THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION: UNCLE MEAT

(Considering this an album by THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION and not a Frank Zappa album)

50 % improvisation, 50 % madness

"Uncle Meat" was released in 1969 as a double LP and showed the band in its most psychedelic and experimental era. "Uncle Meat" is an album full of the weirdest and most varied selection of songs that go from the classic post-VARÈSE music through a wide collection of jazz stylized pieces, from instrumental segments to some other ones with funny and crazy lyrics (as usual with these guys). The novelty of Ian UNDERWOOD in keyboards and saxophones really helped in the development of this record and its notorious differences with the four previous albums of the band.

This record was supposed to work as a soundtrack of a film that was never released, so it has some occasional dialogues that worked as middle sections among the songs, these little details rested impact on the album, also, I already explained in a different review that I am not a fan of double albums because I feel they sometimes get lost into so many songs and this is not an exception, probably this would have been much better with half of the songs. The D-side of the record was the tremendous "King Kong", a song with around 17 minutes that was divided into several small segments, I believe this is the most concrete side of the album while the other three are lots and lots of independent material gathered together.

Even being a very large album with lots of filler songs and unnecessary dialogue sections, as a whole, it is a very entertained album that never gets boring, maybe that is precisely because of its very changing musical mood. By the way: the almost omnipresent xylophones and marimbas are amazing, and even if this was not the first Rock album to include these instruments, they sounded absolutely original.

SONG RATING: Uncle Meat, 4 The voice of Cheese, 3 Nine types of industrial pollution, 4 Zolar Czakl, 4 Dog breathe, in the year of the plague, 4 The legend of the Golden Arches, 5 Louie Louie, 3 The dog breathe variations, 4 Sleeping in a jar, 4 Our bizarre relationship, 3 The Uncle Meat variations, 4 Electric Aunt Jemina, 3 Prelude to King Kong, 4 God bless America, 3 A pound for a brown on the bus, 3 Ian Underwood whips it out, 4 Mr. Green Genes, 4 We can shoot you, 4 If we'd all been living in California, 3 The air, 4 Project X, 5 Cruisin' for burgers, 4 King Kong (whole), 5

AVERAGE: 3.83

PERCENTAGE: 76.52

ALBUM RATING: 4 stars

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