The Mothers Of Invention - Who Are The Brain Police? (1966)

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Definitely one of the strangest songs ever composed and recorded by Frank Zappa, or by anyone else for that matter. I had the good fortune of hearing this on WYSL FM one
September evening in 1969 and recording it on my reel-to-reel. Of course the compilation album it appeared on, Mothermania (1969), was also out at that time and it wasn't long after that I went out and purchased it. That would be my first Frank Zappa album purchase. Mothermania, to the best of my knowledge, was only released on vinyl and was never converted to CD (unless it has been recently). Originally this song appeared on Freak Out! (1966) as the third track.

According to Frank Zappa's liner notes on Freak Out!: "At five o’clock in the morning someone kept singing this in my mind and made me write it down. I will admit to being frightened when I finally played it out loud and sang the words." I read elsewhere that Zappa had actually dreamt the song during a nightmare and wrote it down when he awoke. Although he seemingly "made sense of it" during a 1988 interview, back in 1966 he said he had no idea where it came from or what it meant. And yes, he was frightened by it.