SIDE A
1. Plastic People – 3:42
2. The Duke Of Prunes – 2:13
3. Amnesia Vivace – 1:01
4. The Duke Regains His Chops – 1:53
5. Call Any Vegetable – 2:15
6.Invocation & Ritual Dance Of The Young Pumpkin – 6:59
7. Soft-Sell Conclusion – 1:41
SIDE B
8. America Drinks – 1:53
9. Status Back Baby – 2:54
10. Uncle Bernie’s Farm – 2:10
11. Son Of Suzy Creamcheese – 1:34
12. Brown Shoes Don’t Make It – 7:29
13. America Drinks And Goes Home – 2:48
So it is really quite quirky, but also says a lot, that this has ended up first. I will disclose that sadly, for any of the many Zappa superfreaks out there, this will be his only representation on the list, which kind of feels wrong given his prolific he is and how excellent so many of the albums are. More notably, this my only ‘new’ album on the list. What I mean by this, is that in around 2014 I first put a rough version of this list together (in Top 100 form). Though many albums have changed position, moving up and down, and others have come into consideration, this is the ONLY album I first heard SINCE that time (in 2016) to fast-track all the way into the final 52. That is a particular achievement.
Frank Zappa is a unique and astonishing iconoclast. Recently I had the pleasure of watching the excellent Alex Winter retrospective of his career and I recommend it to anyone. Here is a stat pulled roughly out of thin air:
If I extended this to be Top 200, Zappa might just have the most representation of ANY artist. That number? Roughly 10.
Just in his lifetime, which was cut short by prostate cancer at 52 in 1993, Frank Zappa released 62 official albums, many under the title of his band, The Mothers Of Invention. Classics such as his solo jazz-rock masterpiece Hot Rats, hesitant tiptoes into the semi-mainstream with Over-Nite Sensation and Apostrophe, and seminal late 70s parodic masterpieces Sheik Yerbouti and Joe’s Garage all make a serious case for inclusion. They all bring something different and all have moments of true genius at their peaks, but all meander at times in different ways. Absolutely Free, absolutely does not.
It is the early Mothers albums that are most worthy of inclusion. They all have not just a kind of perverse pop sensibility which has helped make them iconic, but they are the true pioneering works that established the Zappa brand. Perhaps the most special Mothers albums, both to my intuition and in wide-scale reverence, are the first, 1966’s Freak Out, and the third, 1968’s We’re Only In It For The Money.
These are both legendary albums I have always kept in these countdown conversations. Largely on reputation, I purchased both long ago. Absolutely Free never seems to be included in the same conversations and snuck below my radar for years. Yet when the time finally came, I have found it much better.
For comparison, Freak Out is an absolute icon that shook up the establishment when it came out, with its combination of quirky doo-wop inspired pop, musique concrete and biting social commentary. It is truly ground-breaking. It does however, ever so slightly drag. The pop songs are excellent but similar and very dated in sound, the weird stuff is just that, a bit long and weird.
We’re Only In It For the Money is more concise and has some of the most delirious peaks of Zappa’s career but is utterly madcap (not necessarily a criticism, to be fair). It is more avant-garde, also ends with a long and largely unlistenable piece of noisy ambience, and jumps all over the place structurally. It is very much a patchwork quilt.
Absolutely Free, compared to those or any of the other 60s Mothers works, has a satisfying flow to it. It consists of two connected song cycles on each side. These suites provide a more naturally engaging structure, especially for someone so partial to Progressive Rock/concept album style structures. Each song has its own distinct identity, but they flow and call back to each other expertly, particularly on Side A. But flow only gets you so far, the music has to be good. Absolutely Free also deftly combines The Mothers’ trademark parodical material and is another step up from Freak Out in the supreme musicianship. But it is also full of memorably catchy moments. Zappa is not exactly famous for his mainstream melodies so that is the real pleasant surprise in this album, though it shouldn’t be a surprise that such masterful melodies are easily achievable given Zappa’s compositional genius.
Highly unusually for a great album, the openers and closers of both sides are actually the four weakest tracks. This makes some sense in context though, as in three cases certainly, they are basically prologues and epilogues framing the meat and potatoes in the heart of the pieces. Plastic People is quintessential Zappa. It is messy, chaotic, refusing to settle on any one theme, and full of particularly parodic spoken word madness. It includes an excellent little shtick at the start where an apparently intellectually disabled President of the United States can only speak in the melody of iconic The Kingsmen hit Louie, Louie. Soft-Sell Conclusion is the big finale of the opening half, while America Drinks and America Drinks And Goes Home bookend the second piece with a nightclub lounge parody.
The material within the margins though is all superb, without exception. Side A, subtitled “Absolutely Free” (#1 in a Series of Underground Oratorios), really gets going with the delicate and strangely beautiful The Duke Of Prunes, where Zappa re-quotes a melody from an earlier film score of his, so rightly assured of its quality is he. It is a slippery but captivating primary melody, upon which the band builds with their perfect balance of energy and precision. Amnesia Vivace interrupts briefly and dramatically, with a cacophony of noise based around a series of immediately recognisable quotes from Zappa’s favourite legendary composer, Igor Stravinsky, who he calls back to regularly throughout his career. The Duke Regains His Chops resumes the superb Duke melody, veers further into left-field, then gives way to Call Any Vegetable, a funny piece based on one of the most excellent and typical frenetic Zappa staccato riffs. Invocation & Ritual Dance Of The Young Pumpkin is a welcome break of sorts, settling into a breezy bluesy jam, one of the very best of the early Zappa guitar workouts. The highlight of the long track comes early though, with a thumping bass-heavy quote of one of the famous melodies from Jupiter, part of Gustav’s Holst’s The Planets.
My perception, whether accurate or not, is that Side B of this album, subtitled “The M.O.I. American Pageant” (#2 in a Series of Underground Oratorios) is somewhat forgotten under the weight of the well loved opening half. The three short tracks are all excellent and underrated pop rock gems. Status Back Baby detours midway through into yet another tour-de-Stravinsky, a simplified but tense rock transposition of the opening of Petrushka. The rest of the track, then the following Uncle Bernie’s Farm are straight up simple fun period pieces, rocking hard but melodically. Son Of Suzy Creamcheese is this side’s fantastic foray into textbook Zappa speed staccato, before we move in earnest to the album’s centrepiece, Brown Shoes Don’t Make It. This 7 minute journey through all manner of semi-avant-garde semi-theatrical bizarreness is the first of Zappa’s universally acknowledged masterpieces. It is generally termed a ‘mini-musical’ and for me lays alongside (and another step along from) The Who’s 1966 9-minute mini-opera A Quick One While He’s Away as rock’s first two major steps into the world of classical-style longform conceptual narrative pieces. It is a bit dated now, sonically as well as some of its discomforting sexual attitudes (as is the case of much Zappa’s work, satirical though such attitudes may or may not be intended to be). It is also the most challenging sequence of the album by far, but it is strangely rewarding. I can barely point to what makes it appealing but somehow I always find the whole piece wholly satisfying, especially in its place at the climax of the album.
Dated, crazy, complex, but strangely satisfying. This summary of the album’s peak song just as well fits the whole album itself. But why Absolutely Free is that step above other similarly characterised Zappa albums, is because it is not simply intellectually satisfying like always, but uncharacteristically fun and enjoyable as a simple aesthetic pleasure.
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