FRANK ZAPPA & THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION - One Size Fits All (Ryko)

My fourth Zappa, his 19th (according to allmusic).

I think I now recognize the quality I liked so much about We're Only In It For The Money: I could feel tropes I'd never enjoyed registering and yet I didn't mind. It wasn't like I analyzed it and came away thinking, "Huh, I guess that has a lot in common with other late-60s music, which is funny, since I don't usually like late-60s music." I heard things which immediately felt like I wouldn't like them, except I did.

Bears some resemblance to the first time I realized that by god I could just walk home in the rain without an umbrella if I didn't have one. I'd never paid any attention to the sensation of rain hitting me before; if rain was hitting me, in the past, I was too busy bracing against it. And you know, rain feels GREAT!

That was partially a matter of willpower, of course, whereas here, I don't know what the confounding factor is. I like Zappa's sonic bag of tricks, I think, and his melodies when he makes them manageable enough.

Oh! Right, anyway: this has that same dynamic, except with fusiony rock and whatever kind of music the Grateful Dead play. Always hated them. Really like this.

TY - Upwards (Big Dada)

I got into Big Dada around their second wave of releases, at which point Ty was the... let me see, not the black sheep, but the runt of the litter. Two years on, Big Dada has made some questionable signings of American MCs, while Ty has learned (okay, cribbed) enough from fellow BD Brits like Roots Manuva and New Flesh to make a solid record. And he's a bit charming -- maybe he was before, and the music just didn't draw me in enough to notice. "The gun-toting gangster from next door / Who likes to play Connect Four / And has a degree, actually".