HOT RATS

Released in 1969, Hot Rats is one of Frank Zappa's most famous early period albums. An almost entirely instrumental album, Dadaist, with zany titles, and sounds often bordering on farce. A great revelry where the high register is always together with the low register, and Zappa's irreverent fury is expressed in long and quite well elaborated compositions, which move between rock and jazz and blues. In reality, there is little of progressive, at least, as it was thought at that time: in 1969 it was progressive In The Court Of ... by KC, certainly not this contemporary of his, which at most was considered jazz-rock.

The first song is a catchy rockblues, with circus sounds, easy to listen, 1. Peaches en Regalia (3:39) rating 7.5 / 8.

The second song completely changes mood thanks to the raucous voice of Captain Beefheart and the electric violin of Sugarcane Harris, here we are more on an improvised blues. It's a jam-blues masterpiece, similar to what Blind Faith did the same year, great work on Zappa's guitar. We are the antipodes of prog: it is an improvised jam 2. Willie the Pimp (9:23). Rated 8+

The fourth song starts with a strangely pompous beginning for Zappa, but always attenuated by the noisy disorder, we are at the variation on the theme that dominates everywhere, with a music that combines jazz with the sound of a village band, the result is always high, however. 3. Son of Mr. Green Genes (8:57) Rated 8.5

The second side opens with a short passage 4. Little Umbrellas (3:09) Rated 7,5 which seems to resume the previous one but here we have the multi-instrumentalist Undewood who begins to take over, however a nice song that, like the first of the first side, amuses with its catchiness.

5. The Gumbo Variations (12:54) we are in the border area between free-jazz and fiatistic blues Colosseum's style. Again, as the name implies, this is a constant variation, it is music for jazz listeners, and at best of jam blues, not prog rock listeners. A prog lover would define a 13-minute piece as a suite, but here it is only improvisation, there is no work on the musical score, on the composition. Underwood is the leader.

6. It Must Be a Camel (5:17) Final with a hybrid track, the least classifiable on the album. Rated 8.

This album, far removed from prog rock, is a small masterpiece, very compact in sound and setting, producing a farcical jazz-rock hybrid combined with easy-listening but very ambitious small town band music. It is high-level improvisation, which stimulates the senses (but not the heart), manages not to be difficult, but has the limit of the improvisation.

Rating 9. Small masterpiece. Five stars.