to his philosophising I think he was spot on for the time, and even some of his predictions for our time turned out mostly correct (I don't recall the exact words but he thought the Christian right would be the ones to lead cancel culture, for example).
 
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Can you name another musician who ends concerts with a 5 minute jam about The Muffin Man? Didn't think so. (Timestamp 1:11:27 if the embed doesn't work.)

 
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Speaking as a lifelong fan who has made efforts to consume everything released by and about Frank: The genius trap is in being poisoned by your own cynicism into believing you’re smarter than you actually are.

 
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I dig the fuck out of a lot of Zappa, even some of his weirder (by Zappa standards) stuff, but tbh I'm really glad he died long before anything resembling current year so he never had a chance to go that bad.
Apostrophe / Overnight Sensation remains in my eternal jam pile with ELO's Time among other things, also Jazz From Hell
 
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