Perfect Tens Dept. - We're Only In It For The Money

Who's your dreamiest Mother?

 

Any choice of a Zappa Perfect Ten is going to be contentious, but as a general rule the later album design - and defining later is contentious - can be a tad bland (you know what I mean), and Cal Schenkel's art is anything but. There are few rock act/graphic designer partnerships that reach the Lewis Carrol/John Tenniel level of synchronous symbiosis, but Schenkel and Zappa kicked the entire rock caboodle to a scary new location and dared you to join them.

Calvin sez: "Frank came up with the concept early that summer, and we rushed around trying to find props and get it in the works as soon as possible. I went out and bought a bunch of old mannequins to convert into wax figures of the Mothers. This was accomplished in an old loft, high over the Garrick Theater/Café a Go Go complex. Many hours and pounds of plaster served in the task. The photography was done by Jerry Shatzberg, a real photographer, in a real New York photography studio. This was my first actual album cover and I was impressed. Other than the wax dummies and the collage in the background of the front cover, I mostly just got to art-direct the thing."

Is this the first example of a pop album being deliberately offensive? It's been claimed that the gatefold [above - Ed.] was spoofing the trend for rock bands to drag it up, but that didn't really start until the 'seventies. Jerry Schatzberg pulled it off with The Stones (er ...) back in '66 [left - Ed.], but that was in the same satirical spirit, more Monty Python than Mame. So the target of the barb was, of course, the Beatles, who'd adorably camped it up as toytown soldiers for Sgt. Pepper. You want dressing up? Zappa was saying, how 'bout these apples?

The original outer cover, before it got flipped by the suits at Verve, already fouling their Jockey shorts over the lyrical content, was Schenkel's virtuoso riff on Peter Blake's Pepper assemblage. Go here for the roll-call. That's really Hendrix, too - groovy! McCartney weaseled out when Zappa asked him for permission, saying the matter should be left to "business managers". The perfect example of Corporate Shill vs. Artist.

In '68, nobody under thirty was snickering at The Beatles. Only the Vegas supperclub tuxedo set was roasting the hippies. Zappa was being offensive to everyone, from LBJ's Great Society, to the record company, to the counterculture, to the pop establishment as exemplified by their most respected icons and their fans, right through to - and this is incredible - us. His audience, the saps what scarfed it up, making it a Top Thirty album. It's this inclusivity - if you will - that makes the album a satirical benchmark without peer. Satire is generally comforting for the side that's not being targeted. Zappa leaves nobody out - everybody in this room is wearing a uniform, and don't kid yourself.

Satire usually has a short shelf life, but WOIIFTM has outlasted its targets by being musically outstanding (rewarding limitless plays) and snork-out-loud funny. It also stands as an accurate documentary of 'sixties LA culture and a bleak vision of our own future-present. In 2005, the U.S, National Recording Registry lauded the album as "culturally, historically, and æsthetically significant ..."

Excellent musical analysis here, should youse bums be desirous!