THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION: WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY

I believe that We're Only In It For The Money is the grand finale of the satire-heavy Mothers' era. Frank used everything he learned about writing great melody and using a lot of freaky production techniques and sound exploration and combined them into this tour de force. Zappa's messages were never stronger, and his freakiness was never more abundant than in this album.

This album was the single answer to "Why are hippies stupid?" Zappa touched more and more styles of music in this album. Let's Make The Water Turn Black sounds like a children's ditty when the show ends, and Nasal Retentive Calliope Music touches surf music at the end and is a tribute to the dissonance of Edgard Varese (along with The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny), both being severely interesting and freaky. A lot of the songs are short, freaked up diaogue pieces, sometimes in the middle of one of the actual songs on the album! Most of it again inside stories that only Frank and the Mothers know about, unless you've read up somewhere the story behind them.

There are no guitar solos on the album, as the album concentrates once again on message and stories combined with freaky dissonance and actual played instruments, with effects layered all over. So, this album is more of a mixture of Freak Out! and Lumpy Gravy, sacrifiing the groove and improvisation of Absolutely Free, which can be a bad thing. A lot of the effects can definitely be intriguing, but can get old and may interrupt what one would call a solid listen of a song-oriented album, which isn't necessarily the case for me, I enjoy Frank's freak-outs thoroughly, but it's definitely specific.

I'd say as an accessible album with stronger melody and more interesting playing, Absolutely Free edges this one, but We're Only In It For The Money is a masterpiece because the structure is extremely solid with what Frank wanted to do, and it ended up probably THE most different and original album of it's time, with plenty of great songs, including the worded version of Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance. A must-buy, it's hard to explain, but this album is being rated high for a reason.

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