Zappa's earliest influences were 1950s pop and rock (such as doo-wop and rhythm and blues), and 20th-century classical composers including Igor Stravinsky and Edgard Varèse. His output was divided between adventurous instrumental compositions and succinct, catchy rock songs with ribald, satirical, or comically absurd lyrics. On stage he demanded virtuosity and spontaneity from his musicians, and employed many performers who would later go on to achieve fame in their own rights. He directed and released a number of films featuring himself, his musicians and entourage, including 200 Motels and Baby Snakes.
His career started in 1955. His earliest recordings date from the mid-1960s, and include collaborations with his school friend Captain Beefheart. In 1965 he joined a bar-band called The Soul Giants, quickly dominating its musical direction and rechristening it The Mothers. Their first release (as The Mothers of Invention; the name alteration requested by their record company) was the 1966 double album Freak Out!. The line-up of the Mothers gradually expanded to accommodate Zappa's increasingly ambitious and avant-garde music, but by 1969 he decided to work outside the band structure, focusing on his solo career, and effectively disbanding the Mothers in 1971.
The beginnings of his solo career in the late sixties and early seventies was characterised by a strong free jazz influence, with albums containing little, if any, lyrical content, such as Hot Rats, Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo. Towards the mid-seventies his albums became more rock-orientated, with a combination of Jazz Fusion instrumentation and Rock song structures. This more accessible sound bore reasonable mainstream appeal, especially with the release of the well-advertised albums Over-Nite Sensation and Apostrophe (') (which both went Gold), but Zappa's unpredictably eclectic output never led to solid mainstream recognition. He received uniformly lukewarm reviews from popular music publications such as Rolling Stone throughout his career. In his late seventies' output, the gulf between his humorous songs and more lengthy, complex instrumental music widened, and albums, such as Zappa in New York, Joe's Garage: Acts I, II & III, and Sleep Dirt displayed, by track, both sides firmly segregated.
Zappa saw a second run of success in the early eighties with the release of many albums with predominantly comedic rock songs, but later continued to experiment with virtually every style of music through the eighties, and was productive as ever until his death. His output in this later-career period included two albums of strikingly original classical music with the London Symphony Orchestra, an electronic take on 18th-century chamber music (written by the obscure Italian composer 'Francesco Zappa', no relation), an album of Synclavier compositions (misleadingly titled Jazz From Hell which garnered a Grammy award), a double-CD release of electric guitar instrumental music (the laconically titled Guitar) and a plenitude of official live releases, revisiting fan-favourites as well as showcasing Zappa's talent for reinventing the music of others; his version of Stairway to Heaven becoming a word-of-mouth favourite.
Zappa produced almost all of his own albums, spending many hours in the studio recording and manipulating tracks, and was always at the forefront of emerging technologies; from tape editing, collage, multitrack and overdubbing in the sixties to digital recording, electronic instruments and sampling in the eighties. Conversely, Zappa was also a obsessive self-archivist, recording virtually every one of his live performances, and often using live recordings of new material without needing to enter the studio. The archive of tapes at his family home in Los Angeles continues to be a source of posthumous releases for the Zappa Family Trust. He was also noted as a spotter of talent and his shifting line-up of musicians included Lowell George, Jean-Luc Ponty, Terry Bozzio, Chad Wackerman, George Duke, Mike Keneally, Adrian Belew and Steve Vai, as well as giving Alice Cooper his first break in music and working again with his old collaborator Captain Beefheart when his career was in decline.
In the late 1980s he became active in politics, campaigning against the PMRC's music censorship scheme and acting as culture and trade representative for Czechoslovakia in 1989; and considered running as an independent candidate for president of the US.
His death in Los Angeles, California, on 4th December 1993 came three years after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Who Are the Brain Police
Frank Zappa Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
And the plastic's all melted
And so is the chrome?
Who are the brain police?
What will you do when the label comes off
And the plastic's all melted
And the chrome is too soft?
Wah
I think I'm gonna die
I think I'm gonna die
I think I'm going to die
I think I'm going to die
I think I'm going to die
I think I'm going to die
I'm gonna die
I think I'm going to die
I think I'm gonna die
I'm going to die
I think I'm gonna die
I think I'm gonna die
I think I'm gonna die
I think I'm gonna die
I think I'm gonna die
I think I'm going to die
I think I'm going to die
I think I'm going to die
I think I'm going to die
Who are the brain police?
What will you do if the people you knew
Were the plastic that melted
And the chromium too?
Who are the brain police?
The lyrics to Frank Zappa's song "Who Are The Brain Police?" are open to interpretation and can mean different things to different people. However, it is generally interpreted as a criticism of a society that values conformity and compliance with authority over individuality and free thought.
The first two verses describe a dystopian scenario where plastic and chrome, symbols of artificiality and conformity, have melted. The brain police, whoever they may be, seem to be the ones in charge of this oppressive society. The chorus of the song, "Who are the brain police?" is a direct challenge to this authority.
The last verse takes a more personal turn, suggesting that the people the singer knows could also be part of this fake, plastic world. The fear of losing oneself to conformity is evident in the repeated line "I think I'm gonna die." Overall, the song can be seen as a warning against blindly following authority and valuing individuality over conformity.
Line by Line Meaning
What will you do if we let you go home
And the plastic's all melted
And so is the chrome?
Who are the brain police?
If we release you, what will you do when you return home to find that all of the artificial aspects of your world have disintegrated, including the plastic and chrome? Who is in charge of controlling your mind and your reality?
What will you do when the label comes off
And the plastic's all melted
And the chrome is too soft?
Similar to the previous line, what will happen when the artificial aspects of your world become unreliable, including the labels used to define and identify things?
Wah
I think I'm gonna die
I think I'm gonna die
I think I'm going to die
I think I'm going to die
I think I'm going to die
I think I'm going to die
I'm gonna die
I think I'm going to die
I think I'm gonna die
I'm going to die
I think I'm gonna die
I think I'm gonna die
I think I'm gonna die
I think I'm gonna die
I think I'm gonna die
I think I'm going to die
I think I'm going to die
I think I'm going to die
I think I'm going to die
The repetition of "I think I'm gonna die" suggests a feeling of fear and impending doom, reflecting the potential fallout of losing one's sense of identity once the artificial aspects of reality become unreliable.
What will you do if the people you knew
Were the plastic that melted
And the chromium too?
Who are the brain police?
If the people you thought you knew were only superficial and artificial representations of their true selves, if they are just as unreliable as the plastic and chromium melting around us, then who is responsible for this false sense of reality and control over our minds?
Lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Written by: FRANK ZAPPA
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@ilanlilo9423
In this decade, Zappa produced no less than 22 albums (!!!), in an amazing and unprecedented artistic frenzy of rock, a fertility that exists only in classical composers and not in rock musicians. In five months, between 1967 and 1968, he recorded no fewer than four albums at the same time, One of which is even double (Uncle Meat 1969). In this decade, and especially in the first three years, with Zappa’s first "Mothers of Invention" (of three), Zappa records his most polished, tight, innovative, and intriguing works, and is an enormous influence on countless prog-rock and kraut-rock artists. But everything that Zappa produced after Bongo Fury, his joint album with the legendary Captain beefheart, a bad album for both sides that catches Zappa on a mediocre day and Beef at the low of his career, is just not that.
“Heavy zapaists”would throw rotten tomatoes at me,but I did not like anything of Zappa I heard after 1976. Zappa has changed direction, has become a kind of flamboyant technical virtuoso, a music masturbator who always works with the sharpest musicians, beats long guitar solos from the exile in trillard rhythms at a rate of 180 characters per second until it gets nasty. It may be very impressive, but for me albums like Sheik Yerbouti or Joe's Garage will always be an impressive show of emptiness, and I just do not connect to it. Crazy. I do not even want to talk about the eighties of Zappa.
This time I wanted to talk a bit about the album with which Zappa started. The album was not only ahead of its time, it was not only twenty leagues above any album that was around, not only was radically innovative, not only spared the rock of his stupid love songs, but created an independent musical universe, Of exemplary albums, which proved that things Zappa did in the 60’s will not be repeated in the 60’s of the 22nd century. And that is Freak Out !.
That's how: In 1964, Zappa, a man with four years of independent experience in recording in small studios, meets Ray Collins, somewhere in Los Angeles. Collins offers Zappa to be a member of the Collins Blues group, The Giant of Soul. The band includes Collins in song, Mexican Roy Astrada in bass and a troubling supernova, Jimmy Carl Black, the Indian on the drums, and a guy named Devi Coronado on a saxophone. Zappa joins the band and offers them to play original material. The band agrees, Coronado leaves, joins guitarist Elliott Ingber, Zappa serves as a musical director in the band as a guitarist, singer and writer of all the material and the design of the concept. The five members of the band were ugly and strange, with long hair. Super-producer Tom Wilson happened to be recording another band of five ugly and strange people this time from New York, who will also change the world's music - the velvet Underground, of course. Wilson is enthusiastic about signing the band for a contract for MGM. In 1966, after changing the band's name to "Mothers" and then to "Mothers of Invention," Mother’s enters the studio and begins recording.
What happens in the music world in 1966? On the one side of the ocean, in High-Ashbury, San Francisco, the hippie movement begins to form, with bands such as Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead starting to consume more and more psychedelic drugs, and the influence of the Beat generation on building an alternative way of life. On the other hand, the Beach Boys are releasing their own Pet Sounds, an album that is thought to be groundbreaking in innovative recording techniques, arrangements that have not yet been heard in the world,and a slew of inventions of Bryan Wilson's feverish mind. Dylan leads the nation of singer-songwriters in his classic album Blond On Blond. On the other side of the ocean, the Beatles release their Revolver, a classic in its own right (and to my personal taste, frantically added), an album that may include the important song of the time, Tomorrow Never Knows. Things change: people think differently, they dress differently. Rock albums come out of the tab and start to be - what's the word? - Oh, interesting. In New York, Reed is already planning his revolution.
And here comes Zappa the “hooligan”and completely devours the cards! What is this album? What is this freak out that you did to us? Is this supposed to be a doo wop album? Of blues? Psychedelia? satire? Classical music? What the fuck? Duplicate album? A poem that takes half a side, which is not a song at all, just noises and nonsense? Laughing? Drugs? Madness? What's the matter with you, Mr. Zappa? That's how you do not make music! The first album Zappa recorded is a music school. I crown it as the first interesting album. True, very pretentious of me, the Beatles and the Beach Boys and the byrds and Dylan and the hippies also grew up then, but Zappa is just a few leagues above them, in every field. The music is much more sophisticated - a combination of half-parody, blues and RnB, with the influences of avant-garde composers, primitive sound and sound experiments under direct influence by Wasser and Stokhausen, innovative studio experiments like Cut and Fist and Fitch Games Hysterical in the air, and especially a lot of humor and sarcasm.Literally, it is superfluous to say that nothing else came close to that. In some of the songs, Zappa attacks the hollow American culture and splits it into pieces. In some of the songs, Zappa strikes with particularly dumb lyrics, a kind of parody of rock at the same time. And in the last part of the album there are no words but shouting, laughter, crisp gibberish and a lot of inventions that nobody dared to do in 1966. And something else is very important - the cover of the album also looks like something else. Beyond the design of the cheesy deliberately, Zappa is amazingly glittering, and although the disappointment is not lyrics,it is worth reading the comments he gives each song and the stupid biography he writes about himself and the band members ("At the age of 11 I was five feet tall with hairy legs, 'Buyers and Mustaches'').
Not just this album sounds strange even today - it is just a creation on a temporary basis. And this is perhaps the most important aspect of freak out! Achieves - the sense of being strange, being bold and avant-garde, being silly and dressing like an idiot.
Zappa's school begins with the '' Hungry Freaks Daddy '' bluesy, in which Collins excels at singing and Zappa fakes vigorously the subversive text against Zappa; From there comes the "I Aint Got No Heart", which is beautifully decorated and decorated with brass instruments; We continue with the first extreme song on the album, "Who Are The Brain Police," whose title makes it possible to understand Zappa's influence with German kraut-rock bands, a particularly shocking and sickening song; Continue with "Wowie Zowie" which is a masterpiece of bad taste, fun and campy song with criminal words ,”You Did not Try To Call Me '' and 'Anywhere The Wind Blows' which prove that Zappa was also a talented pop writer, a second without cynicism and satire, excited by the kitsch and fun of '' You're Sure Wondering Why I'm Here, "and only then do they digest the defiant words against the rotting and deceptive American way of life; Head-to-head with the acute political protest in Trouble Everyday, almost an ancient rap song that Zappa wrote in the wake of the riots in the Watts quarter of Los Angeles about racism and nationalism; And then there are twenty minutes of trip from outer space in three parts, three '' songs '' which are a wonderful collage of bizarre - strange sounds, cuts and surprising studio edits and lots of mess and tasteless fun, with the climax in the last track ending the album, The Son Of Monster Magnet '', twelve minutes after which the world of rock has changed forever, just like that. This ends with a particularly nasty and spoiled trip of four vinyl sides and exactly sixty minutes. But how disgusting, how delicious ...
It's hard to estimate how many 'freak out’ Is an important album. How much each album Zappa produced in the Sixties is important. Without this album and those that followed it, the whole experimental rock genre would sound quite different. And to complete the historical picture, a year later the velvet’s underground ' banana album was released, after which nothing was left as it was. These two albums, a complete antithesis to hippies, or psychedelics from the toxic side of the acid, are the most important ever. What's really big about Freak Out! Is that he's really fun, and you can really enjoy him. He is not necessarily recommended for the beginner zapheist, but this is an advanced material, but anyone who considers himself a music lover must hold it, along with We're Only In It For The Money, where Zappa included his anti-hippie insights into art. Not everyone. But in fact.
@jonh.4170
as a hardcore mindless self indulgence fan who has just discovered frank zappa, i can say i have not found a track by him that does not sound like something i would listen to. this man was a fucking genius.
@fleotusleotus8642
Welcome to the neverending fold....mobius strip
@im1whole1
I love your mommy
@robbie4860
You have been ZAPPED for life my friend!! There is no turning back...😎😘👌
@ZAPPAFREAK59
“The mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work unless it’s open.”
Frank Zappa
@WilliamDavidHobbs
Congratulations you have found your way into the genius world of Frank Zappa.
@lauchalz1
imagine the look on the face of the people that listened to this in 1966.
@divine5460
imagine their psyche crumbling under the weight of all that lsd and this
@TheJohnac
This was the first Mothers' track I heard back in 1966. It really was a "where did that come from?" moment. Incisive and deeply worrying.
@rowan1955
I was still at school, was hooked from first listening! Still am <3