it is like Spinal Tap but terrible, I hate it

Well, I am very sorry but for me ‘We’re only in it for the Money’ is just self-indulgent hippie crap featuring the usual psychedelic tropes I’ve come to learn about on this 1001 Albums journey, namely: San Francisco, some beads, dope, barefoot, love, bongoes in the dirt. It is just a pile of self-indulgent rubbish and I have no idea why this is on this list. There are countless minutes of tape splicing and recordings of chats, tape reversals all designed to cover up how little music and how little music talent there is here. The title says it all and it is a none too subtle pointer to the effort put into the “music”.   One of the ridiculous lyrics goes “When my royalty cheques comes in I’m going to buy a Mustang, no a Corvette, no a Harley Davidson, no none of those things”. So….?

If it is a piss-take album, it’s great; it is like Spinal Tap but terrible, I hate it. If the idea really was to parody Sgt. Pepper then Zappa has clearly missed the point of The Beatles who were only ever about the music and certainly not the money. The 1001 albums book calls this ‘one of the most influential albums of the 20th century’ and describes Zappa as a ‘visionary genius’, what a load of rubbish.

I may be in Covid-19 lockdown and listening to all the musical gaps in my knowledge but I simply do not need this and ‘We’re only in it for the Money’ comes across the way it is titled.  I’m currently exploring Julian Cope’s back catalogue (St Julian, Peggy Suicide, Jehovahkill, etc.), he too was a maverick like Zappa but he was at least a genuine genius, like the Crazy Horse himself, Neil Young, up next.

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Album – We’re only in it for the Money
Artist – The Mothers of Invention
Favourite Tracks – …..( i.e. none)
Released – 1968
Rating – 1 (!) lucky to get that!
Time – 39′ 20″
Tracks – 19
Genre – Psychedelic Rock
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Source – Tidal
Player/Streamers/DAC – Tidal Desktop via Atlas USB GRUN
Amplifier – Questyle CMA400i headphone amplifier
Output – Oppo PM2 via Atlas Zeno
Next Album – 139 – Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Everybody knows this is Nowhere