[nine_k]

Zappa is technically breathtaking; for instance, Steve Vai is listed in a few of his orchestra tracks as "doing impossible guitar stunts", and there are many more examples.

But Zappa was never, like, serious, he always was ironic, sarcastic, or downright clownish, and always, it seems, looked down at the audience. This makes his music sound great at a Saturday night show, and less so elsewhere.

[noefingway]

Always been a Zappa fan since the first Mothers album. I always found is humor in music and words appealing. His band was always tight, great musicians. I many of his albums but I have to say Live at the Fillmore East (1971) is my favorite.

[DaoVeles]

What makes you think he looked down at his audience? It always seemed more like the audience was the people that didn't take it too seriously and thus that is why they were fans.

[nine_k]

> In the old days it wasn’t like that. At that time the audiences were hostile to what we did. They gave us a bad time. Now, historically, musicians have felt real hurt if the audience expressed displeasure with their performance. They apologized and tried to make the people love them. We didn’t do that. We told the audience to get fucked.

Interview to The Rolling Stone,1968.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-rolling-st...

There are many more snarky comments which Zappa directed at his audience, and any audience in general, and likely the humankind as a whole. I think this is the reason he created technically brilliant and invariably ironic pieces: he did not think that a worthy audience exists, maybe except his orchestra and a few other musicians.

[the-rc]

That might have been 1968. It's not like he worshipped his audience later, but he did get to a point where the fan base was large enough and more "in tune" with his thinking, organically. He made the comment that nobody could get 100% of what he'd do, simply because everybody's life experiences are unique, but maybe someone somewhere has enough context for 50-60% of his output. In later interviews he said that he offered a certain kind of product, which many might not like, but enough people did like, kinda employing him for entertainment. He just wouldn't go out of his way to cater to them. And he did know that the people at his concerts or buying his records were not a monolith. The most he might have done for them was when the band learned Whipping Post a whole seven years after a fan had interrupted the 1974 concert in Helsinki to request it. :-)

(If you think he liked orchestras, you should read about his LSO recordings and how he had to rescue them by editing tapes with razor blades. He wasn't actually happy until he recorded with the Ensemble Modern at the end of his life.)