FRANK ZAPPA & THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION

Back in the mid-to-late 1970s, the Verve Mothers Of Invention albums were very hard to come by. Verve, for some reason, probably a difference of opinion with Frank, had stopped distributing all of the MOI album they controlled. Having been introduced to Mr. Zappa's music around 1975, I began scouring the record stores, both new and used album sellers, for all of his music. I was able to find new copies of "Freak Out" (one of the last in the area) and an import copy of "Lumpy Gravy". As for the rest, it took many years to locate them all.

In the meantime, Verve, in 1975, released a series of cheaply packaged albums, collections from their most popular artists, all with similar album covers, with the artist's picture in what looks like a slide frame (ask your grandparents if you don't know what that is), with the band name scribbled in marker. These were often referred to a the "Transparency" collections.

The album gave me a taste of the wonderful music on the albums I still didn't own, but a few items make this album only for collectors. On the plus side, strings of songs are kept in the proper order from "We're Only In It For The Money", preserving the flow of these classics. But on the down side, Verve used their horribly edited versions of the songs. For some reason they spliced out of "Let's Make The water Turn Black", the line: "I still remember Mama with her apron and her pad, feeding all the boys at Ed's Café" (unless these dense record company execs had no idea that waitresses carried note pads to keep track of their orders, there is nothing offensive about this). The live was just chopped out, ruining the meter of the song. And in "Absolutely Free", the exclamation "Flower power sucks!" was also amputated in a similarly clumsy fashion.

Since then, all of the music has been rereleased in the proper format, both on record (The Old Masters sets) and on CD. Therefore, I cannot recommend this one, except as a testament to how foolish executives can be.