Hot Rats: Frank Zappa

 

On the contrary, it's probably Zappa's best album from the period because, aside from Willie the Pimp, it contains no vocals and concentrates strictly on the music (along with one of the first uses of 16 track in studio); therefore, there is no sarcastic social commentary, no winks-and-nudges to California culture and no gross or self indulgent lyrical nonsense that, to me, tends to detract from and compartmentalize much of Zappa's music.

 

Sometimes Uncle Frank was too smarmy or eccentric for his own good. Here, we can just jam to Zappa without the extraneous material.

 

 

 

 

I can relate to this. The jamming is tedious and surprisingly it doesn't have a colorful background of sound to it. It has a definite "Ugly" sound which I believe is intentional on Zappa's part, but some of the repeated sections of it are boring. By the time Zappa recorded Joe's Garage, all jams were backed with an atmosphere in sound, created on keys, open chords on guitar, and dynamic bass and drum parts. Also the production was not as advanced sounding as Grand Wazoo. The snare drum was more cutting on Grand Wazoo than 200 Motels ...where it sounded like a drummer playing cardboard boxes and aside from the instrumental Avant-Garde pieces, it was frustrating to hear.

I'm more in this camp. Peaches en Regalia and Little Umbrellas are my favourite tracks. The jammy stuff was done much better on Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo. As it stands I reckon it's a pleasant jazz rock album, but ol' Frank did much better.   

Any thoughts on the mix differences between the 1969 and the 1987 versions? I'm listening to both and there are some parts that I like in both versions.