Frank Zappa - Cruising With Ruben & The Jets

"Is this the Mothers of Invention recording under a different name in a last-ditch attempt to get their cruddy music on the radio?" It didn't work, but who cares: This now stands as a much-loved, oddball item in the Mothers catalogue. Zappa's love for the '50s doo-wop style of early rock'n'roll was never much of a secret, and this collection of (just barely) original tunes was both a tribute and an affectionate sendup. As Zappa explained at the time, "We made it because we really like this kind of music."

After placing doo-wop homages like 'Wowie Zowie" on earlier Mothers albums, Zappa went all the way with silly gems like "Cheap Thrills" and "Jelly Roll Gum Drop," with the original Mothers in all their greasy splendor; while "How Could I Be Such a Fool" and "Stuff Up the Cracks" lampooned the melodrama of early rock ballads.

This is the original vinyl rip from '68 (I believe) its been reissues and remixed on CD, you can get it here.

Download it.

The Monks - Black Monk Time

This is the soundtrack to the most bizarre story in rock and roll. In 1966, five American GI's stationed in Germany decided to form a band designed to disturb people. Calling themselves The Monks, they shaved their heads, donned black robes and pounded out impossibly primitive songs like "I Hate You", "Complication" and "Shut Up". Radical stuff for audiences in the midst of Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" infatuation; predictably, their album went nowhere. This was, after all, an ocean away and a year before The Velvet Underground's first experiments with atonal noise, and a full 10 years before the punk explosion.

Three decades later, this reissue of The Monk's only album finds them still out of time, but slightly more acceptable to audiences. Only slightly - this is Very Wacky stuff. With pulsing fuzzbox bass, slashing electric banjo, tribal drums and deliberately amateur organ squeals, The Monks thumped out quasi-surf cacophony, two-chord rants, angst polkas and surprisingly catchy melodies yelped by "singer" Gary Burger with a dark, campy sense of humor.

There's nothing to these songs but raw energy and primal rhythms, with a lyric or two (at most) tossed in for emphasis, like "I hate you with a passion baby, but call me". That's all you get for 3 minutes, and that's all you need. Call them the first punks, call them angry delirious Beat poets, but any way you slice it, whether avant-garde weirdness, garage rock or vicious punk, these kids did it first. But really, it's all about the electric rhythm banjo. Where else are you going to hear that?

As far as I know this is thier complete discography, including the first first LP and two follow up EPs. They remind me of Crass and Devo long before their times, and thought of themselves as the anti-Beatles.

download it
buy it if you want, but The Monks official website says the band doesn't make any money from this, so I wouldn't bother.