by Frank Zappa and The Mothers
of Invention
1970, Bizarre/Reprise Records

the sound: The opening drum beats and trumpet blasts on Frank Zappa’s self-produced 1970 album, “Weasels Ripped My Flesh,” sound like a rhinoceros charging into a crowded circus tent. The song, curiously titled “Didja Get Any Onya?” sets the pace for a recording that spans an amalgam of jaggedly stitched-together styles, often in a deliberately mocking tone, fused with collections of random and sometimes irritating noise. From the blues-heavy “Directly From My Heart to You,” to the hard-rocking “My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mamma,” to the anti-hippie anthem “Oh No,” to the guitar-jammy “The Orange County Lumber Truck,” The Mothers recklessly crash through genre boundaries and tear apart everything they find on the other side. The album features a number of highly palatable and stimulating instrumental bits that inevitably collapse into raucous disarray, as if Zappa wants to show you that he can make pleasant sounding music—he just doesn’t want to. He even pays tribute to a free jazz pioneer and clear personal influence on “The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue,” which is marked by oblique time signatures and meandering notes. The album showcases a menacing arsenal of instruments, including flugel horn, saxophones, electric violin and snorks. There are also voices that sometimes sing, sometimes wail and sometimes speak in a German accent or say lewd things. “So I figured I’d rip off her drawers and get a little,” you can hear Motorhead Sherwood saying in one backstage bit.

the background: Although “Weasels” was released in 1970, it is actually a collection of live recordings, unreleased studio tracks and overdubs from The Mothers of Invention, Zappa’s seminal breakthrough band, between 1967 and 1969. It followed “Burnt Weeny Sandwich,” which came out the previous year and consisted of a similar blend of archived material. Before that, also in 1969, Zappa released “Hot Rats,” a largely instrumental and guitar-heavy album that amounted to one of his most listenable recordings. But, to the general public, “Weasels” is distinctly un-listenable. Of the album’s 11 tracks, only the scathing “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama,” could possibly be considered a normal, three and a half minute song. And this at a time when The Beatles’ “Let it Be,” Elton John’s “Your Song” and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” were some of the most popular tunes on the charts.

the significance: In the late 1960s, psychedelic rebellion rock was at its apex. In a musical climate swollen with sunshiny songs about peace, love and hallucinogenic drugs, Zappa was a virtual anti-Christ. He scoffed at the hippies, disgusted by what he viewed as their naïve and phony ideals, and laughed at their faddish lingo. Frank Zappa was one of the first rock musicians to implement humor and satire into his music, and his often offensive and sexual lyrics have earned him many a hostile fan. (It should be noted that many of Zappa’s sleazy lyrics actually poke fun at some of the popular rockers of the time, who were known for swapping groupies like baseball cards.) But the artist’s refusal to take himself seriously belies the fact that he possesses an unusually high musical IQ. As early as the mid- to late-1960s, he was writing complex compositions more typical of a mad classical composer than a rock star. The humor, the weirdness and the genius of Zappa all play out on “Weasels.” —Matt Kanner