Frank Zappa - We're Only In It For The Money (1968)

(originally posted on Facebook)

 

If you know nothing about Frank Zappa you're kinda in trouble. Zappa has a huge reputation in the music world but his songs don't make many appearances on the radio or in movies. The amount of music he is responsible for is also daunting (at least 60 albums by the time he died) probably only rivaled by the variety of musical styles he delved into. There's no real Zappa gateway. The man recorded and released music constantly for about 30 years with all sorts of different bands. I've resisted trying to figure out Frank zappa for so long only because I had no idea where to start.

Well at long last The Big List has forced me to sit down and try to make sense of at least one Frank Zappa album. This is one of his earliest releases, the third album from when he was playing with The Mothers Of Invention. The (intended) album cover and title are clearly a knock against The Beatles who had recently released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Zappa has infused his album with his trademark zaniness along with heavy focus on satirizing hippies and politics. The sound is quite revolutionary for the period. Zappa experiments with several recording techinques including recording people speaking near a grand piano to make the strings vibrate.

The intended album cover before the producers got scared of a lawsuit. The final cover was originally the inside cover of the gatefold.

I hate the vocals for the most part. A lot of care has been made composing and arranging interesting melodies and harmonies everywhere except the vocals. Even if it's intentional and Zappa wanted it to sound this way it's hard to get into this album when everyone is doing slightly off kilter or nasally voices. It's too much of a dichotomy for me.

There are a ton of voiceovers and sound effects that distract from perfectly good songs. While listening I find I'll be really into a tune and enjoying the instrumentation when suddenly it will cut out to someone snorting like a pig. Then the song will pick up again like nothing happened. Was Zappa trying to do a serious album or a comedy album? He got stuck somewhere in the middle and I'm not sure how I should feel about what he wound up with. In most cases the music by itself would be wonderful, but with the stupid voices and sound effects it's a disjointed mess. 2 stars... too much goofing around, not enough real music to make up the difference.