Frank Zappa Discography - Frank and Special Guests

If You would like to listen to a collection of nice, three-minute pop tunes, then you had better steer clear of Lumpy Gravy.

Consisting of musical snippets interspersed with chunks of absurd dialog (recordings of people talking inside of a piano that Frank spliced and edited into pseudo-conversations), this album comes off like the soundtrack to a series of television commercials.

Sounding surprisingly un-dated for an album recorded during the mid-sixties, Lumpy Gravy is an important link to Civilization Phaze III, as well as, one of the earliest examples of Frank's orchestral vision.

This is one of those albums that people seem to really like or really hate.

Mostly an instrumental offering, Hot Rats consists of one completely composed tune (Peaches) one vocal track (Willie - sung by Captain Beefheart) and several extended jam sessions.

To my ears this album sounds very dated (circa 1970, but most likely recorded well before that time), but contains some great music nontheless. There's plenty of Frank's guitar playing, although his tone is somewhat thin and harsh, and Ian Underwood provides copius amounts of overdubage on organ, clarinet and saxaphone.

The classic Peaches En Regalia is required listening for any would-be Zappa fan.

Opening with Transylvania Boogie (arguably, Frank's ugliest solo on record due in part to a thin wah-wah induced tone) and closing with the oft-reworked Sharleena (arguably, another classic), Chunga's Revenge spans the gap between the original MOI and the Flo & Eddie period.

Although Howard, Mark, Jeff, George, Ian and Aynsley appear on most of this album's tracks the cohesiveness of this combination of players is not to be found on this recording.

Originally billed as a preview to 200 Motels, this album sounds more like a collection of out-takes interspersed with leftovers from Frank's late '60s work.

That said, I still have a soft spot for this album. Perhaps the fact that I aquired this recording fairly early in my discovery of the genius that was/is Frank Zappa has clouded my ability to reason.

The allusion to Hot Rats on the cover of Waka/Jawaka is no coincidence, as this album could easily be taken as phaze II of the aforementioned project.

After the initial head, the remaining 16 minutes of Big Swifty pay homage to Miles Davis' Bitches Brew/Big Fun period.

Your Mouth and ...One Shot Deal are a couple of faceless vocal tunes with the latter sounding at times like a tip of the hat to the Eagles or Nitty Gritty Dirt Band due to "Sneaky Pete's" steel guitar accompaniment and solo.

Waka/Jawaka picks up where ...Swifty leaves off bringing the album to a close with 11:17 of jazz/soul fusion.

Utilizing much the same ensemble as Waka/Jawaka and recorded during the same time frame, The Grand Wazoo could be considered phaze II of that project.

Opening with the eerie Calvin (listen for reference to Greggery Peccary) this album quickly gets down to the business of jams and solos.

The liner notes include an interesting little story to accompany the cover art.

This album has found it's way into a lot of collections that otherwise contain no Zappa. In fact, I can recall reciting parts of Yellow Snow before I even knew who Frank Zappa was.

For a lot of people, Apostrophe' is quintessential Frank. For others, this album marks the end of Zappa's creativity. The only way to find out for yourself is to give it a listen.

Marking the beginning of Frank's lewd and crude period (culminating with Joe's Garage), Overnite Sensation is filled with sexual overtones.

Although this album was another of my early aquisitions, it has never been a favorite, but don't let my opinion dissuade you from checking it out.

With the exception of Camarillo Brillo and 50/50, all the songs on this album are classics and re-appear on many of Frank's later efforts.

This also marks the origin of the '74 band, but Frank's dominance over the band keeps me from including this one in that catagory.

One of the four "litigation" albums that caused Frank to file a law suit against Warner Bros., Studio Tan might, on first listen, appear to be comprised of purely "throw away" tunes.

Don't be too quick to judge, and I'm sure that this album will grow on you.

Greggery Peccary is an all-too-obvious Billy The Mountain spin off, but the composition itself is light years beyond what the Flo and Eddie group could have pulled off.

Revised Music is a very interesting piece that features Frank on a nylon-string acoustic guitar and percussion accompanied by rock band and orchestra. There is entirely to few examples of this sort of thing in the Zappa catalog.

Let Me Take You To The Beach is a bit "cutesy" and korny but what the hey.

RNDZL is one of those timeless Zappa instrumentals. This version has some nice variations including some intense spewage by Frank playing through a wah-wah pedal and a Pignose amp.

The musicians featured on this album include George, Bruce, Tom, Chester and Ruth from the '74 band, but again not enough of their individual personalities shine through to include this album in that catagory.

This album is as ugly and strange as the cover art (including Frank's well displayed manhood), but Zoot Allures contains several instances of choice Zappa.

The title track along with The Torture Never Stops and Black Napkins are some of the finest moments Frank ever commited to tape.

Friendly Little Finger provides an early example of Frank's experiments with what he called xenocrony, a technique where he would overdub tracks from completely different pieces onto eachother to form a new composition. (You can find examples of this on Sheik Yerbouti and Joe's Garage as well.)

The remainder of this album is Zappa at his down-and-dirtiest.

A friend of mine came across a copy of this album on 8-track (Does anybody remember 8-tracks?), but I only got to hear a few bits and pieces before the tape self destructed (or was it the player?). The only thing that I recall was the absence of Thana Harris' vocals, which I'm not overly fond of.

Aside from that, Sleep dirt has some great music on it.

The title track, featuring Frank and James "bird legs" Youman in an acoustic duet, is enough of a reason to buy this one.

Zappa and Friends