Absolutely Freaks

My only worthy foil in my heart for Black Sabbath is Frank Zappa. Frank was a genre bending genius of an idiot whose tremendous musical skills were undermined/heightened by his zany and satiric humour. You will learn more if you follow my blog.

Our first chapter is the album that opened my eyes toward the Zappaic universe, Absolutely Free from 1967.

The first tune is “Plastic people”, which starts by Frank's introduction of the President of the US, and after that "El Presidente" jangles "fellow Americans", it goes to a stuttering scat du-du against the guitar. We got the refrain and than various interesting interjection. It ranges from society observations, fiction, comment on hippies. The piece was a commentary of how the San Franciscan police handled hippies. (see Nazis) Of course, the hippies got their stuff to the face as well. They are the plastic people. Also we get the “Prune is a vegetable” cue of the album. (see: flower power, deduct mockery, salute FZ ) The whole tune got an amazing ride of style all in cosy 3:30 minutes.

“The Duke of Prunes” ridicules sappy love songs, with a nice bouncy melody that is characteristically disturbing a bit. Pseudo-operatic vocals and doo-wop harmonisations are in abound; the later is usual FZ. “Amnesia Vivace” has some nice reeds, and then we got the Duke theme reprised and twisted and amplified into an explosion.

"Cheesy, Cheesy”, announces “Call Any Vegetable”, which opened my eyes. It has a darn tricky time signatures palette, based on eights, extremely bouncy. Look out for the most out of the tune yodel ever and various vocal and lyrical hilarities. The middle part of the suite is a nice instrumental that you can dance to! After we conclude the vegetable story with advices how to deal with our Veggie friends.

“Big leg Emma” is a blues-ish jazzy shuffle about, wooh, Big leg Emma. Reeds are carrying the theme, a nice breather. “Why don’tcha do” me right is a menacing piece with a lingering sexual undercurrent. Frank let it rips showing his solo prowess. There is no one like him with his feedback soaked idiosyncrasy.

Because I feel you could get the hang of Frank now, I am just mentioning the plastic people type of opera roller coaster “Brown shoes don’t make it” and the bar salute mocker “America drinks & go home”.

Frank always loaded his album with messages and a rich musical tapestry that is always worthy looking at more deeply. (And you got to love how the maestro himself laughs at the idiocy sometimes.)