I don't think I have ever listened to a single Frank Zappa album in my life. I've heard of Joe's Garage but I have no idea what it might sound like. Friends of mine think Frank Zappa was a true genius. Based on what I've heard in conversation, I get the feeling it's going to be too avante garde or experimental for my patience but I'm going to keep an open mind. He apparently released over 300 albums before his death so it's in my interest to like this as it will give me a nice, juicy catalogue to pursue.
It's a double album, which makes me nervous. Having sufficient material to fill 4 sides of vinyl is not enough to justify recording a double album. The material needs to be of consistent quality with the best songs you intend to include. Anything that doesn't meet your best should be tossed or used as B sides.
Blonde On Blonde was the first (rock) double album by a week followed by this. Blonde On Blonde wasn't worth cutting down to a 7 inch single let alone a single LP and I really hope there's more to this than funny titles.
Case in point: Hungry Freaks, Daddy. The opening track explodes onto the aural landscape with urgent pace and the tambourine used like closed high hat and a fat bass line playing a line reminiscent of the Stones' Satisfaction in unison with a tightly distorted guitar. I'm on board. Even when the almost-spoken vocals start, I am still engaged because he's double-tracked it and makes it interesting. By the next section though, it becomes clear this is a distraction technique. On its own the vocal would be quite poor. As soon as the "singing" gives way to the instrumental sections, things improve again. There is some great guitar work and I can even put up with the cazoo at the end of each turnaround but it's novel at best.
I Ain't Got No Heart is a more traditional title but it's a kung fu B movie soundtrack interrupted by the same atonal political whining. Painful, yes, but evidently there was worse to come.
Who Are The Brain Police is the sort of track that would be really funny if I was on acid. During my experimental phase I would've even tried to like this. It's got a very odd melody, which I'm sure I could explain if I concentrated hard enough. But who wants to listen to music you have to explain? It's unpleasant already but then goes into an arrhythmic, reverb-soaked playout section that has me reaching for the scissors. Thankfully, it ends before I start to look like Snake Plisskin.
The next few songs seem to return to this planet, or at least to the solar system. They're accessible rhythm-wise, the voices are singing melodies and if the arrangements are weird then it serves to separate them from how they would have sounded if produced by the Soul and RnB engineers of the time whose genre these closest resemble.
Wowie Zowie bounces along in a poppy kind of way, every so often declaring "I don't care if you brush your teeth" and then we're back to popular styles in a hall of mirrors.
That's what it is. Every few songs there is something utterly alien like "You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here" and then there is what must've been a song at some stage distorted and blurred and Pollack speckled with random instruments and effects.
It's evenly distributed between senseless excrement (Help I'm A Rock for example) and satirised pop but the melodious, accessible stuff isn't nice enough to counterbalance the fucking hideous racket interleaving.
The last twenty minutes of this album are just agony.
For the first minute and 20 seconds of It Can't Happen Here you get random vocal noises, clicks and the title phrase repeated. Then a drum beat sort of comes in for a bit and then we're back to the vocal crap. It's like somebody left a few wooden spoons and empty biscuit tins in a psych ward and left the tape running. But there was still worse to come.
The Return Of The Son Of The Monster Magnet, the remaining twelve minutes of what was a promising album for 8 bars, is pure SDT. That's Sensory Disorientation Treatment if you're not a fan of 24.
It begins with the words "Suzy? Suzy cream cheese?" and so heralds the start of something that made me truly wish I had never started this project.
Frank Zappa may have been gifted as a child but in the pursuit of frontiers, he lost sight of what was important. This isn't entertaining, it's torture. I'm trying to imagine somebody listening back to this inexcusable shit in the studio. Of course, he produced the record but even so.
In Rain Man, Raymond farts in the phone box and Charlie exclaims the question "How can you you stand that?" I guess a visiting producer could ask the same question of Frank Zappa.
How. In the FUCK. Can ANYONE. Stand. This. Shit.
No word of a lie, they are playing the SPOONS and repeating the words "cream cheese" over and over again. And now playing that back sped up by a factor of 4 or 5. For TWELVE minutes!
Remember what I said in the beginning about justifying the length of the album? Yeah. This could've been an inventive, ground-breaking, maybe even inspirational 35 minutes of actual music. Instead, I feel a responsibility to not award even the two stars I was going give this so that I don't unwittingly lead you to walk onto the blade of this mindless cunt fudge.
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