We’re Only In It For The Money

This week I’m going to talk about an album that I recently discovered: We’re Only In It For The Money.  I’m confident that most of you probably never heard of this album before but nonetheless it’s still great because of the perspective it takes on the social climate at the time when it came out (1968). This album for me is a muse on breaking the 4th wall. Its title alone should show that. And the cover shows it too.

(Zappa is the goofy looking guy with the long dark hair and mustache) 

As you can see, it has a striking resemblance to The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and this is, of course, intentional. The reason being is that Frank Zappa (the leader and frontman of the group) wanted to make fun of hippie culture.

The whole album is a disorienting collage – a psychedelic rock album making fun of psychedelic rockers.  I’m gonna show you one particular track that I think is the most accessible to audiences (even though in reality, all of these tracks are obscure). and then the opening two tracks

I recommend listening on a streaming service for the best quality (Spotify, Apple Music)

What’s the Ugliest Part Of Your Body?

I love this album because THIS song was a single. I mean if this is the most accessible song of the tracklist, you can see how weird it could get. This song sounds like a weird twist on 50s pop. With the background vocals singing harmonies over the strange nasally lead vocal. it gives the track a whimsical, almost comedic, vibe. And the lyrics are anything but orthodox:

What’s the Ugliest Part of your body?
What’s the Ugliest Part of your body?
Some say your nose Some say your toes
I think it’s your mind (Your mind)
I think it’s your mind, woo woo

This album constantly has the listener in a “heady” mood. Like there’s a space it puts you in where you’re reconsidering values that you never had previously reconsidered. Just to say that the mind is the ugliest part of your body or your being, is almost to say that things are much weirder than they seem, and Zappa is always trying to put the strangeness at the forefront. He adds to the weirdness with the second part of the track:

All your children are
Poor unfortunate victims
Of systems beyond
Their control
A plague upon your ignorance
& the gray despair
Of your ugly life

—
Where did Annie go
When she went to town?
Who are all those creeps
That she brings around?

This is where the weirdest groove I’ve ever heard comes in. with some of the best lyrics on the album — he takes the song to such weird places so often and so quick! It’s so experimental in that you could tell that Zappa didn’t give a f**k about what was on the radio – he did what HE wanted to do. That “All your children” bit is some of the most direct lyricism that I’ve heard, and it came out in the 60s!! Nuts if you ask me. The “Where did Annie go” bit is also hilarious. Creeps is, I think, referring hippies, and I think its supposed to be a short interlude of the parents that Zappa is referring to in the previous “All your children” part. To me, it’s such a funny commentary on the hippie generation, and in a way, by Zappa and The Mothers of Invention pointing at it and making fun of it, they separate themselves from the rest of the psychedelic rock scene.

Are You Hung Up?

This is a perfect opener to the album. It sets the mood of disorienting madness of the robotic noises and panned vocals. It starts with, oddly enough, Eric Clapton speaking to a woman, asking repeatedly “Are You Hung Up?” Then its followed by Gary Kellgren, the studio engineer on this album, whispering some randomness into the microphone. Talking about the “all of the Frank Zappa masters.” Following after this, we hear a guitar play some nasty little riff, and then a weird scream. It ends with Jimmy Carl Black, the drummer hilariously saying “Hi, boys & girls, I’m Jimmy Carl Black, I’m the Indian of the group!” 

This whole album is a reflection of a mind (That being mostly Zappa’s) that’s very aware of the social climate at the time. I hope to one day have a piece of work as aware of itself as this album is.