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Inner Sleeve: Jem Finer
- Issue #279 (May 07) | Inner Sleeve
- By: Jem Finer | Featuring: The Mothers of Invention
- Printable version
The Mothers Of Invention – Weasels Ripped My Flesh (Bizarre/Reprise LP 1970)
Design by Neon Park
There was a time when there were no mobile phones doubling as lo-fi ghetto blasters, nor the hi-hat hiss of headphone spill. In the early 1970s public displays of musical taste were silent and visual, and the greatcoated youth of my teenage years could be seen parading their favourite records around town, tucked, cover facing outwards, under one arm.
It’s questionable whether an album was chosen due to a genuine interest in the music or for the purpose of asserting a degree of individuality, both in respect to the adult world and to one’s peers, which is perhaps how I came to find myself attracted to a record whose cover depicted a man shaving himself with a weasel.
On the front of the September 1956 issue of the men’s adventure magazine Man’s Life was a painting of a screaming man, torso bare and bleeding, standing waist high in water as he fights a host of rabid weasels. The picture was an illustration for the story Weasels Ripped My Flesh, and Zappa allegedly showed this to the artist Neon Park and asked him, “What can you do that’s worse than this?”
His response was to paint a parody of a shaving advertisement in which a generic American male smiles while shaving with a strange hybrid electric weasel/razor. Missing its back legs, the hind parts of this cyborg weasel sandwich a switch and flex, while the front half is all animal, wearing a bemused expression, as if surprised and somewhat horrified to find itself gouging chunks out of the man’s face. In contrast, he seems to be enjoying his shave, beaming as his right cheek is lacerated by the weasel’s claws and teeth.
There is an ambiguity in the man’s expression. Part of my abiding fascination with the painting to this day is whether his slightly sinister and off-kilter ad-man grin is one of masochistic satisfaction, or whether his eyes are glinting due to an altered state in which he hallucinates the metamorphosis of his razor.
The cover gnaws at one’s imagination. There is no hint of sound save for the cartoon “rzzzzz!” speech bubble (again ambiguity: is it the razor’s buzz or the man himself, perhaps suggesting to the weasel a more suitable sound than the shrill shriek one might imagine such a creature making?). In its silence, the mysteries of the music within deepen.
Turning the album over, the track titles amplify the bizarre intensity of the front cover – “Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Sexually Aroused Gas Mask”, “My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama”, “Weasels Ripped My Flesh”... along with the grainy black and white photos of Zappa, staring wide eyed behind his ample moustache, the titles complete a circuit, sparking intense curiosity. What is this record? What does it sound like?
The cover’s twist on advertising functions perfectly, both as a work of art and as an advertisement for itself. Rzzzzz!
Jem Finer is a musician/artist/sound sculptor.
Design by Neon Park
There was a time when there were no mobile phones doubling as lo-fi ghetto blasters, nor the hi-hat hiss of headphone spill. In the early 1970s public displays of musical taste were silent and visual, and the greatcoated youth of my teenage years could be seen parading their favourite records around town, tucked, cover facing outwards, under one arm.
It’s questionable whether an album was chosen due to a genuine interest in the music or for the purpose of asserting a degree of individuality, both in respect to the adult world and to one’s peers, which is perhaps how I came to find myself attracted to a record whose cover depicted a man shaving himself with a weasel.
On the front of the September 1956 issue of the men’s adventure magazine Man’s Life was a painting of a screaming man, torso bare and bleeding, standing waist high in water as he fights a host of rabid weasels. The picture was an illustration for the story Weasels Ripped My Flesh, and Zappa allegedly showed this to the artist Neon Park and asked him, “What can you do that’s worse than this?”
His response was to paint a parody of a shaving advertisement in which a generic American male smiles while shaving with a strange hybrid electric weasel/razor. Missing its back legs, the hind parts of this cyborg weasel sandwich a switch and flex, while the front half is all animal, wearing a bemused expression, as if surprised and somewhat horrified to find itself gouging chunks out of the man’s face. In contrast, he seems to be enjoying his shave, beaming as his right cheek is lacerated by the weasel’s claws and teeth.
There is an ambiguity in the man’s expression. Part of my abiding fascination with the painting to this day is whether his slightly sinister and off-kilter ad-man grin is one of masochistic satisfaction, or whether his eyes are glinting due to an altered state in which he hallucinates the metamorphosis of his razor.
The cover gnaws at one’s imagination. There is no hint of sound save for the cartoon “rzzzzz!” speech bubble (again ambiguity: is it the razor’s buzz or the man himself, perhaps suggesting to the weasel a more suitable sound than the shrill shriek one might imagine such a creature making?). In its silence, the mysteries of the music within deepen.
Turning the album over, the track titles amplify the bizarre intensity of the front cover – “Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Sexually Aroused Gas Mask”, “My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama”, “Weasels Ripped My Flesh”... along with the grainy black and white photos of Zappa, staring wide eyed behind his ample moustache, the titles complete a circuit, sparking intense curiosity. What is this record? What does it sound like?
The cover’s twist on advertising functions perfectly, both as a work of art and as an advertisement for itself. Rzzzzz!
Jem Finer is a musician/artist/sound sculptor.
Posted 13/05/07
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