It was a movie, it was a record, it was an 8-track and a cassette. Now it's been reissued on its newest format: compact disc. It is 200 Motels. To better understand the music contained therein, we should be asking: "But what is 200 Motels, anyway?" Well, it would seem that 200 Motels is a bit of a crazed genius conflagration by everybody's most prodigious artist, Frank Zappa.

Legend has it that Frank, while walking down Hollywood Boulevard, ran his foot across a used condom, and saw it like a holy vision: 200 Motels. It came to fruition through various trials and tribulations that resulted in a one-week-long shooting schedule for the film. Frank worked like a man possessed, directing during the day and writing the score and songs and developing the schedule at night. The result: a wacky, fruity film that brought us the music that I write of now.

If you're familiar with Zappa's Joe's Garage or Thing-Fish albums, 200 Motels will come as no surprise; you get the vaudeville Frank, the American satirist Frank, and the scatological, politically- incorrect- in- any- era Frank. The record begins with a teasing introduction of strings calling in discordant mewls and perversely odd horns before the anti-climax of "This Town is a Sealed Tuna Sandwich." Then come a couple of score tracks by the Royal Philmarmonic Orchestra before you arrive at "Lonesome Cowboy Burt," and that's when the fun begins.

The man that turned contempt for all musical rules into a style leads the listener into a funhouse that varies in texture across the spectrum in every style, while prodding for laffs all the while. And let's not forget such Zappa classix as "I'm Stealing the Towels," "Penis Dimension" and "Magic Fingers."

Now, of course the record has some problems-- I mean, it comes across like a performance of "Chess" with trippy house music between the juicy dialogue bits. The listener that raises this objection must have not the patience to see Zappa, to feel Zappa! Then there's the man that says 200 Motels doesn't hold a candle to Joe's Garage. Maybe so, but does Joe's Garage have "Little Green Scratchy Sweaters and Courduroy Ponce?" Or that hairless emu that told me 200 Motels hurts his ears. I say to him now, for all the world to see: "Take the speakers off your head!"

-James P. Wisdom