Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention - We're Only in It for the Money (1968)

I'm out of my depth here, never really having had much to do with Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, or anything from the long-haired end of the sixties. It either hasn't grabbed me, or hasn't had the opportunity to grab me for one reason or another, which has never really felt like a problem given that I've always had plenty of other stuff to listen to, and I don't trust anyone who feels their record collection must include a representative selection of everything. It's not a fucking competition.

Nevertheless, I'm beginning to feel I've been missing out where Frank Zappa is concerned. I always liked the idea of the man, but never knowingly heard any of his work until the late, great Andrew Cox gave me this for Christmas. Given that Andrew passed away back in 2009, it's probably fair to say that it's taken me a while to click with the record, although in my defence there have been a few years spent in transit and without a turntable between then and now.

It seems Zappa viewed the long-haired end of the sixties with suspicion equivalent to my own. Scratch anyone who feels the need to tell you just how laid back and far out they are and you'll invariably find Joseph Goebbels somewhere underneath.

Obviously this one was taking the piss out of Sgt. Pepper, or what Sgt. Pepper seemed to represent, but ran much deeper than mere sarcasm, revealing a healthy distrust of utopian sentiment as being no more revolutionary than the hula hoop or the beehive hairdo; and if it fails to offer an alternative to turning on, tuning in, and dropping out, that's because it doesn't fucking have to because it's not chess. If you don't want to know that you're being used, then that's your tough shit.

Musically, Money goes along with certain conventions of its era, subverting ragtime, doowop and others to the cause of its opprobrium, then glueing all the bits together with an avant-garde sensibility hinting at musique concrete and the weirder end of jazz, but with a precision and targetting which can be mistaken for neither. There's none of that saggy far out shit here, no aimless giggling at its own reflection, but neither is the record in any sense mean spirited. Frank doesn't want to piss you off so much as he wants you to wake the fuck up - which is probably why you'll laugh your ass off with this record, at least if there's any hope for you.

I guess this is approximately where Devo got started, and certainly the Residents, or at least that's how it sounds to me. I'd say that I wish someone had told me, but they sort of did.