CosmicBen's Record Reviews
"Z" Reviews
* * Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention: We're Only In It For The Money (1968)--Most albums have at least one great song, one passionate vocal, something I am excited to play for friends and can't wait to hear again. Frank Zappa's supposed counter-culture masterpiece never rises above "cute", and even that is completely overrun by the pretension of the concept. Most of the "songs" are based on a colorful, watery riff and completely wasted from there on out, sticking in your head a bit less than a commercial jingle or a kiddie singalong. "Concentration Moon" and the doo-wop "What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body" approach memorable rock melodies, but that's it. The lyrics are the album's best aspect, hilariously cutting down hippies and establishment jerks like me. If this were a spoken word recording or full-out sound collage it would have been clever, but Frank shot for the rock audience and failed to include even one great rock song. The melodies never stay in one place for long, so the first time around it's fun to hope that the next song will finally be the good one. Like the ideals of the sixties, though, the hope fades away and I'm left with an album that leaves no songs stuck in my head, no desire to listen to it again, barely a mark on me at all.
* * 1/2 Frank Zappa: You Are What You Is (1981)--Probably the densest album I've ever stuffed into a paragraph-long review, but I don't feel that bad. Is this guy really a genius? The first five songs on here are lots of fun, well-constructed, melodic and coherent. I enjoy all of them. There are some nice riffs introduced throughout and then buried in the songs. And the suite about religion has some amazing, if typically heavy-handed, lyrics ("There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over"). But the rest is just...misguided. Big choruses of people with boring voices, singing refrains that slam you in the face with obvious humor and no real melody. The mix is muddled, and the cast of millions saps the album of any personal resonance. Frankly, it's disappointing coming from a guy I'd heard so many great things about. Often, he'll take an iffy joke and riff on it pointlessly for minutes on end, with no solid melodies to make it worthwhile. The album's not all bad -- with a bit more personality, I'd rank the first four songs as classics -- but it's mostly incoherent and a real chore to sit through.
* * * * * The Zombies: Odessey and Oracle (1967)--God, this is beautiful. With the exception of the bizarre (yet intriguing) "Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914)," every song is a masterpiece, pleasant, melodic, brilliantly harmonized, and oh so memorable. The big hit was "Time of the Season" (ohhh, those Zombies...); it's an undeniable classic and it's not even one of my favorite songs on here. Each track is super-British and super-wimpy, the lyrics are clever but don't say much, and the melodies, combined with Colin Blumstone's ethereal vocals, will get you right there and make you want to hear them again right away. The songs are divided between keyboardist/leader Rod Argent and bassist/second banana Chris White, and I actually like White's contributions better: the chord changes on "Maybe After He's Gone," "Brief Candles," "This Will Be Our Year," and "Changes," which is just indescribable, will floor you and never leave your psyche. I should know; I've owned the album for two days now. Argent's contributions aren't as instantly memorable, but they're damn beautiful: check out the simple loveliness of "A Rose For Emily," the cathartic chorus of "Care of Cell 44" (about a girlfriend being released from prison!), the understated grandeur of "Hung Up On A Dream"... White's "Friends Of Mine" is slight by comparison, and it's my favorite song on the album. Please buy this: there's effortless beauty from beginning to end, and it rivals Abbey Road as a going-away present from a band about to break up forever.
* * 1/2 ZZ Top: El Loco (1981)--A weird album; even though the band's vision is dull and confused, their competence shines through on most of the songs. The rhythm section is tight and creative, and while Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill must have the most generic voices in rock 'n' roll, Gibbons comes through with with a chiming, Big Star-ish guitar tone that makes even the pointless tracks (the bizarre blues "Ten Foot Pole") at least sound cool. The problem is that the songwriting -- on the weird tunes and the "normal" ones -- is uniformly mediocre: "Leila" is the best example, an airy, ultra-sincere ballad whose limp melody just doesn't deserve the elaborate steel guitar arrangement Gibbons gives it. Almost everything else is momentarily entertaining but unremarkable, even the bizarre experiments "Groovy Little Hippie Pad" and "Heaven, Hell Or Houston", and especially the rockers, which all have great guitars and pointless hooks. Thus, the best song ends up being the tight, catchy "It's So Hard", which is a pleasant ripoff of the Eagles' "The Long Run". Still, the guitars are really nice (witness the fade on "I Wanna Drive You Home"), both side-closers have dumb cathartic force ("Don't Tease Me", "Party On The Patio") and the whole thing has an intriguing "what the fuck?!" quality that demands you pay attention to at least the first few seconds of every song. Even with all the exerpimentation, though, it really sounds like they weren't trying too hard this time around.
* * 1/2 ZZ Top: Eliminator (1983)--I slept through the 80's, so maybe I'm missing something here. This was the Top's big breakthrough record, but it's so mind-numbing that I have a hard time listening to it. The beats are powerful, but they're all the same; the guitar riffs are interesting, but the tone is generic; and damn it, it's got synths, and I hate those. All in all, it's about the most colorless record I own; with every song sounding the same, it crawls along and picks at my brain, the aural equivalent of taking a 3 p.m. jog in the middle of July. Split up into individual songs, it's not so bad: "Gimme All Your Lovin'" has a great chorus, "Got Me Under Pressure" is a powerful tension-builder, "Sharp Dressed Man" is cooler than you, and "Legs" is a lot of fun. "I Got The Six" is thematically like "Party On The Patio" from the last record, but with a mail-order arrangement and even hoarser vocals, it's a lot less interesting. "I Need You Tonight" is a grating attempt at a soul anthem, and it's the only awful track, with everything else having a little propulsive power. But with punchy rock and roll substituting for any kind of emotion, even the best songs can't redeem this dull, dull album.
* * 1/2 ZZ Top: Afterburner (1985)--I'm sick of this fucking band. I'm sick of their hoarse vocals and their flat melodies and their unvarying instrumentation. I'm sick of wasting money on albums that are just so damned uninteresting. I don't get their vibe. I'm not feeling the groove. Do I have to be from Texas and wear a ten-gallon hat? Do I have to be an idiot? Listening to Afterburner, I'm getting the urge to vote for George W. Bush in the next election, and that can't be good. There are no interesting choruses, a few cool drumbeats and fun lyrics, and a bunch of guitar passages that are so buried that I don't care about them. The band isn't evil, and if you really lower your standards, they're kind of fun to listen to. But look! Three mediocre grades in a row! After four years of studying rock music, I've heard so many bands that are more interesting than ZZ Top....I'm not buying their records anymore, no matter how cheap I find them for.
I'm sorry, I didn't really mean that.