Hot Rats (album) by Frank Zappa

Great fusion of rock and jazz. Good ambient album.

Really good album start to finish.

I love the Jazz leanings of 'Little Umbrellas'. Track 2 side 2 (vinyl) then moves into an improvisation which is very 'Gongesque', particularly with the sax right at the front of the mix taking the lead through the first part and then handing over to violin in the second half. In contrast track 3 side 3 moves back into more of a Latin Jazz feel. I love the contrast on this album and wish Zappa had turned out more consistent albums like this which focus on musicianship rather than a lot of the satirical drivel on other later albums. I have got pretty much all of the core Zappa albums and most apart from a few are spoiled by the satirical or damright crude (not that I'm a prude) and unnecessary drivel.

From wenny 04/21/2019 12:44

Quite strange, yet very welcoming and digestible at the same time. Incredibly impressive instrumentation, and surely an influencer on many contemporary artists.

From Graeme2 02/16/2019 21:49

I'm seeing comments about jazz, rock, psych, prog. Fair enough but am I the only one hearing a funk record?

From Boltzmann 09/16/2018 11:44

The rhythms and melodies are not as random and interesting as he thinks they are.
I feel like he’s not really good at making rock ‘n’ roll or jazz, so he decided to fuse them in the hope that the whole would be more than the sum of the parts. He succeeded to a very small extent, such that I still think this album can be skipped by anyone and that person would not really miss an important part of music history.

This is a great album filled with great melodies. I especially love the guitar solo on Willie the pump.

Amazingly weirdly. Everything on this album (and with a lot of Zappa's work) sound so satirical and I love it.

From JulianR 02/14/2018 06:27

Aside from Little Umbrellas, I wouldn't classify much of this as jazz-rock so much as blues-rock with avante garde leanings. I don't think that improvisation should be mistaken for jazz, even if that improvisation is in the form of overblowing a saxophone. Yet again, if Brubecks blues based jazz is still jazz, then I'm not exactly sure where this lies. Aside from that categorizational nitpick, this album is pretty awesome. Lots of cool blues jamming. The drumming really stands out to me, personally. I dont really see what others see in Peaches En Regalia, but I'll listen more for sure.

From Sandrof1969 02/11/2018 22:26

Esiste il free jazz; se esistesse il free rock per me sarebbe questo.