From the Observer archive, 22 October 1967: Frank Zappa pours scorn and satire on the beautiful people

The Mothers of Invention have a new LP called Absolutely Free (Verve VLP 9174). The music therein contains references to, or direct quotes from Ravel, Stravinsky, Debussy, Shostakovich, Varèse, Schoenberg, Mozart, the Supremes, Elvis Presley and every hated musical cliche since Claudia Agrippina invented the triangle. The quotations are as musical as they are sarcastic, as brilliantly satirical as they are as stimulatingly witty. The nearest that the Melody Maker can come to an opinion is to suggest that the Mothers must be "two years ahead of their time". They are not. They are of now.

There are eight Mothers in all, including a mythical girly called Suzy Creamcheese (the Mothers dreamt up this name for a giggle, but their idiot public demanded the reality: so they just seized an unsuspecting hanger-on, changed her name and hey presto. That's showbusiness). The group's leader is Frank Zappa (27) of Baltimore, Maryland.

The Mothers' first record, Freak Out, described as "improvised insanity", has sold over 250,000 copies. It includes such compositions as I Ain't Got No Heart and The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet, an unfinished ballet in two tableaux. Of these the first is a Ritual Dance of the Child-Killer, and the second – Nullis Pretii (no commercial potential) is described as "what freaks sound like when you turn them loose in a recording studio at one o'clock in the morning on $500 worth of rented percussion equipment".

"Americans are ugly. This music is designed for them," said Zappa at a recent Albert Hall concert. Coming from the mouth of an American, and said to a scented audience of jangling flower-power beautiful people, how do you react to a statement like that? Laugh? And if so, at whom? The Mothers' music is most frequently played on LSD trips. "Good for sales," said Zappa. Yet no one is more anti-drug than he, no one more derisive of the wastefulness of the contemporary "scene".

Not surprisingly, their visit to Britain was almost ignored last month. The Mothers came and went. Which is a pity, because there is something interesting lurking in the minds and music of this gang of all-American rowdies. For all their offhand rudeness and deliberately bizarre image, the Mothers have made a determined effort to hold up a mirror to the self-pitying arrogance and ugliness of the world they inhabit. In them, we are witnessing the public mockery of our own adulation of "pop".

This is an edited extract