Frank Zappa - Strictly Commercial: The Best Of Frank Zappa (1995)

Frank Zappa would have laughed at the title of this Rykodisc compilation that draws music from throughout his career, as he always joked about pop radop charts and only a handful of his songs (especially "Valley Girl," featuring daughter Moon Zappa's mocking satire of Southern California high school female's insipid manner of speaking) ever received significant airplay outside of more progressive college radio stations. Compiled and issued in 1995, two years after his death, in 2002 it appeared in Japan with a new cover as a limited and numbered reissue of a 1995 compilation, packaged in a miniature gatefold LP sleeve, with the same contents. This collection isn't a bad cross-section of Zappa's prolific output, including the snappy instrumental "Peaches en Regalia," the blistering "My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama," the hilarious "Be in My Video" (a sendup of stupid videos aired on MTV) and Zappa's dismissals of the disco scene, "Dancin' Fool," a minor hit, and "Disco Boy." While a number of these songs stand well on their own, it is better to acquire the complete CDs in which they appear.~Review by Ken Dryden