Freak Out!: Mother's Of Invention.

This one get better with time for me.  One of my top 5 FZ albums these days.

If I wasn't to lazy to read the PA reviews, I wouldn't have posted this question.

Very good in the beginning, great at the end, not so much in the middle.

It starts out with the very first use of a wah wah pedal with a pretty fine lead on Hungry Freaks Daddy. It closes with Return of the Son of Monster Magnet, which explains all by itself why Zappa forms the prototype for the Avant(/RIO) genre. It's a nowhere near as professional sounding as later material, but it's among some of his most experimental stuff. A lot more dissonance back then, which has a lot to do with him being influenced by Varése. I'd forgotten how Africanized or tribal sounding Monster Magnet was. I don't remember anything else sounding quite that way, even from the next couple albums.

I love Freak Out! However, I view the album in much the same fashion as ITCOCK. I always have sense of the album as something of an artifact, something for which I'll never be able to fully absorb its impact unless I was there listening to it in 1965 when it first came out. Alas, I wasn't born until '66.

HackettFan wrote: I always have sense of the album as something of an artifact, something for which I'll never be able to fully absorb its impact unless I was there listening to it in 1965 when it first came out. Alas, I wasn't born until '66.

It was recorded in March 1966, and released in June 1966.



I was four in October 1966, but didn't hear Freak Out! until a friend of mine got a copy in the late 80s.  It's a splendid album.

I got into Frank in latter '70's and didn't get this album until 2005.  I find it interesting that this album was ever released when it was, so I appreciate it for what it is.  Trouble Every Day, remains my favorite because it is partly dated and partly universal to any era...
"Well you can cool it
You can heat it..
'Cause, baby, I don't need it..
Take your tv tube and eat it
'N all that phony stuff on sports
'N all those unconfirmed reports
You know I watched that rotten box
Until my head began to hurt
From checkin' out the way
The newsmen say they get the dirt
Before the guys on channel so-and-so
And further they assert
That any show they'll interrupt
To bring you news if it comes up
They say that if the place blows up
They'll be the first to tell"

I'm going to add a clarification - to any era of the TV age...



Edited by Slartibartfast - March 07 2015 at 16:55

micky wrote: ^ yeah. I listen to that and immediately launch into a few 'hell yeah Frank' prog album? whatever.  Great album?  No doubt.  I see it more as the first alternative rock album actually.

Why not as the first art-rock album? It would be more logical than alt.rock, isn't? 

Tom Ozric wrote: ^ Yes, but we do imagine how it 'would've' sounded like had we been there.......

Oh sure, we try, perhaps with reasonable success. I was around as a youth during some of the later hippie years, living across the road from a university. My parents and I even got caught in some tear gas once, so it's not altogether alien. But ultimately, it's like the old question how can someone appreciate an Ancient Greek sculpture the same way an Ancient Greek did?

Svetonio wrote: micky wrote: ^ yeah. I listen to that and immediately launch into a few 'hell yeah Frank' prog album? whatever.  Great album?  No doubt.  I see it more as the first alternative rock album actually. Why not as the first art-rock album? It would be more logical than alt.rock, isn't?

Yeah, Art Rock or Avant Garde Rock is what I would've called it. Given that PA subsumes Avant/RIO as a genre of Prog, it would have to be the first Prog album. I agree with Micky's point, though, as far as how different it was from British Prog.

micky wrote: It was a statement of everything wrong in the world man. It was social commentary and critque, giving a finger to all that was wrong in the world. In my mind a helluva lot more in tune with 'alternative' rock than English Art-Rock.  IMO the music was secondary to the overall message in that album. I'd damn well bet my paycheck, and yours that is exactly what Frank intended. Art-Rock? Nah..  I don't see it.

60s English Art-Rock actually was Symphonic rock, early English psychedelia, Hammond organ driven Heavy Rock and Canterbury scene (I apologize if I've forgotten something). Of course that Freak Out!  have nothing to do with them. Freak Out! was / is U.S. Art-Rock IMHO. Of course, a common thing to 60s U.S. Art Rock (Zappa, Blood, Sweat & Tears, The Doors and so on) and 60s English Art Rock (Moody Blues, Family, The Nice and so on) is that they both showed greater ambitions than to make just danceable pop rock songs. However, they all were very different from each other - especialy with Atlantic ocean between them.

Edited by Svetonio - March 06 2015 at 11:00