Jesuschrist.
Zappa's weird, but this just takes it. More bent madness than We're Only in it For the Money, more demanding jamming than Hot Rats, and a double album running time to make sure you really mean it when you say you want to hear it.
It's inventive, occaisionally catchy, curiously brilliant, but mostly its just a goddamn mess, sounding like a mashup of Ween outtakes. Every once in a while it strikes gold (the curiously beautiful The Dog Breath Variations), but it feels like a bit of a stopped-clock-double-daily-correctness kinda thing.
It's post-music, even for Zappa, seemingly seeing how many filters they can remove, how many conventions of good taste they can betray. This impression was deepened by accidentally listening to the CD version, which includes a 40 minute piece of excerpts from the related batshit film this is all theoretically soundtracking. It's a testament to Zappa that I assumed this was part of the initial release.
Is this a soundtrack? Should it be judged as such and therefore be allowed to be a bit more formless? The film it was supposed to accompany wasn't finished at the time, hell, might not have been started at the time for all we know. This is the downside of constantly fucking with people's expectations, they can't frame your work and just have to take a wild stab at taking it at face value. In that sense, maybe Zappa has won, denying me the context I might use to understand this.
By the way, for those keeping score at home: 1969.
Good job? I do admire the man, even admire the album, but that doesn't mean its not pretty terrible 2.5/5
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