THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION: FREAK OUT!

I heard of this album first in about 1971. I was a little young to hear about it before, but when I heard it, I found the content to be very relevant to the times, and also the musical style was unique. I later figured that this album was the first concept album, not Sgt Peppers, as we were later told. In fact John Lennon cited Zappa as his influence, calling him a f***ing intellectual and a genius. In my opinion, several of the songs on this album are stand alone classics, for example You're probably wondering why I'm here, which as well as being very catchy and listenable, still amuses me profusely with the images that Frank's word-pictures conjour up. Another track which I later realized was not only a cool groove laden with meaningful lyrics, but also a prophecy of later musical forms... The rappy vocals portending a generation who would later watch rats run across the floor, and make up songs about being poor... Not to mention the Help, I'm a rock suite, which cleverly emulated psychedelic-induced auditory hallucinations, as well as echoed the soft porn soundtracks which brought FZ legal trouble in his early recording career. All in all a great debut double concept album, which paved the way for all other subsequent rock music, yet still stayed in it's own genre.