Music Banter - View Single Post - In Which I Attempt To Listen To 125 Albums

OOS · 03-23-2013, 05:15 PM

I forgot to mention this, but my one bit of criteria when I was making this list was that I limited each individual artist to only three albums each. Or else this thing would be swamped with all the Bowie albums I probably should've listened to by now. Anyway, on with the show!

Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention - We're Only In It For The Money

"We're Only In It For The Money" is bizarre. It can't really be categorized. It's...unpigeonholeable? That's not a word. But it fits! Here Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention flit between musique concrete, jazz, rock, pop, psychedelic, spoken word, music hall, often multiple times on the same track. Which, at the very least, would make this an interesting album. What the group really proves here, however, is that they have a keen knack for song writing, and between all the cut and pasted guitars, pitch-shifted vocal harmonies and out-of-the-blue orchestration it was surprising to find that "We're Only In It For The Money" is loaded with hooks. Considering that Zappa and co. were attempting to send-up The Beatles here, they (perhaps intentionally) kinda ended up creating a rather brilliant example of psychedelic pop music themselves.

I suppose I should also mention the albums much-lauded lyrics, which present a biting tear down of 60's hippy culture. It works surprisingly well, although occasionally Zappa's lyricisms are a bit too on-the-nose, particularly on "Absolutely Free", which drops all pretence of subtlety and just has someone declare "flower power sucks!" half-way through. It's also worth noting that some of the more experimental tracks don't really go anywhere. The albums hit-to-miss ratio is shockingly high considering how many direction it goes in, but occasionally a bit of sampled noise or stuttering guitar is dropped in for no particular reason whatsoever (I'm still not sure that the final track really has a reason to exist) and disrupts the flow.

Overall, though? It's pretty fantastic. It's wild, daring, completely at odds with the culture it was made in and still holds up as a great rock album today. Hopefully the other two Zappa albums that I have lined up go just as well.

Next up: Pet Shop Boys - Behaviour

03-23-2013, 05:15 PM	#4 (permalink)
OOS Music Addict Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 124	I forgot to mention this, but my one bit of criteria when I was making this list was that I limited each individual artist to only three albums each. Or else this thing would be swamped with all the Bowie albums I probably should've listened to by now. Anyway, on with the show! Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention - We're Only In It For The Money "We're Only In It For The Money" is bizarre. It can't really be categorized. It's...unpigeonholeable? That's not a word. But it fits! Here Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention flit between musique concrete, jazz, rock, pop, psychedelic, spoken word, music hall, often multiple times on the same track. Which, at the very least, would make this an interesting album. What the group really proves here, however, is that they have a keen knack for song writing, and between all the cut and pasted guitars, pitch-shifted vocal harmonies and out-of-the-blue orchestration it was surprising to find that "We're Only In It For The Money" is loaded with hooks. Considering that Zappa and co. were attempting to send-up The Beatles here, they (perhaps intentionally) kinda ended up creating a rather brilliant example of psychedelic pop music themselves. I suppose I should also mention the albums much-lauded lyrics, which present a biting tear down of 60's hippy culture. It works surprisingly well, although occasionally Zappa's lyricisms are a bit too on-the-nose, particularly on "Absolutely Free", which drops all pretence of subtlety and just has someone declare "flower power sucks!" half-way through. It's also worth noting that some of the more experimental tracks don't really go anywhere. The albums hit-to-miss ratio is shockingly high considering how many direction it goes in, but occasionally a bit of sampled noise or stuttering guitar is dropped in for no particular reason whatsoever (I'm still not sure that the final track really has a reason to exist) and disrupts the flow. Overall, though? It's pretty fantastic. It's wild, daring, completely at odds with the culture it was made in and still holds up as a great rock album today. Hopefully the other two Zappa albums that I have lined up go just as well. Next up: Pet Shop Boys - Behaviour