Fenk Zappa: Freak spokesperson and charming nihilist

Frank Zappa is a hyperproductive genius, who left behind about sixty albums.

With a twisted sense of humor and sharp musical ideas, he left the canonicity of genres and inventively expanded the boundaries of rock 'n' roll. As a reaction to the demagoguery of pop culture, with imaginative parodies that meet trash-pop with the modernism of serious music that he actually aspired to throughout his career, his work is essentially a confrontation of opposing values ​​in culture.

Despite numerous masterpieces (such as "Hot Rat", "The Grand Wazoo" and "Over-Nite Sensation"), the first three albums, a kind of musical Bermuda triangle: "Freak Out!" (1966), ”Absolutely Free” (1967) and “We're Only in It for the Money” (1968), considered his most significant contribution to the history of music: as a cataclysmic avant-garde revolt, they are art-rock therapy, an incredibly fun response to mainstream dementia and countercultural kitsch.

The conflicting nature of the double debut "Freak Out!" it is aimed at a satirical observation of the American subculture. As one of the first concept albums (with supporting fictional character Suzy Krimczyz), it is very eclectic in terms of genre. With the production of the famous Tom Wilson (worked with The Velvet Underground, Niko, Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel) who used hallucinogenic narcotics during the recording, the album set the standards of psychedelic production that only a year later entered the mainstream through authors such as The Beatles and Pink Floyd.

According to Zappa, the album offered something for everyone, regardless of age or social milieu, but it was still too ironic for the taste of a wider audience (which is especially foreign to America, which, unlike Europe, does not have that tradition). That's why the publishing house "MGM", expecting a new The Animals from them, was dissatisfied with the recording, which, thanks to the eccentric band and producer on LSD, got out of control and produced one of the most unusual albums of the 60s.

Taking no sides with either the hippies or their decadent parents, "We're Only in It for the Money" is a critique of the American way of life, carefully watered with LSD and nuclear tests.

Like a twisted version of the pop music "Freak Out!" is an attack on the hypocrisy of the American media, which will condition his further musical development in which the heroes of his songs are politicians, corporations, television preachers, girls from Catholic schools and "Jewish princesses", through whom he made jokes at the expense of all possible conferences, ideologies, race. Along with a clown outfit and scathing interviews, Zappa is with "Freak Out!" established as the court madman of American democracy in the 60s, which is why he gained cult status overnight in his country, while in Europe, especially in Britain, he achieved significant success and influence.

According to Zappa, this album was "on a personal level a process in which an individual rejects an outdated and limiting standard of thinking, dressing and social labeling, in order to creatively express his relationship to the immediate environment and the social structure as a whole".

The second album "Absolutely Free" went even further in that research. Zappa claimed that progress is not possible without deviation from the norm, and it was precisely on this album that this attitude came to the fore. Full of sudden, rhythmic changes, "Absolutely Free" managed to create a bizarre world of operetta rock music in the confrontation of different musical themes and genres. Divided into units reminiscent of symphonic movements, the musical complexity of "Absolutely Free" is filled with numerous musical references from popular music ("Louie Louie" by Richard Bey) to serious music ("Devotion to Spring", "Petrushka" by Igor Stravinsky).

In that sense, the album sounds like a rock encyclopedia written by a schizophrenic. It is characterized by sudden changes and a linear structure, which contains a certain improvisational charm. Accepting that absurdity is the only form of reality, Zappa and The Mother of Invention luddically (de)compose music on this album so that they let us know that it's tragic when people get serious about anything, especially fashion and politics. In this sense, the paradigm of such intentions on the album is the famous seven-minute drama "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" in which American President Lyndon Johnson is parodied.

The next "We're Only in It for the Money" is brutal cynicism, which will later lead The Residents to extremes and Sparks to the charts. The subversion of subcultural currents here has evolved into a destructive dialectic. With taunting songs that deviantly played with pop structure, turning them into psychotic cartoon soundtracks, The Mothers of Invention expressed their hatred and contempt for the empty flower-rock era.

Taking no sides with either the hippies or their decadent parents, "We're Only in It for the Money" is a critique of the American way of life, which, carefully watered with LSD and nuclear tests, mutated the country into a "monstrous" camp society in the late 60s. and early 70s.

All of them, even their fans who fantasized that one day they would be rock stars living in Los Angeles mansions with large swimming pools, were in music for no other reason than, as the title of Zappa's third album says, just for the money

The satirically equal album, meeting Stockhausen, Vares and Stravinsky with jazz, doo wop of the 50s and psychedelic folk-pop, was far ahead of its time: didactically presenting all the possibilities of the postmodern within rock music, Zapa managed to create a heterogeneous genre sound and lay the foundations of an eclectic approaches the rock form.

With this album, Zapa once assumed the role of the most progressive new rock author. Not shying away from the most uncompromising experiments and idiosyncrasies that have led to a complete distortion of the classic rock form, this album is intellectually superior and very complex playing. As a fusion of confusion, electronic cacophony and melody, "We're Only in It for the Money" is an eccentric manuscript of an author who nihilistically approaches the rock structure, deconstructing it to the point of absurdity. With a twisted sense of sarcasm, it is an attack on the concept of the masses - the ultimate declaration of individualism in rock 'n' roll. A slyly humorous manual for the semantic distortion of pop music, “We're Only in It for the Money” was a slap in the face for the music industry: ironically, it ended up at number 30 on the official charts!

Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart (aka his high school friend) are the founders of American freak-rock. Younger representatives of this "genre" - The Residents, Sparks and Devo, have developed this parodic cultural sequence into one of the most subversive phenomena of popular music.

As an open "spokesman for "freaks" - imaginative outsiders who could not fit into any of the existing groups", Zappa, together with The Velvet Underground, opened a new page in rock history: his twisted proto-punk sound is a reaction to the impersonal mainstream: while when the flower children talked about the expansion of consciousness (Zappa was known as a militant opponent of psychoactive substances), and the counterculture grappled with conservative America, Zappa recognized and demystified this "revolution" as hypocritical: behind the essence was the music industry and hedonistic style lives of their spokespersons.

All of them, even their fans who dreamed that one day they would be rock stars living in Los Angeles mansions with large swimming pools, were in music for nothing else than, as the title of Zappa's third album says, just for the money.