I have been brainstorming a provisional top 100 albums for want of anything better to do (to be posted on the forum over my dead body, unless i can think of an ingenious new twist) and was picking out my favourite Frank Zappa albums.
Only In It For the Money is extremely compatible with me, but
Uncle Meat might just take the biscuit. It was realised by Zappa as a companion to the film, and one side of the album is a long edit of excerpts from said film. The other side (like
Lumpy Gravy) is Frank just on the cutting room floor with miles of tape from various aborted orchestra sessions and live performances, random treated found sounds all cut and pasted together, to form a glorious whole.
I always loved the low-budget meanderings of the 60's stuff most,
Only In It For the Money is the 'pop satire' album;
Uncle Meat and
Gravy are all fusion and 'alt-classical', very stream-of-consciousness, they only work really when heard in one sitting.
Having said that it's a nostalgia thing, I heard the 60's stuff first, and the distended motifs and ideas strewn about those tape music albums came into remarkable fruition on
Burnt Weeny Sandwich and
Weasels Ripped My Flesh only a year later. The man really churned them out... Oh yeah and in-between he did
Hot Rats, which for some reason has never fully connected with me. Maybe it's just too polished.
1969