Freak out!

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Freak out!
Studio album by The Mothers of Invention

Publication
(s)

June 27, 1966

Label (s) The Verve Music Group
Barking Pumpkin Records (CD)
Rykodisc (CD)
VideoArts Music (CD)

Format (s)

LP vinyl , CD

Genre (s)

Psychedelic rock , progressive rock

Title (number)

15th

running time

60:23

production

Tom Wilson

Studio (s)

Sunset-Highland Studios of TTG

chronology
- Freak out! Absolutely Free
(1967)

Freak out! is the first music album by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention . It was released on the Verve label in 1966 and is classified as progressive rock . It is considered the first debut double album in the history of rock music and expanded the palette of forms of this genre in music and lyrics.

staff

The Mothers of Invention

Guest musician

production

  • Producer: Tom Wilson
  • Sound engineers: Val Valentine, Ami Hadani, Tom Hidley
  • Assistants: Eugene Dinovi, Neil Levang , Vito, Ken Watson
  • Music director: Frank Zappa
  • Orchestration and arrangement: Frank Zappa
  • Concept: Frank Zappa
  • Cover design: Jack Anesh
  • Cover photo: Ray Leong

content

Track list

All compositions are by Frank Zappa.

  1. "Hungry Freaks, Daddy" (3:29) is a vicious political satire on the alcohol-laden "American Way of Life". (P. 124)
  2. “I Ain't Got No Heart” (2:30) raises the question: Is there love? This song says: No.
  3. “Who Are the Brain Police?” (3:22) is political criticism in the form of a zappaesque radio play - a kind of “audio hallucination”. (Pp. 136, 276)
  4. “Go Cry on Somebody Else's Shoulder” (3:31) is also a “not” love song: Ray Collins (unnamed as co-author) thinks about terminal marriages - and above all wants to be left alone. (P. 139)
  5. "Motherly Love" (2:45) is a plea for free love - and a hit from the early Mothers shows. (P. 20ff)
  6. "How Could I Be Such a Fool?" (2:12) casts an ironic look at a self-pity attack. (P. 24ff)
  7. “Wowie Zowie” (2:45) reflects thoughts about a common expression of astonishment in teenage jargon. Pamela Zarubica (aka "Suzy Creamcheese") provided the idea for the song. (P. 133)
  8. "You Didn't Try to Call Me" (3:17) deals with pubertal self-pity - again suggested by Suzy Creamcheese. (P. 133)
  9. "Any Way the Wind Blows" (2:52) gives an autobiographical look at a broken marriage. (P. 99)
  10. “I'm Not Satisfied” (2:37) deals with dissatisfaction, self-pity and the inability to change both. (P. 38f)
  11. “You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here” (3:37) is a frontal assault on the thoughtlessness of young concertgoers. (P. 40ff)
  12. "Trouble Every Day" (6:16) is a sarcastic political commentary on racial discrimination and on the US news programs that turned the greatest misery into business. (Pp. 136, 276)
  13. "Help, I'm a Rock" (4:42) is a collage in which more than 100 freaks make all kinds of noises in the studio, conducted and structured by Frank Zappa. (P. 137)
  14. "It Can't Happen Here" (3:56) satirically not only target the American small town idyll, in which one can feel really safe between the swimming pool and ready-made meals made of rotten meat, but also counts on the freak-out feelings of the people Hippie scene that, in Zappa's eyes, was beginning to establish itself in the prosperity of American society.
  15. As a sound collage, "The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet" (12:17) gives an unmistakable answer to the question: What has got into you?

meaning

Freak Out! Gave the rock music genre, which was still young at the time of its publication . important impulses. The album picked up on several common patterns such as beat , rhythm and blues , doo wop and rock 'n' roll . Zappa didn't just put them next to each other, but rather combined them into a dramaturgically developing unit. Frank Zappa, who wrote all the pieces, didn't stop there - he considerably expanded the musical palette of rock. He broke listening habits by interrupting catchy song structures with snippets of words cut in between or other sounds.

This principle of montage and collage of contrasting elements, which was typical of his work in the following decades, was taken to extremes in the last three tracks of the album. The piece "Help, I'm a Rock" develops over a riff played by guitar and bass, which is gradually replaced by ever new fragments of speech and sound - including a quote from "Who Are The Brain Police?" , the third track on the album - is superimposed until the track ends abruptly. The piece "It Can't Happen Here", possibly not listed separately on some album covers for this reason, begins with onomatopoeic painting aimed at the sound effects of various vowels or vocal groups until a cluster played by the classical orchestra interrupts the whole thing. This is followed by an atonal passage with drums and two pianos, until at the end everything flows into the sound paintings from the beginning of the piece. “The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet” begins with a continuous drum groove in which humming, singing, synthesizer sounds, sound collages of various instruments and stereo effects are initially increasingly condensed. Eventually the rhythmic patterns change, the tempo also increases. The R&B classic Louie Louie is only cited briefly , then previously played motifs are electronically alienated. All of this leads to the line of text called “America is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful”, which the choir calls over and over again.

For the mid-1960s, the subjects dealt with in some texts and the bluntness with which they were addressed were also still unfamiliar. Already the opening song of the album, "Hungry Freaks, Daddy", made the new pace clear. Zappa settled with "Mr. America ”, whose schools you couldn't learn anything, and who was satisfied with his“ supermarket dream ”and his liquor store sanctuary (“ liquore store supreme ”). One of the lyrics on the album that stands out is “Trouble Every Day”. In this critical political song, Zappa branded the race riots in Watts, a district of Los Angeles. It began on August 11, 1965, lasted six days and ended up killing 34 people. Zappa was outraged by how the event was reported live on television stations and how it was being commercialized by news broadcasts. He angered "all the unconfirmed reports" (all the unconfirmed reports) and the screeching greed of the broadcasters to be the first to send the reports into the air ("They say that no one gets it faster") - for Zappa simply a dumbing down Masses ("mass stupidity"). The line “I ain't black, but there's a whole lot of times I wish I could say I'm not white” (I'm not black, but very often I wish I could say I'm not white) shows Zappa's sympathy for the black pursuit of liberation. "Trouble Every Day" is the most successful song of the 1960s, which describes the situation of black people in the United States. As the form of the text presentation, Zappa chose spoken song, for his biographer “possibly the first rap song on record”. For Barry Miles, “It Can't Happen Here” is also one of “Zappa's most important texts”. (P. 136) It is about the hippie movement that was just budding at the time. When asked several times, each with a different location, Zappa answered the question "Who could imagine that they would freak out somewhere in ..." with the phrase "it can't happen here" (here it can't happen), but he also predicted right away: "It won't happen here".

reception

criticism

The critics reacted ambiguously to the album: The album was highly praised by some reviewers, others downright tore it up. The Swiss writer Urban Gwerder enthused that the album was “unique in everything” and offered material that “has never been heard in pop music”. Gwerder concluded that the album "radically turned the whole rock culture and contemporary music upside down". (P. 33) The Sparifankal co- founder, writer and journalist Carl-Ludwig Reichert also pointed out a sociological point of view. He said the album "made an underestimable contribution to the subjective liberation of young people of both sexes trapped in the constraints of Western cultures". (P. 33) And the sounds reviewer Rainer Blome was almost speechless when he heard the pieces “Help, I'm a Rock” and “The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet”: “It's a musical happening , a kind of living theater on record. This music is so spontaneous and creative that it cannot be described. ” (P. 28)

The album was maliciously panned by other reviewers . Pete Johnson of the Los Angeles Times rated it "musical nonsense" and speculated whether Freak Out! "Could be the biggest stimulus for the aspirin industry since income tax". Others described the composer as "degenerate" and "danger to humanity". For Loraine Alterman of the Detroit Free Press, the album alone had "slack" potential; she warned parents among her readers not to let their children go to Mothers concerts. (P. 250f)

Publications

The album Freak Out! has been published in many different versions - too many to be presented here individually. The following overview clarifies the main distinguishing features.

  • The album was released as a double LP in North America, France, New Zealand and Japan. There were versions in mono and stereo. There were also differences in the cover: For example, the back of the cover generally showed a color photo, in France only a black and white photo.
  • Freak Out! Was released in Germany, Great Britain and Mexico . in contrast, initially as a single LP. The pieces “Go Cry on Somebody Else's Shoulder”, “How Could I Be Such a Fool?” And “Any Way the Wind Blows” were missing here. In addition, the track "Trouble Every Day" was more than half shorter than on the original. The British version came in mono and stereo versions.
  • At the end of 1971 a re-release as a double LP appeared in Europe on Verve, in 1985 another re-release on Zappa Records . In 1985 the Old Masters Box Vol. One was released on Barking Pumpkin Records , the Freak Out! also contained as a double album.
  • The digitally revised album was first released on CD in 1987 on four labels: Rykodisc (US market), Zappa Records (Europe), VACK (Japan / Asia) and JPCD (Russia). A reissue with a revised cover appeared in 1995 on Rykodisc and VACK.

successes

Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
Freak out!
  US 130 02/18/1967 (23 weeks)

In the short term, the album could not yet establish itself on the market. From Freak Out! only 30,000 copies were pressed at the start. Most American radio stations refused to play pieces from the album. Nevertheless, it climbed to number 130 on the North American Billboard chart for pop albums in the year of its release. In the long term, Freak Out! commercially successful. The album had become a sought-after collector's item. Even in the days of vinyl records, there were several new editions. Even black copiers wanted to benefit from the demand and launched the first release as a bootleg. It was also released twice on CD - almost 20 years after it was first published. Rolling Stone magazine chose Freak Out! to 243rd place among the 500 best albums of all time.

Reviews

Web links

swell

  1. a b c d e f g h i Barry Miles: Zappa . Rogner & Bernhard, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-8077-1010-8
  2. a b c d Frank Zappa / Carl Weissner (transl.): Plastic People - Songbook, Corrected Copy . Two thousand and one, Frankfurt 1978.
  3. Notes on the song (as of February 2007)
  4. Text Monster Magnet (February 2007)
  5. ^ Robert A. Rosenstone: "The Times are A-Changing" - The Music of Protest, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , Vol. 383, 1969, p. 135
  6. ^ A b Carl-Ludwig Reichert: Frank Zappa . DTV, Munich, 2000. ISBN 3-423-31039-1
  7. ^ Rainer Blome: Freak Out . In: Sounds - Platten 66-77 , Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt 1979.
  8. Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso: I am the American Dream . Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, Munich, 1991. ISBN 3-442-32536-6 .
  9. Album versions ( Memento of the original from October 23, 2012 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Status: February 2007) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lukpac.org
  10. Charts US
  11. Rolling Stone (as of February 2007)