- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- Apostrophe (’) is Frank Zappa’s fifth solo album and biggest seller, and his only album to make the Top Ten in the Billboard 200 albums chart.
Frank Zappa – Apostrophe (’) (1974): Most of Frank Zappa’s early music was issued under the name the Mothers of Invention, originally formed in 1964; they released five studio albums before Frank Zappa dissolved the band in 1969. The following year, Zappa assembled another version of the Mothers of Invention – this time, mostly called “the Mothers” – that remained more or less active through 1975. Meanwhile, Frank Zappa had begun releasing solo albums made with other musicians, beginning with an orchestral album called Lumpy Gravy (1967). Lumpy Gravy is considered to be of a piece with the Mothers of Invention album We’re Only in it for the Money (1967) that features a satirical presentation of the album cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).
A photograph of a smiling Frank Zappa on the back cover of Lumpy Gravy includes a speech balloon saying: “Is this Phase 2 of We’re Only in it for the Money?”; similarly, the cover photograph of the bandmembers in the Mothers of Invention on the latter album has a speech balloon pointing to Frank Zappa with: “Is this Phase One of Lumpy Gravy?”. Many years later, Frank Zappa had a genuine hit song and a true sensation that he performed with his daughter Moon Unit Zappa (who was 14 years old at the time) called “Valley Girl”, taken from his 1982 album Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch (the cover depicts a minimalist comic/riddle of the sort that were rife in popular culture at that time). “Valley Girl” both mocks and celebrates the vapid consumerism and youth culture of Southern California. As described by Steve Huey in his review for Allmusic: “As the song spread across the country, it hastened the entry of various phrases from daughter Moon Zappa’s squealing, deliciously dead-on monologue into popular slang: ‘totally bitchin’ ’, ‘barf me out’, ‘grody’, ‘bag your face’, ‘I’m so sure’, ‘Mister Bufu’, the concept of being ‘like, oh my God’, and, of course, ‘gag me with a spoon’.” Apostrophe (’) is Frank Zappa’s fifth solo album and 18th album overall; it is Zappa’s biggest selling album, his second Gold album, and his only album to make the Top Ten in the Billboard 200 albums chart. Apostrophe (’) opens with one of Frank Zappa’s best-known songs, “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow”; an edited version of “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” that includes parts of other songs on the album is the first of three Zappa songs to make the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Other absurdist story songs cover the remainder of Side 1, such as “Nanook Rubs It” and “Father O’Blivion” (the source of the character name of Professor Brian O’Blivion in the 1983 David Cronenberg film Videodrome perhaps?), with “Cosmik Debris” being the most entertaining of the group. Side 2 starts off with a bang, “Excentrifugal Forz”. The title song “Apostrophe (’)” is a great instrumental jam session, with Frank Zappa sharing songwriting credits with his drummer Jim Gordon and Jack Bruce, formerly of Cream. “Uncle Remus” is a more indirect critique of racial discord that Frank Zappa explores more directly in one of his most accomplished rock songs, “Trouble Every Day”, included on the debut album by the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out! (1966). Under the title “Trouble Coming Every Day”, the song was covered as a full-bore blast of fury by Mick Farren on his second solo album Vampires Stole My Lunch Money (1974). And the album ends in true Zappa fashion with “Stink-Foot”.