Two seminal Zappa albums fleshed out
in a big, box-set kind of way
The second installment in Zappa
Records’ “4tieth Anniversary FZ Audio Documentary” series
exposes the Kraken lurking inside the bought-and-sold bodies of Frank
Zappa’s albums. The title—cross-hitched from the 1968 albums
comprising this set, Lumpy Gravy and We’re Only In It For
The Money—appropriately links the two together (the parodic
rock-pastiche of Money had time to emerge when Lumpy’s
release was stalled due to label disputes). Lumpy Gravy was
Zappa’s first official solo project, and Money his third
release with the Mothers of Invention. Still, the shared methodology
of the two albums—frenetic collage—helps answer the rhetorical
question posed on the back of Lumpy Gravy: “Is this phase 2
of We’re Only In It For The Money?”
We’re Only In It For The Money,
whose Sgt. Pepper-parody cover stalled its own release, gets
less revelatory treatment here. But it needs less; its ’60s-skewering
rock suite hilariously and compellingly lampoons the decade’s
countercultural overindulgence, paranoid close-minded conservativism
and slick or uninspired artistic movements. It still singes. That the
answer to Zappa’s central question in freak-out waltz “What's the
Ugliest Part of Your Body?” (“your mind”) hasn’t changed much
in 40 years makes you wonder just what Frank would do in 2009. My
guess is reissue this album.