Frank Zappa

By John Swenson

The New Rolling Stone Record Guide, 1983

FRANK ZAPPA / THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION

[This part written by Bart Testa is exactly the same as it was in The Rolling Stone Record Guide, 1979.]

FRANK ZAPPA

★★★ Studio Tan / War. (1978)
★★★ Sleep Dirt / War. (1979)
★★★ Orchestral Favorites / War. (1979)
★★★★ Sheik Yerbouti / Zappa (1979)
★★★★ Joe's Garage Act I / Zappa (1980)
★★★★ Joe's Garage Acts II and III / Zappa (1980)
★★★★ Tinseltown Rebellion / Bark. (1981)
★★★★★ You Are What You Is / Bark. (1981)
★★★★ Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar / Bark. (1981)
★★★★ Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar Some More / Bark. (1981)
★★★★ Return of the Son of Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar / Bark. (1981)

If Zappa had seemed in a cul-de-sac with his mid-Seventies work, which is arguable, his departure from Warner Bros. Records seemed to spur him on creatively. With virtually everything he had done up to that point tangled in litigation, Zappa was forced to start from scratch, and he came up with an ambitious program. His first move was the projected release of the long-anticipated multi-LP work, Läther, which was a collection of canned and live music that represented the cutting edge of Zappa's experiments through the Seventies. Warner Bros, cut that idea short by claiming that some of the proposed music for Läther was actually owed them and released part of the Läther concept on Studio Tan, Sleep Dirt and Orchestral Favorites.

Sheik Yerbouti saw Zappa returning to his most devastating satire and social criticism, zeroing in on pop sentimentality with "I Have Been in You" and "Broken Hearts Are for Assholes" and the late-Seventies disco set with "Dancing Fool" and "Jewish Princess."

Joe's Garage continued the sociopolitical commentary with Zappa's most fully realized conceptual LP since We're Only in It for the Money. This three-disc, two-package science fiction concept presents a future world in which music has been outlawed and musicians are punished severely for breaking the law. In the course of this sweeping collection Zappa manages to look back with fondness on a bygone era in the title track, satirically gibe sexual mores in "Catholic Girls," L. Ron Hubbard in "A Token of My Extreme," groupies in "Crew Slut" and wet T-shirt nights in "Wet T-Shirt Nite," then include a beautifully introspective, mostly instrumental song of alienation, "Outside Now." Above all, Joe's Garage is a masterful piece of production, which indicated the future direction of Zappa's technologically advanced approach to arranging and recording music.

Tinseltown Rebellion is a mostly live document of Zappa's crack touring outfit at the outset of the Eighties, featuring a lot of new material, including several songs that would become standards – the title track, "Fine Girl," "Easy Meat," "The Blue Light" and "Bamboozled by Love."

You Are What You Is ties together all the threads of Zappa's renaissance, combining his renewed satiric voice with his most advanced recording techniques. Guest vocal appearances by Motorhead and Jimmy Carl Black from the classic Mothers band and one of the best collections of songs Zappa's ever assembled make this one of his finest records ever. "Teenage Wind" is a hilarious parody of concert-going cliches over the years, "Harder Than Your Husband" is a great C&W spoof, and "Doreen," "Goblin Girl," "Conehead" and "Mudd Club" are Zappa's finest cameo songs.

You Are What You Is contains Zappa's most direct attack on hypocrisy in a suite of songs aimed at the religion-for-profit video evangelists who have proliferated in the Eighties – "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing," "Dumb All Over" and "Heavenly Bank Account."

Fans of Zappa's instrumentals and arrangement strategies will find the Shut Up series particularly worthwhile. The records are made up of strictly instrumental tunes featuring Zappa guitar solos in a variety of contexts. One of the most interesting tracks, "Canard du Jour" from Return of, is a duet between Zappa on bouzouki and Jean-Luc Ponty on baritone violin.

 –  J.S.

Source: archive.org