The Mothers of Invention: Freak Out!
Saturday, June 7, 2023
I have been avoiding Frank Zappa and this album Freak Out! for 56 years. I have been curious, but something about the Frank Zappa character (at least in the media) puts me off. Also, I have friends who insisted that Zappa is a genius, which was also a turn-off. I have heard some of his work on the radio here and there, and I remember seeing him and the original Mothers in a concert as a child. I didn’t like it. The whole Zappa experience was bitterness, anger, and juvenile humor. When you get down to it, Zappa was not elegant. And his band, including Frank, in the height of 1966, wore hair on their chins or had mustaches, and not in that cool Ron Mael way, but in that Hippie mode. And it’s not the Hippie-love thing, but more of an angry Hippie, which is borderline fascistic. Their humor is bully-like and full of resentment. Why is he so angry?
With that in mind, 56 years later, I finally purchased a used copy of Freak Out! to confront my hatred or prejudice. I felt terrible that there was resentment on my end for an artist I had never heard a whole song. First of all, I was expecting something crazed or underground. The Mothers of Invention, circa 1966, are very much song structured, and to my ears, borrow a lot from the music of that year, as well as having their experimental side, but not aggressive like The Fugs or the Velvet Underground. The Fugs get in one’s face, and The Velvets are decadent, but The Mothers sound very 1960s Wrecking Crew-like in a Los Angeles recording studio in their music-making approach. All the songs are beautifully arranged with nice vibraphone touches and exquisite piano work, among the other instruments. I hear traces of The Rolling Stones in their guitar riffs, but with perhaps greater sophistication.
Zappa was a fan of the great 20th-century composer Edgard Varèse, which is a good thing, and I can hear traces of his music on the long, which takes one side of the disc, The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet, which I have to admit is pretty good. It reminds me more of the German band Can than Varèse, but that’s OK. Art doesn’t exist in an airless container, and when I listen to this album, I feel like I hear the sounds of 1966 expressed in all their glory. The beauty of Zappa is that he can take doo-wop and share it with certain aspects of the avant-garde, with a sophisticated garage rock stance. What I don’t like are the parodies and the humor. The whole counter-culture vibe turns sour around this point, and Zappa, who was pretty straight in that world, exposes a disappointment in that landscape that comes off bitter.
One song here is a masterpiece: How Could I Be Such a Fool? I suspect that Zappa wrote this song when he was a teenager because it captures the angst of a youth lost in love. Or, it may have been written in the 1960s as a tribute to that type of song, but it’s great.
They appeared on his private record labels, Bizarre/Straight, where his first release was The Berkeley Concert of Lenny Bruce, along with Alice Cooper, Beefheart, The GTO's and Wild Man Fischer. Frank also produced Grand Funk Railroad's best album, not necessarily the best selling one however.
Good make up test. I too am among those who feel that Frank, and his childhood pal Don Van Vliet, were geniuses, their music still sizzles, especially the mutually concocted Captain Beetheart experience, via Trout Mask Replica. The only downside to frank was his somewhat snotty arrogance, but on the Mothers album Reuben and the Jets, they created some of the most exquisitely surreal faux doo-wop in history, especially in tunes like The Air, but its his later, more "serious" material, such as The Perfect Stranger with Pierre Boulez, and later, The Yellow Shark, with Ensemble Moderne, where he showed us his true brilliant atonal genius. And also, we can never forget that he was the producer who brought us The Shaggs.