Freak Out!

For FUCKS sake, I've only just had these guys and it was one of the worst albums I'd ever heard in my life. And now you're subjecting me to another whole hour of them? Why on earth have they got two albums on here?

Once again they seem to think they're really funny, but they're just annoying. There's clearly some skill there, so it'd be nice to hear an actual serious album from them to see what they really have. Some songs have some promise to them, before they're inevitably ruined by some stupid interjection or undercurrent. Overall this is definitely better than the other album I had, but it's still SHIT. I hate them and everything about them.

1.5 rounded up.

Rumor has it they were only in it for the money.

Strange album. Just didn’t really feel it.

Lacks the polish of later albums, but shows much more adherence to melodic convention while they build our trust to hit us with the weird in the final act. Well done

What did i even just listen to? I already knew Frank Zappa wrote some pretty weird stuff back when i listened to Hot Rats for this project but Freak Out! just feels like if Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and The United States Of America had a baby (which kinda is weird since those two albums came out 1 and 2 years after this album respectively) and gave that baby a ton of crack and LSD. While the songs in the beginning feel like they might have worked. The later songs definitely didn't due to just being all over the place in terms of music and direction. I also hope you like the sound of laughter because you hear it a lot during the back half. I get that this album is meant to be satire based on pop culture and Los Angeles' freak scene and that's cool and all but being satire doesn't automatically excuse something for being not very good.
Best Song: I Ain't Got No Heart
Worst Song: The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet

I had never heard of this band or album, so I was intrigued. Reading further into the band there is lots to look into here with Zappa coming in an multiple members leaving. I am looking forward to learning more!

Im giving this a 4. I will be listening to this again

Favourite song: Im not satisfied
Least favourite: they are all worth a listen
Album artwork: Great cover

The good thing about having this double album on LP is that you can just ignore Side 4, deny it exists, and think of this as a perfect debut of Zappa and the Mothers Of Invention.

This must be some sort of milestone in originality, inventiveness and that ‘I couldn’t care less about all this rubbish’ attitude.

Strangely enough, it’s really good - I’m giving it a 5… what a Zappa :-D

Zappa never fails to make something interesting. The album absolutely goes off the rail after Trouble Every Day. Favorite songs were Hungry Freaks, Daddy, How Could I Be Such A Fool, I’m Not Satisfied, and Trouble Every Day.

Not annoying but utterly unremarkable.

About as out there as you can get. I've never done. Such a 180 on an album before.

Wowie zowie what a cool album.

Frank’s not fully formed yet, but still awesome. Lots of good stuff here.

4/5

I'm sure plenty of Zappa fans out there will disagree with my assessment of the man as a musician, but to me, his music always strikes me as meta-music. Like, he can't switch off. He can't just make a song for normal enjoyment and consumption. There's always a sense of him standing just outside a group of musicians and saying, "hey guys we're musicians. We make music. That's what we do. That's what we're doing. We're making music. We're musicians, and we make music." Instead of just making music. I mean, he does make music, of course, but it's always conscious of it *being* music, which is why he plays in so many styles and is always experimenting. It's all a kind of puzzle to him. I've listened to a lot of his music--a lot--and I've seen Baby Snakes and other nonsense. He's not a rock star. He's not enjoying himself. He's like a marionette master, manipulating his fans and micro-managing his band. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just why Zappa stands apart from every other artist in my collection. He is an outsider. He's too smart for his own good. I guess that's the hallmark of every good satirist.

The Mothers of Invention are Frank Zappa's band before he broke off on his own. This album is weird as fuck. There were a lot of drugs done for sure. I mean, it's fine I guess, it's just horribly experimental. Like.... All of the psychadelic drugs were taken while recording this album. All of them! One song on the record is called "Help, I'm a Rock". That song was definately written while on an acid trip. Another song heavily features a kazoo. Fuck kazoos. The last song features like 8 minutes of people fucking, and like 2 minutes of people saying "cream cheese". What a trip.

The musical stylings range from psychadelica, to blues rock, to satirical doo-wop. All over the place. I mean, I know that without experimentation, there would never be growth, it fuck this is weird.

Favourite songs: Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder, "Hungry Freaks, Daddy", Motherly Love, Anyway The Wind Blows, Trouble Every Day

Least favourite songs: It Can't Happen Here, The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet, Who Are the Brain Police?, You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here, "Help, I'm a Rock"

2/5

Ach, in de jaren '60 hadden ze ook al punk-ideeën. Nog niet het ruige gitaarwerk, maar wel lekker afzetten. 'Satirisch' framet wiki dat. Vast door een fan geschreven. Mag je zelf leuk vinden, maar er is geen enkele reden om te vinden dat iedereen naar mensen moet luisteren die expres vals zingen.

Wiki looft ook dat het het een van de eerste concept albums is. Het lijkt mij geen goed teken dat ik na het luisteren wel even terug moet naar wiki om te lezen wat dan dat thema zou moeten zijn. Ik raak al snel mijn interesse kwijt en krijg het hele artikel niet gelezen. Wat is er uithaal; het overkoepelende thema is 'afzetten'. Noem het maar een thema....

Verder lees ik zinnen als: Zappa later found out that when the material was recorded, Wilson had taken LSD. No shit, Sherlock...

The foundation of the songs are fairly standard bluesy pop rock structures gussied up with Zappa's signature baroque doo-wop and jazz approach to composition, zany arrangements and instrumentation, and his satirical view on both the 60s mono-culture and emerging counter culture. Like lots of Zappa stuff, this plays with the boundary between novelty songs and real rock. He's at once one of the most serious, curious, and experimental composers in the rock cannon and one of the goofiest exponents of musical and lyrical silliness. It means his work both rewards careful attention and relistening, but also becomes more tiresome and less exciting the more you hear it. 'Trouble Every Day' for instance is a perfect execution of the California psych blues-rock genre but also demonstrates Zappa's boredom with and scepticism of the scene surrounding it. 'Help I'm a Rock' takes this even further with a Kafkaesque premise for a dissociative freak out anchored in a trance-inducing bass phrase - it's ludicrous but extremely good.

My takeaway from the last Mothers of Invention (We’re Only In It For the Money) was that a lot of the humour and satire didn’t land for me-
save some lines like “I will love everyone / I will love the police as they kick the shit out of me on the street”
which made the more abrasive, experimental elements all the more unpleasant.

So far, Freak Out! is more conventional but less irritating, although I’ve just finished the first disc.
UPDaTE: finished the 2nd disc
Saved the best for last! Really though, either I have a thicker skin against the Zappa-isms in tracks like “It Can’t Happen Here”, or the broader, more surreal humour of this album aged better.
The deadpan pastiches of bygone 50s/60s pop are good as standalone tracks, while “Who Are the Brain Police?” reminds you of the terrors/delights to come

January 3, 2024

10 songs in, there was no mistaking what the group had set out to do. Satirically emulating pop music, and by extension the industry and the cultural mindset that makes it possible, is a risky bit for a debut album. Diogenes would have been proud!

Then the track 'Trouble Every Day', drops the pretense and the Mothers show you a bit of what they truly are. An adept psych-blues band with a penchant for laser focused social commentary.

The remainder of the album slips and descends slowly into chaos, culminating in a true freak out of a track with 'The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet.' I guess they needed to fill the 2nd record with something.

A wild ride, indeed.

Such a rediculous debut album. Wonder what people thought first listening to this in 1966. 100% an album you need to listen to before you die. Won’t be for everyone, and some of it is just a bit too strange that it’s not quiet a masterpiece in my eyes.