Word: zappa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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ROLLING STONE magazine good-naturedly bestowed last year's Quote of the Year Award upon Frank Zappa for describing "rock journalism" as "People who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." Articulate and outspoken, Zappa has never been afraid to bite the "invisible hand" that feeds him, even insulting the "boys and girls" who buy his records and scream for "Louie, Louie" from concert hall audiences...
...latest album, Sheik Yerbouti (on Zappa Records), he lashes out more than ever before at today's "young generation." Zappa mocks punk, disco, kinky sex, JAPs, and yes -- even Peter Frampton. As for the album's title, well, only Zappa could concoct a name that uses disco jargon to suggest OPEC domination. Unfortunately, the music itself is mechanical and boring, and the lyrics provoke the listener without providing any insight in return...
Yerbouti, a double album, is Zappa's 25th official release. In his nearly 15 years of recording and performing, Zappa has been the most persistent of rock's "enfants terribles." And yet, at the same time, his ingenuity has contributed much to the music. If he doesn't do drugs or Mister Rodgers imitations, he does have a knack for social satire that betrays an electric intelligence...
During the late sixties, he was as much amused by the "flower punks" of the Summer of Love as he was by the contagious mediocrity which brought plastic furniture to the suburbs. Never one to take the world seriously, Zappa has long since moved to Montana and become a dental floss tycoon...
...subject Zappa has always handled most masterfully is mass America: crass commercialism, media hype, and the other things that numb our minds. From his songs of 1965 "Who Are the Brain Police?", to his more recent commemoration of television "I Am the Slime," Zappa has to his credit rock's choicest statements on mass euthanasia (though admittedly, because their babies are treatin' them bad, other songwriters rarely address such topics). Zappa's critical eye looked beyond the government and Vietnam to the covert "moral faseism" of American society. While others lambast politicians and corporate honchos, he criticizes everything and everyone...