The 500 - #246 - Freak Out! - The Mothers of Invention

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #246
Album Title: Freak Out!
Artist: The Mothers of Invention
Genre: Experimental Rock
Recorded: TTG Studios, Hollywood, California 
Released: June, 1966
My age at release: 1
How familiar was I with it before this week: A little

Is it on the 2020 list? No
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Trouble Every Day

Preparing for my weekly blog, I like to listen to the featured record as often as I am able. This frequently means arriving at my classroom early to listen to the album while organizing the day’s lessons.

The last two weeks, the records have been unusual, dissonant and experimental ventures from jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman to acid rock legends Grateful Dead. Coincidentally, a Teacher Candidate from Western University who has been working with our class, politely put up with my cacophonic approach to education reverberating through our portable classroom.

In fairness, I encouraged her to play some of her favourite music, too. The happy byproduct was that my appreciation of Taylor Swift expanded. I also encountered the music of folk-pop artist Noah Kahan, who is worth checking out. His sound reminds me of the Denver alternative rock band, The Lumineers.

Folk-Pop artist Noah Kahan.

I hoped to give her a break from challenging music, but this week's selection of #246 on The 500 is perhaps the most bizarre sounding record on the entire list. Freak Out! was the debut album of The Mothers of Invention, featuring the legendary Frank Zappa. It presented a collage of blues, psychedelia and a variety of rock styles, filled with intelligently used parody, tinged with black humour and loaded with social commentary. Ironically, beneath the comedic weirdness of many tracks are lyrics that tackle important issues such as depression, alienation and love.

It is the second of two records on The 500 list from "The Mothers". In October, 2022, I wrote about their third record, We're Only In It For The Money. In that post, I share a brief history of the band's formation and sound as well as some biographical information on Zappa.

I am always fascinated by the quirky collaborative nature of art. One artist can inspire another's art and, later, that art can then inspire the work of the former. For example, We're Only In It For The Money was composed, in part, as a satirical commentary on The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (#1 on The 500). Interestingly, The Beatles’ Paul McCartney has made it clear that Sgt. Pepper took inspiration from Freak Out!.

Zappa has eluded description. Many simply see him as a weird, novelty musician. However, to those who know him better he is a composer who dabbled in everything from rock to classical music, a guitar virtuoso, a band leader, a political commentator and a razor sharp satirist. As I’ve mentioned previously, I embraced his music as a teen because it hit the same absurdist funny bone that was the hallmark of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Steve Martin stand-up, and Mel Brooks movies.

In high school, my friends Paul Dawson and Steve Mackison were also fans of Zappa and The Mothers. Steve introduced me to one of my favourite Mothers’ records, Over'Nite Sensation and Bongo Fury. However, it was with Paul that my appreciation of Zappa grew. Paul had a significant collection of the group’s records, including Zoot Allures, which truly floored me because of the superb guitar work on the album.

I finally got a chance to watch the excellent 2020 documentary Zappa from director Alex Winter (See the Trailer here). Most people would recognize Winter from his acting career -- particularly his role as the titular slacker Bill in the ‘80s teen comedy, Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure. However, Winter has become a powerhouse documentarian tackling a wide range of topics, including the dark web, child actors and the perilous impact of YouTube on our society.

As I watched Winter's documentary and heard the accounts of Zappa's dismissive, self-centred behaviour with his bandmates it would be easy to dismiss him as an egotistical jerk. However, Ruth Underwood, who played with Zappa from 1967-1976, frames the relationship differently. She surmised he was just single-mindedly obsessed with his music. As with some other music geniuses (Mozart), music was constantly being composed in his head. Mozart had to remember it; Zappa was desperate to get it recorded. In his short life, he released 62 studio records, but also recorded hundreds of live shows and jam sessions at the studio and in his home.

Ruth Underwood playing with Zappa's band.

Zappa painstakingly collected and preserved everything he recorded. His output was kept in a massive, temperature-controlled room, dubbed The Vault, beneath his Laurel Canyon home. When the home was sold in 2016 to Lady Gaga for a reported US $5.5 million, the vault was emptied and moved to a storage facility owned by the Zappa family. In 2020, Winters worked with Zappa's son, Ahmet, to launch a crowd-funding campaign to digitally preserve the material  before time degraded the analog recordings. Their efforts were successful and the vault has been moved to a digital cloud -- something I am sure would have fascinated and amused Frank. In 2021, Gaga sold the home to Mick Jagger's daughter, Lizzy, for US$6.45 million -- a tidy profit after only five years.

My teacher candidate is working with our class for two more weeks and, no doubt to her relief, a little less musical weirdness is on The 500 agenda. Upcoming next week is more conventional rock and roll standards from Jerry Lee Lewis. Album #245 is All Killer, No Filler: The Anthology.