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.

The 500 - #297 - We're Only In It For The Money - The Mothers

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: #297

Album Title: We're Only In It For The Money

Artist: The Mothers

Genre: Experimental Rock, Acid Rock, Satire

Recorded: Three studios in Los Angeles, California & New York City

Released: March, 1968

My age at release: 3

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:  Who Needs The Peace Corps?

My first record collection belonged to the London Public Library. I was fourteen when I moved to the Southwestern Ontario city and discovered that the Central Branch of the municipal library system had an entire section dedicated to vinyl records and eight comfortable listening booths available for free.

Where my earnest foray into music and comedy began.

The library's collection was impressive, and many contemporary rock bands were represented. More surprisingly, there was an extensive comedy section. Already a fan of Monty Python, Steve Martin, SCTV and Saturday Night Live, it was among these stacks that I first heard records from legends such as Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Gilda Radner and The Goon Show.

Four of my favourite comedy discoveries at the library

It was also among these stacks that I first saw a Frank Zappa record. It was Act I of his three-part rock opera Joe's Garage and, initially, I mistook it for a comedy album. I wasn't entirely wrong; there are numerous absurd and humourous elements throughout it, including provocative and titillating song titles such as: Catholic Girls, Crew Slut, Wet T-Shirt Nite, and Why Does It Hurt When I Pee? The album cover features Zappa holding a mop with his face completely painted black -- which I found weird and intriguing. Through the social lens of today, it was an unfortunate portrayal.

Joe's Garage album cover

Zappa was a provocateur and outrageous. Those familiar with Zappa's career know he has no history of racism and that, in the context of 1970s’ society, he was just being silly.  Additionally, some claim, weakly, it is not "blackface", but engine grease (ostensibly from Joe's Garage) smeared on his visage. Moreover, his lips are not painted and he is not mugging comically to the camera like the Minstrel performers of the 19th and early 20th century. Granted, it doesn't help that the "Joe" character in the rock opera is voiced by Ike Willis, a black guitarist and singer in Zappa's band.

Two white performers in blackface for a Minstrel Show

Regardless, hearing Joe's Garage for the first time on those library-owned headphones was an overwhelming and wonderfully confounding experience for my teenage brain. Instinctively, I knew I had stumbled onto something special. It was as if the universe had provided me with a puzzle that I needed to solve. I had so many questions, the most pressing of which was: "Who is Frank Zappa"?

The unconventional Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 21, 1940, to Sicilian immigrants. When he was 12, the family moved to southern California and he joined the high school band as a drummer. It was during this time that he became passionate about music and sound. His earliest influences ranged from black rhythm and blues guitar rock and doo-wop to modern composers that included Igor Stravinski and Anton Webern. He was also fascinated with avant-garde composers, particularly Edgard Varese, who created dissonant sound experiments.

Edgard Varese, known for dissonant sound experiments

Varese's influence, which emphasized timbre (tone quality) and rhythm above melody, is evident in many of Zappa's compositions. In fact, in 1963, long before the release of his first record, Freak Out! (#246 on The 500), the 22-year-old Zappa appeared on the television variety program, The Steve Allen Show, to demonstrate how he composed using a pair of drumsticks, a bass violin bow and a bicycle. You can see the video here.

The magic wrought by drumsticks, violin bow and bicycle wheel demonstrated by Zappa on the Steve Allen Show, 1963

In 1964, Zappa replaced the guitarist in an established R&B band called The Soul Giants and the group rebranded themselves as The Mothers of Invention. Zappa became bandleader and co-singer. The group built an audience playing in Los Angeles’ underground scene and Zappa's predilection for sonic experimentation began to infiltrate the band's sound. In 1966, their first record, Freak Out!, was released. The Mothers were backed by an orchestra of 20 additional musicians, including cellists and a full brass section.

Album cover for Freak Out! (1966)

We're Only In It For The Money, was the third release by The Mothers. Featuring 18 musicians, it is a concept record that satirizes left and right wing politics, describing both sides as "prisoners of the same narrow-minded, superficial phoniness". The themes work as well in today's political climate as they must have in 1968. The thin-skinned, perpetually stoned hippies of Zappa's era have been replaced by overly-woke, endlessly offended hipsters of today.

1960s hippies have somewhat morphed into 2020 hipsters

The right wing targets of Zappa's sardonic ire – insincere corporations and police officers who unreasonably resort to acts of hyper-violence – fit well into a criticism of the social milieu of the sixties or these twenties.

Police arresting protesters in San Francisco (1968)

The cover lampoons The Beatles who had just released their magnum opus, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Zappa felt that the British band's embrace of peace, love and harmony was less sincere than it appeared. He believed The Beatles were more a corporate product than a band and that Sgt. Pepper was more about money than about social change.

Sgt. Pepper & We're Only In It Covers side by side

After Zappa conceived the cheeky parody photograph, he reached out to Beatle Paul McCartney to request permission to lampoon their iconic cover. McCartney declined, suggesting  it was "an issue for business managers" -- ostensibly supporting  Zappa's contention.  Thus, when the first edition of We’re Only In It For The Money was released by the production company, Capitol Records, it nervously put the parody cover on the inner sleeve. An alternative cover was requested  by Capitol and Zappa opted for an image of himself and three of The Mothers looking intentionally bland, dressed in women's frocks.

First version of the album cover for We're Only In It For The Money

Back in 1980, when I was filled with teenage anxiety and was uncertain about my place in the world, I kept my appreciation of Zappa a secret. It wouldn't be until the autumn of 1981 that I would become more public about my Zappa fandom. That was when I met two unabashed Zappa fanatics -- pals Paul and Steve (both of whom have been featured in previous posts). They had, to my envy, attended a Frank Zappa concert at the local hockey arena the previous November. I knew about the show, but chose not to attend it. It's a regret I still have today and, since Zappa's premature death from prostate cancer in 1993, it is a missed opportunity I can no longer rectify.