Call me a nut but I prefer a lot of Zappa's 80's music/live performances (where they changed up some of the older songs) to his older stuff... most likely because I'm a stickler for good production and his 80's music production was miles ahead of his MOI and 70's stuff. The music was pretty good too, and he was in full-on satire mode lyrically.
As for JFH, that was Zappa's first foray into synclavier composition. A couple songs on there are catchy (no lyrics though, entirely instrumental) and have a good melody (Night School and G-Spot Tornado) but most of the songs are polyrythmic and very dissonant, and would drive music simpletons (like your co-workers) insane