1. Freak Out.....one of the most ambitious debutsd in rock history, Freak Out! was a seminal concept album that somehow foreshadowed both art rock and punk at the same time. It's four LP sides deconstruct rock conventions right and left, eventually pushing into territory inspired by avant-garde classical composers. Yet the album is squenced in an accessibly logical progresion, the first half is dedicted to catchy, satirical pop/rock songs that question assumptions about pop music, setting th tone for the radical new directions of the second half. Opening with the nonconformist call to arms "Hungry Freaks, Daddy" Freak Out! qickly posits the Mothers of Invention as the antithesis of teen-idol bands, often with sneering mockeries of the teen-romance songs that had long been rock's commercial stock in trade.Despite his genuine emotional alienation and dissatisfaction with pop conventions, though, Frank Zappa was actually a skilled pop composer, even with the rawperformances and his stinging guitar work, there's a subtle sophisticaton apparent in his unrthodox arrangements and tight, unpredictable melodicism.
2. Absolutely Free.....Frank Zappa's liner notes for Freak Out! name-checked an enormous breadth of musical and intellectual influences, and he seemingly attempts to coer them all on the second Mothers of Invention album, Absolutely Free. Leaping from style to style without warning, the album has a freewheeling, almost schizophrenic quality, encompassing everything from complex mutations of "Louie Louie" to jazz improvsations and quotes from Sravinsky's The Rite of Spring.
3. Weasels Ripped My Flesh....a fascinating collection of mostly instrumental live and studio mateial recorded by the original Mothers of Invention, complete with horn section, from 1967-1969, Weasels Ripped My Flesh segues unpredictably between arty experimentation and Traditional song structures.
4. We're Only In It For The Money....from the beginning, Frank Zappa cultivated a role as voice of the freaks - imaginative outsiders who did't fit comfortably into any group. We're Only In It For The Money is the ultimate expression of that sensibility, a satirical masterpiece that simultaneously skewered the hippies and the straights as prisoners of the same narrow-minded, superficial phoniness. Zappa's barbs were vicious and perceptive, and not just humorously so, hhis seemingly paranoid vision of authoritarian violence against the counterculture was borne out two years later by the Kent State killings. Like Freak Out, We're Only In For The Money essentially devotes its first half to satire, and its second half to presenting alternatives. Despite sme specific references, the frst-half suite is will wickedly funny, since its targets remain immediately recognizable. The second half shows where his sympathies lie, with character sketches of Zappa's real-life freak acquaintances, a carefree utopia in "Take Your Cloths Off When You Dance," and the strident, unironic protest "Mother People." Regardless of how dark the subject matter, there's a pervasively surreal, whimsical favor to the music, sort of like Sgt. Pepper as a creepy nightmare.
5. Joe's Garage...Acts I, II, & III....Joe's Garage was orignally released in 1979 in two separate parts: Act I came first, followed by a two-record set containing Acts II & III. Rykodisc's reissue puts allthree acts toether on two CD's. Joe's Garage is generaly regarded as one of Zappa's finest post-60's conceptual works, a sprawling, satirical rock opera about a totalitarian future in which music is outlawed to control the population. .
BQ:
Joe's Garage, Absolutely Free, and Over-Nite Sensation.
Songs would be, Bobby Brown, Catholic Girls, and The Torture Never Stops.
take care
dave
