Released: 1967
Tracks: Are You Hung Up?; Who Needs the Peace Corps?; Concentration Moon; Mom & Dad; Telephone Conversation; Bow Tie Daddy; Harry, You’re a Beast; What’s the Ugliest Part of Your Body?; Absolutely Free; Flower Punk; Hot Poop; Nasal Retentive Calliope Music; Let’s Make the Water Turn Black; The Idiot Bastard Son; Lonely Little Girl; Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance; What’s the Ugliest Part of Your Body? (reprise); Mother People; The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny.
Best track: too hard, they’re all good. I guess I pick Mother People.
Track to skip: uh, none really. I don’t “get” Megaphone yet, so if you have to, that’s it. It’s still really interesting.
There has already been written so many things about this album, I can’t possibly add more. I can’t talk about the historical significance of it since I wasn’t even alive when it came out. All I can say is that it is a DAMN good album and one you should own. But of course I have to say more about it.
The lyrics of course are superb. Smacking around the Hippies, their parents, every stupid person of the era. Some of Frank’s best lyrics and overall statement. The words to Mom & Dad especially are excellent and they say stuff that just wasn’t talked about much back then. It’s one of the very rare instances of some very visible emotion from Zappa the lyricist.
As a whole, the album is just so damn funny. Just little things he’ll put into in the mix, my fave example being the 2 simultaneous conversations at the end of Flower Punk (which is a lyrical take-off of Hendrix’s Hey Joe). However, THE moment of the album is the little bit of orchestral music stuck in the middle of Mother People. For that 15-second snippet alone, it’s all worth it. Absolutely beautiful. Go buy this thing right now.
Rating: 95
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