FRANK ZAPPA Sheik Yerbouti Classic 1979 US 18-track double vinyl LP. Music features the then new Zappa discovery, a pre-King Crimson Adrian Belew and was recorded mostly live in London…

FRANK ZAPPA Apostrophe 1974 US 9-track Discreet LP. One of Frank Zappa's most commercially successful albums, APOSTROPHE is also among his goofiest. The album found its way to the semi-mainstream chiefly on the strength of "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow." As the title of that single indicates, the scatological humor and cheap jokes that are part of Zappa's stock in trade abound here (see also the self-explanatory "Stink-Foot"). Part of Zappa's genius, though, much like that of Gong's Daevid Allen, was to deflate his sophisticated instrumental excursions and conceptual work with lowbrow humor and downright silliness. Nowhere is that process more apparent than on APOSTROPHE.

The typically large band (including violin and horns) that accompanies Zappa here follows him through daunting twists and turns as tempos get turned around and counterpoint riffs bounce off each other at breakneck speed. In the midst of all this instrumental facility, Zappa's satirical side blazes forth, as on "Uncle Remus," which addresses racial strife, and the bluesy "Cosmik Debris," where he casts aspersions on the idea of gurus. APOSTROPHE finds Zappa at a peak: successfully mingling humor with harmonic exploration, yet succumbing to the excesses of neither.