STRICTLY COMMERCIAL

"Strictly Commercial. The Best of Frank Zappa" is a collection of some of Frank Zappa's popular music. The other album in this series is "Strictly Genteel" which gives an excellent collection of Frank's classical (and jazz) tracks from previously released albums. "Strictly Commercial" also takes songs from previous albums, most of which are the commercial, or popular side of Frank. All of the songs on this collection are quite radio friendly in that they are single versions that don't need to be censored, radio-friendly.

Unlike the "Strictly Genteel" collection though, this collection is not as cohesive. Since these tracks are more rock oriented, it is very apparent when you are listening to the "newer" tracks and "older" tracks. There is a very noticeable difference in the music styles, and this makes this collection sound choppy.

It's not a complete wash out, however. Most of the tracks have vocals and are humor oriented. Again, the humor is quite safe as the crude humor is left off of this collection. There are the great like "Peaches en Regalia", "Dancin' Fool", the guitar solo "Sexual Harassment in the Workplace", "Muffin Man" and so on. However, there are also the songs that aren't so great, and they are mostly the repetitive ones like "Disco Boy", "Fine Girl", "Joe's Garage" and "Valley Girl". A lot of the songs seem to lose their significance when taken out of their album settings.

The collection is decent enough I suppose, but there are better collections out there that have better selections on them, but, as is the problem with many collections based on popular music, you are going to get some good and some bad. The collection is not the best representation of Zappa's rock and roll and mixing all of these songs in something other than chronological order tends to make it suffer too. Anyway, unlike the sister album Strictly Genteel, this is only an OK collection.