I LOVE concept albums. Some of my favorite albums are narrative driven concepts, like the Pretty Things' SF Sorrow or Skip Bifferty's Skip Bifferty album. And I'm all for pop/freak theater in rock, like Alice Cooper, Arthur Brown, or even the Tubes. However, as rock staggered into the 1970s, a lot of the groups got real self-conscious and serious about their concepts. For example: Rush. Anyways, after the original Mothers of Invention split, and band leader Frank Zappa became known as just Zappa, I lost interest. Part of it was Zappa records, by the mid-'80s, were worth more than GOLD, which made it difficult to obtain 'em, AND every pretentious rock freak was soooooo "serious" about everything Zappa. Ugh. They'd endlessly, and obsessively, yammer on about the genius of his '70s and '80s recordings, especially harping on 200 Motels! At the time, by the way, most of these serious rock bros hadn't even seen the film yet!!

Honestly, I kinda dig Zappa's early solo records: Hot Rats is my fave, Chunga's Revenge keeps it weird, while Waka/Jawaka, Weasles Ripped My Flesh and The Grand Wazoo are okay. I say only "okay" as his jazz thing cuts a bit too close to prog's love of fusion for my thick-skulled primitive tastes. And that is as far as I've seriously gotten into the Zappa catalog. Honestly, what I've heard of his mid-'70s albums, after Phlorescent Leech & Eddie were employed, always sound too much like proper theater, like... musicals? Which is fine, but I'm not a fan of musicals. I think my hang-up is feeling once Zappa let the narrative drive his writing process, the music became a frame for his jokes/stories, so there was, um, an imbalance. Personally, I wanna be challenged by the music along with the narrative in a heaving tandem!! (Sigh.) I know Zappa is CHEEKY, but there is just so much cheek I can take before I feel the gags have burned out. That said, I imagine a handful of you on Slog Out are Zappa smarty pants, so I hafta ask, are there any later Zappa records AS solid as Freak Out! or did he keep on being "Zappa" the creator of cheekiest musicals till he died? I'm hoping I gave up on Zappa when the giving up was good?