 "Fresh at forty" | 2008-08-21 |
| - Reviewed By cecilbothwell |
I am a deejay at a community radio station whose mission is to showcase independent music makers, either local talent or those on "indie" labels. Having long ago lost my vinyl collection (don't ask) I occasionally buy one of my oldie faves, both to enjoy and to broadcast.
Having listened and re-listened to Frank Zappa's brilliant "We're Only in it for the Money" (the first time I've heard these songs for at least 30 years), I have to say that today's indie artists got nuthin' on Frank. And he is much funnier. Not to mention musical prodigality that shines through even the weirdest of his weird. Zappa was clearly a genius.
"There will come a time when we can even take our clothes off when we dance," for example, includes profound insights into the ways society shames individuals into conformity."What's the ugliest part of your body?" he asks, and answers "your mind." "Who needs the Peace Corps?" delves into the ennui of youth and the meaninglessness of so much of what passes for culture. And too, this one is a send-up of the Beatles who had just issued Sgt. Peppers, which some (and obviously Zappa) felt was a little pretentious (though I would beg to disagree on that one.)
A gem from the 60s. |
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 "Flower Power Sucks!" | 2008-08-02 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1IAQIZSXONWVU |
A REAL concept album. Everything is perfect here.
1. The Cover: Cal Schenkl's original album cover was an anti-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band design. The interior gate-fold image appears outside, the "cast of thousands" image from the Beatles front cover appears inside with all the famous folks eyes blotted out. The back cover appears inside with all of the Mothers turned away and Motorhead Sherwood facing the viewer (instead of Paul turned away and the rest of the Fab Four turned toward the viewer. There were even the cardboard cut-out "badges" that included a hairy nipple and a Zappa "Gingus". There's also a little homage paid to The Rolling Stones' "Between the Buttons" (Zappa's favorite Stones album by the way).
2. The Music:
First of all, the thought bubble "Is this phase II of Lumpy Gravy" is significant as this music is closely related to that effort, in fact there are some orchestral passages that appear on both releases verbatim.
Where to begin? Ok, at the beginning. WOIIFTM is a very significant work full of biting sarcasm. From a technical standpoint it's just amazing how the man put all this together. What an achievement! The recordings were started in a four-track studio but moved to Apostolic because they could hand 8 tracks at once. For it's time, this had to be the most advanced example of the artist using the studio itself as a musical instrument. The session starts off with Zappa's recording engineering out in the studio whispering into a mic with echo about his plans to erase all of Zappa's masters while Zappa looks on from the control room.
WOIIFTM contains some of Zappa's most biting social commentary. Zappa goes after the "Friscoids" whom he made no secret of despising in his autobiography.
"Who Needs The Peace Corps" contains a hilarious "hippie" pledge that is just so accurate it's embarrassing (if you lived that era).
"Concentration Moon" hurls spears at then California Governor Ronald Reagan and a suggests the possibility of a camp Reagan re-conditioning center.
"Mom & Dad" assaults middle class parenthood and eerily anticipates The Kent State shootings that would occur a year later. Hey Punk is hilarious, especially if you pay attention to what all the little rock stars are planning to do with their royalties checks.
There's some real-time phone conversations that Zappa recorded involving a father who was a very real pissed off FBI Agent
"Bow Tie Daddy" is a slam at middle-class fathers that's got a roaring twenties kind of sound to it.
"Harry Your A Beast" slams the shallow ambitions of American Girls.
"Ugliest Part of Your Body" has Zappa pondering what's the ugliest part of your body and arrives at the conclusion that it's your mind. There is an EXTREMELY powerful lyric "All your children are poor unfortunate victims of the lies you believe"
"Absolutely Free" begins with a gorgeous piano solo that drips with melancholy and thought. It's the only restful pause because then Zappa proceeds to rip the transcendental meditation movement that was popular with all the dopey kids back then and even manages to throw in the names of Santa's Reindeer with references to Donovan's "Mellow Yellow"
"Hey Punk" is a hilarious send up of young wanna be rock stars that apes a that much covered tune "Hey Joe" Here's a sample of one of the lines. "I'm going to the Fillmore to get some action then I'm going home to bed." This tune dissolves into various wanna-be rock stars (with the voice sped up just below chipmunk pitch) discussing what will be purchased with the first royalty check, picking up girls, and how music is so wonderful and just how great the kids are today. ha ha!
"Nasal Retentive Calliope Music" features the voice of Eric Clapton "God! I see God!" lampooning the famous London graffiti (Clapton is God). This piece is inspired by Zappa's love for Verese' (the father of electronic music) and is made up of lots of tape loops played while manipulating the spooling velocity. Zappa did more of this stuff on "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" and "Uncle Meat"
"Let's Make the Water Turn Black" is the real-life disgusting story of boyhood "hooligan" friends Kenny and Ronnie and what they used to smear on their bedroom window. Hint: dysentary green.
"The Idiot Bastard Son" furthers the Kenny and Ronnie saga but now Zappa turns his acerbic wit toward... YOU and ME! "The child will thrive and grow and enter a world of liars and cheaters and people like you..."
Ok, I have to wrap this up. There are other pieces but I must jump to the end. Maybe I'll come back later and finish the others.
"The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny" begins with one of the most beautiful orchestral passages my 52 year old ears have ever heard. It then becomes a very eerie avant guard piece.
This is an incredible work of art that was very technologically advanced for its time. Zappa pioneered some recording techniques that Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix would go on to use in their own work.
I highly recommend this historic cultural artifact of the late 60's in the USA. What a statement! All of it painfully true! |
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| "Zappas first and best." | 2008-07-02 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2Z11AFULISG6C |
| I love this album its a masterpiece excluding Nasal Retentive Callipe Music and the chrome plated megaphone of destiny. |
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| "A nice alternative to everything else!" | 2008-05-02 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2VIQ61HJSCWX4 |
Frank Zappa was the first recording artist to completely say no to pop music. He did so with a passion and it is most relevant on this recording. Often praised as his best work, Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention attempt to create a commentary on the hippie movement and the flower generation. Or, more specificly, a commentary on how fake and corrupt they were. The album is titled, We're Only In It For The Money. A completely sarcastic statement that is complemented by a mock Sgt Pepper cover complete with nipple badges. The title and cover are reflections of the music itself which is the ultimate 60's anti-pop gem.
Nothing on the album is taken entirely serious. You never hear actual full songs and some of the avant-garde stuff is purposely close to unlistenable. This is all for the purpose of saying "screw you!" to conventional pop formulas. Although many people say so, I don't see this album as being a parody. Zappa's first album "Freak Out!" was more of a parody. It consisted of pop songs that were twisted and "freaked out" in order to poke fun at pop. We're Only In It For The Money, however, sounds nothing like anything before it or since it. It doesn't mock the 60's, it simply says no to them.
Everything here derails some aspect of 60's life. Lyical songs like "Who Needs The Peace Corps?" reveal the phonieness of the "LSD" generation. Others like, "What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body" actually have very insightful messages underneath the comical atmosphere. Then there are others like the "Chrome Plated Megaphone of destiny" that exists for the sole purpose to slap pop music in the face. The whole album seems humorist but is really a very serious take on the world during the 60's.
Albums like this paved the way both for Progressive Rock and Alternative Rock. It was art rock in the way it inverted conventional rock structures and was alternative in the way it created a backroad for getting away from the mainstream. No way did the group do this only for the money. They wanted to be different and they did so in the best possible way. |
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| "Gotta Love These Mothers" | 2008-04-24 |
| - Reviewed By User: A222M9VLVSA1DC |
| Still my favorite Mothers of Invention album, this "Sgt. Pepper" send up is full of satire and good tunes at the same time. Their third album and with a fleshed out group of musicians, this is Zappa at his finest. Recommended for all Zappa fans! |
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| "Don't Wait! Buy this NOW!!" | 2008-03-09 |
| - Reviewed By User: ATHBVKC35U1M2 |
| The MFSL CD of WOIIFTM is out now at regular price! BUY IT NOW, it is worth every penny, and then some! Don't wait 6 months when every clown in town wants 2,3 or 4X todays' price! |
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| "The Definative Zappa!" | 2008-03-08 |
| - Reviewed By stevo226 |
Before there were The Residents, Negativland, and Ice-T, there was Frank Zappa and his Mothers, offering us biting cynicism in music and bending the musical ear in acid-induced spirals!
This album spells out Zappa's opinion of the late 60's "Flower Power" movement. My brother turned me on to it when I was just a kid. He said it was as if a Mad magazine was made into a record, and he was right! Much as The Residents did with their "Third Reich and Roll" album, Zappa reinterprets that era's pop music with his own original biting and totally weird sonic adventures!
The core message of Zappa? "Plastic People...oh baby, now you're such a drag!"
The core message of "We're Only In It For The Money?" "Snork-Snork!" |
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| "Snippets & Substance" | 2008-01-20 |
| - Reviewed By irridium |
This classic album, a devastating satire of the 1960s hippie scene, is comprised of mostly short songs interspersed with even briefer linking snippets. One of the most memorable songs, Who Needs The Peace Corps? is all about San Francisco with acerbic observations on an aspiring hippie daydreaming about the big time in Height Street. Concentration Moon and Mom & Dad are more serious social commentary but Harry You're A Beast and What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body? bring out the laughs again.
Absolutely Free is a tuneful ditty and Flower Punk with its nervous rhythm takes the listener into the head of an ambitious, highly materialistic flower child. The instrumental Nasal Retentive Calliope Music is pure found sound a la Edgar Varese, Let's Make The Water Turn Black sounds like a singalong folk tune and The Idiot Bastard Son is a mix of talking vocals, sound FX and snatches of chorus. There are gripping instrumental textures in the lyrically sharp Lonely Little Girl and Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance.
Then follows the reprise of What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body, the penultimate track Mother People with lovely snatches of melody, including what sounds like classical music sequences. The album concludes with the only long track (over 6 minutes), called The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny, another excursion into Varese territory with its SFX. Overall, despite the different styles of music and the many short tracks, the album is quite cohesive. At first listen it sounds messy but repeated play will soon enough reveal the magic.
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| "It's good, but Zappa's done better. Great cover, at any rate" | 2007-12-09 |
| - Reviewed By radioactiveman12 |
| You're probably wondering why I rated this one anywhere below five stars. This is Zappa's "undisputed masterpiece", right? Well, it's true that it's one of his better albums, that there's a lot of uproarious mock-acid rock ("Who Needs the Peace Corps?"; "Flower Punk", with a simulated drug overdose; "Take Your Clothes off When You Dance"); that the lyrics are some of Zappa's finest, skewing both hippy ideals ("Absolutely Free") and conservative values ("Mom & Dad"; "What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body?") - at the same time, Zappa sends out his warmest regards to the "real" counterculture (which he probably considered himself a member of) - check "Mother People", with a strong melody, and "Take off Your Clothes Off"; there's also some just plain hilarious weirdness, as demonstrated on the outrageous "Let's Make the Water Turn Black". But I'm not a fan of any of the avant-garde tracks: I'd much rather hear "Monster Magnet". Most of them are mercifully brief (dialog snippets "Hot Poop" and "Telephone Conversation"), and some of them can be funny ("Are You Hung Up?:" - "Hey kids, my name is Jimmy Carl Blackman and I'm the Indian of the group!"), but when he tries to stretch them out to standard length, they fall apart ("The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny"; "Nasal Retentive Calliope Music"). And Zappa's arrogance can get the best of him on occasion ("Lonely Little Girl"; "The Idiot Bastard Son"; "Harry, You're a Beast"). Freak Out! and Absolutely Free do the whole counterculture parody thing better; and Hot Rats has more of Zappa's guitar playing and composition skills - all three are, in the opinion of the author, better albums. |
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 "Start Cryin' Zappa Fans: This Is NOT VERY GOOD....." | 2007-11-09 |
| - Reviewed By brkicgary |
| Yes the Zappa-heads will be whining loudly after they read this: WOIIFTM is the most overrated disc in FZ's catalog. The real masterpiece of this era??? Absolutely Free. AF has better songs, and the studio tricks are incorporated smoothly into the music. The tunes on WOIIFTM wear thin after about 2 listenings (I mean c'mon; how many times can you listen to "Bow Tie Daddy" or "Flower Punk" once you know the joke????). If you want "weird", go to Lumpy Gravy or Uncle Meat. If you must have this though, stay away from the Rykodisc versions with the "new" drum and bass tracks, they are horrible. Let the whining begin!!!! |
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