Whenever anybody asks me what the best album to buy as a first Zappa album, I tell them either "We're Only In It For The Money" or this one, and I usually give this one a little higher boost.

Why? Because this is the album that got me into FZ at the tender age of 11 years old. By accident....

One balmy spring day in early '75, my (then) uptight, Catholic, ex-John Birch Society mother came home with a stack of records from the local Ridgecrest library that she thought looked appropriate for kids. My sister and I looked through the stack until.....Apostrophe! We looked at each other in shock: Mom brought home a ZAPPA record! At that time, only kids with hipster bros & sis's had heard his records. We knew the rumours: he talked about "naughty" things on his records! Was mom "letting her hair down"? No. She just thought that "the guy on the record cover looks like a jazz musician with a sense of humor", and "the song titles are funny".

Cool! Diane & I ran to the record player & were therein initiated into the universe of Frank Zappa. Of course we giggled through the obligatory scatology of "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow" & the adventures of Nanook, but there were other songs here that made some slowly emerging gears in my 11 year old head start to turn. What was so important about "St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast"? What was "Cosmik Debris", and why was the man "jiving" him with it? Why did I like the instrumental "Apostrophe", and why did I feel in my gut that it was different somehow that other rock solos? Why did the man have the argument with the dog after the discussion of the importance of personal hygene in "Stink Foot"? My pre-adolescent brain began to burn with one of the most subversive things that rock n' roll ever did to kids. Sex? No (well, okay, maybe a little..). Drugs? No.
The frightening answer was......questions!! I was beginning to THINK FOR MYSELF, stimulated by Zappa's imaginative absurdity!!

Now, as an adult, I 've figured out those answers. "St. Alfonzo's" is a satire about religious hypocrisy & behaivior.
"Cozmik Debris" is a stab at mocking the "new age", and its voodoo b.s. "Apostrophe" is a solo in the Lydian mode, highly unusual. And the dog & the man were arguing about semantics.

Thanks, Frank, for making this guy think. Too bad, other adults didn't get warped like I did.

It's not too late. Buy Apostrophe.

Look, I have to be objective here. I'm a big Zappa fan. I especially love his work with the original Mothers (ALL of it) and the work he did with his big band (Waka Jawaka, Grand Wazoo, Imaginary Diseases) as well as the Roxy and Elsewhere band. All of those aforementioned CDs get 5 stars in my reviews - some I would give 100 stars if I could. The ONLY reason I'm not giving Apostrophe (') 4.5 stars is it just isn't as good as the aforementioned material... but it IS good and worth adding to your collection.

Apostrophe (') is good fun and there is some great music here. But let's be honest, this release was used to finance more serious works by Zappa.

Yellow Snow and Nanook Rubs it are funny the first couple of listens.

St Alphonzo and Father Oblivion is at once humorous and very good music

Excentrifugal Forz is one of the high-lites but it is very short

Apostrophe (') is a great jam with Jack Bruce but it's just a jam, there's no serious writing here.

Cosmik Debris is another favorite and a indictment of new age mumbo jumbo.

Uncle Remis is a great commentary on the loss of focus and priorities when it comes to civil rights (whoa, are we movin' to slow? I can't wait 'til my 'fro is full grown - and so on and so forth)

Stink Foot falls into the same category as Yellow Snow and Nanook.

So yeah, this is a good Zappa CD. Is it essential? I guess that depends on what you are looking for in a Zappa release. It's good fun but the music simply isn't as good as that found on Roxy and Elsewhere, Waka Jawaka, Uncle Meat, Freak Out! and so on and so forth.

4.5 stars

BY THE WAY: Dweezil's Zappa Plays Zappa band is playing material from this release. Last night I saw this band and it was FLAT OUT AMAZING! Cosmik Debris and Uncle Remus (with Ray White singing!) were included in the very generous 2.5 hour set. If Zappa Plays Zappa comes to your town, for God's sake, GO SEE THEM! You will not be disappointed as this show rivaled the concert I saw in March 74 with Zappa and his Roxy and Elsewhere Mothers. Dweezil's band REALLY IS THAT GOOD!

Zappa took a compositional turn with this album. It's in the genre of "Over-Nite Sensation," but further developed towards whatever it is musicians think of when they hear "Zappa," and there was more like this and even further developed material to come. This album has a definitive main thread, even though it features four different drummers and four different bass players, because it's very bluesy. Even if the songs aren't played with typical blues progressions --with the exception of "Cosmik Debris"-- there's a bluesy feeling pretty much throughout, which mainly the guitar solos lend. But there's more than a feeling of blues to this album; the songs are complex to an unusual (yet not extreme) degree, but make sense, and are very well performed. "Apostrophe (')" is, in a way, an album in a genre of it's own - mainly for the highly individual compositions "St. Alfonzo" and "Father O'Blivion," but also much because of "Uncle Remus" with its feeling of soul and gospel that isn't much heard anywhere else in Zappa's discography. Many think that "Stink-Foot" is not a highlight, and while I understand that point of view (since it fills a fifth of this 32-minute album and doesn't have a compositional quality like the other songs) I still find it highly entertaining and needed because of its groove. Don't let the length of the album scare you, btw - the material on it is worth the money. 4 1/2 stars.

This is one of my all time favorite album from Zappa. The first half of the cd is simply delirious. If you want to discover FZ, this is a good one to start with.

The debate seems to be centered on which of Frank Zappa's albums is the best and the choice is between "Apostrophe" and "Over-nite Sensation." But such a debate is moot if you put the two albums on one CD, right? Besides, these albums run a bit short on their own, so putting them together makes sense on that economic level as well.

"Apostrophe," in its own words, "is an album of songs and stories set to music performed for your dining and dancing pleasure." The first four songs are about an Eskimo that almost makes sense, which makes this something of an actual concept album, at least for the first "side" of the record. What I remember is that "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" was my first exposure to the musical stylings of Frank Zappa (my roommate did the "listen to this" bit with me). The best guitar solos are on "Cosmik Debris," "Stink-Foot," and the title cut. The lyrics are perhaps a dark shade of Zappa than you usually find, but it was 1974 and that could explain it right there since you should look for deep, hidden meanings in the songs of Frank Zappa, but just not in any conventional way.

Now, the reason I have this album can easily be explained by quoting the chorus of the first track, "Camarillo Brillo":

She had a snake for a pet
And an amulet
And she was breeding a dwarf
But she wasn't done yet
She had gray-green skin
A doll with a pin
I told her she was awright
But I couldn't come in
(actually, I was very busy then).

The lyrics are what hooked me, but I also like the way George Duke pounds the ivories during that song. Along with "I'm the Slime" and "Dirty Love" I think that the first three tracks on "Overnite Sensation" distill the Zappa essence as well as any comparable set you can find in his entire oeuvre. Perhaps the best proof of this would the anecdotal evidence that this is the album people who only own one Frank Zappa album happen to own. This would make sense since "Overnite Sensation" is probably more rock-oriented than most of Zappa's albums. For songs about in a similar vein, only about an Eskimo, check out "Apostrophe," which was produced in the same time with pretty much the same musicians.