_Weasels Ripped My Flesh_ is a Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention disc that combines both live and studio material recorded between 1967-1969. This material I believe is not found on their studio albums that came before this one. The combination of loose jazz improvisation, relentless experimentation and musical adventurousness will irritate and baffle many listeners who are accustomed to easy pop/rock or the like. However, amongst all the chaos, there are a few tracks that can be considered accessible. These tracks would be:

"Directly From My Heart To You"--A bluesy cover of a Little Richard track.

"Get A Little"--A melodic and tasteful instrumental featuring Frank Zappa soloing on a wah-wah (or what I call a 'wow-wow') pedal.

"My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama"--Zappa's only lead vocal on the disc. A steady rhythm with nice musicianship. Frank does some impressive guitar work on here. Love the backward section on here as well.

The rest of the disc is experimental, challenging, adventurous meat. "Didja Get Any Onya?," starts out in a big band-like jazz explosion. It goes through several motifs - featuring vocal experimentation, classical-like dissonance (in the middle section) and some loose and seemingly unstructured sax playing (which many may accuse of sounding like 'noise.') Lowell George does a vocal 'improv' which mimics what sounds like the trumpet a few times on this track. This has me laughing like a maniac. "Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Sexually Aroused Gas Mask" features an odd-timed rhythm, similar to the one found on "Didja." However, the rest of the track is given to vocal experimentation. If you don't have a sense of humor, this track will annoy the hell out of you. There's lots of hysterical laughter, yelling and roaring. Personally, this has me laughing hysterically. "Toad Of The Short Forest" starts out with some tasteful jazz instrumentation. Frank's guitar playing in particular gets the spotlight. Unexpectedly, the second half roars with blasts of free jazz improvisation. This becomes very challenging, as there are tempos/rhythms layered upon one another. Frank himself takes a moment during the track to tell the audience what time signatures various instrumentalists are using. He says Drummer A is playing in 7/8, Drummer B, Tambourine player & Bassist are all playing in 3/4 and the Organ player is playing in 5/8 - all at the same time. Definitely something for the cerebral who loves a challenge to tickle the brain. "Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue" is a meandering instrumental that I'm not too fond of. This is my least favorite on here. However, most of it has an ominous tone to it. "Dwarf Nebula Processional & Dwarf Nebula" seems like two different song titles. This would make a bit of sense because the track sounds as if it's divided into two different tracks. The first half is a quirky, pseudo-country/rock experiment that I wish would have gone on longer. The second seems like a backward recording of guitar solos and god knows what else. I really like this. "Oh No" sounds like a typical '60's r&b/rock tune. The vocals are unconventional, albeit melodic. This track is fairly accessible. "The Orange County Lumber Truck" is very strong on melody - something that many may be surprised to find here. A tasteful, Hendrix-like hard rock track with great guitar playing from Frank. "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" is nothing but jarring, chaotic, ominous, cacophonous distortion and feedback. The disturbing thing that I find is that these last 2 minutes can be addictive in a psychotic way - in that I personally wish that it would have gone on for another few minutes. If you slip into the designated mood, you may feel the same way. Anyway, it's moments like these that leave you wondering if there's really a discernible difference between music and 'noise.' Music and any other kind of appreciation is subjective and are nothing but personal opinions, right? If it wasn't, then EVERYONE would think, feel, observe similarly on EVERYTHING - no chance.

This album is not for purist, close-minded or faint-hearted listeners. However, if you're a fan of jazz-fusion and/or challenging, experimental, cerebral and adventurous music, take a risk and pick up this album. You may just find a new favorite artist, and/or appreciate music in a whole new way.

I make no pretense of having heard all of FZ's massive output, but of what I've heard, this is the pinnacle. I'm not saying it ranks ahead of "We're Only In It For the Money" in terms of significance. WOIIFTM is clearly more important both in terms of its satirical (and prophetic!) content, but also in terms of the radical form. What I am saying is that, as aside from HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE, this album is a total rush to listen to! Now if you like Frank because he did "Yellow Snow," you're probably not going to agree with me. It's not a pop album, and complaining that "some of the tracks just go on aimlessly" misses the point entirely. "Weasels" is short on juvenile humor and long on formalistic revolution. Like many Zappa albums, beginning with "Freak Out!", the whole is much greater than the sum of, what in this case might seem like particularly disjointed, parts. Throwing "Directly From My Heart To You," with great electric violin from Sugarcane Harris, in next to free jazz (but of course nothing Frank did was really "free," it was always planned as part of his overarching Project...), is what makes "Weasels" so exhilarating. You can't take any of the pieces completely seriously when they're placed in such wild juxtoposition with radically different sounds and structures. Of course, it does contain a couple of Zappa's best compositions, "Toads of the Short Forest" and "The Orange County Lumber Truck," and some of Frank's great guitar. For me, "Weasels" stands as a great concentration of the liberatory spirit of the late 60s. Some of FZ's 70s stuff was excellent ("One Size Fits All" is quite underrated, FI), but the freshness and optimism of the 60s was lost. I recommend this album as a sort of musical Zen koan -- listen to it repeatedly, and see if it doesn't open your mind!

This is the second of two compilations Zappa made (per his contract) of the last lineup of the early Mothers of Invention, the companion being the much more polished Burnt Weeny Sandwich album. This album, contrasting its heavily composed and easily digestible forerunner, highlights the band's experimental live jazz performances. At the time of its release, this band had long been dissolved. A few musicians worthy of mention are Sugarcane Harris and Ian Underwood, the two hang-ons from this period that played on the Hot Rats album, and Lowell George. Lowell was one of FZ greatest discoveries, but his time with Zappa was short lived. He formed Little Feat in 1970 and went on to grab a nice piece of 70s rock history for himself before his untimely death at the end of the decade.

The opener, DIDJA GET ANY ONYA?, sets the tone for the whole album. A raucous, spontaneous experimental piece that contains some fantastic nasal sax playing (Underwood's special talent), and some vocal adlibbing by Lowell. It slips, with some humor, into a cover of DIRECTLY FROM MY HEART TO YOU, which features a great solo by Sugarcane, who also contributes the vocals. PRELUDE TO THE AFTERNOON... is a mockup of Debussy's Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune, though it doesn't quote it at any moment. The intent seems to mutate the idea into perverse improvised theatre, the type of which is recreated by FZ and Roy Estrada on-stage on the Baby Snakes film.

TOADS OF THE SHORT FOREST is a split piece, with a beautiful composed portion recorded in studio, and a heavy live portion that features several members of the band playing in different signatures, per Zappa's obsession with "rhythmical textures" in this period. GET A LITTLE is a short, wah solo set to a simple lounge beat. Not an inspired solo on Zappa's part, although the tempo and FZ's playing are pretty suggestive, especially when one considers the title.

The ERIC DOLPHY MEMORIAL BARBECUE is one of my favorite Zappa tunes of all time. I don't know where the reviewer who makes vague accusations of plaigarism got the idea that anything in it is borrowed. I've been an Eric Dolphy fan longer than I've been a Zappa fan, and, frankly, I've never seen a tremendous amount of similarities between them. I've always assumed the title refers to the extended phrases that cover several registers, something I'd asssociate with Dolphy. Certainly, I've never heared this kind of use of polyrhythms on a Dolphy record. The cramped spacial quality of Zappa's pieces are in perfect contrast to a lot of Dolphy's work, which took on an almost Eastern or minimalist approach in his later work. I'd like to know what *exactly* the accuser believes to have been ripped off from Dolphy. The title was a little ironic, if anything. But, moving on, the next number, DWARF NEBULA PROCESSIONAL MARCH & DWARF NEBULA is a studio track, the first a composed little romp reminiscient of the first part of Toads. The rest is tape noises, sped, looped, distorted, you name it.

In case you were worried that there wasn't any easily accessible material on this album, three polished studio tracks follow. MY GUITAR WANTS TO KILL YOUR MAMA, a great mock hard rock number that had a pretty funkish counterpart (see YCDToSA5, the only studio track in the series). OH NO was featured in part on the Lumpy Gravy album, and is here in its full version with the vocals -- one of Zappa's great reoccuring melodies. It leads into the fantastic ORANGE COUNTY LUMBER TRUCK, another reocurring Zappa theme (a great version of it featured on the Roxy album). The closer, in case the rest of the album confused you, clears everything up. Its two minutes of grating distortion noise. Theatre of cruelty, I suppose.

This isn't the place to start with for new fans, who will doubtless be a little put off by the overload of experimental weirdness crammed into this one. But this album is incredible fun, and seasoned FZ listeners will really enjoy exploring this little experimental gem.

[ As for the shot at Zappa's politics, made by the same reviewer who made the strange and unexplained charges of plaigarism, it shouldn't matter at all, save that the dogmatic left (and I speak as a Social Democrat myself) always feels it necessary to conduct these kind of intellectual purity witch hunts in the sphere of art. Its a nauseating desire to subdue all art to its narrow idea of dialectal progress. Zappa wasn't an intellectual -- so what, a lot of artists aren't, and its simply not necessary for the production of meaningful art. Anyone who has read a poem by Rilke, a play by Strindberg, or enjoyed a piece by Mussorgsky knows this. Zappa is simply the most potent expression of cynicism and rebellion against middle-class values of his time. His finding profoundity in the grotesque, his disregard for aesthetics and theories, and his formalistic chameolonism which mocks more than pays tribute, all point to a rebirth of Dadaism in the youth rebellion of his times. Nothing so well expresses the meaning, the raison d'etre, of rock music. And, following logically, this makes Zappa considerably anti-political, and, if anything, an extremist secular libertarian. ]

Already a dyed in the wool Zappa fan when this album was first released, I appreciated the Rock & Blues cuts, & attempted to fathom the forays into Avante Garde Jazz & Musique Concrete. However, the uncompromising nature of much of this album proved to be an incomprehensible, if interesting challenge. Thirty years later I have rediscovered this classic, & find it is possibly the most important album I know of. None of the cuts herein can be characterized as pure Rock, or Blues, or Jazz, rather each blends two or more musical styles in dizzying swirls that alter character not only from one track to the next, but change in flavor within many of the selections. For those listeners who truly enjoy atonal music (such as Coltrane's Ascension, Sun Ra, John Gilmore, Pat Patrick, Marshall Allen et al.) Weasels contains an unparalleled opportunity to hear this genre approached from a different point of view. By not limiting himself to looking at any musical form from "it's own point of view", Zappa has blended an incredible sound which snaps back & forth, stretching the most experimental of musical boundaries, & the listeners discernment, while delivering licks as hot as can be found. This is clearly not an album for the fainthearted. It is likely to take several serious listenings before some of the more outre' musical statements begin to make sense, but it is well worth the effort. There are no frivolous tracks here. The "Rock" is among the most complex ever recorded, but once one begins to comprehend those musical statements that seem to be "just noise" at first, you will find yourself reassessing all music in a new light. I heartily recommend Weasels for the musically mature, open, & adventurous, those not willing to work at growing need not apply.

As the others say, there is a lot of jazz improv and intense experimentation going on here; that's plain enough from looking at the liner notes and the nod to Eric Dolphy and his own avant garde jazz work. If you're open-minded, you'll enjoy the jazz tracks, but they're surely not toe-tapping hits. My favorite bit(s) on this album is the three-song combo of "My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama," "Oh No," and "Orange County Lumber Truck." I only wish the jam on "Lumber Truck" could go on longer. Then there's the culminating "Weasels Ripped My Flesh;" an appropriate title for 3-odd minutes of live, fully-amplified noise. This is definitely NOT an introductory FZ recording. This one should probably come in somewhere between #15 and #25 in your acquisition scheme. It's a great one to have, but it does take some appreciation, even a little bit of work to access. Enjoy.