Frank Zappa always had greater ambitions than simply being a rock and roll musician. When you first read or watch any of his opinions on the music scene he was a part of, it's easy to write him off as a complete asshole or horribly negative about everything, but he was just passionate and had a very tunnel-vision like idea of the music he truly wanted to create. The original Mothers of Invention seemed to encapsulate all of the disparate influences that ran through Zappa's brain. Everything from the atonality of classical composer Edgar Varèse to pure doo-wop of groups like The Penguins and The Clovers were mixed into their sound which could be technically stunning or sound like a group of guys who had no idea how to play their instruments, sometimes in the same song. Zappa despised using music as a marketing tool, and to him, the Hippie movement in the late 60's was nothing more than a marketing ploy. He sought to lambast and satirize everything from the phony hippies to the record companies that took advantage of the idealistic young people who would buy anything resembling "hip" music.
After the original Mothers ran their course, Zappa disbanded them and went on his own and ventured into what could be considered early jazz fusion with 1969's "Hot Rats", but with the inclusion of former Turtles members Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, 1970's "Chunga's Revenge", Zappa featured sophomoric lyrics that dealt with the road life of a musician whether that was the monotony of towns blending into each other or having sex with countless, nameless groupies. This controversial subject matter would carry Zappa into the most successful period of his career. But first, he needed to make a movie.
Zappa making a full length film itself isn't really a surprise. He was always one of the most ambitious and prolific of his peers, but I don't think anyone expected a normal movie from him and they certainly didn't get it. But I'm not here to talk about the film itself, which, if you couldn't guess, is a complete and utter mess. It's entertaining and it's cool as a time capsule of that incarnation of the group but it makes no sense and is poorly, poorly acted.
It only took one solo album before Zappa reformed The Mothers but this time, they served less of a full group and more of an ever changing vehicle for Frank's madness. Frank always picked the best musicians for his groups and while I'd say the mid-late 70's were probably the tightest group he assembled (especially the Joe's Garage and Sheik Yerbouti era), he never had more charismatic and entertaining guys than Kaylan and Volman or Flo and Eddie as they were known due to contract reasons. Seriously, both guys were so quick witted and funny that they could turn anything into something that would get a laugh out of even the most sophisticated person. I think the funniest part of that though is the fact that these dirty, hairy perverts were two of the main singers just a year prior of The Turtles, one of the squeakiest of the clean bands of the 60's. I don't think they were ever "cool", with them resembling Spanky And Our Gang more than The Jimi Hendrix Experience in terms of hipness.
200 Motels is the peak of Zappa's crude humour with Flo and Eddie, with some of the songs I straight up have no idea how they got away with back in 1971. Lines like "Half a dozen provocative squats!/Out of the shower she squeezes her spots/Brushes her teeth/Shoots a deodorant spray up her twat" or the entirety of the song Penis Dimension (a song that allegedly even Volman and Kaylan thought went too far). If you're easily offended, you might want to stay far, far away from this album. But just risque lyrics doesn't make an interesting listen. I really liked this period of Zappa because it was before he got really, really technical with his music and there's a raw, pure rock crunch to the arrangements of the band numbers. Elsewhere there's grand orchestral numbers that at times are interesting, but the more musique concrete stuff doesn't really grip me. Also, since the soundtrack is taken straight from the film and the movie was made on a, what I can only imagine was a less than even shoestring budget, the audio quality isn't amazing, but I feel that lends itself again to the rawness of things. The bread and butter of the soundtrack, in my opinion are the more conventional songs. I don't think you're missing anything by skipping the instrumental sections and just sticking with the band stuff. Lots of people sour on 200 Motels but it's always been my favourite of his early 70's material. I was never a fan of his pure jazz Grand Wazoo/Waka Jawaka stuff later on and while I love the original MOI, some of their stuff is a little too weird even for me. 200 Motels scratches that itch of combining some of the most juvenile humour with adventurous, exciting rock and roll.
Key Tracks: Mystery Roach, Lonesome Cowboy Burt, Would You Like A Snack, Centerville, She Painted Up Her Face, Half A Dozen Provocative Squats, Shove It Right In, I'm Stealing The Towels, Dental Hygiene Dilemma, Does This Kind of Life Look Interesting to You?, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, What Will This Evening Bring Me This Morning, Magic Fingers
Open up your pocketbook
Get another quarter out
Drop it in the meter momma
Try me on for size
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