Frank Zappa
"Moving to Montana soon, gonna be a dental floss tycoon"
REVIEWS
- FREAK OUT! : Federico's Review / Richard's Review
INTRODUCTION written by Richard Vasiliy
...And now it’s time to speak about one of the most influentive rock-person in history. Frank Zappa – all we know him as the crazy style-mixer, rude joker and antisocial musician who always liked to laugh about “human rules”. But not so much of us know him as very clever composer, excellent guitarist and a really good man (do you know how much talented musicians and artists got help an were provided by Frank?). Unfortunately Frank Zappa has died almost 10 years ago, in November 1993. He was only 53. As usual all the Zappa’s albums were called by the name of Frank and his band Mothers Of Invention, though I think it doesn’t matter, as I think Mothers of Invention = Frank Zappa anyway, because almost all the ideas, tracks and creative thoughts were composed by Frank.
To my opinion, Frank Zappa was the most unpredictable and diverse person in rock-history ever. You hardly can find the style he didn’t use in his albums (those were released by 7 ones per year sometimes and weren’t bad at the same times!), so, if you are going to pick up all the Zappa’s discography, be ready to collect it for a long time, because you’ll have to buy almost 50 albums and “unreleased”-compilations, is it easy for you? :o) So I’m very proud that I have approximately 2/3 of stuff Frank Zappa & Mothers of Invention ever released.
If you never were familiar with Zappa or don’t know his music at all it would be logically to ask “what kind of music Frank & Mothers played?”, but I will answer to you “I dunno”. It means that it takes too much words to describe, because there were blues, jazz, boogie-woogie, progressive, hard-rock, funk, disco, folk, country, psychedely, music and anti-music, singing and voices of madmen, guitar-playing and guitar-imitating-of-donkey-crying, compliments, and insults to listeners, jokes and parodies, Freak-Outs and Eating-Of-Yellow-Snow, etc... All of you need and even don’t need – there were ALL! As usual music-fans prefer his more “listenable” records (I mean those, where are less experimentation and different “crazy things”), but me – ha! – it’s another case (and Frank would be very proud of him knowing that there’s another person who prefers just crazier and “more pretentious” albums by him), I guess that such albums as WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH, TINSELL TOWN REBELLION and SHEIK YERBOUTY are much more interesting and creative than well-known and especially popular FREAK OUT, 200 MOTELS and YOU ARE WHAT YOU IS (gentlemen, who like just these albums, please, don’t take offence on me!). I’m sure that the most creative period by Zappa was in the 2nd part of Seventies.
I think that those who know music much enough and wants to listen something absolutely new – hey! – Frank Zappa & Mothers are just for you! Do you want something heavy and powerful? Ok, listen to ZOOT ALLURES or SHIP ARRIVING TOO LATE TO SAVE A DROWNING WITCH! Something more complicated and experimental? You’re welcome to WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH, FRANCESCO ZAPPA or THE MAN FROM UTOPIA! Something conceptual? Well, 3LPs of JOE’S GARAGE is perfect for this case! Or maybe you are a fan of root-rock. OK, OK, listen to FREAK OUT, 200 MOTELS, BONGO FURY or maybe even HOT RATS. And more, and more... No equal records at all! Join your self with the sea of pleasure with Frank Zappa!
FREAK OUT!, 1966
Overall Rating: 9.5
Best Song: the best parody is Wowie Zowie, the best "serious" song is The Return
Of The Son Of The Monster Magnet.
Worst Song: impossible to tell.
Rock is dead before is born!
Written by Federico Marcon
Let's put apart for a while Edgard Varese, Luigi Nono, Schoemberg,
Stravinsky and Stockhausen (all of them credited in the booklet as "These
people have contributed materially and in many ways to make our music what
it is. Please, do not hold it against them"). The year was 1966, the world
was waiting for the summer of love, for hippies, art-rock, UFO club in London,
psychedelia. A lot of young people wanted to change the world with love and
music, the music itself was going to change, becoming more "serious" and "artsy".
And then Frank Zappa released this album that anticipated all the possible
developements of rock music: psychedelia, folk-blues, avantgarde, silly pop,
progressive, studio tricks, eletronic jamming, dissonance, strings, a lot
of aditional instruments, long suites... wait a moment. Maybe he wasn't the
first to have some of these features, but I think you should think to the
fact that all of them are in some ways, present in this album. But this is
not the most important fact; the most important feature of this album is that
it's a parody. All the genres showed here, are exagerated in some directions
(like the funny and super-mellow choruses on "Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder"),
are funny, comic, and obviously underdeveloped to sound generic and funny.
For instance, "Who Are The Brain Police" is the proof that psychadelia was
already manneristic in 1966! Or "Hungry Freaks, Daddy" is a satire of all
the commonplaces about hippies and the so-called "counter-culture". And it
happened in 1966!
This double album is terrific: here Zappa builds and destroys the musical
languages of the future ten years! He built a counter-culture anthem, a super
conventional silly pop song ("Wowie Zowie"), he explored the mysterious world
of feedback, linking it with the traditional (and already manneristic at the
epoch) pop-rock structure in "Who Are The Brain Police?". He put into parody
all the folk rock stuff with "Trouble Everyday", a folkish song with an amazing
fiddle, completely out of key and rhythm. And then he tried avantgarde, destroying
melodies, looking for dissonances, destroying by pulling to their limits the
musical structures he had experienced in the first part fo the album. Basically,
this album can be seen as a summary of the 60's and also of the early 70's.
And another way to see it could be: the aim of this album is to kill the music,
by showing that all the possible directions are already taken. Uhm, that's
rather extremist, it's better to say that Zappa wanted to underline all the
pseudo-experimentation of those days, showing that all was already discovered,
and a composer has to rely not on surprise but on quality. Ok, I admit this
interpretation could be azardous, but try to reflect about the cachophonic
pianist J. Cage: wasn't his aim to show that the piano (as instrument) had
said all it could have said? If you don't want to be so extremist, think to
this album as a great parody of all the music of the 60's.
Well, until this point, I've said that this album was really groundbreaking,
original and historically important. But it has more to offfer than this.
Ok, it's a parody and a parody is for its definition, generic. And also you
should consider that Zappa wasn't still mature enough, not as guitar player,
not as arranger neither as composer. And despite all he says about Varese
and Schoemberg, it's clear even in the most avantgardist tracks that his main
source of ispiration is rhythm and blues. Well, this is one of the most common
opinion you can find among the reviewers; and I agree, but partially. At that
point Frank had a lot to learn, but he was already good, just think of the
fact that he is able to cover a lot of genres, imitating them in a very precise
way. And among the parodies, there is not a single bad tune, or an unlistenable
track. The musicians aren't so great, but they are very good, and Zappa is
able to insert with gusto other additional instruments, like the tasteful
interplay between piano and xylophone. Or the minimalist and compact guitar
solo in "Hungry Freaks, Daddy". Also remarkable are the funny and cachophonic
choruses of "Go Cry...". The most serious part is constituted by the last
four tracks, the most experimental on here, with a lot of sound collages,
feedbacks, background voices. It's here that Zappa shows all his debts with
Varese & Co. And the tunes are really mindblowing (a.k.a. barely listenable!)
and surely interesting. If you listen to this album it may happen that you
won't listen to other rock music. Get it at your own risk. But get it!
FREAK OUT, 1966
Overall Rating: 7.5
Best Song: TROUBLE EVERY DAY
Worst Song: THE RETURN OF THE SON OF MASTER MAGNET
Written by Richard Vasiliy
The first album of our revolutionary hero (Frank Zappa) was released in the beginning of revolutionary years of music (to my opinion these years are 1965-1974). And this FREAK OUT!-album has proved to be revolutionary too. It was one of the first attempts of rock-psychedely, there’s one of the first more-than-10-minutes-long-song (The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet) on the album and it was the 1st album by Frank Zappa (I think even this fact is revolutionary as it is).
Also the album had more than usual (for the sixties) 35-40 minutes length – it’s more than 50 minutes. So both sides of LP is more than 25 minutes, and, the main thing, these sides are very different to compare with each other (the 1st one is closer to simple mainstream-rock characterized by joyful atmosphere of big-beat and doo-woppy-poppy-boogie, sometimes of parodic mood, but the second one is in contrast darker, with much experiments and psychedelic feeling. Though it’s hard to say what side is more preferable to me, I like both ones. So, anyway, I’m gonna comment this album as two parts of it.
Well, as I’ve already said, the 1st half of the album is more simple and closer to rock-roots, but less diverse, and I hardly can say that it’s very unusual or superinteresting, though the stuff is very good anyway, there are not weak songs at all. I think that I AIN’T GOT NO HEART and HOW COULD I BE SUCH A FOOL are a little bit more diverse and interesting than others. They are pretty moody and has some unusual features (hey, Zappa began his experimentation from the first records!) with rhythm-breaks, using of different new (for early 60s rock music) instruments (I mean different winds, cymbals, some kinds of percussion) and chord-changes. The rest stuff is produced in style of the 1st half of 60s, with much hooks, memorable refrains, the lyrics of big city life, but without solid arrangements they are too simple for my taste (though I like to listen them, especially with good mood or in company with friends). Here I also can admit GO CRY ON SOMEBODY ELSE SHOULDER (with nice bluesy melody), groovy and energetic MOTHERLY LOVE, YOU DIDN’T TRY TO CALL ME (which is rather close to the 1st album of Jefferson Airplane). The side-two is much more diverse. There are 5 compositions of more length, those are influenced by “the-early-developing-avant-garde-ideas of Zappa”. Though the 1st of them (YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING WHY I’M HERE) is closer to the side-one, I think it’s rather relative Rolling Stones (of 65-66), with strong rhythm and powerful sounding. But the next track is absolutely another. TROUBLE EVERY DAY is the 6-minute meditative-rechitative number with cold and dark atmosphere. I even don’t know why I like this song – it almost has no melody, it’s based on simple rhythm-section with constant bass-line – but this damn track is the best here! (And not only me thinks so). The next track is very interesting too. HELP I’M A ROCK is also meditative, it’s based on rhytm-section and the constant repeating of the phrase “help I’m a Rock”, and it’s rocking, or I even may say, it’s “raping”, because by some reasons it reminds me some kind of rap-predecessor (I hate rap more than the biggest enemy, but anyway this song is good). And then the two avante-garde tracks follows. And if the 1st one of them (IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE) could be called as the music based on psychedelic avant-garde and vocal-oriented jazz (by the way, Zappa will use the similar methods for the later albums), the second one is the total mess. THE RETURN OF THE SON OF MASTER MAGNET is not even psychedely, I think it was only some kind of Frank’s sound-experiments and different “effects-fiffects”. Though I think it all shows that Frank had his sense of humour.
I think FREAK OUT! is very good starting point to listen Frank Zappa & Mothers of Invention. And I think this album would be suitable for different people with different tastes, it’s enjoyable, rocking, moody and not complicated, everyone would get a lot of fun listening to FREAK OUT!
IN NEW YORK, 1978
Overall Rating: 7
Best Song: Big Leg Emma
Worst Song: The Illinois Enema Bandit
All the good and bad sides of live Zappa in one nifty package.
Written by Ayoze García
Yet another live album... this one has one hell of a long
history that I don't feel like telling now. Suffice to say that some of the
material was deemed too controversial by Warners, Zappa's record company at
the time, and didn't make into the original release, much to his disgust. The
songs that were released are a rather mixed bag, and the new CD version
almost doubles the playing time, so rejoice, now you can get to hear the album
as it was intended.
There's quite a huge band here: Ruth Underwood, Ray White, drummer extraordinaire
Terry Bozio, a horn section including the Brecker brothers... In his way into
recruiting half of the Saturday Night Live staff, Frank also grabbed announcer
Don Pardo, who introduces a couple of numbers and does a decent job singing
the second verse of "I'm The Slime". Such an unusual line-up can't really conceal,
though, that there's no lead singer. Ike Willis hasn't joined yet, so even Terry
Bozio gets to sing. And man, does he suck (more on that later).
The fine, swinging "Titties And Beer" leads off but soon the band gives up playing
anything other than some pizzicato violin chords and Zappa starts trading lines
with Bozio, who plays the Devil, about how much he wants the two things the
song is titled after. You might enjoy it the first times, but once the novelty
wears off, you'll end skipping all that stupid dialog. That's the main problem
with this album, there's way too much comedy overshadowing the greatness of
the performances. They sure must have had a lot of fun on stage, but I bet you
won't want to put "Punky's Whips" and "The Illinois Enema Bandit" too often
on your record player. The former features the singing talent of Terry Bozio,
and his awful quavering further evidences the triviality of the song's plodding
structure (I'm sure Zappa could have managed something good out of this garbage),
while the later boasts some deadly sick humour and, after starting as a smoking
blues with superb vocals by Ray White, drags for thirteen minutes. The
end is especially embarrassing, with Frank playing the fool and poking fun at
ex-Mother Roy Estrada. Even if the first disc has two great instrumentals ("Cruising
For Burgers", an extended, maybe a trifle too much, take on the Uncle Meat
tune, and the twisted nightclub muzak "I Promise Not To Come In Your Mouth"),
it's better to stick to the second.
Now this is better: a cool, brassy "I'm The Slime" (it's funny to hear how ole
Frank deals with a chorus originally sung by the Ikettes), a pleasant "Pound
For A Brown", some weird atonal noise ("Manx Needs Woman") and... two different
versions of "The Black Page"! The first develops from a mighty drum solo and
showcases, in my opinion, Zappa's most successful use of polyrhythms. And then,
for all the dumb kids out there, he presents us it again rearranged as to sound
as DISCO, in the "easy teenage New York version". Who else but Frank could have
done that? However, I'm not too fond of the overlong "Purple Lagoon / Approximate"
closer, as it has a dull guitar solo, one of the many overdubs that make this
album perfect technically-wise, but also prevents any excitement. In any case,
if you can afford to buy In New York only for the second CD, this might
be the live Zappa album you're looking after.
YOU ARE WHAT YOU IS, 1981
Overall Rating: 8.5
Best Song: Harder Than You Husband
Worst Song: Dumb All Over
Mostly excellent pop-rock satire. Way to go, Frank!
Written by Ayoze García
Originally conceived as some kind of follow-up to Joe's Garage (act IV?), You Are What You Is is perhaps Zappa's most focused and consistent song-based album since We're Only In It For The Money. Two LP's, twenty songs and relatively few misfires: "Theme From The Third Movement Of Sinister Footwear" is not one of his best instrumentals and "Dumb All Over", no matter how thought-provoking (and funny!) the lyrics are, consists in just a recitation over some extremely dull backing, while Frank lowers and distorts his voice so much it's annoying (what's that, the return of the Central Scrutinizer?). "Mudd Club" has the same problem, well, at least there's also a part with a memorable melody. But by when he rips-off that groovy "When The Music Is Over" keyboard line in "If Only She Woulda", I've already forgotten all about that, because the amount of great music is overwhelming: he successfully parodies gospel ("Heavenly Bank Account"), country ("Harder Than Your Husband"), heavy metal ("Any Downers"), blues ("Suicide Chump"), reggae ("Goblin Girl"), 50's rock ("Society Pages")... and often comes up with unclassifiable genre cross-overs like "Jumbo Go Away" (hard rock meets 20th century classical music?), tied together with wacky transitions and unexpected narrative shifts (conceptual continuity, you see). The streamlined 80's production ensures that this is one of his most accessible records, but there are plenty of bizarre elements as well: sound effects, startlingly complex canon-like vocal codas, and ever-changing, arresting melodies ("I'm A Beautiful Guy"). Oh, and the social commentary has hardly been this sharp and pointed since the old days. Not the best choice overall for those interested in Zappa's virtuosity at the guitar (although, granted, many songs feature crunchy riffs and speedy solos) or in his merely compositional skills, You Are What You Is is nevertheless a great album showcasing his talent for crafting catchy rock with hilarious lyrics.
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READER COMMENTS
Paul Kaye, 30/08/02, 20/05/01
I would reverse your best/worst song judgment of this album - dumb all over is one of the most urgently compelling and intelligently sarcastic pieces of music I've ever heard. Still frightening relevant twenty years on. And harder than your husband is just country music - which I don't like anyway. I suspect you like it for the toilet humour lyrics - yes, they're funny, but they don't make it a good song.
Paul Kaye
Belgium
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