today’s album a day was frank zappa’s uncle meat.
i liked frank zappa when i was very little, because of his album covers and because i thought he was a comedian. i would laugh and laugh listening to the sounds he made on the couple of records i had at my house.
zappa is kind of a legendary figure so i’ll skip the tiny biography portion i sometimes do here. almost everybody knows who frank zappa was.
the music on uncle meat is a triumph of sound recording. the way the instruments and tracks are blended, recorded, dubbed and overdubbed give it a sound all it’s own. it’s intermixed with spoken word stuff that is hilarious.
one track consists of a band member complaining to frank that, sure, he makes a good living, but if they would only play a few more gigs, he could live well, and not just get by, as he seems to be doing. i don’t know if this is just frank running tape while a guy in the session was complaining or what but in the context of the album, it made me break up while i was driving listening to it.
zappa was a guy of rare and wide talent. given more time and his druthers he might have turned out more interesting film work, but as it was, he made music on his own terms for almost his entire life. in the end he had a hand in about 60 albums of music. he had a certain kind of genius that’s hard to define.
he was one of a kind. luckily he left behind a huge body of work to enjoy.
