THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION: BURNT WEENY SANDWICH

Purchase this if you want to get into Zappa's RIO/Avant-Rock works without getting smacked in the wall by his other albums released at that time's blistering inaccessibility. Here we get a delicious slice of RIO, only in a slightly more "normal" way, at least for Zappa's standards. The songs varies between jazz, rock and avant-garde, and mixes it into something that sounds like a mix of Henry Cow and "The Grand Wazoo". The two doo-wop tracks that starts and concludes the album might not be appealing for everyone though, but I think they're both OK, but the album definitely would have been better without them. The instrumentation is, as always, excellent and all arrangements works well, without sounding tiresome.

That being said, the best track here have to be the 18-minute epic, "The Little House That I Used To Live In", one of Zappa's very best tracks from his work with The Mothers. The rest of the album is also very good with the two Igor Stravinsky tributes "Igor's Boogie Pahse 1" and "Phase Two" being two humouristic stand-outs here. This album is very much recommended, both for older and newer Zappa fans. 4.25/5