(1981) Frank Zappa - You Are What You Is





Review:

You Are What You Is was another of Frank Zappa's periodic post-Over-Nite Sensation efforts that concentrated on tight songwriting supported by satirical lyrics. Originally a two-record set featuring 20 songs, You Are What You Is skewered a variety of targets, from teenagers, punk rock, disco, and country music to the media, yuppies, the beauty-and-fitness industry, upper-class vice, religious hypocrisy, suicide, and the military draft -- all the trappings of Reagan-era America. Occasionally, Zappa's satirical points seem ill-thought-out, if not unnecessarily malicious; "Jumbo Go Away" is perhaps the most offensive song in Zappa's huge canon of potentially offensive songs, a tale of a whining, VD-riddled groupie who is portrayed as deserving the punch in the face she gets from an irritated musician. Despite that misstep, though, You Are What You Is is quite ambitious in scope and in general one of Zappa's most accessible later-period efforts; it's a showcase for his songwriting skills and his often acute satirical perspective, with less of the smutty humor that some listeners find off-putting.











Tracklist:

1 Teen-age Wind

2 Harder Than Your Husband

3 Doreen

4 Goblin Girl

5 Theme From The 3rd Movement Of Sinister Footwear

6 Society Pages

7 I'm A Beautiful Guy

8 Beauty Knows No Pain

9 Charlie's Enormous Mouth

10 Any Downers?

11 Conehead 

12 You Are What You Is

13 Mudd Club

14 The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing

15 Dumb All Over

16 Heavenly Bank Account

17 Suicide Chump

18 Jumbo Go Away

19 If Only She Woulda

20 Drafted Again





Media Report:

Genre: art rock

Format: FLAC

Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM

Bit rate mode: Variable

Channel(s): 2 channels

Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz

Bit depth: 16 bits