Frank Zappa - Hot Rats
(Reprise - 1969)
When I get a serious hankering for some serious guitar shit, there are only a couple of guys I go to. Frank Zappa is one of those guys. It's an understatement to say that Zappa's style was unique. He can peel off flurries of notes without breaking a sweat, yet there is a really vocal quality to his playing and you always feel like you are being taken somewhere as opposed to just listening to another jack ass jack off. The dude was wicked fucking smart. He had a penchant for fucking with the absolute nuts and bolts of guitar technique and sound rivaled only by Jimi Hendrix or maybe Adrian Belew. A guitarist becomes dangerous when his technical ability can keep up with his imagination, and Zappa was that guy.
'Hot Rats' is a wicked guitar album, there is no argument about that, but it is not wanky and boring like most instrumental guitar albums by "guitar greats" (read: wankers) like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. Don't even give me that shit about Steve Vai getting his break with Zappa (side note: It's true, legend has it that Vai, a young Berklee Boston student, was the only guitar player who could pull off one of Zappa's "Black Page" compositions [double side note: a black page is a piece of transcribed music so insane and dense that the notes appear to turn the page black] and thus got his break), his albums blow and you know it. On a Zappa album you get killer soloing, but it's part of an elegant composition that prominently features other lead instruments and musicians as well. To see what I'm talking about, dig on "The Gumbo Variations", seventeen minutes (apparently only twelve minutes on the original vinyl, I have yet to confirm this) of sax heavy jamming punctuated frequently by Zappa guitar solos. Frank gets so modal on your ass that you don't have a clue what the hell continent you're on anymore.
'Hot Rats' is fabled to be the first album recorded on a sixteen track tape machine. In 1969, an eight track was industry standard, sixteen was completely fucking unheard of. Having a stereo mix of drums, which 'Hot Rats' did, was a recording breakthrough. Zappa also went nuts with varying tape speeds and cutting tape together in wild assed song collages, which became an important trait throughout his career. Hot Rats also preceded Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' (the token album the people who know little or nothing about music cite in reference to complicated and experimental recording maneuvers, to which I can only reply, "Well, sort of.") by four years. For real. I did the math and shit.
So is 'Hot Rats' a rock album? Jazz album? Guitar album? Fuck it. 'Hot Rats' is part of the only genre that really matters - "good" albums. Albums that have "it". If we could ever define what makes a lot of shit truly "good", if we could put our finger on "it", then I reckon that shit would hardly be worth talking about in the first place. "Good" music exists far outside the bounds of mortal description. I'm damn set on trying to describe it anyway.
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