Customer Reviews
Classic Zappa
Especially WPLJ, a good remake of a 50's era song. Classic Frank Zappa. Zappa is as usual innovative. A good Zappa classic for your collection.
A Perect Mixture of Instrumentals & Doo Wop
how good is this album? well, it's easily one of the most pleasant 41 minutes of music ever recorded. "Burnt Weeny Sandwich" is one of the early masterpieces by Zappa's first lineup of the mothers of invention. it is actually a better album than the follow-up "weasels ripped my flesh" which, sadly, gets more attention than this album in many rock magazines & music articles because of it's awesome and hilarious album cover. don't get me wrong, "weasels" is a damn good album but i won't get into explaining why in this review (see the separate "weasels" review for that stuff) but here's what to expect when you listen to this opus of musical brilliance:
the opening track "WPLJ" is actually a cover of an obscure doo wop song about a unique beverage that is allegedly very refreshing. the ingredients needed to make this tasty concoction are White Port (wine)and Lemon Juice. . WPLJ!! although i never heard the original version, i will assume that zappa's version is more enjoyable to listen to. zappa sings lead vocal on it, an activity he'd temporarily abandon for the most part when Flo & Eddie were to arrive 2 albums later. such a catchy toe-tapper and a great way to open up an album.
for the next 35 minutes or so, there is nothing but instrumental music for your listening pleasure. this is not experimental musique concrete bu carefully written, organized and performed pieces of various styles.
"igor's boogie phases one and two" is Zappa's tribute to one of his musical idols, Igor Stravinsky.
"Holiday in Berlin and its overture" is one of Zappa's signature instrumental songs. It's name perfectly suits the music that belongs to it and you will notice this when you listen to the short overture. It has a feeling of ethnic pride to it and you can just imagine hitler and his nazis proudly marching to it at one of their nurenburg rallies. Zappa probably imagined it that way too and titled it holiday in BERLIN.
holiday in berlin actually has some words to it that were sung later on by Flo & Eddie during their period in Zappa's band (1970-71) but you won't hear the lyrical version on any main zappa albums. you'll have to go to the official bootleg set "beat the boots" to hear it. it's okay but not as powerful as the instrumental version heard here.
"Aybe Sea" (pronounced A-B-C) is a marvelous re-creation of a sea-shanty (old songs that were sung while on-board ships) that starts out quite happily and then concludes with a chilling piano solo that will put goose bumps on the arms of anyone who listens to it.
the album's "theme" has a fast and memorable guitar solo & riff in it that demands to be put on repeat for atleast an hour.
"the little house i used to live in" starts out slow but then soon picks up with awesome guitar playing and a long electric violin solo that is reminiscent of the one heard on "Hot Rats. "
alas, "valerie", another doo wop cover song, closes the album. it's more similar to the awesome doo wop tunes heard on "cruising with ruben & the jets" than the doo-wop opener "wplj. " Zappa also sings lead vocal on this doo wop tune as well.
all in all, it is hard for any true Zappa fans to criticize this album.
"The little house I used to live in
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35 years on, I can't get tired of it
But somehow, between about 1967 and 1969 he managed to hold together a bunch of good-enough players to make a series of albums that defy time. FZ was, by all accounts, a terrible man to work for. They concide with FZ's own growing mastery of multi-track recording, but come before he fell in love with the idea of getting super virtuoso players who, although they could play more notes than this crew, lacked character.
Don't mistake me: the band on this album could sure play. Ray Collins' cheesy vocals, Jimmy Carl Black and Artie Tripp on drums, Roy Estrada on bass, the Gardiner brothers on wind, the delicate Ian Underwood on keyboards and sax, Don Preston, Jim Sherwood - but if you don't want to get into the Zappatist subculture you don't have to.
You will be beguiled by the opener - WPLJ - a bit of doo-wop fluff that nowadays hangs in some strange space and time continuum of an imagined 1960s hispanic district, but that's only to lull you into acceptance of what follows. Disjointed marches of clarinet and cymbals, munchkin trotting harpsichord, guitar boogie with the wah-wah pedal, farting sax and bicycle horns - they create a landscape of sound that has moments of familiarity before darting off in some new direction.
As another reviewer has said, the BIG piece is Little House I Used to Live In, which, in the world of vinyl, opened side 2. I can't say it any better than he has. And we close with Ray Collins smooching it up on Valerie.
Sure, it ain't rock and roll as we know it, captain, although there's enough there to show that this crew know what that's all about.
But if you want to get past FZ the clever guitarist or lyricist, and hear FZ the composer, you can't do better than this. It's a rewarding experience - deadly serious, but a helluva lot of fun. I've been listening to it since 1972, and I haven't got all the juice out of it yet.
. You can see a complete list of all Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention discography, or go back to the Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention tabs
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