I prefer Beefheart to Zappa. Beefheart was a genius with a vision from another planet. Zappa was talented but his smugness and middle-school humor ruin it for me. His freakiness feels showy, like he's trying to prove how different and smart he is. Beefheart on the other hand was a being who absorbed different chemicals from Earth's atmosphere.

He was abusive to his TMR bandmates though - to the point of running a cult. They resorted to shoplifting just to eat.