Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 82

Record label: Verve

Produced: Tom Wilson

Recorded: Sunset Highland Studios of TTG Inc; March 9–12, 1966

Released: March 27, 1967 (UK) August 1966 (US)

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: Frank Zappa (g); Ray Collins (v); Jim Black (d); Roy Estrada (b); Elliot Ingber (g); various unknown LA sessioniers

Track listing: Hungry Freaks Daddy; I Ain’t Got No Heart; Who Are The Brain Police?; Go Cry On Somebody Else’s Shoulder; Motherly Love; How Could I Be Such A Fool; Wowie Zowie; You Didn’t Try To Call Me; Any Way The Wind Blows; I’m Not Satisfied; You’re Probably Wondering Why I’m Here; Trouble Every Day; Help I’m A Rock; It Can’t Happen Here; The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet

Running time: 60.31

Current CD: Rykodisc RCD 10501

Further listening: Uncle Meat (1969)

Further reading: Waiting For The Sun: Strange Days, Weird Science And The Sound Of Los Angeles (Barney Hoskyns, 1996); Frank Zappa In His Own Words (1993); Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics Of Poodle Play (Ben Watson, 1996); www.zappa.com

Download: HMV Digital

When Frank Zappa gathered up his motley collection of bar band oddballs, LBJ ‘great society’ rejects and bona fide freaks and landed himself a major label record contract, he alerted the world to the new American underground. Freak Out was a landmark that arguably has never been surpassed in scope and ambition. MGM hardly knew what they were getting.

‘The first track we laid down was Any Way The Wind Blows,’ said Zappa. ‘The second was Who Are The Brain Police? I could see [producer] Tom Wilson on the phone through the control room window calling the head office in New York saying, Well you’re not going to believe this.’

Who Are The Brain Police? is one of the scariest songs ever to emerge from the rock psyche, a Kafka-esque vision of contemporary America where personal identity and individuality are erased. In context, it offers a nightmarish counterpoint to the more overt political polemic of Hungry Freaks Daddy and Trouble Every Day (the latter originally titled The Watts Riot Song). Although much of the music was played by the Mothers, Zappa was shrewd enough to augment Freak Out with the cream of LA’s session musicians (credited as The Mothers Auxiliary). Go Cry On Somebody Else’s Shoulder; You Didn’t Try To Call Me; Any Way The Wind Blows; I’m Not Satisfied; How Could I Be Such A Fool – all later re-recorded for Cruising With Ruben And The Jets – are given full orchestral treatments and reveal Zappa’s formidable talent as an arranger. Sure, the Mothers looked like Hell’s Angels who’d come for your daughter, but there was also a good chance they’d take her home to play her Stravinsky and Charles Ives. Subsequently, Zappa tended to apportion his musical iconoclasm to specific albums: savage satire (We’re Only In It For The Money); classical motifs and musique concrete (Lumpy Gravy) and doo-wop (Cruising With Ruben And The Jets). Only the equally impressive Uncle Meat casts its net as wide as does this audacious debut.