THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION: WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY

First off, I have to say that I love this album. However, it's more like watching a witty sitcom, or maybe even watching a comedian who has the audience, rather than listening to an album. There's no virtuosic playing, few catchy melodies, and a whole lot of effects and bizarre vocals. Clever? Yes. Unique? Probably. Genius? Hardly.

One thing that the Mothers really have going for them is that they seem to realize that their melodies really aren't that interesting by themselves, and they make sure to constantly keep things moving by shifting to new ones and adding all sorts of weird sounds and voices. The basic content of hippie jokes amazingly hasn't changed much in the last forty years: make fun of love for everyone, free love, not showering or shaving, and playing simple music while pretending that you're changing the world in doing so. Fortunately, they do deviate from this primary goal, also poking fun at some of the squares of the time (The Idiot Bastard Son, Bow Tie Daddy). Of course some of the songs are absolutely worthless, such as the entire six minutes of sound effects that constitutes The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny, as well as Hot Poop (which I'm convinced was just an excuse to use that as a song title).

It's very difficult to compare this to traditional prog albums, as noted by other reviewers. Basically, you have some truly engaging, entertaining, and downright hilarious lyrics. On the other hand, by copying the style of the hippie songs they are making fun of, the basic music is not very good. In addition, the snarky lyrics can go a bit too far and get a bit stale. I hope they had fun making this album (and I'm sure they did), because I get the feeling the that Mothers feel that their work is a lot more profound than it really is. At any rate, this is definitely an album worth owning, but also not one to expect too much from.

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