Customer Reviews

Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Along with the Boulez and Nagano (LSO) recordings, this excellent album stands out as Zappa's best work from the first half of the eighties (a bland period). The satire-pop songs ("We're turning again" and "Yo cats")are funny and delightful and the works for synclavier are among Zappa's best compositions ever (along with "Inca Roads, "Peaches", etc.). Too bad that so many people immediately reject them because of their synthetic sound and their "coldness". "One man, One vote", "Little Beige Sambo" , "Aerobics In Bondage" are all exquisite, so are "Alien Orifice", and "What's New In Baltimore" which both include marvellous guitar-playing. Listen to this album a few times, and see that my five star-rating is deserved (By the way: Why can't people shade off their ratings? A lot of five star-ratings include bunches of disclaimers telling of mediocrity).

The impetus behind this album was, of course, the PMRC hearings on labelling/censoring offensive rock lyrics. The album is a mixed bag of material -- 5 studio tracks with a band, 3 synclavier compositions, and 2 collage tracks. They're somewhat hapharzadly thrown together, making the album extremely disjointed -- but there is a lot of great material on this album, nevertheless.

The opener, "I Don't Even Care," is a waste of 5 minutes. Its essentually a groove set down in studio by Zappa's band, with "I don't even care" sung in the background while Johnny "Guitar" Watson (not credited?) ad libs some lines. No solo, though you keep waiting for one. The song goes nowhere and is extremely repetitive.

Then follows 3 synclavier compositions, "One Man One Vote," "Little Beige Sambo," and "Aerobics in Bondage." These are pretty good. "One Man One Vote" is the least interesting, but the other two are extremely worthy compositions that measure up to the best material on Jazz From Hell.

The next 4 tracks are all Zappa classics that rank among his best work. "We're Turning Again" is a hilarious swipe at hippie culture, brilliantly arranged with a great hook. There's a great re-mix of this, and "Yo Cats" on the Have I Offended Somebody? compilation. "Alien Orifice" is a jaw-dropper. Get the Make A Jazz Noise Here album to hear the '88 band perform this sucker live! Zappa at his best.

"Yo Cats" is a great Ike Willis crooner, taking a shot at professional musicians. "What's New In Baltimore" is the best track on the album -- rarely can Zappa's work be desribed as "beautiful," but the opening guitar/percussion run on this song deserves the charge. The solo is one of Zappa's greatest.

"Porn Wars" and "H.R. 2911" (a bonus track) are both sound collages, mixing sound effects, synclavier, guitar, and looping the taped hearings of the PMRC in congress. Its amusing -- especially the extra clips from the people in the piano from the Lumpy Gravy album (one of my favorites!). Also, you'll get to hear Al Gore profess to be a Mothers fan, which is PRICELESS. But it drags on far too long.

Doesn't work as an album, since it has no cohesive direction, but some of the material on this album is great.

Setting the music aside (read other reviews of that), Zappa's politics infuse the last two tracks of the CD. Taking a tape of Zappa's appearance before an "unofficial" Congressional hearing (prompted by a committee made up of Tipper Gore and other Senators' wives demanding censorship or ratings on recorded music), FZ's surrealistic re-edit and remix create an appropriately dada sound collage. Amid the Congressional fools and blunderers, don't miss samplings of "Lumpy Gravy" and--best of all--Al Gore declaring himself a fan of Zappa's music and an admirer of the man himself!

Simply the greatest. Little Beige Sambo, Aerobics in Bondage, what's new in baltimore, We're turning again, alien orifice, and PORN WARS make this a verifyable GREATEST HITS package for the latter part of FZ releases. And it all on one release. I was totally blown away in 1986 when someone gave this to me to listen to. I just had to get more from this artist, then started my big chase to get them all.

This recording is just simply FZ full of passion, blasting ideas like a torch into steel. He was full of fire and ideas and it was most likely his last release of all new music until his death. Great stuff.

GET THIS CD.

This is Zappa's docualbum of his tift with the PMRC, who held congressional hearings on putting smut labels on albums in 1985.

All the rock track "We're Turning Again," "Yo' Cat's"are digitally recorded, and were some of the first to show Zappa's love affair with modern technology. The playing and writing is great, and the production sounds cutting edge today. The songs are fine but not standouts.

"Porn Wars" is a montage of the hearings--with Zappa in attack mode--and he samples digital monster sounds to show his contempt for the PMRC fun and games.

Just for this track, the album is a big piece in the late-Zappa puzzle.

Funny story: this was one of the first of Zappa's albums I got. I was so ignorant to Zappa at the time, when I saw the word Mothers on the cover, I looked on the back credits, thinking Zappa had rehired Ian Underwood and Motorhead and Jimmy Carl Black.

I am a 58 year old Zappa fan not fanatic ). I have many downloads of Zappa songs as well as the original vinyls and cd's. Recently I purchased some NEW music from groups like Bohuslan Big Band, Harmonia, and Fido Plays Zappa. I was confused to find that everyone seems to love the song 'What's New In Baltimore?' After listening to the song in these various versions for weeks, and falling in love with it over and over again, I went back to where I remembered having first seen the song, this album 'FZ meets the MOP'. What a treat!!!! Now I am wondering where the lyrics came from. I remember hearing Zappa and the band singing lyrics in various live versions.
This is the kind of pure joy that does not happen with other 'musicians and composers'.
Zappa's compositions are so dense and creative that they can be interpreted and re-interpreted by musicians from all over the world from here to eternity. Seek out this recording and enjoy.

This is mostly instrumental, with 3 lyrics songs and also 'porn wars' which uses dialogue. The synclavier stuff takes getting used to, but it is marvellous. Jam packed with ideas, a taste of delights to come. 'what's new in baltimore' is a gorgeous tune with some prime zappa guitar also alien orifice. yo cats and i don't care are good songs and we're turning again is a gem, frank rubbishing the mythology surrounding the 60s legends like hendrix and jim morrison, classic frank insensitivity: "we can pat her on the back when she eats her sandwich". Porn wars includes the senator who pronounces porn as pawn. 'If there was any way to do away with it, i'd do it'. It's an impressive sound collage. If you can come to terms with the socalled 'sterility' of the synclavier then you'll love this album. Thank you

I DO have trouble with the Synclavier works (I like rock band versions of these tracks, like Baltimore, Turning again and Orifice a lot better). But it cannot be denied: the compositions are very good.

Porn wars is a bit of a period piece, and relevant to the US (Tipper Gore!) only, but interesting nonetheless.

Whereas one of the very latest albums, "The Perfect Stranger", had seen Zappa's Synclavier music computer used "against" a chamber orchestra (Pierre Boulez's), here it meets Zappa's own electric band. Oddly - Zappa's highly brilliant musical companions-in-arms of the day certainly had little to fear of such competition - the gap seems wider here, for some reason. I have no problem with the alleged "coldness" of the Synclavier material, which might just be an irrelevant issue. I find just as much coldness in some of the humanly performed pieces from that era, whether by Boulez's group or FZ's, than in most of the Synclavier tracks from the Perfect Stranger album. However, in this here "FZ meets the M.O.P", most electronic pieces have a lot of passion, mystery and humor to them (esp. "Aerobics in Bondage" [one of Zappa's most beautiful and moving pieces ever recorded IMO], "H.R. 2911" and "Little Beige Sambo"), and this tendency was to continue with the next Synclavier album ("Jazz From Hell", 1986). Maybe I lack concentration power for the very abstract pieces from the previous one ("Love Story", "Jonestown", "Girl in Magnesium Dress"), but I find the newer electronic compositions somehow more focused, with better "hummable" themes.
Some of the rock band tracks are from the studio, others are apparently live stuff from the much acclaimed '81/'82 group, cleaned up of all audience noises. AFAIAC, same thing as always with the 80s Zappa's electric combo music: dangerously brilliant compositions (listen to the FZ solo spot in "Alien Orifice"!) share the space with very dated ("We're Turning Again") or barely relevant ("Yo Cats") satires. Pretty witty all right, but absolutely lacking any "meat" of any sort in the melody. Compare with "America Drinks and Goes Home", from "Absolutely Free", or better still, with the Zappa-produced Jean-Luc Ponty version!

Good later Zappa. It ain't Joe's GarageJoe's Garage: Acts I, II & III, but there's some classic Zappa here.