Here comes my first major challenge as a self-professed reviewer on the World Wide Web of musical albums that NO ONE READS except for YOU, and only because someone bumped your arm while you were trying to click the "Fat Granny Fucks a Shoehorn" link that your uncle posted on Facebook and clicked a link to my blog instead. Somehow. Anyway, this will be a challenge because 95% of Frank Zappa's Hot Rats is instrumental. I will actually need to talk about the music instead of falling back on my old hat weaselly writing tricks, such as incorrectly talking about what I think the meaning behind the meaningless words are, or making attention-diverting shoehorn-fucking jokes.
The previous album Uncle Meat may have marked a musical departure, but Hot Rats is a complete overhaul altogether. Zappa disbanded the Mothers of Invention entirely prior to the recording of this album due primarily to financial hardships and due secondarily to Zappa's dissatisfaction with the band's efforts (no one's gonna pretend he wasn't impossible to please). Of course, the Mothers were upset at Zappa's lack of compassion during these trying times, but it allowed him to recruit guest musicians without political interference. The only other member of the Mothers involved in Hot Rats was good ol' boy Ian Underwood, possibly because he knew how to play 45 instruments and was therefore a cheap keep.
Hot Rats is a pioneering record in the genre of jazz-rock, which was burgeoning at the end of late '60s with rock bands like Cream experimenting with the incorporation of jazz elements and, conversely, jazz artists like Miles Davis experimenting with the incorporation of rock elements. Obviously, Zappa wasn't content with just melding the two genres; Hot Rats exhibits a lot of classical elements in the mix as well, especially in the shorter songs like "Peaches En Regalia", the quintessential signature track of his whole career.
"Peaches En Regalia" is the track that everyone fucking knows, it's the track that casual fans will claim as their all-time favorite. I wonder if knowing this information in advance has soured my perception of "Peaches En Regalia" (which, as a 17-year-old, was an extremely likely by-product of my learning that something was critically acclaimed), but I'm going to make a bold statement now, as a snotty 29-year-old, that this song...just...isn't...uh, let's just say that it doesn't do much for me. I'm going to be honest here, in my gut I've always felt like "Peaches En Regalia" really hasn't aged well. I'll give credit where credit is due here, it's a beautiful mid-tempo melody, simple and straightforward with a conventional song structure and without terribly complex rhythms. Your grandmother would even like it. The instrumental selection is your usual Zappa fare as well: plinky keyboards, flutes-a-flutter, brassy winds. And clocking in at about three and a half minutes, even the length is incredibly inoffensive. But my problem with it is that with all these elements together, at least give me some snarky or cynical lyrics or some slight minor key dissonance. This song is too fucking jubilant, it sounds like something out of Sesame Street. I never really understood the hype surrounding it. But don't worry about what I say, you're going to think it's fine.
Now the next track, "Willie the Pimp", this is where I feel the record truly kicks off. This is the only track on Hot Rats with any lyrics, featuring the smooth, syrupy, cherubic vocals of one Mr. Captain Beefheart, Zappa's high school pal who was already an accomplished solo artist in his own right by 1969. I'm being sarcastic about his voice of course, the man swallowed a porcupine. Say what you will about his mucus-ball utterances, it adds an extra level of skeeziness to a track already titled "Willie the Pimp" ("I'm a little pimp with my hair gassed back/Pair of khaki pants with my shoes shined black"). The vocals are over after a couple minutes, the rest of the 9-minute track is a searing, dirty blues-based guitar jam that's up there with the most melodious extended solos in Zappa's catalog. A lot of criticism gets thrown toward Zappa's solos because they're typically meandering and perceived as superfluous, but "Willie the Pimp" is so impressively chock full of good musical ideas that I think it should supersede "Peaches En Regalia" as Zappa's signature tune. It's a jam so good you'll shit your pants on purpose!
Next up is another 9-minute jam session, "Son of Mr. Green Genes" (the title begot the rumor that Frank Zappa was the son of the guy who played Mr. Green Jeans on Captain Kangaroo, but if you look up the guy you can plainly see that, clearly, Ken Jennings of Jeopardy! fame is his real bastard son). FINALLY, after a quarter of the album's duration has elapsed, we get something that can actually be called jazz-fusion! The backbone of the track borrows the melody from "Mr. Green Genes" off of the Uncle Meat album, speeds it up a bit and expands the fuck out of it with bombastic horns and guitar solos. Not nearly as memorable as "Willie the Pimp", but enjoyable while it's happening for sure.
"Little Umbrellas" is another tightly composed, short piece that I guess falls into the jazz-fusion category as long as you're fusing jazz with MY ASSHOLE, but I feel that this one brings the energy down a bit after the ~20-minute unrelenting endurance race of the previous two tracks. I suppose on the original LP this would be the beginning of Side B, which I could understand working better in such a context, but here in God's 21st century I'm listening to the CD version, and I ain't like the flow. I just get antsy about the next song the whole time, which I'll talk about now. Fuck "Little Umbrellas"!
"The Gumbo Variations" is the most daunting track, clocking in at almost exactly 17-minutes. It's hard to tell whether or not "Willie the Pimp" and "Son of Mr. Green Genes" contain some improvisational elements due to their seemingly tight structures, but with "The Gumbo Variations" it's pretty clear that this studio jam session is all freeform and off-the-cuff. It starts off with a simple, funky bassline, joined in shortly by good ol' boy Ian Underwood stealing the spotlight for about 7 minutes on a kick-ass saxophone solo that bounces seamlessly between hook-laden musicality and squealing, aggressive free jazz. Next, as Underwood slowly backs out, Don "Sugarcane" "Twinkletoes" "Voldemort" Harris swoops in with some rectum-blistering electric violin action and keeps the jam going! And then sometime between Minute 10 and 45, I don't remember where because it blends in pretty nicely, Harris backs out and Zappa rides out the rest of the jam on guitar. Exhilarating! Unrelenting! This is probably my favorite track up to this point in the catalog, although "Invocation & Ritual Dance of the Young Pumpkin" off of Absolutely Free is a close second. Both are great examples of multiple musicians competently improvising and playing off each other as a cohesive unit for an extended session, and you don't get much of that in the early Zappa records. IT'S NICE TO HAVE.
Hot Rats closes with another short(er), jazzy number "It Must Be a Camel" that, again, feels largely tacked on and forgettable. I have, in fact, listened to Hot Rats in its entirety about 70 times in my life and I couldn't even tell you what "It Must Be a Camel" sounds like right now (possibly because I now have Emperor's Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk cascading and rollicking through my ears at the moment like some sort of poseur).
As you have likely gleaned from this pedestrian album review, I find the shorter compositions very much inessential to the Hot Rats experience. The three long tracks are the real stars here (and "Peaches En Regalia too, I suppose; you won't find very many people who would agree with my feelings about that one), so luckily they make up most of the album proper. As a result, I can say with a strong conviction that this isn't a perfect record at all, but most people who dive head first into Zappa's world tend to pick this album as one of their starting points (it was my second Zappa album purchase after Over-Nite Sensation), and if nothing else it will completely quash any preconceived notions that Zappa is merely a "Weird Al" predecessor and not much else. The people who think that can all go fuck a shoehorn. Hot Rats is pure good, dirty, bluesy, jazzy jamming, and of the big three Zappa jazz-fusion records (the others being Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo) this one is the best. Obtain a copy and put it in your ears, Citizen.
GOOD
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