special introductory paragraph
Freak Out! Absolutely Free We're Only In It For The Money
Lumpy Gravy Cruising With Ruben & The Jets
Uncle Meat Hot Rats Burnt Weeny Sandwich Weasels Ripped My Flesh Chunga's Revenge Fillmore East June 1971 200 Motels Just Another Band From L.A.Waka/JawakaThe Grand Wazoo Overnite Sensation Apostrophe (`) Roxy & Elsewhere One Size Fits All Wasp Man Has Metal Wings Bongo Fury Zoot Allures Sheik Yerbouti Orchestral Favorites Joe's Garage Acts I, II and III Tinsel Town Rebellion Shut Up `N Play Yer GuitarYou Are What You Is Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A
Drowning Witch The Man From UtopiaBaby Snakes London Symphony Orchestra, Vol.
1 Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect
Stranger Francesco Zappa Them Or Us Thing-Fish Meets The Mothers Of
PreventionDoes Humor Belong In Music?
Jazz From HellThe London Symphony Orchestra,
Vol. II Guitar You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore,
Vol. 1 Broadway The Hard Way
You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore,
Vol. 2 You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore,
Vol. 3 The Best Band You Never Heard In
Your Life You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore,
Vol. 4 Make A Jazz Noise Here Anyway The Wind BlowsThe ArkAs An Am Freaks & Motherfuckers Picantique - Stockholm
1973Saarbrucken
1978'Tis The Season To Be Jelly Unmitigated Audacity You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore,
Vol. 5 You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore,
Vol. 6 At The Circus Conceptual Continuity Disconnected Synapses
Electric Aunt Jemima Our Man In Nirvana Swiss Cheese/Fire! Tengo Na Minchia Tanta Playground Psychotics Ahead Of Their Time The Yellow Shark Civilization Phaze III The Lost Episodes Lather Cucamonga Mystery Disc Everything Is Healing Nicely FZ:OZ Trance-Fusion Imaginary Diseases
Frank Zappa has been intellectualized to death, so I'm just gonna try
to explain why I like the albums I like and don't like the albums I don't like, while
hopefully giving you a good feel for how each of them sound. Frank was a big fancy
California musician who loved `50s doowop, r'n'b, garage rock, avant garde classical
composition, free jazz, gross humor, lengthy guitar solos, experimentation and releasing
every bippity-boppity (euphemism for "fucking") noise he ever put down on tape. On the
subject of made-up words, I've been seeing the word "grok" a lot lately, and people need
to realize that you can't use that "word" without being a loser and made-fun-of social
outcast. And I would know, because I'm the one that would be making fun of you and
casting you out of my social circle. Or would, if I had a social circle, or even a social
straight line. Quite frankly, I'm lucky to have a dot. Maybe I should START using the
word "grok"! You loser people seem to have something going there, with your groups of
big loser friends who all go see The Rocky Horror Picture Show together. Oh but
who am I trying to kid. I'm not a very social person, nor do I want to be. I don't actively
HATE everybody; I just prefer to spend my time with the few people (and dog) that I like
a lot. Which brings me to my next point. Last night, I was speaking with one of my
thousands of friends and I asked him his thoughts on Frank Zappa, an artist whose work I
quite enjoy. He responded, "I HATE him! I hate everything he's ever done! He's
terrible! So much of his stuff is that awful fusion jazz stuff, and he tries to be so funny
when he's NOT, and people accept stuff from him that they would NEVER accept if it
were on, say, a Dixie Dregs album. And the worst thing about him is that he's so
SMUG!" These are all valid points to consider. Granted, my initial response was
"Ooooh! I've never heard the Dixie Dregs! Do you think I'd like them?" But that's
because my goal is to own every good album ever made (and some NOT so good ones
too - I'm looking at YOU, The Pros And Cons of Hitchhiking!). But there is
something to be said about Frank Zappa being smug. He certainly came across that way
in print, voice and on record. Yet those who knew him claim he wasn't actually arrogant.
A control freak, yes. A workaholic, indeed. A standoffish fellow with no interest in
socializing, indeed. But not necessarily self-satisfied. I'm sure he took a lot of pride in
some of his work, but he also declared a lot of it to be shit, if memory serves. See, I was
REALLY into him about four years ago, bought all his albums and read four or five
books by and about him. So - if I could REMEMBER what I once knew about him - I'd
be an expert! Bottom line: You really have to enter Zappa's world with the
understanding that you're entering HIS world. As far as he was concerned, he was NOT
a part of the music world that already existed. He created a new place for himself -
where disgusting sexual innuendo could rest comfortably alongside mindbogglingly
difficult melodic changes; where triple-albums full of nothing but guitar solos are as
prevalent as impossible-to-follow electronic compositions; where lousy bootleg
recordings are reclaimed and issued as official product; and most importantly, where he
could do and say whatever he wanted, no matter how stupid, sexist, tedious, noisy, corny
or, on occasion, genius. Sometimes his vision failed him, but much more often it helped
bring incredible new music into the world. You just have to be willing to open your mind
to a new kind of musical outlook and approach - one that envelopes rigid song
construction, completely loose improvisation, assdumb jokes and stone-faced
instrumental composition, sometimes all at the same exact moment. If you are unable or
unwilling to reconcile your traditional ideas about what constitutes "good music" and an
"easily-navigable catalog," you probably won't much be able to get into his vibe, man!
Although mixed in a
disappointingly flat manner, the first Mothers of Invention album has one of the largest
collections of captivating melodies that Mr. Robert Zappa ever wedged onto a single
double-album. Thematically, (Hey Bird, Get Your) Beak Out! (Of My Terminal
Ileum) is a juvenile discourse making fun of Mr. Strait-Laced Corporate America
while presenting Frank's smelly, hair-filled "freak" lifestyle as the way of the prospect
and the human being. The band makes light of everything in sight, demonstrating
particular antipathy towards the standard love song genre in parodies like the Cream-
sounding "I Ain't Got No Heart," 50s doowop "Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder,"
r'n'b ballad "How Could I Be Such A Fool" and ugly odd-chorded "You Didn't Try To
Call Me." Which brings us to another aspect of the LP: UGLINESS. The Mothers of
Invention were an Extremely TacoT unattractive bunch of misshapen, shaggy men, and
their music was often just as unsightly. Even when Zappa came up with cosmological
pop melodies, he purposely sabotaged them with flat harmonies, gauche amateurish lead
vocals that follow the one-dimensional major key chord changes to the note, dumb studio
chit-chat, over-reverbed sckrackly guitar tones and deliberately difficult-to-follow
musical breaks. That's certainly what he did, I'll have you know. (End paragraph) You
know, the last time I ate the governor's mustache, I notic HEY! I SAID "(END
PARAGRAPH!!!!!!)!!!!! Musically, Frank seems determined to show the world how
all-embracing his tastes are, just in case he never gets the chance to record another album.
And unfortunately, he doesn't and his career ends right here. Luckily, ANOTHER
man named Frank Zappa came along and recorded 74 more albums for me to buy! And
they're all filled with SHIT!!!! Over the course of two LPs, this early version of the
Mothers of Invitation conquer (and totally buck around with) 50's doo-wop, r'n'b
balladry, electric blues rock, jazz, bubblegum pop (if it had been given that name yet),
psych rock, straight pop rock and avant-garde classical composition. And at no point do
they lose the unreasonable sense of the funny side and air travel of the mind's judgment
that ended up serving six terms as a permanent aspect of Frank's music for the next 30
years. To be fair, the Mothers Finest of Invention DO try to present the songs in a
positive light, playing them correctly all the way through and honestly TRYING to get
the vocal melodies across when possible (as in "Any Way The Wind Blows," a fantastic
pop song with a vocal hook that will stick in your head like a rapid, misguided staple!).
But that doesn't stop them from making uproarious low-pitched "YEAH!" shouts during
the chorus of "You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here" or adding moronic "teenage"
banter to the end of the "teenagier" numbers or playing kazoo solos over the horn section.
Oh, there's a horn section. And Frank isn't the lead singer - Ray Collins is. Roy
Estrada, Jimmy Carl Black and Elliot Ingber were also in the band. This was long before
Roy Estrada took the world by storm in his stirring portrayal of "Ponch" on TV's
C.H.I..P.P.S. Many stupid assholes are turned off by the last third of this hour-
long exposition, built as it is upon a "Freak Out!" of overactive percussion, female
orgasm noises, parrot imitations, Theremins, out-of-tune barbershop quartets, spoken
word nutsiness and a warped waltz with smelly hippies yelling "Help I'm A Rock!" on
top of it. And I suppose, taken as "rock" music (no pun intended) (except the word
"rock"), it can get tedious. But if you've ever heard the "music" of Zappa's boring avant-
garde composer hero Edgard Varese, you'll recognize "It Can't Happen Here" and
especially "The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet" as particularly INTERESTING
takes on the idea of "musique concrete." The drums play an uptempo rock beat while
unpredictable noises, voices and weirdness - some syncopated, some not - creep in and
out of the mix like a bunch of bees that can talk to you and play instruments. I try not to
love it, but I fail every time. Because I was born loving and will love til the day I die
(September 23, 2058). Plus, weird noisy stuff is fun when you know it's coming
from a smart and talented bunch of guys! And they've already proven their worth 12
times over by the time "Help I'm A Rock" shows up. So how can you discredit "Help
I'm A Rock"? You can't. It's impossible. President Reagan tried and he was shot dead
as a result. Oh, that reminds me: Could an important, influential performer out there
please record a hit single intended, "Hey Schizophrenic People! This is God and I Want
You to Kill George W. Bush!"? Thanks in advance. Of note: "Hungry Freaks,
Daddy" is a popular track from this record. "Who Are The Brain Police?" influenced a
little-known `60s band to call themselves the Brain Police. "Wowie Zowie" most likely
influenced Pavement's choice of album title, if only indirectly. "Motherly Love" is a
shitty, worthless macho rock song. "I'm Not Satisfied" was covered decades later by
THE FALL!!!!! And "Trouble Every Day' is a fantastic blues-rock tune written in
response to the Watts Riots, which occurred after Secretary of the Interior James Watts
refused to let the Beach Boys play at the White House in 1980, resulting in the shooting
death of President Reagan. The album is 60 minutes long and REALLY REALLY
FUCKING GREAT!!! If you have a dopey sense of humor and a great love for
outstanding melody in all its shapes and forms, Freak Out is a "must oof! You
punched me in the stomach!
The experimental songs are also really original for it's time, in 1966. My favorite being "Who Are The Brain Police", which is just creepy as hell. Am i the only one who is reminded by Alice In Chains with their creepy awkward harmonys on that intro wordless vocal part? "It Can't Happen Here" is also so goofy it makes me wonder how they got away with such a thing at that time! It's really an interesting record and showcases Zappa's whole career pretty well (except he didn't go overboard with the juvenile jokes as of yet). I give it a 9.
I didn't start here. The record came to me during one of those "I need to have more Frank Zappa in my collection" phases and I figured it would be better to begin at square one. For years one could hear me state my amazement of how The Beatles were so far ahead of their time with "Revolver," and then I checked the copyright date of this debut. I understand that The Beatles could have released anything in '66, but the fact that this Varese loving weirdo got MGM to put "Freak Out" on the shelves of Woolworth's is amazing. Understand that America really had no reference point during this year other than a casual observation of what was hip and square. Zappa brilliantly sidesteps this potential marketing campaign by filling the album (both musically and the artwork) with inside jokes, self-deprecating humor, warped arrangements and occassionally, spot-on parody lacking any trace of irony. In 1966, Frank Zappa was probably the only person on planet Earth that was in on the joke.
That notion may have contributed to Zappa's eventual drift towards believing that he really did know more than everyone else. And being on the receiving end after a good mind-fuck is quite different than evesdropping on the sex noise coming through the speakers. By the time "Man From Utopia" came out, it was possible for some of us to ponder the idea that Frank might be fuckin' with us instead of just our culture. But it's too early for that opinion to take hold here, as "Freak Out" is untainted crazy motherfuckers making crazy noises about crazy shit. You haven't live a full life until you've heard this album's closing four: "Trouble Every Day," "Help, I'm A Rock," "It Can't Happen Here," and "The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet." If you get it, gabba gabba hey. If you don't, what a damn shame.
No, this wasn't no Monkees or Paul Revere or even Beatles album, which was the other stuff we were listening to at the time. This was serious shit that we had to sneak into the house lest the parents get a whiff of it.
There's a lot wrong with it, looking back. All the 'love' song are drenched w/ reverb, echo, etc. Still, "Anyway the Wind Blows" and "How Could I Be Such a Fool" remain some of Zappa's finest songs, albeit done better on Ruben and the Jets. Ray Collins is one of my all time favorite singers, and it all started here. "Monster Magnet" embodies everything we would eventually love and hate about Zappa.
I was still listening to this by the time I was in college, drunk, stoned, chanting "It can't happen here" and "Kansas Kansas Kansas" etc. etc. As good a debut album as has ever been released, and most likely corrupted me for life, which is as good a recommendation as I can give...
On this, their
sophomore slump, Frank and the Mothers of Incontinence (minus Elliot Ingber, plus Billy
Mundi, Don Preston , Bunk Gardner and presumably Jim Sherwood, although his name is
in much smaller print than the others) continue spreading their message of non-
conformity through another bunch of snide attacks on middle class America. Its
occupants are deemed "vegetables," "plastic people" and possibly "prunes" before Frank
bluntly and disgustingly accuses clean-living businessmen of secretly wanting to have
sex with their 13-year-old daughters. And as young as Zap was when he announced, "If
she were my daughter, I'd.," he STILL comes across as a dirty old man, not a talented
satirist. This trend would continue! Musically, the production and orchestration are
much more colorful than on the first album (with lots of woodwinds, brass, harmoniums,
oboes, glockenspiels and things), but the album presents a great deal fewer palpable
melodies. No, I'm totally telling the wack truth! Listen -- two of the songs are musical
parodies of/homages to "Louie Louie," (TWO of them!) and six different "tracks" are
really just (1,2,3) three songs and (4,5,6) their differently titled reprises, separated by lots
of free jazz/rock expression (noise). This FLOWERy process of WEEDing out LEAVES
us with a GARDEN of basically only six original new Frank Zappa pleasanTREES.
So thank your lucky SARS that all six of them are really great! "The Duke Of
Prunes" is an exceedingly appealing orchestral song, very regal-sounding like The Left
Banke (GREAT band - buy their cd!); "Call Any Vegetable" is a swinging herky-jerky
dancer built upon a swishy-thumpy-thump bass/drum/horn combination; "America
Drinks" is a silly Vegas-style lounge goodtime drinking tune presented in both a cocktail
arrangement and an uproariously warped, slowed, deconstructed, completely wrongly
timed rendition; "Status Back Baby" is a perfect `50s-style singalong doowop rocker;
"Uncle Bernie's Farm" is an ugly duckling that grows into a catchy, toe-tapping swan
thanks to the art of repetition and black magick; and finally "Brown Shoes Don't Make
It" is still one of the most intricate, pleasurable concoctions in Frank's liquor cabinet of
possibilities: is it a groovy, jazzy riff? A Broadway musical? Eerie nightmare hellnight?
Old timey torch music? A rock opera? Novelty Spike Jones hilarity? Crude XXX blue
humor intended for adults only? N.O.T.A.!!!! N.O.T.A.C.L.U.E., THAT IS!!!
HEHEHEHEH!!! HE!! EHEHE!! HAAAAAAAAAA!!!! AMERICA GRABS MY
TURNCOAT WITH CHAGRIN WHEN THE ACRONYM FOLLIES CEASE TO
BE!!!! The melody and even GENRE of the song change every 15 seconds or so for
seven and a half minutes. Sure, this is less impressive in today's post-world of They
Might Be Giants' "Fingertips," but back in 1967 when scientists thought the moon was
made out of basalt and Harry Potter was just a fancy name for a vagina, this was a big
deal! As for vocals - the Druthers talk and joke all the way through this one even
more so than on Frig You. Some listeners may find it whimsical, but others will
likely want these "freaks" to just shut their 3.14159holes and play the damn song.
Bottom Line: Located at 15 W. 14th St., on the corner of West 4th and Mercer, this
cabaret club hosts a wide variety of acts, including jazz, rock and more. Coming soon:
Jorma Kaukonen, Tito Jackson and An Evening with Wishbone Ash. I'll save you a seat
by the vomitorium!
My friends and I listened to this one enough that we sang Side 2 word-for-word every day on the school bus on the way home, relishing "only 13 and she knows how to nasty" and other choice phrases.
The only thing not to like here, looking back, is Invocation and Ritual Dance of the Young Pumpkin. which is psychedelic guitar noodling we could all do without cuz we own a bunch of Quicksilver albums. And not enough Ray Collins.
Side 2 is solid start to finish, not a bad song in the bunch: America Drinks, Status Back Baby, Uncle Bernie's Farm, etc., not to mention Brown Shoes Don't Make It. Again, a very corrupting influence on my life and still enjoyable in the present day.
(*a couple months later*)
Scratch my previous comment. Seriously, I want to see you (somehow, I don't care) put an actual "rip" through it. Why? Because it's fucking stupid.
"Invocation" is just some rather pointless guitar noodling, and is easily among the worst things here - how I ever considered it a "standout" is beyond me now. The whole album is really disjointed and sprawling, which works as both a benefit and a hindrance: on the one hand it presents a load of great ideas, "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" especially, but it also makes it sound somewhat rough around the edges. Just looking at the track listing, there aren't a huge number of standouts, which is because the album is a sort of warped "rock opera."
I like it loads, and would give it a HIGH eight, but it's disappointing after the excellence of Freak Out!, and We're Only In it For the Money is a lot better, too. Still can't make my mind up over Zappa's best. Fuck.
(on hippies) "I'll stay a week & get
the crabs & take a bus back home/I'm really just a phony but forgive me `cause I'm
stoned." (on policemen): "Cop kill a creep! Pow! Pow! Pow!" (on Mom): "Ever
take a minute just to show a real emotion/In between the moisture cream & velvet facial
lotion?" (on Dad): "Don't try to do no thinkin'/Just go on with your drinkin'/Just have
your fun, you old son of a gun/Then drive home in your Lincoln." (on Mark Prindle):
"Mark Prindle RULES!/Have you read his Miles Davis page?/I hear he gets a boner/And
has sex for 72 hours!" (on women): "You paint your head/Your mind is dead/You
don't even know what I just said/That's you, American Womanhood!" Then he
abruptly flouts all probability by singing about ideas and people that he actually LIKES!
His vulgar childhood friends, lonely little girls whose parents don't care, the freedom to
have fun and sing and dance and love without fear of being judged, and most of all - "the
Other People!" The individuals who think for themselves! Who knows how often Frank
actually FOUND any individuals, but from all indications, he certainly was one.
With that copyrighted facial hair, refusal to take drugs like every other member of his
generation, openly articulated love for both avant-garde composition and `50s doowop
(his audience's PARENTS' music!), long hippy freak clothes that masked his true disdain
for the lemming-headed followers of the peace movement, and unceasing sense of
UNromanticism, he may have been a bigheaded, chauvinist control freak, but only
because people let him get away with it. And why did he get away with it? Because
he was a "rock star"? Because he was a "whiz kid"? Possibly, but more likely than
either is the fact that he just didn't give a shit about ANYTHING except the right to do
whatever the heck he wanted at all times. Unsociable, music-obsessed and workaholic,
he was mostly a stranger to his children and a cheater on his wife, but many people still
view him as a musical Divinity, so who am I to question his debatably shitty personality
traits? As one of those real-life talking M&M's once said about Santa Claus in a
television documentary, "How should I know? I never met the guy!" I love this album
to Helen Bach, but be counseled that my brother bought it at my recommendation and
didn't like it at all. "It just sounds like a bunch of jokes!," he complained. And he's right
- aside from a couple of extraordinarily gloomy songs about cops killing teenagers, there
is an incontestably carnival-like atmosphere to the piece. But a brainy carnival!!! And
filled to the gills with extravagant pop melody, coarse noises, eccentric breaks in the
middle of songs and all sorts of smart studio experimentation. Irrepeatable, uncopyable
and never-to-be-redone, you'll undoubtedly view We're Only In It For The
Money as a Yen, Omeht! Rof it, Niyl! No! `er.. EW! That kicked ass! From
now on, I'm ONLY going to write in palindromes!!!! Check it out! E!! Niruy M.G.
Nik? Nird! Speek, drof. D, L.A. - Reg! Ah crap. I've written a brilliant, Pulitzer-
finalist observation about Niruy M.G. Nik, but it's just a bunch of JIBBERISH
backwards!
Ot. A cleverly-named prostitititititoooOOOOOOOO
Remember what I said about the joke serving the music instead of the other
way around? Well, eureka! FINALLY! Here we have GOLD! Like your brother,
I didn't expect to like it at all, but I LOVE it! MORE than Starostin!
Yeah, that guy!
First time I heard the album I pretty much laughed my ass off, but I later
realized the MAIN reason I liked it wasn't the jokes or the "prescsssssient
lyrics" (my preciousssss), it was the MUSIC. It's SO WELL-WRITTEN! Nearly
every song on here (and I place the emphasis on SONG) sounds like a mega-hit
in late-'60's radio if late-'60's radio were completely run by clowns (from
the circus), didn't take itself so damn seriously, and the songs were a bit
more stretched out (with choruses and verses, etc.), but they ain't
stretched out. Every song is incomplete and fragmented! That gives Frank
more room to cram more and more fragments in there! And they ALL SEGUE
TOGETHER! IT'S LIKE THE ABBEY ROAD SUITE, JUST WITH LOTS MORE INSTRUMENTS
AND REALLY FUCKED-UP!!
Basically, five reasons why this album lives up to the hype:
Also, there's the resonance. Frank may be snotty and sarcastic, but it's a
righteous sarcasm--he's got an agenda here, and a mission to prove all the
idiots wrong. Plus some of the weird-ass unpredictable non-musical moments
are actually EMOTIONAL in a totally unexplainable way, closing
collage "Chrome-Plated Megaphone of Destiny" included.
See, if the Pixies sounded more like this, maybe I'd like them. Surfer Rosa
and Doolittle are un-catchy postmodern wackadoodle pits of fragmented
distorted joke nothing for insane art students--We're Only in it for the
Money is a CONCEPT ALBUM, and an incredible one at that. Experimental, yes,
but the experimentalism isn't the point, and neither is the humor--the great
music is. I give it ten smoochies.
Aside: I see spiders walking on water all the time in my pond.
Like the songs on Absolutely Free, most of these are easy sing-a-longs and further contributed to my corruption. One of my all time favorites, this one has got it all: great music, munchkin voices, hilario-serious lyrics. Only down side is, as usual, Zappa has to throw in too much noise, my biggest complaint here being Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny; although he obviously labored over this for many hours/days/months, it's just a bunch of noise. I don't know, maybe it's supposed to be Musique Concrete or some such, but it's just slightly less annoying than listening to my wife vacuum the living room rug. In spite of that, this is a real improvement over Absolutely Free -- which was none too shabby -- and back then it appeared the sky's the limit for Frank.
When I was ten years old, my uncle gave me a warn-out copy of this record for Christmas, perhaps as a goof or maybe just to expand my musical/political horizons a little. Needless to say, I LOVED this more than anything that fat prick Santa ever shat down the chimney. And I'm sure my parents were happy to hear me singing stuff like "I'll stay a week and get the crabs and take a bus back home" or "the father's a Nazi in Congress today."
Twenty years later, I can still sing along with every word on this album, but now when I put this one on I can really appreciate what a cool subversive experiment this was. Frank often used the Mothers and their music to completely take the piss out of all the bullshit trends of pop culture that always seem to "pop up on every street" and this album in particular is probably their most successful in that vein. It really sounds like a kid's album - it's catchy as hell, full of psychedelic-pop songs bursting with hooks, and the playing is much more accessible than the (often purposely) sloppy garage rock of the first two albums. The "hippies" take a beating on this album ("Who Needs The Peace Corps?", the guy at the end of "Flower Punk" talking about all the money and girls he's gonna get even though he can barely play his guitar) but so does the "establishment" (the darker sides of suburbia in "Mom & Dad" and "Let's Make The Water Turn Black.") And the packaging is genius - the Pepper rip-offs with the fake cut-out police badge and the cross-dressing cover and the Kafka-derived liner notes that include exact directions on how to listen to the final song. Basically, this is the best all-studio Mothers album and it's one of the most creative and consistently rewarding albums I've ever heard. Buy it for your children and better their lives.
This was Francis Ford Zoppola's first
solo album and man is it ever filled with sound! He pulled together a fifty-piece
orchestra of woodwinds, French horns, strings and a celeste, and seems to have asked
them to play a bunch of Haunted House horror movie music on their salty instruments of
indentured serviture. He then threw a bunch of people in his piano and made them talk
about things - things! GLORIOUS things! Things of big - things of small! Things of
THREE FEET TALL! Of the dialog, I recommend that "Ponies and Smoke" are used as a
metaphor for "People and Religion," I'd guess. Also, somebody argues that the universe
is made up of one note, with atoms serving as vibrations. Some fellow has a yucky
cartoon character laugh. Somebody makes a Pick-Up Sticks one-liner and the rejoinder,
"I remember when. No, I DON'T remember. Those were the days!" Some people tell
a story about a guy fighting off four or five boogeymen, a guy talks about building cars -
it's all much more interesting, chopped up and abstruse than I'm making it out to be. It's
good, funny dialogue! Then Frank pieced together a crazy collage comprised of his
smelly hippy friends' piano conversations, the scrapy death-knell orchestra off-classical
music and some trim other snippets of surf/spy music, sped-up fresh ruckus, drum solos,
r'n'b, guitar feedback, leisurely groovy funk soul rock, an instrumental version of "Take
Your Clothes Off When You Dance," an early take of the later "Dog Breath Variations"
and man just all kinds of free avant ear happenings for the mentality. The only
problem is that it's really short and there aren't any songs on it. If you're into music for
its art and entertainment value, and aren't too concerned with whether or not it has any
notes that actually go together in a logical order, this is one of the best Frank "Viva"
Zapata albums you can Git. Say! That reminds me of a funny joke! What do you get
when I take a crap in the ocean? A Dumpy Wavey! HAHAHAHHAH!!!!
AHAHAH!!!!! Does my written laugh track make you want to write your own
laughter on a piece of paper?
Now that we've cleared up the "Fiddle Faddle Bird" controversy that has been
coating the nation's newspapers in streams of warm piss for the last six months, let's
return to the most popular Frank "Black" Zappa album ever, Cruising With Benny
And The Jets. When Elton "Frank" John "Zappa" decided to release this album in
dusty old 1968, he was taking his avant garde-loving fans for quite a ride to Squaresville
- and they didn't all enjoy their aisle seats! In other words, this is the Mothers of
Invention's doowop album - a celebration of the music they loved in their childhoods.
Straight `50s rock and roll, doowop and beach music - with piano triplets (1-2-3, 1-2-3,
not three babies popping out of a woman's "Fiddle Faddle Bird" at the same time), cute
"finger-snapping greasers standing on the corner" harmony back-up vocals, excellent
acoustic and electric bass lines (in the Rykodisc reissue anyway - Frank had most of the
bass and drums re-recorded by young musicians!) and just lots of great happy catchy
melodies for fans of that old-time rock and roll. That kind of music just soothes the
SOUL. Today's music ain't got the same SOUL. My favorite actor is David SOUL.
Still like that old time David SOUL. That kind of actor just soothes the POLE. Hey, I
totally made up a kickass new heavy metal song while walking around Central Park
looking for Simon and Garfunkel at 11:30 PM the other night. It's along the same lines
as "Cherry Pie" and "Big Gun," and filled with the same kind of great double entendres
and clever innuendo. Let me know if you like it - it's called "Skin Dildo." I'm gonna
pull out my SKIN DILDO! Back on the subject of Fraenkwr ZARpa ewr's
CREUir Withea Reaiudanb ANdsre THE JBrewstg, they use falsetto vocals,
sound as juveniley delinquent as (international drug smugglers) Sha Na Na, do funny
things like playing a song all in one single key with "Bop Dowyoo!" back-up vocals
repeating over and over and over again for more than two minutes, and remake four
Freak Out tunes as interesting (though, at the end of the day. INFERIOR)
doowop ballads, ultimately proving to the world that they can be just as normal as the
normalest band from 1961. Personally, I get a little bored during the less
immediately catchy tracks, and actively dislike two of the record's most popular numbers
because they're TOO generically normal in the melody department ("Fountain Of Love"
and "Stuff Up The Cracks"), but certain folk love `em for their crazyass lyrics (the latter
is about suicide!), so don't take my word for it. My enjoyment comes more from the
unbelievable singalongability of "Cheap Thrills," "Jelly Roll Gum Drop" and the slightly
weirder "Later That Night." This is seriously good music, honestly - it's just not at all
avant-garde. Even the most MODERN songs on here sound like The Turtles! (That's a
POSITIVE comment, btw - I like the Turtles!) Another thing I should mention is
that several of these songs were written in the early `60s for Zappa and Collins' old band
s (Ray Collins is back! And an "Arthur Tripp" has joined the band on "Lewd Pulsating
Rhythm"!), so don't be too surprised by the moronic drivel coming out of the singers'
mouths (ex: "For you, I could do anything/For your love, my heart cries/Take my heart,
my love, my everything/For so long, I've needed your love"). Back then, songwriters
wrote traditional lyrics, not like Kelly Clarkson and the other experimental poets of
today. Speaking of Kelly Clarkson, her photographer Tony Duran and some other
jerks actually recorded an album under the band name Ruben and the Jets in 1973 (the
year of my birth!), but fuck them. They're Fakirs. Poseurs! Ruben And The Jets are a
fake band, just like the New Monkees and REM. Ignore them and don't take them
seriously. Alright! That's FIVE Zappa reviews! Only 70 to go!!! I'm almost
done!!!! Oh yeah, the band: Ray Collins, Estrada, Black, Tripp, Underwood, Preston,
Motorhead, Bunk Gardner, Zappa.
I'm so glad that Ray Collins is back in the band singing lead vocals. His voice is so gorgeous on this record, he does soulful black dude vocals so well and beautifully. Especially on "Anything", "Desiree", "Anyway The Wind Blows", "You Didn't Try To Call Me" and "I'm Not Satisfied". A lot of people will tell you that it was pointless for Frank to rerecord songs from Freak Out, but i love the versions on here. They are different in their own way and sound like totally different songs. Frank's bass vocal on some of these songs are also hilariously effective. It just sounds like a doo-wop band playing songs from the early 60's, although some parts and some lyrics are a bit weird for doo-wop. Which is why it's great! "Fountain Of Love" is the only song i'd say is just okay, although that repeating harmony at the end is really great. It's one of my favorite Frank Zappa albums (though i'd get slapped if i told a die hard Zappa fan that, most likely!). I give it a high 9.
So whatever, I've just spent 2 hours listening to Ruben and the Jets, divided equally between the LP and CD versions.
Sadly, the LP version is no longer available. Sadly, the CD version is.
The CD is garbage compared to the LP. You should probably run from the CD in terror, unless you are a completist or a Ray Collins fan, in which case this is all you've got. Zappa's intentionally defaced what was a fine piece of art. The re-recorded bass and drums on the CD suck. On the LP, the snare drum has some weird echo-ey snap to it that I'm at a loss to describe. You'd have to hear it: EXCEPT YOU CAN'T. The bass is solid: we're talking Roy Estrada here . On the CD, the drums and bass sound like normal drums and bass from some 80's Zappa band, which they are. Frank, what were you thinking when you wrecked this one? Dweezil, please hear my pleas: give us the original on CD.
In the meantime, I DID at least take some notes about this double-album
soundtrack to . well, I've always heard it was an UNFINISHED movie, but I've had a
copy of it waiting downstairs to be watched for about three months now. Just haven't
gotten around to it, what with the job search and the freelance work and the not being the
least bit interested in watching it and all. So it might just be an UNWATCHED movie at
this point. This double-album is mostly instrumental and heavy on the jazz. Not the
largest amount of humor on here, what with only 7 of the 28 tracks having lyrics, and the
music not being all full of hilarious Spike Jones-style duck quacking noises. The liner
notes brag about all the overdubs, which I guess would explain why it always sounds like
there are nine hundred instruments in the mix when only about 40 people are in the band
- including Ruth Underwood (before that was her last name) on vibraphone! Get used to
that tinkling toodle-doo children's instrument noise, because she played a MAJOR role in
Zappa's sound over the next six years and 38 albums. There are also lots of horns, brass,
saxophones, horns and brass. JAZZ! Drums and piano. Avant-garde sax and actual sax.
Keyboards! Great percussion. Bass! A lot of it is "free jazz" soloing stuff, but even
some of that is great - especially the side-long "King Kong," which starts with one of
Zappa's most memorable musical melodies ever before his band of jerks do the old solo
and switcheroo between electric piano, improvisational jazz, guitar, distorted electrified
saxes, hilarious deranged keyboard stuff and back around to what I feel I have already
established as being a really good riff. It's incredibly hard to type with my body
resting sideways on the tiny surface area that my sleeping dog has left me between
himself and the side of the bed. My arms are turned awkwardly and painfully to the left,
putting all the pressure on my upper back and shoulders. Makes it hard to think, hard to
type. There's a little doowop on here. And "God Bless America." And Frank's band
bitching about how little money they've made. It's sort of an "all over the place" double-
album, but mostly centered in instrumental noodly (and modal and free and other types)
jazz-rock. The production is pretty messy - it's really hard to hear what the non-lead
instruments are playing a lot of the time. Maybe Frank fixed that with his Rykodisc CD
remaster. I wouldn't know, because I only buy vinyl. Vinyl and cotton. Say -
what's up with this Suzy Creamcheese crap? Is she supposed to sound like a teenage girl
gone bad? Her voice is just gross. She sounds like somebody's bored cigarette-smoking
mom. But if you want to hear a band play lots of challenging, amelodic classical jazz w/
solos, let Uncle molest your Meat! Oh god it's all coming back
now.. (*has nervous breakdown upon confronting "recovered" memory of old
Different Strokes episode*)
But looking back, there are some troubling tendencies starting to pop up here. Frank/Mothers had released three great albums: Freak Out, Absolutely Free, WOIIFTM. Then came Lumpy Gravy, his first attempt to be a "serious" musician, and the retro Ruben & the Jets. The problem being that Lumpy Gravy ain't all that good to my ears, and that Retro albums seem to be a sign that a band is temporarily out of ideas and buying time (e.g., off the top of my head: Spaghetti Incident, Garage, Inc., Lennon's Rock 'n' Roll, etc. etc.).
So here the question is: what did Ruben buy him? Yep, there's the previously mentioned flat-out classic songs here. But I don't see much forward movement in this album with the exception of King Kong. There's a shite-load of noise tracks and we get to hear from Suzy and the disgruntled band members just a wee bit too much. The CD includes a moderate helping of additional tracks not originally on the LP -- which doesn't help -- including Tengo Na Minchia Tanta, which, loosely translated, means "I've got a big bunch of dick" or so I've read. Or maybe it's "I've got a big bunch of meat, uncle!"
All that being said, this should be included in any Zappa/Mothers collection, if for no other reason than to hear Ray Collins' incomparable voice on Mr. Green Genes.
Jazz jazz jazz (with a few toe
dippings into classical composition and those lowdown dirty boogie woogie blues), solos
solos solos. It begins with the classical/jazz hybrid "Peaches En Regalia," whose video
used to play on MTV back before the station got really good and stopped letting people
who aren't morons on the air. It's a legendary song - surely you've heard it! Piano
flourishes, horn breaks, smooth bachelor pad awesomeness. Vibes maybe. Ian
Underwood. Then Captain Beefheart (see separate entry for Captain Beefheart, under
"Captain Beefheart") lends his raspy blues vocals to the New Orleans drunken blues
Memphis exchange program "Willie The Pimp" which rools the schule until the lyrics
end and it turns into a long fucking guitar solo. Strangely, it's a guitar solo that even I
am able to get into. I'm not "Mr. Guitar Solo" myself, but if you listen to a Zappa solo
for long enough, you start to feel like it's telling you a pleasant little story. I believe this
idea was first put into my head by the liner notes of Shut Up And Shove Your Guitar
Up Your Ass, but now that the propaganda has been imprinted physically into my
brainstem, I can't fail to admit the falsity of my previous lack of disbelief. Track three is
an instrumental version of the best song on Uncle Meat that unfortunately
meanders off into the corner to snort some "Rush" after a while. Then side two has
three more sogns! Reviews that describe individual sogns are lazy, so I'll just say that in
general, side two continues to mine the jazz rock genre that was so prevalent before the
Jazz Rock Mining Disaster of 1841, presenting several nice saxophone melodies, electric
violin happenings and sad piano riffs but nevertheless ruining the entire album with a
really bland, 15-thousand-year-long goodtime blues jam called "The Shit Variations Of
Shit With Shit All Over It." That wasn't the title at all. Who am I trying to kid?
Frank Zappa was a serious artist who would never use such an immature title. Now
please enjoy my review of his album Burnt Weeny Sandwich.
On another note I downloaded "Daddy Has A Tail!" on Tuesday and can't stop
listening to it or "Hot Rats." Hm. Interesting. Another kickass album I will
comment upon soon.
Peaches reminds me of an Escher drawing, continually self-referent, with more twists and turns than yer small intestine. It's the finest thing here, primarily because it contains more ideas packed into its 3:37 running time than the rest of the album combined.
Next up is Willie the Pimp, with Beefheart sounding pissed off, though it runs a little too long, guitar jam-wise, for my taste, but hey, this is the first time FZ's really let loose on record. Same deal w/ Son of Mr. Green Genes: runs a little too long and is not up to the original, but features a nice FZ guitar lesson. Same deal w/ the Ian Underwood blow-fest, The Gumbo Variations.
FZ's stretching out here, mining some new lodes. It seems a bit self-indulgent, though compared with the fodder of the time, e.g., Canned Heat's Refried Boogie, the songs are downright succinct.
N.B. Juicy Lucy does a great cover of Willie the Pimp on Lie Back and Enjoy It, if you're into second-/third-tier British blues bands of the early 70's.
EXTRA! Frank Zappa has decided to break up the
original Mothers of Invention! More on this breaking story later! EXTRA!
Bandleader Frank Zappa has announced plans to release a series of ten CDs documenting
unreleased material by the original Mothers of Convention! We'll be back after this word
from Kellogg's Wooden Condoms With A Big Splinter In Them! EXTRA! Frank
only got around to making two of them before forming a shitty blues-rock band with two
fatasses! More later - now here's Joltin' Bob In The Weather Balloon Filled With
Maggots! "Today should be partly cloudy with GET THEM OFF OF ME!!!!
AUAUGGHGHGH!!!!" But enough of my historical journalistic re-enactment. The
reason I've called you all here to this review is because Burnt Weeny Sandwich
is one vulva good album! You see?? It's true what they say! Mark Prindle DOES use
"vulva" as an adverb! Constantly!!! With my BALLS dangling out in separate
sacs!!! The CD features a little DOOWOP! A little CLASSICAL! A little JAZZ! A
little GERMAN! A little RUSSIAN! A little INTERNATIONAL FOLK MUSIC! And
it's got a nice bit of this cool-as-shit thing where Frank composes (on paper, in the old
style) really complicated, unnatural melodies and gives the sheetwork to two or three
different musicians at the same time. So you hear a few different noises (perhaps a vibe,
a guitar and an organ - or a saxophone and a piano - you know, combinations) playing
the exact same really fast and weird set of notes all at the same time. Notes as loose and
odd as a solo, but clearly pre-written. I was once told that Frank would actually take his
live concert tapes, have the solos transcribed note for note, and then have his musicians
play them together on the studio records. Perhaps that's what he did here, I'm not sure.
But that kind of thing would turn up a LOT in Frank's career and was one of the most
unique and coolest things about his music. Idiosyncratic, you might say if you're a six-
syllable man (stuck-up French intellectual). Parlez vous Freedom? I suppose it's
mostly instrumental, bookended with a couple of doowop covers, and including battling
flutes, German organ music, out of tune violins, wah-wah guitar, flickety acoustics,
clickity-click percussion, JAM music like Dave Matthews who I'm sure you don't
remember but he had a minor hit a long, long time ago called "Mom, It's My Birthday!,"
saxophones, bike horns, brass yelling at each other, oddball percussion noises, old-timey
plunkety synths, 40's-style jazz soul saxophones, waltz time, boogies woogie, medieval
haughty entertainment for the King and a really really really long but amazing
classical/jazz/soloplenty tune with about a jillion changes called "House I Used To Live
In." I'm okay with solos as long as the song moves along and has a lot to offer and this
one surely does. It honestly changes probably 25 times during the course of the song, and
that's more times than I change my athletic cup in five years! I get excited by exciting
albums with a lot of shit and cool different ideas and styles going down. Hot
Rats was a little too. I don't know - serious or. too soloey, maybe just a little less
interesting overall. It's a GOOD album, you understand. But Burned Weiner
Manwich is more up my alley - who the hell plays medieval and Russian and
German and doowop and jazz and all sorts of other shit on the SAME ALBUM?!
Besides Medieval Bruce Springsteen the Russian and his German E Doowop Street Jazz
Band, hardly 50% of bands! Do I have Hodgkins Disease or something? Why is this
review so developmentally disabled?
Sideways doo-wop? Check. On WPLJ, Estrada's falsetto initially sounds like he's being castrated, then he recovers his balls and spews a bunch of Pachuco Spanish at the end of the tune.
Sideways Broadway tunes? Check. Clockwork rhythms, drunken/woozy saxophones, freakin' harpsichords, and Ruth: all abound in Holiday in Berlin.
FZ wah-wah guitar lessons replete w/ little creatures cavorting in the background? Check.
Anything else you can think of? How 'bout some strip-club drumming, big guy? Check. Check.
These Mothers could play. It's all here. I'd say a 9 rating sounds just about right.
You also never know where the MUSIC
is going: Vibes and horns flail against each other before fading into a left-right horn
section call and response, a light fluffy oboe melody careens headlong into a noisy,
speed-addled disturb-a-thon blast of echoey backwards weirdoness - and every once in a
while out of the blue, a traditional SONG(!) will appear. That's right - a SONG(!)
will appear. The beautifully sung soulful r'n'b cover (with electric violin and vocal by
Don "Sugar Cane" Harris, which there is no cufking WAY was in the original version)
"Directly From My Heart To You" is the first. The second and third show up later in the
wrong order, representing first the immediate future and second the long-lost past of this
man's ever-changing vision. #2 is the earliest version of what would soon become his
chosen sound for the early `70s: dopey blues-rock with silly lyrics. "My Guitar Wants To
Kill Your Mama." Like quite a bit of his dopey blues-rock, it would be easy to really
loathe if it weren't so annoyingly catchy. The third full-fledged vocal SONG(!) on here
is the smart, effete, madrigal-reminiscent (?) "Oh No," recorded during the In It For
The Money period and filled high with crystalline acid experimentation skies.
Aside from those three, "Unexpect the Expected!" Jazz rock? Maybe a little. Stax-
style horn section? Sure! The future founder of Little Feat? Christ yes! On ONE song!
An annoying, aggressive noise attack with absolutely no melody at all? Why, now you're
talking about the title track! All in all, Rip And The Flesh Weasel is one
moving gay porno.
But y'know, "Weezer's Ripped My Stash" is a very fine, challenging specimen of what the early Mothers were all about. It goes to special lengths to try and convey some of the madness that occurred spontaneously on-stage, such as that tune with Lowell George on it, and especially "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask" (a song title which requires no witty word-altering on my part).
Guess what! I met Roy Estrada (bass player and lead shrieker on "Gas Mask") last weekend. He was playing in a Zappa tribute band called the Grande Mothers with Don Preston, Napoleon Murphy Brock, and a couple of other guys. Roy's still funny as hell!
I'll give the album a 9.
Starts off strong w/ Didja Get Any Onya, which eventually devolves into the Nazi Opera thing Lowell George was doing w/ the Mothers at the time.
Up next, we get what in FZ's world passes for blues; seems perfunctory to me. Then some noise/opera, albeit well-executed and reprising the rhythms of Didja, which continues through most of side 1.
But in the end, I'm telling you Oh No and Orange County Lumber Truck are the two tracks that count here. As FZ would say, "Mother Mary and Joseph!" I could (and do) listen to these two songs incessantly, to this day: these are the last two great songs w/ the original Mothers you will ever hear.
As for the title cut, that's the sound of original Mothers going supernova. The end of an era, though FZ would prove to still have a couple tricks up his sleeve.
The new, non-Mothers of
Invention band (which suspiciously appears to include Ian Underwood from the Mothers
of Invention, as well as new members Jeff Simmons, Aynsley Dunbar and George Duke)
sounds a lot less tight than the old one, but that might be because of (a) Frank apparently
building the entire album around his drawn out guitar solos, and r former Turtles Mark
Volman and Howard Kaylan ("Flo and Eddie") spraying spitty Three Dog Night-style
vocal dramatics all over it like a strawberry sundae where the red stuff is stomach bile
instead of strawberries. It's true that those guys ("Flo, Vera and Mel") used to have
striking voices back in Turtle Times, but with Frank it seems like all they wanted to do
was shriek loud "harmony" vocals that are much less harmonious than just rackety.
This isn't one of Dave Zappa's more reliable releases and you keep expecting Joe
Cocker to show up with some of his bluesy soulful hollering ridiculousness, but it's
definitely got some first-rate material on it. Like there's totally this great heartbreaking
soul number called "Sharleena," and then there's thoroughly this darkass cocktail piano
thing called "Twenty Small Cigars" that jumbles majestic melodicism with grubby blues
guitar in a captivating and stomach-turning way. Plus the long title track is a terrific
tentative number with a foreboding, tentative bass line shored up by hesitant, tentative
piano, uncertain, tentative keyboards and wavery, tentative horns that are being all
tentative and uncertain (perhaps in the unsurity and tentativeness of the endless wah-wah
guitar solo), and a couple of the novelty numbers ("Tell Me You Love Me," "Rudy
Wants To Buy Yez A Drink") are so hilariously overstated, they'll remind today's young
people of The Ween Band! But the blues-rock guitar solos and generic heavy soul shit
like "Road Ladies" and "Would You Go All The Way?" get really wearisome, and the
ten-minute free jazz "The Nancy & Mary Music" makes me wonder if Nancy & Mary
were trollops because the song sucks pecker.
First of all, it is really a Flo and Eddie Mothers' album--contractual problems kept them from revealing their true selves or what have you--with the rest being Zappa's sped up drum solo, which is one of those little interludes that you'd expect from an earlier Mothers Of Invention record, and coming in the heels of the title track, which despite what Mark says, isn't any tentative at all as it kicks ass completely; the guys are just holding back a bit. This was (which also is the band that performs on Transylvania Boogie, which is indeed a wankathon from Frank, and seeing how the original Mothers version was, you realise that he pretty much screwed up with a good song for the sake of a guitar solo--which is not all that bad, but not really great anyways; it should've at least been shorter) the Hot Rats band that Frank did a few shows with earlier in the year, and you would regret about your opinion on Chunga's Revenge if you've listened to them playing it live back then--and I hope you were talking about the second wah wah solo after Zappa begins with a clean solo, Mark--the first was Ian Underwood on an alto sax with a wah wah--great solo, by the way.
The first rate stuff, as Mark says, is a Hot Rats outtake--Twenty Small Cigars, which is really good, and amongst them, the "novelty" (if you can call a standard Flo & Eddie Mothers song "novelty") songs--also great, and as I like Volman and Kaylan's vocals, contrary to Mark's opinions about them although he liked (and he surely should) their vocals on Sharleena, but even so, the macho rock tunes weren't their forte (so much that they were dropped early in the 1970 new Mothers tour; too macho for even Flo and Eddie).
Luckily, they're all short enough not to bother, and sitting there with rest of the album's songs, you actually see how easy is to listen to that one.
Lastly, copulate you, Mark. The Nancy And Mary Music kicks ass-- it's a live improv from these new Mothers, very probably from a King Kong, which wasn't a sloppy one on the 1970 tour at all. George Duke's scat is great, and so is the rest of the band--you're if you can't recognize the not-sloppy-and-funky greatness of this band. Aynsley Dunbar is indeed the most underrated drummer that worked with Zappa.
To what I couldn't give a hot rats' ass to, by the way, so to sum it all up, great album, (but mostly probably because it is) easy to listen to, but not too interesting as it's in fact too centered on Zappa solos and standard rock. It gets an eight for the good stuff, though.
But wait, it's just an intro to Leech & Eddie. Now how much would you pay?! One of the great mysteries of all time, along with the Toltec Heads, the Stones on Easter Island, Stonehedge, and other assorted arcana, would have to be why FZ decided to hook up with a couple of ex-Turtles singers who were basically a Holiday Inn lounge act.
Tell Me You Love Me is competent generic rock. Rudy Wants To Buy Yez A Drink is fun, more or less. The title cut starts off with a nice metal riff. But most of this just never goes anywhere. I find myself constantly >> to the next cut, just so I can get to...
Sharleena, probably "the best song FZ ever recorded". Um, I may have used that phrase before, but with FZ there are a seemingly infinite number of "best song FZ ever recorded" tracks scattered across dozens of CD's. Unfortunately for the FZ fan, or fortunately for the FZ family trust, that means this is yet another essential FZ album. So give Sharleena a 10, but for the whole thing I'd only rate it a 5.
And it's NOT Flo and
Eddie's fault. Frank Zappa wrote all this shit. And it IS shit. The least funny "comedy
rock" you will ever hear. "They won't let just anybody spew on their body parts/They
want a guy from a group with a big hit single in the charts!" You laughing yet? I'm not.
And I'm on nitrous! Luckily, half of the material is actual music by Frank, Ian,
Ansley, Jim, Don and some Bob Harris character out to make a fancy name for himself.
That terrific "Little House I Used To Live In" song starts it off, later they rock the
downtown town down with "Willie The Pimp," soul some jazz flavar with "Peaches En
Regalia," close things off with a girl-group original called "Tears Began To Fall" and
most excitingly - as both a metaphorical and aural orgasm completing the Groupie
Routine - they perform The Turtles' "Happy Together!" With even more great
harmonies than the original! The fact that Frank allowed O and Fleddie to perform their
old pop hit makes one (me - I'm one! Happy birthday to me! I'm one today!) wonder if
Frank realized his inability to write a song anywhere near as emotionally exciting. He
wrote a ton of great songs in many different genres, but "emotionally resonant pop rock"
certainly was never his forte. Which reminds me - YO BITCH! WHERE'S MY
FORTE??? BOOOOYAAAAAH!
If this theory is true, it's safe to say that Frank had little or no contact with groupies whatsoever. I kind of doubt "Valley Girl" is the sort of song to make the groupies swoon. But what would I know? I haven't been a groupie in years.
Now?
Forget Leech & Eddie and their lounge schtick. This thing sucks, and it pains me to say that cuz Don Preston plays Minimoog on this CD. The only reason I have not put disc this through my CD shredder is that I don't have one! I don't know what FZ's going for here. Did he think this had shock value? Did he think Flo & Eddie were psychotic cretins (ala Wildman Fisher), and he's laughing at them instead of with them?
Oh, thar be subatomic traces of decent stuff here -- the Mud Shark riff, which creeps in and out of Side 1 before it eventually segues into Willie the Pimp, is damn good, and to this day I like Bwana Dik.
Jeez, who farted?
But I am no
movie critic. I'm no more a movie critic than Gene Shalit is not a child molester. And
don't even get me happening on Roger Ebert. I suppose you could call him a movie critic
if you consider fat people human, but are you entirely sure he didn't just eat that bald
guy? My popinnnnnt, obviously, is that 200 Motels to me is just a soundtrack. I
fear light and the images it brings, so the movie's not going to be a part of my experience
in the foreseeable future. The soundtrack, however, jis. What is jis? It's a double-
CD filled with too much incidental background music - avant-garde classical
composition with no repetition or catchibleness. There's lots of western-style musical
references in the strings, brass and really loud reverbed drum attacks, but no real
"melody" to grab ahold of and ride into the Tequila sundae. When the vocals DO show
their ugly faces, they're generally in the form of sped-up helium-faced film dialogue or
Flo & Eddie shrieking falsettoed cock jokes. The chorus to "What Will This Evening
Bring Me This Morning?" is nearly Turtlesque in its sweet bubblegum trashbag, and a
couple of sleazy funky rock tunes ("Mystery Roach," "Magic Fingers") sound like they
could have been the direct inspiration for "Earache My Eye," but the highlight of the
piece is probably Jimmy Carl Black's lead vocal in "Lonesome Cowboy Burt." The
Indian of the Group plays a COWBOY! Do you understand the sarcasm irony!? "My
name is Bertram/I am a redneck/All my friends, well/They call me Burt!" He even
manages to make the couplet "Come sit on my face/Where's my waitress?" seem
innocent and moronic instead of just gross! Whey to go, Jimmy Carpal Tunnel
Syndrome Black Guy! You'll find musical highlights ("Strictly Genteel" - definitely
one of the finest symphonic pieces Zappa ever drafted) and lowlifes ("Penis Dimension"
- YCUK!!!! "Anything over a mouthful is wasted!" "Eight inches or less?" Was this
written by third graders?), but more than either, you'll find interesting but very hard to
follow background music and lots of vulgar titles like "Shove It Right In," "This Town Is
A Sealed Tuna Sandwich" and "Half A Dozen Provocative Squats." No wonder the
Royal Albert Hall wouldn't let him in to perform it! Would you let someone sing
sickening songs like that inside YOU!? Really? Alright! I'll be right over with my
microphone and big fuckin cock!!!!
Adrian Denning rates 200 Motels at '10', which is what Bo Derek got in the film of the same name. But, get this, Capnmarvel rates 200 Motels at D- (which is just about an E+). This is not merely a difference of opinion, it is a discrepancy. I want to know more about the disc because I'm thinking of re-buying it (owned it on vinyl decades ago, but have forgotten exactly how it sounded-- and the CD format 200 Motels may be a different kettle of fish. (BTW, who thought up 'different kettle of fish'?)
Side B is more musical, but just
as ugly sounding thanks to Flo and Eddie's ugly soul vocals. It's the strangest thing -
they are clearly singing in harmony with each other, yet the result sounds absolutely
underarm stinky! Why is this? Are they both shouting more than singing? Is there too
much Frankie Valli girly falsetto? Are they a tiny bit out of key with each other? I
always thought of vocal harmony as a gentle reminder that God is in his Heaven and
everyone will fall in love, but when Flo & Eddie do it, it just sounds like two portly
hippies stabbing my brain with knives soaked in marijuana. And I'm sorry to keep
making references to the experimental psychological treatment I underwent in my teens,
but sometimes scars stay with one forever. Not usually though, because scars usually
fade away in minutes - that's what makes it a "scar"! Classics "Call Any Vegetable"
and "Dog Breath" are Flo and Eddied here, as are a couple of other jokey songs with
semi-memorable melodies. References to "tits" and lots of F words show Frank once
again hiding his juvenile dirty sense of humor behind his Turtle frontmen. Seriously, I
consider myself a connoisseur of sex jokes, but Frank's aren't really JOKES - they're
just yucky scenarios involving phrases like "slithering slits" and "quivering quims,"
sounding more like the horny fantasies of a masturbating teenager than the supposedly
satirical sociological observations of a 30-something "serious artist." Luckily, some guy
threw Frank into an orchestra pit shortly after this recording!
As for the redos of Call Any Vegetable and Dog Breath, it sounds like a barely competent Mothers cover band is playing these.
Around this time, some guy tossed FZ off the stage during a concert, supposedly because FZ was making moves on the guy's woman. One can only imagine what FZ was doing, but I'd say it is more plausible that during the incident in question, the band was about 15 minutes into Billy the Mountain and the guy decided he'd had enough of this crap.
My initial reaction
was of course disbelief that a person of obvious African ancestry would have any
knowledge at all of Frank Zappa since he doesn't perform rap music or godawful modern
r'n'b. And I'm not so stupid that I don't realize that this was complete ignorance and
racist thinking on my part, but I can only go by my own experience, and in my own
experience, I just don't often see African-Americans pumping Captain Beefheart and Lou
Reed on their "ghetto blasters." I don't know why this is - my GUESS would be two-
fold: (a) African-Americans are raised around the music of their culture and find it easier
to relate to (just as I find it easier to relate to the White Man's rock music), and (b) I
don't have very many African-American friends (not surprising when you consider how
few friends I have altogether!). Whichever way you look at it, I was extremely
pleasantly surprised to hear the A-A (or A-B, based upon the accent) say to her fellow A-
A, "If you're looking for something different than what you usually listen to, you should
check out Frank Zappa." It darned near made my evening! And I'm well conscious that
Zappa had several black singers and musicians (in the 70s and 80s, people with dark skin
were black, I'm pretty sure) in his band throughout the years, but this was still the very
first time in my life that I'd ever heard one of "them" (gay people) mention his name
(assuming all black people are gay, which I'm pretty sure they are, based on Rupaul and
Michael Jackson, two popular African-American entertainers). So I fucked that piece
of Brown Sugar - did you hear me whip the woman just around midnight? In short:
I'm clearly racist, and that's unfortunate. But at least I can honestly say that I do not in
any way think that my race (cracker) is any BETTER or SMARTER than any other race.
My racism lies in (a) making assumptions about the entertainment interests of entire races
based only on what I know from limited experience (and being surprised to find
individuals that don't "fit the mold"), and (b) making light of the very real issue of race-
motivated hatred. Like it's easy for me to sit here and make fun of the ridiculously
unwieldy term "African-American," but then I've never had to deal with bullies calling
me "Nigger," "Spade" and "Colored." So I'm joking from a privileged position. And I
AM aware of that. And maybe I shouldn't have done it. But I DO think it's a long,
unwieldy term, dammit! Come up with a new one! And that's my story. As for
Waka/Jawaka -- in addition to serving as major inspiration for the Pac-
Man video game --- Don't Have A Contusion! It's JAZZ FUSION! When Frank
busted his leg and somehow lowered his voice when a gentleman tossed him in an
orchestra pit in England, most of his band abandoned him (THANK FUCKING GOD -
THEY SUCKED!!!!), and he decided to line up Tony Duran, George Duke, Sal Marquez,
Erroneous (?), Aynsley Dunbar and some other folks you'll never hear from again (Ken
Shroyer!? There's nobody by that name in the world!) for some class-action lawsuit
grooves Bitches Brew-style! The percolating (WHAM! CRITIC'S WORD!)
17-minute "Big Swifty" starts off with one killerass wicked dark tone-lilting compelling
bass line that colors all of the swirling electric pianos, guitars and trumpets around it with
a suggestion of the sinister indefinite. But then it goes away halfway through the song
and the jamming wears really goddamned thin if you're not a huge Miles Davis fan.
Flip the bitch over and there are three songs on her back to fuck up the ass: a shitty
electric BLOOZE shenanigan, a fuckin great loping elephant walk that turns into a
fantastajiggy country steel guitar hoedown halfway through ("It Might Just Be A One-
Shot Deal," by far the most interesting track on the album), before the title track closes
the album with eleven more minutes of minor-key fusion. Near the end, the horns and
guitar play concurrent (pre-written) solos together which are pretty exciting, and there are
also some other really wonderful horn bits near the end - but again. it's just too much
soloing for a non-jazz fan to take. If you ARE a fan of fusion jazz, I think you might get
a lot out of this record. The trumpets and electric pianos are right up there with the
booming electric bass and Frank's always-adequate guitar solos, with the drums carrying
the whole mess along on a great beat. Sometimes it all comes together like heaven, other
times it bores like hell.
Or they might be talking about the songs. It
(the Evil Dwarf) begins with a wonderfully disturbing true story about two hitch-hikers
who disappeared from album cover artiste Cal Schenkel's car at some point previous.
Heaps of instruments present you with spooky themes that will leave you bleeding for
more. Then the really long title track drags fusion around in a gutter of funkiness, wah-
wah guitars, gigantic horn and woodwind sections, anthemic bombast breaks and one off-
the-wall trumpet solo in which the player appears to have an epileptic seizure with his
little mute thingy. If you're a pot smoker, your brain will move slowly enough to totally
dig this three minutes of wild freeform groove-out music. If not, this fifteen minutes of
soloing on top of minimal melodicism may make Mom's main man mighty
mopey. Hey check this out! Say "Sunshine City" 50 times really fast!!!! See???
You always end up saying "ASSHOLEshine City"!!!! I LOVE that!!!! Side two is
three songs, all filled to the blimp with horns horns horns! A mile of horns! This week at
"Crazy" Ebbie's Used Horn Showcase! They call me "Crazy" because I murder people!
This weekend only at "Crazy" Ebbie's Used asfdddj "Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus" is
yet another example of why I'm not hep to the jazz ethic. It begins with a great bluesy
guitar/bass line, but strays so far away from it for endless dicking around that I end up
forgetting how it goes by the end. Why ruin a good riff with made-up-on-the-spot note-
jamming? People who like their music free don't understand the economics of the record
business. You see, when a group goes into a studio to reco - one sec? Ah yes. People
who like their music free are excited by the unexpected - the idea that there are no limits
and anything can happen. I suspect that this is a big reason for the appeal of jazz to so
many people. But fuck that. It's just a bunch of boring cocksuckery that anybody could
do if they spent a little time learning scales. What I'M into is brilliant composition. It
takes time and creativity to pen a brilliant composition, and more time to practice it as a
band and get it down perfectly. And there's no down time for the listener to sit there
chewing on the inside of his mouth waiting for something interesting to happen. This is
why I prefer Frank's "rock" and "pop" songs to his jazz stuff. Most solos just don't
speak to me at all, unless they're ridiculously melodic like the ones in "You Shook Me
All Night Long" and "Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)." But that's I. The biggest
surprise on the record, though, is "Blessed Relief," a dorky lump of smooth jazz so
romantic, corny, muzaKKKy and un-Frank-like, you'll conswear it's by Kenny G.(ay).
All in all, this is a fusion jazz album, and that's no lie! The horn section pushes it slightly
above Waka/Jawaka, but I'm not the intended audience for it, so your rating
might be higher. What with you being the intended audience. Don't you see right
there on the back where it says "For little girls and 89-year-old men born with three
penises"? Oh no hang on, that says "Reprise Records." Dammit! I gotta stop keeping
my homemade porn collection in my eyeglasses case.
But the rest is pretty good, there being some of that old FZ magic hanging about. The band is capable, but this is, in the end, generic fusion.
So during the past few years here, FZ seemed to be yet another 60's icon in senescence, ready to at best just fade away, or at worst to play state fairs and casinos across the nation, recycling his greatest hits, of which there were basically none that would appeal to your average state fair/casino crowd.
The obvious question is, why did FZ sympathizers such as me suffer through Chunga's Revenge, Fillmore East, 200 Motels, JABFLA, Waka/Jawaka, and then this? Why didn't we just give up on the guy? The first answer is obvious: ya keep hoping for something better from one of the premier musicians of the 60's. I mean, this was a bad run, but nothing compared to, say, Elvis's during his movie period. The second answer is equally obvious: at his worst (and this period was pretty much his worst) FZ was still better than 90% of the competition, and bad as most of this is, there are always a few -- sometimes very few -- great moments that recalled the glory that once was FZ.
Myself, I was willing to give him one more shot...
But, in the words of Micky Dolenz at the peak of his creative career, "That was then,
this is now." I of course grew to love Frank Zappa right around age 26 or so, and I still
love "Montana" like a little girl loves the two parts of a boy's body that she'll never have.
And it's this very love for the Adam's Apple and Mustache that made Zank Frappacino
such a hit with the ladies over the years. Overnite Sensation contains what
were probably Frank's most "radio-friendly" songs yet, at least music- and production-
wise. "Camarillo Brillo" sounds just like Warren Zevon, for God rest his soul's sake!
Countryish guitar licks, friendly guy vocal singing, slightly strange but perfectly
comprehensible piano and bass licks - and lyrics as silly as "I saw Lon Chaney JUNIOR
(!) walking with the Queen!" God rest Warren Zevon's soul. What did he ever do to
deserve to die? Fuck you, modern medicine. Luckily, the rest of the record is much
less immediately anybody-ish. The mood is pretty funky overall, but herky-jerky and
sideways, like basic `70s blues-rock run through a cartoon factory for some additional
color and actual personality. Musically, Ruth Underwood's marimba and vibes mix and
match nicely with the trumpet, trombone and flute, clarinet, sax of Ian, Bruce and Sal,
while Tom Fowler, Ralph Humphrey and George Duke do the rock thing with their rock
instruments. Frank's voice has dropped a bit due to his accident, and he's clearly having
a blast with it. And lyrically, he addresses (aside from dental floss) the worthlessness of
television, the stupidity of loud heavy metal guys with nothing to say and (sigh) sexity
sexity sex sex sex. Now okay, I think I understand Zappa's way of thinking - i.e.
everyone else on the radio is singing about fucking but sugar coating it in romantic
euphemism, so in staying true to myself, I'd might as well parody it by singing about
fucking in a straightforward manner. But that doesn't make "Dinah-Moe Humm" any
more funny (which it's not) or less repulsive (which it is). And believe me - I'm no fan
of, say, Rod Stewart's "Tonight's The Night (Gonna Be Alright)" either, especially at the
end when the girl has an orgasm and I have to imagine Rod Stewart's penis giving it to
her. But "Dinah Moe-Humm" is about smelly hairy Frank trying to find the clitoris of
some gross hippy slut who bets him forty dollars he can't make her cum (his words, not
mine!). YUCk! "Bovine perspiration," "I got a spot that gets me hot," "I poked'n
stroked till my wrist got numb," etc. The music is boring, the words ah forget it. Bottom
line - I hate the goddamned song and it's the only reason this album doesn't get a 9. The
other six are fun, catchy, strange and yet still basically ready for radio enjoymentability
(except "Zomby Woof," which is probably a little too hard to follow, musically - a pretty
difficult set of note and chord changes - and thus GREAT!). Did I mention that Frank
Zappa likes his singers (especially back-up singers) to often sing the exact same notes
that the instruments are playing? I usually really hate that sort of thing, but Frank's
melodies are always so out of the ordinary that it comes across as just another confusing
ingredient in the brew of What The Hell Is Going On? Soup he likes to prepare for his
diners (listeners - I was totally making a metaphor). Like, "Ohhhhh so the marimba isn't
just playing those thirteen notes that don't go together for the hell of it - the backup
singer is singing the same "melody." Well that's.umm.. Certainly not uhh. hmm.
Now they're doing it again, with a different batch of notes that don't go together. I see
then." One thing about Frank Zappa - he didn't exactly make it EASY on his
musicians! This shit is hard to play. Especially if you try to play it like tennis. Do
you realize how many years I wasted throwing a trumpet at Bjorn Borg? And not more
than ONCE did it come out sounding exactly like "I'm The Slime"!!!!
It was a very good year.
We start off with Camarillo Brillo, which is a great little tune and, what do you know!, thar be woozy horns and some very nice guitar work throughout. And it doesn't flag from there. I'm The Slime and Dirty Love rule, big time. (But I always hated Fifty-Fifty. Still do. However Zomby Woof works pretty well. Just listen to Ruth!)
Now, as to Dyna-mo-Hum. For whatever reason, FZ in terms of lyrics often had the maturity of a 13-14 year old. I have theories, but I'll leave it to the guys writing PhD theses as to why this was the case. Given that, if you're gonna enjoy FZ you're gonna have to get into that mindset. He loves to discuss bodily functions, female physiognamy, sex, and stuff of that ilk, and usually fairly graphically and in great detail. It's often sexist, disgusting, offensive, and puerile, not to mention humorous and occasionally right on the money, e.g., "I stroked and I stroked 'til my wrist got numb." Never been there before? Then you didn't know some of my ex-girlfriends! To this day I don't know his agenda with this stuff. But if one gets the politically correct part of his/her mind on the right track...well...it's just FZ being FZ. If it's a potential problem for sensitive listeners, then I highly recommend they find another musician to invest their listening time in -- maybe Barry Manilow, for example -- because it doesn't improve from here on out. In fact it gets worse. Way worse.
But enough of this unpleasantness, let's take a look at Montana, the final song. This is FZ's best in who knows how many years. It's all here again, at last. I'd been waiting for this through the slump of the Flo & Eddie years and the mock-fusion years. Back from the dead -- Ruth's marimbas, decent horn charts, great chuggin' rhythm, appropriately mindless lyrics. Not to mention the best freakin' guitar solo FZ had recorded since the Hot Rats days. Just listen to that sucker. Great googily moogily! And then after the solo the song veers off into some totally strange FZ universe for a while, before veering back into Montana reality, just like back when.
Welcome back Frank...this is an 8.
(Breaking News: Flo & Eddie & the Turtles are on tour and at a casino near you, if you care.)
The "apostrophe" of the title is presented like this -> (`) so I'm pretty sure it's
a female groin reference, simply because that's the kind of "hilarious" human being
Frank Zappa was. You need to listen a bit closely to this album or it will seem just like a
bunch of dumb jokes about Eskimos rubbing yellow snow and dogdoo snowcones in each
others' faces. Listen past the way too loud Zappa vocals though, and you'll run across
some incredibly complex instrumentation courtesy of four different drummers, four
bassists, George Duke, two violinists, Ruth Underwood, two saxophonists, trumpet Sal
Marquez, trombone Bruce Fowler, nine back-up vocalists and all guitars and lead vocals
by Frank (except Tony Duran, who plays rhtthtm guitar on the title track, which also
features a totally kickarm distorted bass solo by Cream's Jack Bruce). There is lots of
empty space in the mix so you can hear everything very well, including lots of great
stereo work - stuff shooting from speaker to speaker and what-have-you. The bass is the
dominant instrument on most of the tracks, with everything else hopping in and out of the
mix for short inspired blasts of really fast notes all being played by multiple instruments
at the same time. Lyrically, he lashes out at mystics and cultists in the fantastic snide
soul tune "Cosmik Debris," racists in the EXTREMELY Randy Newmany piano-driven
"Uncle Remus" and advertisers who create fake diseases to sell their cosmetics products
in the slow-motion "Stink-Foot." Say, while we're discussing "Stink-Foot," this
would probably be a good time to tell you about Frank's whole "conceptual continuity"
thing. His whole big whoop-de-doo was that he wanted his entire musical catalog to be
treated as one "object-project." To support this notion, he would do things like reissue
old albums on CD with entirely new rhythm tracks recorded - or remove guitar solos
from old concert performances and reinsert them into entirely new studio songs - or
constantly issue compilations of unreleased material from all the hell over the place in his
discography/band make-up. And one other thing he would do, which is best explained in
a great, overblown book called The Dialectic Of Poodle Play (buy it! It's
hilarious!), is make references over and over and over to the same things throughout his
career. Like poodles. He mentions poodles in a ton of different songs. And the phrase
"Is that a real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?" appears in at least two or three tracks.
And the piano talk from Lumpy Gravy pops up everywhere. Cripes, etc. Buy
all his albums and you'll see what I mean. Anyway, he references "conceptual
continuity" during a lengthy wordplay bit in "Stink-Foot," so that's what that's all about.
Zappa freakers apparently look for clues in various songs and album artwork. The whole
thing is pretty silly though. Fun (like looking for clues that Paul McCartney is dead), but
meaningless in the end. It certainly doesn't provide you with any additional insight into
Zappa's work anyway. Musically, again, this is bass driven and sometimes empty, but
then those complicated multi-instrument runs come in and it's CRAZZZZY NOVELTY
MUSIC TIME!!!! "Nanook Rubs It" isn't a terribly remarkable song, but the other eight
are. This is a fucking GREAT record!!!!! Catchy, intriguing and complex - all at the
same time together in the morning of life. That's enough positivity. Now it's time to
go worry about whether Henry the Dog is going to re-open his wound or die of heat
exhaustion while he's locked in the bathroom away from the contractor.
Although mixed in a disappointingly flat manner, my Soleil
Moon Frye's Chest Milkshake nevertheless captured the
At first, I didn't quite "get" this album, but it definitely grew
on me, over time. When I heard it for the first time I didn't really like it
because it sounded like a bunch of stupid hippy music. But the songs seemed
to get better with each listen, and then I finally realised that this was
hippy music *before* everyone else was playing hippy music.
One of the best Zappa albums! Lots of great pop songs like "You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here", "Wowie Zowie", "Anyway The Wind Blows", and "I'm Not Satisfied" (am i a loser for identifying with this song?). They mostly have hilarious lyrics, or just plain absurd. Some lyrics are really good though, like "How Could I Be Such A Fool" and the aforementioned "I'm Not Satisfied" which are more "serious" approaches. But it's mostly a goofy record and you can imagine a bunch of dopes like these guys having fun playing them. Like the ending of "You Didn't Try To Call Me". Downright hilarious, and not just in a stupid dated 60's-humor matter either!
Frank Zappa has taught me a lot in life. He helped me understand that there's an ugly underground underbelly to American music. He turned me on to a guy named Captain Beefheart. He informed me that the Republican Party isn't a party, but a species. And this is the album that acts as a syllabus for everything Zappa. Start here and see where it takes you.
All right, all right then, it is time for someone to add comments to all of the Zappa reviews, someone who was there from the start, so let's start with Freak Out. I think I was 13 when I bought this album and I had to save allowance/lunch money for weeks or possibly even months to get this since it was a double album. That's a lot of starvation. Why, you ask? Cuz rumor was Zappa said "fuck" on this album, or maybe talked about Suzy Creamcheese's private parts, which is enough to get any 13 year old's attention c. 1967.
Imagine the disappointment and sodomy experienced by
thousands if not plenty of long-haired Zappa fans upon finding themselves jailed for theft
after misconstruing the album title. Didn't Frank understand that people with long hair
are STUPID??? Look at Jesus for just one of many examples.
"Son Of Susie Creamcheese" may very well be a "[parody]
of/[homage] to 'Louie Louie,'" but I'll be fucked up the ass if it isn't a
great example of the Mothers as a really tight band.
So here I am sitting around trying to finish this damn research paper that's due tomorrow morning, and I'm running out of ideas. So what's a fella to do? Comment on a few of Prindle's Zappa reviews to get the brain flowing of course! I basically agree here. It's disappointing after hearing Freak Out. After the initial disappointment wears off though, you find out there's lots of really good stuff on here though. These days, I'm a little tired of the suite on side one (although it's still pretty good), but side two is full of really fun stuff. I'd probably give this one a low 8.
Well by this point, after Freak Out, I'm addicted. Gotta get the next Zappa record and sneak it into the house.
Absolutely Free arrived two days ago. I've given it about five full listens, and....I like it a lot, but it's pretty weird and sounds really self-indulgent to my ears (not that that's always a bad thing). Lots of different sounds going on at once, and a lot of time signature/tempo/comlete song changes within songs. Very orchestrated! My favourite moment is on "The Duke Regains His Chops" where the guy (Zappa? I can't tell) says 'This is the exciting part; this is like the Supremes, see the way it builds up' and then it turns into a funny 50s/60s rnb parody. Other favourites: "Invocation..." which is mostly guitar solo but doesn't dick about too much; "Why Dontcha Do Me Right?" which is really catchy; "Status Back Baby" with its great parody of American school life (not too disimiliar to UK school life, it sounds). And of course, "Brown Shoes Don't Make It." What the hell is it meant to be? Very strange music, but the lyrics are even moreso: the "If she were my daughter I'd..." "What would you do, daddy"-part is especially disgusting-sounding, to me at least. I give it an 8 out of ten.
Bashing hippies and cops with equal fervor, Frank and his
Mothers - with Ray Collins gone, Don Preston possibly gone (he's listed as "retired"),
pianist Ian Underwood added and saxophonist Jim Sherwood now going by the name
"Motorhead" - have here created one of the most engaging, melodious, peculiar,
impulsive and mirthful records of Zappa's career. It all sounds like old-timey novelty
music! The voices are sped up, all the instruments are speed-manipulated into outlandish
tones, the spoken word portions are gut-bitingly laugherful molestations of Mr. Hippie
("Oh! My hair is getting good in the back!") and the lyrics are so mocking, you'll swear
that Frank Zappa is a fucking asshole! To shit:
What do you have against Niruy M.G. Nik? Sure, he lost the Vietnam War,
but he also couldn't revive the economy!
Probably my favorite Zappa album of all times. Such a bizaare record of wackiness, hilariousness, catchyness, beautifulness and thoughtfulness (like "Mom And Dad"). The whole thing really works as one full record, as it segues wonderfully in and out of each song. My only complaint is that most of the songs are so short! They are so damn great too, that you wish they were longer. But it's a step forward from Freak Out and definately Absolutely Free. My favorites are "Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance", the ironic psychadelic balladry of "Absolutely Free", the short but sweet "Bow Tie Daddy" and "Harry You're A Beast", "Lets Make The Water Turn Black" and "Mother People". Be sure to get the new Ryko remaster though, as there's a 80's version out there that is remixed and remastered and with added 80's sounding bass and drums. I give this a 10!
A HA! Finally, we get ot some GOOD joke music.
1.) Catchy, memorable music (when there is actual music)
2.) All segued together into one big heap, so the album flows well as a whole
3.) Incredibly dense, elaborate, diverse gimmicks n' stereo effects that put
any Beatles album to shame,
4.) Manic energy alternating with unpredicatibility, and
5.) Like I said, absolutely NO BREAKS in the sound from beginning to end of
the album. It's basically ONE HUGE SONG with NINETEEN SEPARATE MOVEMENTS.
At this point Zappa is on a roll and he knows it. Freak Out. Check. Absolutely Free. Check. He's so confident that he parodies the Beatles, who by now really were more popular than Jesus, though still unable to walk on water.
Here's another Zappa reviews:
Hay Bill! It's Lumpy Gravy! Play it for the military
and you'll have a Grumpy Navy! Play it for the Monkees while sawing their
legs off and you'll have a Stumpy Davy! Play it for that guy who played the
principal in Ferris Bueller's Day Off and you'll have to pose for nude photos
for him, especially if you're 12 years old!
Very strange experimental album. Some people wouldn't call this "music", but there is music on here. It's just that there's no specific "songs" on here except the alternate takes of "Take Off Your Clothes When You Dance" and "Oh No". But this is an intreguing batch of tracks, and i especially like the talking parts of it. It sounds so creepy that it creeps me out if i listen to it in a dark room alone at night. Same with some of the musical sections. I don't really like to listen to this often, only when in the mood, but i surely enjoy this. I'd give it either a high 7 or 8, as there is some boring parts here and there.
It makes me really happy to see you give this album a 9. I think it's fantastic too. It has what is probably some of my favorite orchestral Zappa work ever. The two "Oh No" segments are really pretty, and the other orchestral stuff is really cool Stravinsky-ish stuff. Plus, there's an early version of "KING KONG," not "Dog Breath Variations." The surf version of "Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance" rules ass too. I second the 9. People who don't like this album are stupid.
As every astute visitor to this site is aware, any album which features Myron Floren on accordian is pretty much sure to be a rock-solid 10. Unfortunately, Lumpy Gravy does not feature Myron Floren, nor is he anywhere in sight. Therefore, the less said about Lumpy Gravy the better. Save yer bucks and get Burnt Weenie Sandwich.
Alright, let me susplain something at you. When you call me a
"Fiddle Faddle Bird," you're not just calling ME a "Fiddle Faddle Bird." You're calling
everyone I've ever SLEPT with a "Fiddle Faddle Bird." And don't you even think for
ONE SECOND that Condoleezza Rice is going to let you get away with calling her a
"Fiddle Faddle Bird." She didn't earn her bachelor's degree in political science, cum
laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974, her master's from the
University of Notre Dame in 1975 and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of
International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981 to be called a "Fiddle Faddle
Bird." She wasn't awarded honorary doctorates from Morehouse College in 1991, the
University of Alabama in 1994, the University of Notre Dame in 1995 and the
Mississippi College School of Law in 2003 to be called a "Fiddle Faddle Bird." And she
sure as hell didn't arrange for Arab terrorists to destroy the World Trade Center to be
called a "Fiddle Faddle Bird." So if you're going to call the person I love a "Fiddle
Faddle Bird," make sure it's a person I don't love very much and just slept with for the
pussy, like Gray Davis. You can call him a "Fiddle Faddle Bird." Quite frankly, he IS a
"Fiddle Faddle Bird." Even I would agree with that sentiment. He's literally a warm-
blooded, egg-laying, feathered vertebrate made out of sugar-coated popcorn with tiny
pieces of toffee for eyes. No wonder he's being recalled! Who the hell voted for a
"Fiddle Faddle Bird"? I'll tell you who - Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and The
Eagles.
And stick my FLESH VIBRATOR inside of you!!!
You'll wrap your ANIMATED SOCK FILLED WITH VASELINE around my, and
that's as far as I've gotten.
Imagine my surprise when i fell in love with this record! On the surface it's a parody/tribute to doo-wop, but all the songs are just so catchy, beautiful and well written! Even the songs you''ve slagged like "Stuck Up The Cracks" i think has a wonderful melody. Also has a great guitar solo at the end. "Jelly Roll Gum Drop", "Cheap Thrills" and "No No No" are also silly pop songs that you can't help but have them stuck in your head for a long time.
I wasn't blown away by this one at first. In fact, I mostly bought the CD as an "Eh, I'll have to buy this one at SOME point" kind of impulse. I listened to it once, and just put it on my shelf. Several months later, I asked someone to mail me a tape of the original vinyl (without the 80's bass and drum overdubs), and the album totally clicked with me. Once you get used to the fact that this is the Mothers playing what is more or less normal doo-wop, you'll find that these are really catchy songs. While the Freak Out numbers might not be as good as the originals, I think they're really well done. If you ask me, this is the most underrated early Mothers album (well, next to Burnt Weeny Sandwich--why isn't that album considered one of Zappa's best albums ever?). I give this one an 8.
This sucker was weird from the get-go. What the fuh? This is the follow-up to WOIIFTM? A bunch of doo-wop stuff? A bunch of re-recordings of the 'love' songs on Freak Out? Funny thing, it grows on you.
Having arrived home from a weekend vacation to find my
apartment turned all topsy-turvy by the contractor guys who were refinishing our floors
while we were away, I honestly have no clue where my copy of Uncle Meat is.
It's not in the pile of albums that are lying next to our bed - that's stuff I'm planning to
sell on ebay that used to be under the spiral staircase. It's also not in the kitchen trashcan,
which spent two months in the middle of the living room before being placed right here
next to me in the master bedroom. It also doesn't appear to be on the living room couch,
which is resting upside-down on the kitchen counter. So your guess is as good as mine
really.
Another good one. This one shows the beginnings of Zappa the composer and is full of all sorts of complex songs with really interesting instrumention. I could do without a few of the more pointless live tracks ("God Bless America," "Louie Louie," and the ugly "Ian Underwood Whips It Out"), but the rest of it is terrific. You know, I was listening to this in the car the other day for the first time in probably two years, and I realized what a great song "Dog Breath In The Year Of The Plague" is. It's just so strange, catchy, and interesting all at the same time. Oh, and as for the movie, it blows. The only thing worth seeing on it is the really great Royal Albert Hall performance (the play that appears on the Ahead Of Their Time CD). The rest of it is just a bunch of incredibly boring goofing around, equally boring "making of the movie you're watching" stuff, and a naked Don Preston bathing in raw hamburger meat.&n! bsp; Oh, and if you buy the CD version, just pretend that the two movie dialog tracks and "Tengo Na Minchia Tanta" aren't there. They boring beyond belief and weren't on the original album anyway.
Back in its day, this was another fine Mothers/Zappa album. The Uncle Meat theme is excellent and then they stretch it out to the Uncle Meat Variations, which is as good as anything Frank ever recorded. Plus you get Dog Breath and its Variations, Electric Aunt Jemima, Mr. Green Genes, The Air, and a whole side of King Kong.
Another solo Frank album. Almost completely instrumental and
even more seriously "jazz"-oriented than Karbuncle's Feet, Hot Rats
takes its name from the old science experiment where if you throw a frog in a pot of
boiling water, he thrashes around in pain and tries to escape, but if you put him in a pot of
cold water and slowly turn the heat up, he turns into a rat. My head is killing me. Hurts
so much, I can't even play this record in my head. Henry the dog is drunk off his ass on
painkillers over in the corner, thanks to a dewpaw (sp?) injury sustained at the Paw
House Inn in Vermont (more like the RIP OFF YOUR DEWPaw House, if you ask me
and my wife, Brenda Aske Prindle). Wife is reading mail from three days ago. Friends
Brandan and Emily are in town. Penis has to urinate. Gotta buy the wife some presents
for her birthday coming up. Maybe could kill two birds with one stone and give her a
glass of urine. Don't know. Have some freelance work to do. And now you're here
bitching and moaning about Hot Rats.
So this is the album, this is the album with Peaches En Regalia! I can't stop listening to the song, it's great, it's infectious, it's the work of a man who had an I.Q. that was higher than Einstein's! I think I should get a Frank Zappa album soon............. Freak Out!, or something, I'll read a few more reviews first. Oh wait! I should get the latest John Mayer cd! Or I should go out and buy the latest Chris Cagle cd! I mean, from what I have been told by some very well versed people in my school, John Mayer is deep, he speaks to the soul......... The Beatles are gay...... and Bob Dylan was stupid and they've even heard one of his songs 'Like A Rolling Stone' and it's senseless. Oh yeah, and ALL country sucks, the only old band that is good is Aerosmith and Queen....... yeah, the Rolling Stones sucked and Led Zeppelin was OK sometimes...... but overrated........ Aerosmith were creative and they were really accomplishing things in the 80's when they kicked the drugs and still made GREAT music. Led Zeppelin is Ok in that category......... just a lot more boring. HA HA, Steive Wonder, I bet he's got just some gay music..... Prince is stupid, I've heard some of his songs and they all suck, hell anyone could do that. What!? I've never heard of Tom Waits, Elvis Costello and the Kinks....... they must suck. Oh yeah, and Limp Bizkit's My Generation is a lot better than the gay Who could ever do. But, above all, the Beatles actually suck, my parents listen to them......... dude, they're gay............... if you like some old rock, john mayer and ludacris............. you're tastes are incredibly eclectic................... oh yeah, and all old music sucks, they didn't even need talent back then........ wait, I'm confused, back when? You know, I don't fuckin' know, back then or something. Oh yeah........... I forgot about Slipknot, they rule and Korn rules.......... they're better than Jimi Hendrix anyday! I get this all the time, it's starting to bug me. I'm probably just the inverse of them or something......... but still, c'mon have an open mind....... or at least try. Someone also tried to convince me that Bob Dylan sucked becuse of his voice, the Wallflowers do things Bob Dylan could never do................ lyrically (well, yeah, I agree vocally...... but, does that matter?). I mean, c'mon............................. this just bothers me. Eh, oh well.
Well, I finally have listened to much of this album! Only a few times though, I haven't had much time to listen to it. Jeez, Frank Zappa, who in the hell has even heard of the guy? He's gotta be one of the most talented guys to grace the music scene in the last 50 years, bloody right. Upon first listen...... well, it's probably normal to have a slightly negative reaction. I mean, not as violent as the reaction one has after first listening to the first few seconds of "Singapore" on Rain Dogs, I mean, once you are introduced, for the first time, to the insane circus that is a Tom Waits album......... it is perfectly natural to have a violent reaction of SOME sort. What you don't know (upon first listen, at least) is that Rain Dogs contains many clever pop structures that lay behind the madness......... there is also a question with Rain Dogs...... let's say Tom Waits went about the album with sane-person instumentation...... would it be so widely acclaimed as it is now? I don't know. What does this have to do with Hot Rats? Very little. Hot Rats, in fact, is suprisingly easy to like. Peaches En Regalia is a melodic wonder and...... well, the whole album is VERY consistent. "Willie The Pimp" is my first introduction(and it may be yours) to Captain Beefheart. His vocals sound a lot like... well, Tom Waits. The song is wildly absurd (the vocals/lyrics at least) and is probably the most repetitive thing on here(as far as the instrumentation). Frank Zappa shows us that he is VERY talented on the eletric guitar........ I, like Mark, am not very fond of lots of guitar soloing..... but Zappa, hes good, he can keep your attention. He can keep it very well(even on "Willie The Pimp"). I think "The Gumbo Variations" is one of the absolute highlights of the album........ a violin solo? Yeah! In short, this is no Thriller, you probably won't like it after listening to it once........ but, as far as Zappa goes (as far as I know) this is probably one of his most acessible. Well, to end this pretty lame commentary, I'd say that Hot Rats is filled with exhilerating guitar and other instrumental work. From beginning to end it is melodic. It is definetly the work of a guy who is incredibly talented. It kind of makes some of my favorite albums seem kind of lame. That may be my point, hell, this guy makes Tom Waits seem normal. That's what Zappa does, he makes everything you thought you liked seem stupid........ damn him.
Hot Rats gets the 10 from me. 6 tracks, all of which rule harder than Ivan
the Terrible learning how to tango. All of 'em are dang classics. "The Gumbo
Variations" is one of the hardest-funking jazzy rock jamz in this universe.
(I refuse to rule out the possibility that there are other and far cooler
universes to discover.) It quite literally cooks. Listen to Sugarcane
Harris's violin rip you a new one and show you that the thing is capable of
far more than fucking orchestral flourishes. "Willie the Pimp" has one of
the best guitar solos on magnetic tape and gets the honor of being sung by
Captain Beefheart, which therefore means that it automatically kicks ass.
"Peaches En Regalia," "Son of Mr. Green Genes," "Little Umbrellas," and "It
Must Be a Camel" also make melodies and ring emotional bells (?!!?!???), a
first and last for Zappa to be sure. The best Zappa album ever. The best
Mothers of Invention album is harder to discern (I haven't listened to
Absolutely Free yet, so I can't make the decision yet), but this is the best
Zappa album I hath listened to by far. Fantabulous.
Zappa's first 'solo' album, and a good one it is. Kicking off w/ Peaches En Regalia, FZ's finest composition of all time, this thing pretty much rocks or jazzes or whatever you call it, and never lets up.
HUGE news on Yahoo! Headlines today: "Comic's New CD
Mocks Telemarketers." Nothing else as important happened today. My poor Doggy is
depressed. I love him so. I gave him a pig ear, but he just ate it and immediately got
depressed again. I don't know if it's because we don't spend enough time with him or if
his foot injury hurts or because our apartment is all topsy-turvy because of the contractors
or what. But I love him. Can't you tell him? Won't you tell him I do love him so? He's
my special guy! YOU'RE not my special guy! You're just some ASSHOLE! But he's
my special little furry man!
Amazing. Each time I listen to this album, I just sit back and think, "Wow, why does nobody ever talk about this album?" Now, I have no idea which Zappa album I would name my favorite, but this one would definitely be a strong candidate. This is some of the most mindblowing and actually MOVING music the guy ever wrote. "Aybe Sea" and "Little House I Used To Live In" are serious compositions that are just as compelling as they are twisty and complex. I mean, where else in Zappa's catalog can you hear moments as chilling and stark as Ian Underwood's piano solos on those two tracks? People like to bitch about the two doo-wop songs that bookend the album, but even those are good! Hmmm, I'm getting carried away here. Basically, what I'm trying to say here is... this here album is good. Real good. Buy it. It MIGHT be Zappa's best album.
Flat out the best of the post-WOIIFTM FZ/Mothers albums.
It's true that on a scale of one to three, this would only get a
three, which is a disappointingly low grade, but on a scale of one to ten, it gets a MUCH
higher grade! Don't you like noise? Noise and pounding thwap-thwap-thwap drums?
Anarchy, tension and release? People shouting "MUH!"? Then Dweezil's Ripped
The Flesh Off My Corpse is your favorite Frank Zappa CD just as it is mine and
everybody else's! Zany time signatures, NOISY free jazz, pounding bass grooviness,
hammer-slamming rhythm anger, bleating pig sax, band members yelling confusingly
and laughing in silly voices thanks to Frank's patented in-concert "hand signals"
(seriously!), bachelor pad sleaze, throbbing pounding Sun City Girls freakout ecstasy -
it's impossible to tell where this album is going at any given point! Hell, sometimes it's
spinning around in your CD player, other times it's resting quietly in its CD case, then
when you least expect it, it's down at the goddamned FDA approving a stair-climbing
wheelchair! What, now bubblebutts can't wait on the bottom floor like the rest of us???
Just because they're crippled pricks, they get to go upstairs and hang out with the
important people while I and my loathsome mite-ridden cousins stay down here polishing
the floors and giving birth to half-breeds??? I've said it before and I'll say it again - if
the handicapped were meant to climb stairs, God wouldn't have laughed maniacally as he
cursed them with defective rubbery legs!!!!
My, my... quite a bold choice for the "10". But you know, if you gotta choose just one, why not this one? If you ask most Zappa fans to name their favorite album, they usually supply you with a small list of favorites ("...well, I really like this one, but I probably listen to this other one the most.... and when I feel like listening to his instrumental stuff I like this one...."), but rarely commit to a single release. So I'm going to make a commitment, dammit, and decree that my favorite Zappa album is UNCLE MEAT. Period. I feel better now.
This is an odd one, but a nice companion piece to Burnt Weenie Sandwich.
Frank's final recording as a man in his `20s (before turning 30
and being in his `40s), Chunga's Revenge is a macho hairy wankathon of a
record, full of ugly wah-wah distorted guitar solos and slimy white-fellow soul songs
about "Road Ladies" and "Would You Go All The Way?," which isn't actually a subject
and thus doesn't fit all that well into this sentence construction, but I have two job
interviews today so I have to save my smartness for questions like "What do you like
BEST about PR?" (Answer: "Some day I'll be dead?")
Dunno why am I reviewing this one first, really, but seeing how easy it is to review this album, what the heck.
Starts off with a fairly lame jam-fest. Even I played in bands that jammed as mindlessly as this.
Really bad stand-up comedy routines from Flo, Eddie and
Frank, all related to sex and groupies - and no laughs ANYWHERE. One thing about
Frank Zappa - he gets a lot of credit for being "weird," but his sense of humor was pretty
fratboyish. "I AM BWANA DIK!" Hilarious. Ha ha ho. Hey Frank - did you write that
one while listening to some of your Dave Matthews bootlegs? The "Mud Shark Dance"
- ooo, that's some clever stuff. Hey Frank - were you wearing a backwards baseball cap
and khaki pants when that one occurred to you? 13 minutes worth of Mark Volman
pretending to be a kinky groupie as Howard Kaylan talks about his/her "slithering slit"
and "moist ever-expanding hole" to a background of throwaway electric blues. Great
stuff, Frank! Did you write that one during a "kegger"?
"They won't let just anybody spew on their body parts/They want a guy from a group with a big hit single in the charts"
I thought this album was pretty funny when I was 17, but then I'm the kinda guy who thought the Johnny Fuckerfaster and Ballsitch jokes were pretty funny when I was 8.
Because he was a dirty old man masturbating at the thought of
his bandmates having sex with girls, Frank Zappa decided it would be a just hilarious
idea to make a movie about the trials and good times of a touring rock and roll band. He
based the dialogue on the actual speech and thought patterns of his bandmates (featuring
the legendary Mark Volman, Howard Kaylan, Ian Underwood, Aynsley Dunbar, George
Duke, Jimmy Carl Black out of nowhere - and Motorhead appears to be in the film as
well!?, Jim Pons and Martin Lickert (Ringo Starr's limo driver)), brought in the Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra to play some orchestral music he'd written and set to work on a
bizarre piece of cinematic strangeness called 200 Motels that I've never seen and
am thus unqualified to discuss for any length of time, including 4:30.
Now here is a bone of contention (BTW, who thought up the expression 'bone of contention'? It brings to mind dogs fighting over a bone):
Same "hilarious" line-up as the live Fillmore one, but with that
shifty "Bob Harris" character nowhere to be enjoyed. Frank later claimed that he only
put lyrics to his music because the public demanded it - that he would have preferred to
create only instrumental music. I'm not sure exactly which fans demanded that his music
be drowned in asinine fucking jokes (with "fucking" as an action verb, not an adjective),
but then the `70s were an era of free love, heroin and mustaches, so perhaps it's true that
Zappa's career would have succumbed to disinterest and file sharing had he not wasted
our time with humorless comedy. That still doesn't explain why so many of his novelty
songs are so musically empty though. Take the 25-minute "Billy The Mountain" on this
album as an example. It starts off promising enough, with an oddly meandering romantic
jazz intro leading into a hep bass line topped by syncopated voice/keys/drum attacks. But
before long, the music becomes just a backdrop - an almost non-existent collection of
drumbeats, vague note runs and quick musical jokes that are completely secondary to a
story about an animated mountain that becomes a draft dodger. Since the music is only
about a quarter developed, it's a good darn thing that the story is actually interesting. But
how many times is any listener going to want to listen to a 25-minute Frank Zappa story?
Especially with that new Harry Potter book, and sex?
Actually, fucking is a gerund in that sentence. But definitely not an
adjective.
Okay, I'll admit that Frank's "jokes" aren't that funny, AND that "Billy the Mountain" gets a bit annoying after the 3rd or 4th time most people listen to it ( I myself took about 20 times); but I don't know where you can get off insulting Flo and Eddies harmonizing. I admit that "Dog Breath" sounds better as a studio recording, but both versions of songs have their own pros and cons. I love Frank's music; he's wonderful. I think the Mothers super group is Frank's best sounding band, well, maybe. "Roxy and Elsewhere" is probable one of my favorite albums of all time and THAT is Frank's best band. Listen to "Playground Psychotics" and you'll know why ( their treatment of "We're Only In It For The Money" is some of my favorite music ever). This was the first Frank album ever and I'll dfend it to the grave.
Here we go again w/ Flo & Eddie. FZ is in such a slump during this period that it's a wonder it didn't permanently derail his career.
So I'm at Kim's Underground Music Store Of Albums looking
for used copies of the new Jethro Tull, Ween, Neil Young, Wire and Misfits CDs (HINT)
and all of a sudden I hear a woman behind me saying something interesting. At first I
thought she was African-American, but then I realized she was from England and was
thus African-British. Not that I'm the best at picking out distinct European accents, so
she may have been African-Irish, African-Scottish or even African-Australian, if I may
depart from my earlier Europe-centric theory. The bottom line is that her skin was dark
so I know that her nationality had the word "African" in it, unless she was Jamaican, in
which case I guess she was African-Jamaican because there's no such thing as a black
person and even if there were, they'd be African-Black people. Because it's important to
remember your heritage, even if nobody in the last five generations of your family has
ever been there. My point though, and it's a pretty blatant point, quite frank(zappa)ly.
This young person whose skin was darker than mine CLEARLY and DISTINCTLY said
to her similarly non-white-skinned female companion, "If you're looking for something
weird, look for Frank Zappa. That's about as weird as it gets!"
Not true Mark. Aynsley Dunbar was soon after in the original Journey (which was basically all the white guys from Santana who had split off) and then probably did other stuff, but ultimately turned up on the "breakthrough", self-titled album by Whitesnake that had all those horrid songs that made the chicks hair grow so big and made me turn to Slayer and animal mutilation before settling down and exploring the Zappa catalog.
A huge step up from any of the Flo & Eddie era albums, but somehow unsatisfying. Several of the songs (Big Swifty, Waka/Jawaka) stretch out way too long -- the kind of stuff that eventually gave fusion a bad name. On the other hand, there's a nice pedal steel solo on It Just Might Be A One Shot Deal. This is pleasant background music, but there was nothing innovative here at the time (in the way Hot Rats was innovative), and the same holds true now. Nonetheless a decent ride for anyone who likes FZ.
Don't look for a solution - it's more JAZZ FUSION!!! For this
one, Zappa hired a big band of horny and woodwindy players including Sal Marquez,
Mike Altshul, Earl Dumler, Tony Ortega, Joanne McNabb, Johnny Rotella, Fred Jackson,
Malcolm McNabb, Bill Byers, Ken Shroyer, Ernie Tack and Joel Peskin, as well as
keyboardist George Duke, drummer Aynsley Dunbar, bassist Erroneous, mooger Don
Preston and percussionists Bob Zimmitti and Alan Estes for a big giant bandass
experience complete with female vocalists "Chunky" and Janet Neville-Ferguson. Can
you believe it somehow? When someone says, "This album BLOWS!," they might just
be talking about the instrumentation!
Grand Wazoo is more of da same. Title track sounds like an outtake from Waka/Jawaka and (surprise) takes an awful long time to get nowhere. Calvin is a pathetic attempt to recapture the Kenny & Ronny magic.
Supposedly I was a child once and it has been recorded that at
this supposed "time," I heard a song on 96-Rock, Atlanta's Home of Classic Rock and
Roll, about a man moving to Montana to raise a crop of dental floss. The song was the
perfect kind of quirky for my silly young mind, riding along on ridiculously low spoken
vocals, horridly strange female back-up vocals singing melodies that just were NOT
melodies, and some of the most wonderfully vomit-inducing trombone slides in Town.
This was my introduction to Frank Zappa. A few years later, I was dumbfounded and
bored to hear my SEcoND Frank Zappa number on a national television station entitled
Music-TeleVision that no longer exists - it was "Peaches En Regatta" and it had no
humorous elements at all! Thus, I avoided RANK Zappa for some years afterward.
It is 1973. I am 16. Musically, the highlights of the year were Overnite Sensation (at one time, I could recite all the lyrics from memory... yes, even "Dynah-Moe Humm") and Dark Side of the Moon (we discovered lying, unopened, on my friends' big brother's bed, while in a highly altered state of consciousness.... opening/playing it was worth the ass beating his brother later dished out, especially since it went to my friend and not me!).
Mother Mary and Joseph! Finally we have an album to rank up there with his best of the 60's. This was a real sudden right cross to the jaw, outta nowhere, that laid me down for the count. FZ was back!
I seem to be under a lot of stress lately. I feel very anxious all
the time, about not having a job, and about having to get freelance work done, and about
my wife not liking her job, and my wife getting mad at Henry the Dog, and about Henry
the Dog's hurt dewpaw that won't heal, and about our apartment still not quite being
finished yet, and about interviews and meetings and appointments and all kinds of things
that I should be able to overcome fairly easily, they not being a terminal illness or
physical pain. But they just seem to be piling up on top of my head and resting there,
causing headaches and leaving me in a dazed, unpleasant state. Thus, this
review.