The Mothers of Invention - Absolutely Free (1967)

Released in late May 1967, The Mothers of Invention's Absolutely Free album, masterminded by Mothers leader and noted genius Frank Zappa, was one of the most musically advanced rock albums in its time.  Not even the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album, which came out less than a week later, could match it. Zappa abruptly shifted from classical chord structures to heavy guitar rock and seamlessly incorporated operatic flourishes and undercurrents of doo-wop throughout.

But who cares? The driving force of Absolutely Free is satire, and Zappa took the opportunity to put straight, white-bread America through the ringer, using his music and his bitingly funny and wildly obscene lyrics to re-arrange The Greatest Nation On Earth into a comical abstraction.  Public moral hypocrisy ("Brown Shoes Don't Make It"), jive show business ("America Drinks and Goes Home"), and suburban conformity ("Plastic People," "Call Any Vegetable") are no match for the King of Raunch and Roll. Zappa spares no one, from the manipulative toy makers who exploit war in "Uncle Bernie's Farm" to the self-conscious high school Big Man On Campus in "Status Back Baby." Although Zappa's major influence (and target) on Absolutely Free was the squeaky-clean wholesomeness of late-sixties Southern California culture, he was really holding a mirror to the general detachment from reality in all of mainstream America, driven by Zappa's obsession with what rock critic Bart Testa identified as the "prison/insane asylum/shopping mall algebra" that Zappa feared was adding up to a confining America of fake morals and flawed values.

And he and his Mothers delivered it with a laugh - and a nod to a kind of weird Dadaism that, after so many decades, hasn't failed to shock and surprise.  Given America's continuing devolution into a vulgar consumerist fantasy paradise that has become a nightmare of misplaced ideals and priorities, this album, twenty years after Zappa's death, still resonates today.