In The World
| Track: | Rating: | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. I Have Been In You | | | | ||
| 2. Flakes | | | | | |
| 3. Broken Hearts Are For Assholes | | | | ||
| 4. I'm So Cute | | | | ||
| 5. Jones Crusher | | | |||
| 6. Whatever Happened To All The Fun In The World | | | | | |
| 7. Rat Tomago | | | | | |
| 8. Wait A Minute | | | | ||
| 9. Bobby Brown Goes Down | | | | ||
| 10. Rubber Shirt | | | | | |
| 11. The Sheik Yerbouti Tango | | | | | |
| 12. Baby Snakes | | | | ||
| 13. Tryin' To Grow A Chin | | | | | |
| 14. City Of Tiny Lites | | | | | |
| 15. Dancin' Fool | | | | ||
| 16. Jewish Princess | | | | ||
| 17. Wild Love | | | | | |
| 18. Yo' Mama | | | | | |
Some people consider Sheik Yerbouti (1979) to be Frank Zappa's crowning achievement. The perpetuation of this curious belief is a continual source of bewilderment to this reviewer.
From a commercial standpoint, Sheik Yerbouti has several things working to its advantage. It's certainly one of Zappa's more "accessible" albums, with a high percentage of novelty tracks targeted to the more casual Zappa fan. It has "Dancin' Fool", one of only three Zappa tracks to reach the Billboard Hot 100 in America. It has "Bobby Brown Goes Down", and No. 1 track in Norway. And it has "Broken Hearts Are For Assholes", which continually receives an undue degree of attention from both casual and hardcore Zappa followers due to its infamous closing section.
From a music-related standpoint, however, this is one of Zappa's less inspired releases. Some good material does exist here, but the signal- to-noise ratio is much higher here than on most other FZ releases. While this reviewer can understand the logic of Zappa's turn to pop-culture parodies, he nevertheless must wonder if the resulting artistic sacrifices needed to be quite as pronounced.
In fairness, the album isn't quite a disaster. The good tracks (mostly the instrumentals) bring the album as a whole up to a "generally recommended" level for FZ fans, and even the lesser tracks manage to get some mileage out of their novelty value.
In general, though, this album must be considered to be easily the most overrated release in FZ's catalogue.
Before reviewing the individual songs, a general word should be noted about the "vulgarity factor" on this album. As the recent compilation release of "offensive" Zappa tracks notes, FZ's intention with tracks like "Broken Hearts Are For Assholes" and "Jewish Princess" was to shock the shockable, offend the easily offended, etc. Unfortunately, "amuse the easily amused" might be added to this list. Many of the "vulgar" songs on this release are marked by sophomoric humour and rudimentary music -- while Zappa In New York transcended its offensive subject matter, Sheik Yerbouti simply appears crass and amateurish. One should not think that the vulgarity alone is responsible for the low ratings given to some of these tracks.
With that out of the way...
The album begins with "I Have Been In You", which features one of the aforementioned sophomoric lyrics. It also begins with an extremely rudimentary (and obviously parodic) lounge/doo-wop musical base, with Zappa's absurd crooning mingling with simply rhythm guitar lines. The musical development for the "in you again" section is somewhat better, but still not great. Stripped-down rock was never Zappa's idiom, parodic or not, and this track is ultimately little more than a (not overly funny) joke. In passing, one must wonder what the anti-Scientologist Zappa's intention was with the repeated "return from forever" line -- unfortunately, this aspect of the song is too minor to alter its rating.
"Flakes" is a bit better, but is also little more than an extended joke. The lyrics (detailing the systematic advance of lazy, incompetent workers under union protection) never go beyond a bare surface meaning -- sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. The music, while better than that of the first track, is still well below what Zappa was capable of. As regards Adrian Belew's Dylan impression... well... the harmonica was a classic touch, but the joke isn't really developed (and, realistically, the idea of a musician doing a Bob Dylan isn't really all that funny). A moderate success, at best.
For all the controversy surrounding "Broken Hearts Are For Assholes", it's not really much of a song. The heavy rock opening (another obvious parody) is far from essential; the double-entendres used in the protagonist's visits to a gay bar are somewhat amusing (and surprisingly well-informed), but not really all that interesting from a musical standpoint; the infamous "ram it, ram it, ram it" section comes across as the most sophomoric moment on the album.
"I'm So Cute" is even worse, a Bozzio-vox track with more heavy rock lines, a rudimentary drum beat, and an equally rudimentary doo-wop section. Parody or no, there just isn't much here. The album's descent is then consolidated with "Jones Crusher", a Belew-vox track that never makes it past the locker-room level humour of its title (and has pretty insubstantial music as well). Belew's not-yet-proven talents are wasted.
Things start to improve at this point with "Rat Tomago", a live instrumental track which seems to have been transported to this album from an entirely different dimension. The track is essentially a guitar spotlight, and a fairly good one at that -- soaring lines and gritty chord development are mingling well towards the end of the track. Its continuity with the tracks before and after it is tenuous, but this is nevertheless one of the high points of the album. (Note: "Rat Tomago" is bookended by "Whatever Happened To All The Fun In The World" and "Wait A Minute", two very brief collages of sound manipulation and spoken word dialogue originally intended for Lather -- not bad, but not really substantial enough to stand on their own).
The album then veers into sophomoric territory again with "Bobby Brown Goes Down", a jokey pop construction filled with truly stupid lyrics involving bondage, S&M, etc. Accusations of homophobia are obviously inappropriate for this novelty track, but, once again, there just isn't very much to consider here.
At this juncture, two more instrumental tracks are brought in from the aforementioned different dimension -- "Rubber Shirt", an excellent bass/drum duet between Bozzio & O'Hearn, and "The Sheik Yerbouti Tango", one of the best melodies to appear on the album (mostly a guitar track, but with a strong keyboard presence as well). As per the other "quality" tracks on the album, these are live recordings.
"Baby Snakes", although essentially just another novelty track, has a few clever bass lines/backing vocals/hooks to recommend it (and the keyboard spotlight isn't too bad either). The lyrics, while still wandering through the valley of sexual juvenalia, are at least not quite as amateurish as some of the other moments on this album.
"Tryin' To Grow A Chin" and "City Of Tiny Lites" might be regarded as redemptions for the earlier combination of Bozzio/Belew vocal tracks. The former is one of the better novelty tracks on the album -- the musical basis of the song is fairly good, even if its development is somewhat stunted. "City Of Tiny Lites", however, is in an entirely different category -- this track, alone of the works on those album, suggests Belew's future as a guitarist and vocalist. The rest of the instrumentalists all get their moments in the spotlight as well -- the end result, despite the fact that the song deals with cocaine use (from a condemnatory stance, of course), is actually quite touching.
"Dancin' Fool" is one of the better novelties on the album, by virtue of both some extremely unusual rhythmic developments towards the end, and the fact that FZ keeps his parody concise enough for the track to be a modest triumph. There isn't terribly much here beyond the joke, but at least the joke isn't too annoying this time.
The same cannot be said of "Jewish Princess", another sophomoric track with avoids a more disastrous rating only by virtue of its amusing backup vocals. This song, also, received a fair degree of controversy when it was first released -- but, as before, it simply isn't much of a track, one way or the other. The synthesized sound effects are truly bad, and the locker-room humour once again fails to add up to much.>
"Wild Love" is a better track, but it doesn't quite reach its potential. The opening section of the song is extremely unfocused; later, a much better instrumental section emerges from the mix. This track could have used a bit of editing, though it's present state doesn't support too much criticism either.
The album ends with "Yo' Mama", another track prevented from getting a
In general, then, this is an album bound to cause some difficulties for serious FZ fans. The album is still recommended, but with the warning that not terribly much should be expected from some of the better known tracks... and with the further warning that there are many FZ albums much better than this one that the potential FZ consumer could buy instead.
I realize that some people are going to claim that I'm "not getting the joke". To which I would respond that the joke just isn't that funny, this time around.
(review originally posted to alt.music.yes on 19 June 1997)