17/10/2023
ON THIS DATE (54 YEARS AGO)
October 10, 1969 – Frank Zappa: Hot Rats is released.
# ALL THINGS MUSIC PLUS+ 4.5/5
# Allmusic 4.5/5 stars
# Rolling Stone (see original review below)
Hot Rats is the second solo album by Frank Zappa, released on October 10, 1969. It reached #173 on the Billboard 200 Top LP's chart.
The album was dedicated to Zappa's new-born son, Dweezil Zappa. In February 2009, his band, Zappa Plays Zappa, won a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance for their rendition of "Peaches en Regalia."
Having temporarily disbanded the Mothers Of Invention, Frank Zappa recorded this exceptional solo album. His group was renowned for musical satire, but here the artist opted to showcase his prowess on guitar. Aside from "Willie The Pimp," which features a cameo vocal by Zapppa's old friend Captain Beefheart, the set is comprised of instrumentals. The players, including Don "Sugarcane" Harris, Jean-Luc Ponty, and Ian Underwood, are uniformly excellent, combining to provide a solid jazz-rock platform for Zappa's compulsive soloing. Here the guitarist relishes a freedom which, while acknowledging past achievements, prepares new territories for exploration. As such, Hot Rats was a pivotal release in Zappa's oft-misunderstood career.
Because Hot Rats focuses on instrumental jazz-like compositions with extensive soloing, the music sounds very different from earlier Zappa albums, which featured satirical vocal performances with extensive use of musique concrète and editing. Multi-instrumentalist Ian Underwood is the only member of the Mothers to appear on the album and was the primary musical collaborator. Other featured musicians were Max Bennett and Shuggie Otis on bass, drummers Aynsley Dunbar and John Guerin and electric violinists Don "Sugarcane" Harris and Jean-Luc Ponty.
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ORIGINAL ROLLING STONE REVIEW
This recording brings together a set of mostly little-known talents that whale the tar out of every other informal "jam" album released in rock and roll for the past two years. If Hot Rats is any indication of where Zappa is headed on his own, we are in for some fiendish rides indeed.
In the past both Zappa's high-flown "serious music" and his greasy Fifties routines grew heavy-handed, but this album suggests he may be off on a new and much more individual direction, inspired by Captain Beefheart, who is featured prominently on Hot Rats and whose Trout Mask Replica set him several frontiers beyond anything we've heard from Zappa. Beefheart is one of the true originals of our day, and his raffish dadaism is an excellent tonic for a Zappa too often pre-occupied with polemics—his influence shows clearly in much of this record, whether he's actually performing or not.
The new Zappa has dumped both his Frankensteinian classicism and his pachuko-rock. He's into the new jazz heavily; same as Beefheart. and applying all his technical savvy until the music sounds a far and purposely ragged cry from the self-indulgence of the current crop of young white John Coltranes. Ian Underwood's reed work in particular is far more advanced than anything he did with the Mothers.
The album's instrumental highlight comes on "The Gumbo Variations," spotlighting the wildest, most advanced piece of Free-form electric violin playing I've ever heard (who is "Sugar Cane Harris"?), a slithery performance that sings with the rusty purity that only the most corrosive music can muster.
Zappa himself has an extremely long guitar solo on "Willie the "Pimp," but as past numbers like "Invocation of the Young Pumpkin" have shown, he's really not a jazz improvisor, and his repetitious and surprisingly simple patterns get boring before he's half-way through. But those words! The wily Beefheart spirit strikes again: "I'm a little pimp with my hair gassed backàMan in a suit with a bow-tie neck/Wanna buy a grunt with a third-party check/Standin' on the porch of the Lido hotel/Floozies in the lobby love the way I sellà"
If you're eager for a first taste of Beefheart or interested in the new approaches to instrumental style and improvisational technique being developed these days, this is as good a place to start as any; a good stepping stone to folks like Ayler, Don Cherry and Cecil Taylor-the real titans these cats learned it from. (RS 53)
~ Lester Bangs (March 7, 1970)
TRACKS:
All songs written and composed by Frank Zappa.
Side one
1. "Peaches en Regalia" - 3:38
2. "Willie the Pimp" - 9:25
3. "Son of Mr. Green Genes" - 8:58
Side two
1. "Little Umbrellas" - 3:09
2. "The Gumbo Variations" - 12:55
3. "It Must Be a Camel" - 5:15