Frank Zappa may have been an emotionally stunted adolescent, but he was the most brilliantly gifted stunted adolescent since Mendelssohn. Just as Mahler provides an encyclopedic, often parodistic commentary on the long tradition of German music, just as Stravinsky does on the longer tradition of music from prehistory to the modern era, Zappa is a career long and ultra-sophisticated parody on American popular music in all its various forms with a sophistication that can only hail from a refulgantly brilliant musical mind who has a kind of loving contempt for all the music he's parodying. If you're looking for emotional depth like Mahler, Zappa's not the place to find it, but if you're looking for a rock'n roll Stravinsky who provides infinitely sophisticated parodies on every scrap of influence on American music, Zappa is where you go.
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