THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION: UNCLE MEAT

This is just one of those albums. You know? "Those". Describing this would be futile, at least trying to describe the sounds and music with words. I won't even bother. No wait... I will bother, but I have to par it down a little. Simplify all the words, or not the words, but the meaning of the words.

"Uncle Meat" is surely the most "Trippy" Zappa/Mothers album. It draws influences from all kinds of styles. Chamber music, Classical, Jazz (Fusion), Musique concrète (Meaning Concretic Music, a style that uses samples of "non-musical" elements, like natural sounds and speech, this style was used by Zappa earlier in his career to create a whole album, Called "Lumpy Gravy", his first solo album) and mockingly using some basic rock 'n' roll, Blues and Doo-Wop elements. Sides I-III consist mainly of the varying styles and the music flows from one song to another along with dreamy melodies and spoken words of Suzy Creamcheese (A Character who is familiar to those who have listened to "Freak Out! before) and the band members, who discuss the conditions in which they have to live and tour. It's too hard to give a single stand-out track, not really single potential on any of the songs, with a possible exception of Dog Breath Variations (In The Year of the Plague), you can listen to it here on PA on the Zappa samples. Side IV is purely Jazz Fusion. (Okay not purely since it has a slight Avant-Garde touch). The Whole side consists of one long piece, called "King Kong". (Even though it's divided in to several sections). And Yes, King Kong might be the best known piece from Uncle Meat but I wouldn't bash the the sides I, II and III just because side IV could be better. Notice the word "Could", beacause this is a "whole", one large piece of art, and the other sides are just as good as Side IV, only in a different way.

Overall this is a magnificent album, a journey to somewhere, propably inside the head of Frank Zappa, I don't know. I sure can say that this is underrated. it's along the best works of Frank Zappa/Mothers of Invention along with Freak Out!, Absolutely Free, We're Only In It For The Money, Hot Rats and Weasels Ripped My Flesh. A Definitive Five-stars album.

Oh, By the way, I advice you to get this in LP format. Why? Well Because: The CD version comes in those annoying "Large CD Cases", you know those that you could fit four Dics into? And not only that, but the only reason it is in that kind of format is because they had to sacrelige this near perfect record with a stupid bonus track called "Tengo Na Minchia Tanta" (Meaning "I've got a big cock" in Sicilian) and with about 40 minutes of sound bites from the movie of the same name. (Yes There is a Uncle Meat movie, but it was released about 20 years after the album because of financial difficulties). So without those this could be fitted on to a single disc. And LPs are far better than CDs anyway. You can't lose them as easily and the sound is a lot better since it comes of analogically. And the album covers allways look cooler when they are bigger. What? You don't have a record player that plays LPs? Well go buy one!