Soundohm

This the fifth, and final before the break up, album released by The Mothers of Invention. It was released through Bizarre/Reprise on April 21, 1969 as a double album. It was meant to be the soundtrack to a film, that was sadly never finished. The album was recorded from October 1967 to February 1968, the exceptions being the CD bonus tracks. Made up of both live and studio material, Uncle Meat has been praised by critics for the diversity of its compositions, the virtuosity of its performances,…

The Mothers Of Invention

The Mothers 1970

2024 stock Los Angeles – May 8, 2020 – To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Frank Zappa’s celebrated but short-lived 1970 Mothers Of Invention lineup, “Portuguese Fenders,” the first track to be released from the new collection, The Mothers 1970 is available to stream today. The newly-discovered gem is one of 70 unreleased live and studio recordings featured on The Mothers 1970, available digitally and as a 4CD box set June 26 via Zappa Records/UMe. Recorded live by Zappa on his own tape reco…

Zappa Records, Elemental Music

Apostrophe (')

“apostrophe (‘)” is a testament to Frank Zappa’s genre-defying approach and ability to blend seamlessly rock, jazz, funk, and avant-garde, letting his virtuosic guitar work shine through. The opening track, “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow,” sets a whimsical comical tone, while “Cosmik Debris” and “apostrophe (‘)” emphasize intricate solos and quirky techniques that demonstrate Zappa’s musical dexterity. The album is a cohesive musical voyage in which the musician explores societal issues such as cons…

Hot Rats (LP) 50th Anniversary Limited Pink Vinyl Edition

**limited edition translucent hot pink 180-gram vinyl featuring the 1969 mix mastered from the original analog master tapes by Bernie Grundman**. Hot Rats was originally recorded in 1969 and is a predominantly instrumental album that Frank Zappa described as "a movie for your ears." The sound is largely jazz fusion based with extensive soloing, eschewing the satirical vocal performances and musique concrète of earlier Zappa releases. There are many notable musicians featured on the album, includ…

The Hot Rats Sessions

**Killer Box Set! Includes unreleased basic tracks, rare and unedited mixes, work mixes, relevant nuggets from Zappa’s vault, never-before-seen photos from the recording sessions and photo shoot that produced the Hot Rats cover, and unique "Zappa Lland" board game** On October 10, 1969, Frank Zappa’s inimitable, groundbreaking first solo album, Hot Rats, was released, putting the songwriter and musician on the map as a virtuosic guitarist and changing the course of music forever with its concept…

Joe's Garage Acts 1, 2 & 3

2015 Release. Triple LP. Needless to say, it is a grandly absurd undertaking, full of scatological comedy and hard-rock-jazz-fusion. "Frank Zappa’s satirical rock opera, Joe’s Garage, is ambitious and mad, brilliant, peculiar and incoherent — epithets that have also been applied to German expressionist Georg Buchner’s unfinished play, Woyzeck. This may seem like a ludicrously lofty cross-cultural reference to attach to an album most notorious for a song about Catholic girls’ aptitude for fellati…

Sheik Yerbouti

2015 Release. In order to finance his artier excursions, which increasingly required more expensive technology, Frank Zappa recorded several collections of guitar-and song-oriented material in the late '70s and early '80s, which generally concentrated on the bawdy lyrical themes many fans had come to expect and enjoy in concert. Sheik Yerbouti was one of the first and most successful of these albums, garnering attention for such tracks as the Grammy-nominated disco satire "Dancin' Fool," the con…

Weasels Ripped My Flesh

2017 Release. 180 grams, sourced from the original 1970 Analog Master. A fascinating collection of mostly instrumental live and studio material recorded by the original Mothers of Invention, complete with horn section, from 1967-1969, Weasels Ripped My Flesh segues unpredictably between arty experimentation and traditional song structures. Highlights of the former category include the classical avant-garde elements of "Didja Get Any Onya," which blends odd rhythmic accents and time signatures wi…

Zoot Allures

2018 Release. Zoot Allures, released in October 1976, is mostly a studio album (there are some basic live tracks, as in the title track and "Black Napkins") featuring a revolving cast of musicians who, oddly, do not correspond to the ones pictured on the album cover (for instance, Patrick O'Hearn and Eddie Jobson did not contribute). Compared to previous releases like One Size Fits All, Roxy & Elsewhere, or even Over-Nite Sensation, and to upcoming ones such as Zappa in New York, Studio Tan, or …

Chunga's Revenge

2018 release. 180 grams, Taken from the original 1970 Analog Master. It's 1970, and look what Frank Zappa's up to: The band now includes jazz players like George Duke (keyboards) Anysley Dunbar (drums) and Ian Underwood (guitar and keyboards) plus a mysterious pair of singers called The Phlorescent Leech & Eddie -- who, it would turn out, were singers Mark Volman & Howard Kaylan, who'd recently jumped ship from LA pop group the Turtles (they weren't contractually allowed to use their real …

Cruising With Ruben & The Jets

2017 Release. 180 grams, sourced from the original analog master. "It's all one album. All the material in the albums is organically related and if I had all the master tapes and I could take a razor blade and cut them apart and put it together again in a different order it still would make one piece of music you can listen to. Then I could take that razor blade and cut it apart and reassemble it a different way, and it still would make sense. I could do this twenty ways. The material is definit…

Burnt Weeny Sandwich

2018 release. Burnt Weeny Sandwich is the first of two albums by the Mothers of Invention that Frank Zappa released in 1970, after he had disbanded the original lineup. While Weasels Ripped My Flesh focuses on complex material and improvised stage madness, this collection of studio and live recordings summarizes the leader's various interests and influences at the time. It opens and closes on '50s pop covers, "WPLJ" and "Valarie." "Aybe Sea" is a Zappafied sea shanty, while "Igor's Boogie" is na…

We're Only In It For The Money

2017 release. We're Only in It for the Money is the third studio album by the Mothers of Invention. Released on March 4, 1968 on Verve Records. As with the band's previous two albums, We're Only in It for the Money is a concept album, and satirizes left and right-wing politics, particularly the hippie subculture, as well as the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was conceived as part of a project called No Commercial Potential, which produced three other albums: Lumpy Gravy…

Lumpy Gravy

2017 release. Reissue on 180-gram vinyl with a free download code. Lumpy Gravy is the debut solo album by Frank Zappa, an album of orchestral, electric and concrete sound written by Zappa and performed by a group of session players he dubbed the Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra. Zappa conducted the orchestra but did not perform on the album. It is his third album overall: his previous releases had been under the name of his group, The Mothers of Invention. It was commissioned and br…

Freak Out

2017 release. One of the most ambitious debuts in rock history, Freak Out! was a seminal concept album that somehow foreshadowed both art rock and punk at the same time. Its four LP sides deconstruct rock conventions right and left, eventually pushing into territory inspired by avant-garde classical composers. Yet the album is sequenced in an accessibly logical progression; the first half is dedicated to catchy, satirical pop/rock songs that question assumptions about pop music, setting the tone…

Hot Rats

2017 release. Hot Rats was originally recorded in 1969 and is a predominantly instrumental album that Frank Zappa described as "a movie for your ears." The sound is largely jazz fusion based with extensive soloing, eschewing the satirical vocal performances and musique concrète of earlier Zappa releases. There are many notable musicians featured on the album, including drummers John Guerin, Paul Humphrey and Ron Selico, a teenage Shuggie Otis on bass, electric violinists Don "Sugarcane" Harris a…

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