Freak Out! | 
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| Artist: Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention
Label: Zappa Records
Category: Music
List Price: $11.98
Buy New: $7.61
You Save: $4.37 (36%)
New (48) Used (16) Collectible (2) from $7.49
Rating:  65 reviews
Sales Rank: 6379
Format: Original Recording Reissued, Original Recording Remastered
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 310501
UPC: 014431050121
EAN: 0014431050121
ASIN: B0000009RT
Release Date: May 2, 1995
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New and Factory Sealed Item Fast Shipping
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| Tracks:
| • | Hungry Freaks, Daddy | | • | I Ain't Got No Heart | | • | Who Are the Brain Police? | | • | Go Cry on Somebody Else's Shoulder | | • | Motherly Love | | • | How Could I Be Such a Fool? | | • | Wowie Zowie | | • | You Didn't Try to Call Me | | • | Any Way the Wind Blows | | • | I'm Not Satisfied | | • | You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here | | • | Trouble Every Day | | • | Help, I'm a Rock | | • | It Can't Happen Here | | • | The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com essential recording
"This is the voice of your conscience, baby..." The recording debut of the Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention is a brilliantly wicked counter-strike to the flower power sensibilities prevalent at the time of it's release in 1966. Arguably rock music's first true "concept album," Zappa's aural collage mashes together chunks of psychedelic guitars, outspoken political commentary, cultural satire, and avant-garde musical sensibilities, and then hides it all under cleverly crafted pop melodies. Not diminished in the slightest by the passage of time, Freak Out! remains as vital and relevant today as it was in the 1960's. --Andrew Boscardin
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| Customer Reviews:
 The Real FREAK OUT! August 30, 2008
Harem Scarem (Wyoming, USA)
The first Mother's album was a huge step outside the normal rock and roll of the mid sixties, introducing it's audience to the Psychodelic era. This album is historic if nothing else. The music is an early Frank Zappa with the current culture influence, it sounds nothing like the later Frank and has rough edges.
"These Mothers is crazy" June 25, 2008
Laszlo Matyas
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Debut albums are often tentative, exploratory works. They find artists refining their sound, honing their chops, getting a feel for the studio, delicately introducing themselves to their audiences, and otherwise learning to navigate the ins and outs of this whole "recorded music" thing. In the 60s, this usually made for unexciting quickies that buried two great songs under ten bits of worthless filler. Covers ruled the day, and the originals were largely dull and derivative.
For his debut album, Frank Zappa ripped rock music in half and rebuilt it in his own image.
Here's how he did it: He took all of the cliches, conventions, and conceits that had come to rule the pop world and he turned them inside out. He wrote doo-wop ditties with upside down harmonies and surreal narratives. He wrote catchy melodies and pureed them into white noise. He made time signatures go to war with each other. He juxtaposed cheesy pop and musique concrete. Greaseball R&B sat side-by-side with acid fried social commentary. Accessibility went one-for-one with alienation. It's hilarious, catchy, eye opening, friendly, and uncompromising, and it all goes on for over an hour.
And what an hour it is! This album is just about stuffed with classic moments. I mean, who could ask for a better opening salvo than "Hungry Freaks, Daddy?" It's a stinging rocker, a furiously intelligent weirdo anthem, and a good-natured descent into the experimental. And it's catchy! Elsewhere, the album flaunts socially enraged garage rock ("Trouble Every Day"), hilarious post-modern teen pop ("Wowie Zowie," "Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder"), Oedipally conflicted sex-rock ("Motherly Love"), sneering anti-love anthems ("I Ain't Got No Heart"), and whatever the hell "Who Are The Brain Police?" is. I love "Who Are The Brain Police?"
But it's the album's second half that really flies the ol' freak flag. Starting with "Help, I'm A Rock," the proceedings begin a descent into a menacing world of mean-spirited sound collages, spooked acid-psych, and leering avant-garage. The structures become less linear and more freewheeling, less accessible and more violent, less friendly and more...freaky.
Believe it or not, it works. The music (experimental and otherwise) has dated surprisingly well, thanks in no small part to the fact that, as subversive as he was, Frank Zappa was a great writer of pop songs, and the Mothers of Invention were a great band. The wilder elements of the record are balanced by a great sense of humor and adventure. In the end, it's actually the more conventional songs that wind up dragging Freak Out! down a peg: "I'm Not Satisfied" and "How Could I Be Such A Fool" are pretty dull, with stiff melodies and drab lyrics. "You Didn't Try To Call Me" has little more going for it than a cool-sounding intro, and "You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here" repeats the outcast-anthem message of the album without really contributing anything new.
Still... classic album!
Freak Out! June 9, 2008
Morton (Colorado)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention-Freak Out! ****
Well...um...I was pretty disappointed by Freak Out! when I first heard it, so I thought this can't be right, this is nothing like everyone described it, and so I gave it a couple more listens and still nothing. So I set it aside for a while and when I finally went back to it I still felt the same way.
One thing is for sure it is really one of the most original rock albums of all time, not that all of Zappa's releases aren't but this one especially. It is bizarre but not in the bizarre that I thought it would be and it is nothing like any of his other releases. The musicianship is nowhere near the level that everyone describes it as. 'I'm Not Satisfied' has some great piano work, and 'Trouble Every Day' has some great early garage rock guitar, and was really a sign of things to come.
Zappa's humour in his lyrics here is great however, and actually some of the best of his career, and he clearly had his vocals down patent since phase one. But what I found most impressive about Freak Out! is that it is nothing like the hippie movement as the title implies, in fact it is almost anti that, and that is what is so brilliant, not the musicianship, but the social commentary of the time. The impressionistic ways of the youth in America and how they are so susceptible to things and how it is wrong of the capitalist ways to take advantage.
'Trouble Every Day' is fantastic, the doo-whop feel of most of the album while a tribute, Zappa makes it uniquely his own, and 'Help, I'm A Rock' is also among his all time best, so while this isn't quite the album I was hoping for but it is still a legendary effort, I mean it did inspire Srg. Pepper, so there you go!
First Mother's Album April 24, 2008
Dr. Richard A. Martin Jr. (Seattle, WA USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This first from Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention is a slick yet primative piece of work. I first heard this when I was about 14; the new digital recording does the piece well. It's all a done in a satirical way but it holds up well. Recommended for Zappa fans as a period piece.
 The Left-Behinds...of the Great Society March 14, 2008
David F. Mcginnis (Key West FL)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Substitute "...if another WHITE TRUCK DRIVER..." for "...if another woman driver..." and you have not the Watts riot '65 but south LA '92 -- the Rodney King riots. "Trouble Every Day" has stayed with me all this time. My band covered it, believe it or not, with that one update. It still sounds good on my sound check tapes.
"Mr America, walk on by your liquor store supreme..." Has anything changed?
It is difficult to take Zappa at face value when he says he was only in it for the money, so he could make the music he really wanted, string quartets, in his basement.
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