Frank Zappa - Hot Rats

Decade - 1960's.


Frank Zappa - Hot Rats (1969)

Instrumentals? Not really my thing. I usually spend entire albums just wishing there was a voice. I freely admit to being lyric and vocal driven in music, so the next two albums were defintely...an experience. Partly, I think instrumentals tend to be "musician's music" because every single review I read raved about the compositions and techniques involved. I'll take their word for it!

I'd heard of Frank Zappa but not enough to recall anything he'd ever done. Turns out he was far more prolific than I'd imagined and was a composer, guitarist, singer, film director, and satirist! Busy guy.

Hot Rats is "kind of" his first album and is an album of jazz-rock compositiosn with only one short vocal. Again, this is kind of background music for me, but I did like Willie The Pimp which is a great "song"! The others didn't hold my attention as much but it was fairly enjoyable background music to have on and there were parts of each song that brought back my attention.

It's not something I'd buy, or probably listen to again - but it's going to take an incredible instrumental to win me over. This isn't it.

Score - 6.4/10

Best Tracks - Willie The Pimp, The Gumbo Variations

Genre - Instrumental Jazz-Rock

Recommended? - If you like instrumentals, Jazz or Rock!