A Year of Blind Spots: Freak Out!

Ack, I hate the ten-plus-minute noise collage song whenever it pops up on an album. I mean, I should've expected it from Frank Zappa, but still, it's disappointing. Freak Out!, which is rock 'n' roll's very first debut double album, completely falls apart on the second disc, when the eight-minute "Help I'm a Rock / It Can't Happen Hear" fades into the twelve-minute "The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet," and those twenty minutes don't feature a single moment that resembles an actual song. Big bummer to have to sit through ten minutes of Zappa yelling at someone named "Suzy Creamcheese" (even the character name should clue you into how lame this is).

I mean, I don't have to sit through it. If I listened to this album fifteen times this week, then I gave up sometime during those two songs at least ten of those times. I don't begrudge the Mothers of Invention for putting us through it, however. It makes sense, thematically. Here's an entire double album filled with some acid-on-sleeve hippies making fun of the squares by mocking them (the silly doo wop) and busting their balls (calling themselves "hungry freaks" and a whole host of other names to make fun of how afraid the normies are of them). Then, at the end, you really gotta turn the screws. You gotta give them exactly what they are afraid of. Here's some fucking noise. Goddamn hippies!!

So wait, am I a square? I don't know, probably. If being the opposite of a square means passing off some bullshit collage as "music," then yeah, I am a square. But I really do feel like Zappa and co. are better than this. Look to "Go Cry on Somebody Else's Shoulder." Clearly they are making fun of oldies music, but at the same time, they do a really good rendition of oldies music. And they don't even need to be so obtuse about the mocking! The very idea that this is in the style of a love song, but the lyrics are actually telling some broad to fuck off? That's a good enough joke in and of itself.

Like I said, I expected all this. This is my first Mothers of Invention album, and I'm filling a blind spot, but this is not the first time I've heard anything from Frank Zappa. I had some experiences when I was teen, and his solo stuff turned me off hardcore. Weird, lame, sonically has aged terribly. I thought maybe seeing the genesis of the Zappa sound might help me turn a corner. No dice.

We saw the other day that music that is condescending or insincere is not necessarily a bad thing. But if you're gonna mock, then you gotta bring the goods too. The Mothers very rarely bring the goods. A few pretty good songs, a whole lot of filler, and a complete disaster at the back end. I didn't hate this, but I can't say I liked it. Oh god, I would have been insufferable in the '60s.