Frank Zappa: Apostrophe (') [ZAPPA/BARKING PUMPKIN]

Why you'll love it

This 180g pressing was mastered from the original 1974 analog stereo tape at Bernie Grundman Mastering. It was Zappa's biggest US album, reaching No. 10 on the Billboard 200 and going gold.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Mastered from the original analog tapes
• Pressed in Germany
• Stereo mix

About the album

Frank Zappa had plenty of ways to make an album, and Apostrophe (') uses most of them. Side one was recorded in the spring of 1973 alongside Over-Nite Sensation, while side two stitches together sessions going back years, including a drum track on "Excentrifugal Forz" from the Hot Rats era.

The first side plays like a loose, very silly saga. "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" starts a dream about an Arctic trapper named Nanook, which spills into "Nanook Rubs It," then "St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast" (inspired, Zappa said, by a margarine commercial), "Father O'Blivion" and the slinky, guitar-heavy "Cosmik Debris." Side two turns to jazz-rock, with the title track's long instrumental workout and the bluesy "Stink-Foot" closing things out. Zappa produced, arranged and, as the credits put it, struggled with the lot at Electric Lady in New York and studios around Los Angeles.

An edited "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" gave him the first of his three Billboard Hot 100 singles. He spent a career writing orchestral works and jazz-rock epics, and the public's favourite turned out to be a trapper's dream. Composers, as a rule, learn to live with this.

Also at Kops: more Frank Zappa on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Zappa Records / Barking Pumpkin (cat# ZR 3851), a reissue of the 1974 album.