release date: Jun. 27, 1966
format: cd
[album rate: 3 / 5]
Track highlights: 3. "Who Are the Brain Police" - 4. "Go Cry on Somebody Else's Shoulder" - 7. "Wowie Zowie" - 9. "Any Way the Wind Blows" - 12. "Trouble Every Day" - 13. "Help, I'm a Rock"
Studio debut album released by The Mothers of Invention. Actually, the band members had named the band The Mothers, it was the record company (Verve Records) who added the 'of Invention' to the name. This album is highly experimental and the musical style is unpreceded as Zappa wrote the majority of the tracks as his own combination of classical upbringing with musique concrete (Stockhausen, Varèse, Cage) and experimental, psychedelic art rock bringing it all together in satiric texts criticizing the consumer mentality of America in 1960s as a wake-up call to what is termed pop. Some of the songs like "Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder" and "Wowie Zowie" are almost traditional doo wop, "Any Way the Wind Blows" sounds like The Beatles together with Beach Boys, "You Didn't Try to Call Me", and "Trouble Every Day" are like The Who meets Hendrix, whereas "Who Are the Brain Police", "Help, I'm a Rock" and "The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet" are out-of-this-world-experiments by Zappa and noting else! The album secured Zappa a considerable crowd of fans, partly in Europe, partly in USA, but a vast majority simply didn't buy his albums, perhaps because the music is highly original and experimental drawing on modern classical compositional theory. Anyway, it's not really music you put on as background sound for a romantic dinner. It's something that needs a mature ear, and broad acceptance. No wonder The Beatles were able to experiment a lot on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), this album inspired many, including The Fab Four. The album is enlisted in "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die".
