But first, I’d like to say something about a thing that has been a real issue around here this week. Those of you who follow me on Facebook may have noticed that my profile has disappeared. I was not given a reason for the removal of my account. As you may know, Facebook has gone to an all-AI bot system that oversees pretty much everything. Apparently, the bot somehow thought I was trying to hack into my own account, and blocked me for “suspicious activity” (I found this out only after I paid money to be on Meta Verified, and even then they said that the decision of the bot was final, and I couldn’t get my account back). I am continuing to pursue this and hope to be back on Facebook soon, but in the meantime, you can reach me here or through my Instagram profile, which has not been taken down. Additionally, you will probably know from the podcast that you can reach me at my email address of moi1969@snet.net.

Now to the delightful audio content of the week! This recording was sent to me by the amazing Marty Olejnik, and it’s with his kind permission that I can share it with all of you. As I’m sure you will know, orchestral performances of Frank’s work have been relatively rare since his passing, and they have become even more scarce here in the United States.

This is not a very well-known event, but according to this article, somewhere around 1985, Frank commissioned the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra to perform several of his compositions. There is a question as to whether or not Frank was in attendance, but I assume he was. In any event, he reportedly was not very pleased with that performance (there is no recording of it that I know of, so we can’t judge for ourselves, but if it wasn’t good for Frank, I suppose that’s all we need to know).

It would be another 15 years before the BPO would tackle Frank again. On this occasion, they played what I would describe as a number of “standard” Zappa orchestral pieces, and I think you will agree with me when I say that they pretty well hit it out of the park. The article linked above gives more details on this performance.

This recording is an audience tape of the event. It was made by Marty Olejnik with a friend of his. Here are the notes that Marty gave me to accompany the recording:

March 23, 2000

Kleinhans Music Hall

Buffalo, NY

Strictly Genteel : The BPO Tackles Frank Zappa……w/ Bogus Pomp

Conductor - Thomas Wilkins (resident conductor of the Florida Orchestra teamed with Bogus Pomp from St. Petersburg Florida to create this show).

It’s not complete, because of issues with batteries on a primitive DAT recorder. My friend had it taped to his thigh, while I had the microphone inside a tall wool winter hat with a ball on top!

The batteries went dead ,so he left the venue to buy new ones , hence, missing a part of the BPO show.

I got the Bogus Pomp performance with a couple sung by Napoleon, but because of poor storage the master got ruined. And I put the BPO stuff on CD years ago and did the fade ins and outs.

For some reason, I tend to think the whole tape was doomed from the very beginning. But I still have these glorious pieces!!!!  I had Bogus Pomp on cds…stored for years in a box….had a cat that use to sit on it….I later found out he pissed on the Bogus Pomp cd and a few others….ruining the cd with cat ammonia. Heartbreaking!!!

1.Dupree’s Paradise…aside from a little knocking and adjusting.. and someone talking behind me..the rest fares well. I don’t know…is this a slightly different score? The beginning sequence seems unique to me. I never compared or studied this observation.

2.Naval Aviation In Art…I always loved this one…and this is awesome!!!! Again…a slightly different arrangement? Its so cool to hear this coming from a stage!!!!

3.Strictly Genteel….Brings tears to the eyes!…..I thought the ending with the single note instead of the fadeout is really cool.

4.G-Spot Tornado….just another great thing to see and hear before your eyes!!!

This is a fantastic performance, and I’m very grateful to Marty that we all get to hear it. It is a pity about the missing pieces of the performance, but hey, what we have here is amazing music to brighten your day.

Thank you, Marty, you are absolutely incredible! I owe you big time!

For those of you who are paid subscribers, the recording can be downloaded below. It is in MP3 format, the only format it exists in. It is still plenty good, I promise!

THANK YOU ALL for just being you! I truly appreciate every single one of you!

Continue below for the download!

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Me and Sir Joseph, somewhere back in time

Folks, this may not come as a great shock to you, but I like to count His Vaultmeisterness, Sir Joseph William Travers, as one of my close friends. Now he is maybe not going to like this, particularly because he’s not always wanting to have the spotlight on him, but what the hell… It’s Joe’s birthday! So let’s celebrate the man who has given us so much incredible music over the years, and to whom I owe a whole lot!

It must have been me the contacted Joe first. It was after the publication of my first book, Hungry Freaks Daddy. If I remember correctly, I was trying to get information on something that I was writing about, and somehow or other managed to contact Joe (I don’t remember if his old email address – which no longer works, by the way – was listed on the official Zappa website. It probably was). In any event, he answered right away, and we got along very well, very quickly.

In a lot of ways, we basically have the same philosophy where it comes to creating projects. Like me, Joe is a purist. He likes large-scale projects, which is also the kind of thing I do (though obviously on a much smaller scale). Joe got the Vaultmeister gig 31 years ago. At the time, he was the drummer in the Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa band, Z. Like pretty much all of us in the fan community, Joe was an absolutely besotted fan with a great knowledge of Frank’s music and released work. Two years after Frank’s passing, it became clear that somebody was going to need to figure out what was what in the Zappa Vault. Joe was very obviously the right guy for the job.

So it was that Gail Zappa gave him the job and the title. As Joe was primarily a drummer, he had limited experience with the various technologies that Frank had used to record his music, and so he would be initially required to rely on the expertise of the remaining staff of Frank’s UMRK studio. 1996 saw the release of the first wave of posthumous Zappa archival projects; Läther, The Lost Episodes and Frank Zappa Plays The Music Of Frank Zappa - A Memorial Tribute were all released that year, and Joe had a hand in putting all of these releases together. These were significant releases, coming at a time when there was uncertainty in the fan community about how Frank’s legacy might be carried on through the release of new albums. It took a while for the releases to flow consistently, but Joe and Gail worked side-by-side to ensure that the most interesting material would be made available in the highest quality possible.

Releases trickled out in the next few years, important titles like Everything Is Healing Nicely and FZ:OZ. In 2004, everything changed with the release of Joe’s Corsage, a release compiled entirely by Joe of early mid 60s Mothers demos and live tracks. It is my belief that this release opened the door to the steady stream of releases that we have gotten ever since. The Joe’s series was an excellent idea - let the Vaultmeister be the Vaultmeister, and good things happen. Since then, Joe has gone from strength to strength, giving us one fabulous release after another. Honestly, folks, as Zappa fans, we have never had it so good in terms of releases. We have Joe to think for that.

Like a lot of us, Joe got into music from a very early age. If you’d like to hear about some of his early influences, check out this fun video, where Joe talks about the music that shaped his early life:

Pretty excellent taste, right? Joe and I have pretty much the same set of early influences, something that we shared with pretty much every person who grew up to be a teenager in America the 1970s and 1980s. Joe gravitated toward artists/bands with monster drummers, including of course Frank Zappa. He himself displayed a talent for drumming from an early age, a talent that would lead him to study at Berklee School of Music, which in turn led him to seek a career as a musician in the wilds of Los Angeles. Once there, he quickly found himself a gig playing behind Dweezil and Ahmet in Z. One of his early gigs with the band was at the Whisky on the Sunset Strip, the audience for which included none other than Frank Zappa, in what had to be one of Frank’s last public appearances, if not his last. A later version of the band featured Zappa veterans Mike Keneally and Scott Thunes, and when we talk about monster bands, these guys are at the forefront of the conversation. Check out this ridiculous medley of rock and pop classics they put together for a performance at the Dynamo Festival in 1995. Who the hell can memorize all of this? Only the most monstrous of monsters!

Joe has of course had a long and distinguished career as a drummer, playing with dozens of artists ranging from Joe Satriani to Duran Duran. If you ask my wife, some of Joe’s best work was with Duran Duran (she would say that though - she’s a hardcore Duran fan). Check out this video of Joe in action with Duran in 2000. Groove for days!

It was only natural that in 2006, Joe would be back on stage as the drummer for Zappa Plays Zappa. For us longtime fans, the opportunity to see that music played live by some of the musicians who originally played it and by younger musicians with excessive chops was the realization of a dream that we never thought could possibly come true. But here they were killing it. This classic clip features Joe’s drum solo from the Royal Albert Hall in London. Very tasteful, no?

(By the way, that link will take you to Joe’s YouTube page. Loads of amazing stuff there!)

The amount of work that Joe has put into Zappa releases, particularly in the last 10 years, is staggering beyond imagination. It takes a very special sensibility to put all that stuff together. Lots of people think they can do it, but nobody can do it like Joe. It’s been my honor and privilege to occasionally contribute to these projects, and I can tell you that the impetus for doing a good job comes from Joe, and this is absolutely true to Frank’s vision. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – we’ve never had it so good!

These days, Joe is still at it, curating these amazing Zappa releases while playing shows with various artists.And of course he is still playing Zappa, this time in an aggregation known as One Shot Deal. The band has played a number of shows in the greater Los Angeles area, and it would certainly be wonderful to get them out and touring someday. In the meantime, you can enjoy a number of videos from these shows that have popped up on YouTube and on social media. Here we have a complete performance from 2024 at Campus JAX in Santa Monica. This mind-blowing aggregation of OSD is essentially a reunion of various members of the Zappa Plays Zappa bands, playing the music of Frank Zappa with the love and respect it deserves:

Joe was also HUGELY important in bringing the ZappaCast podcast to prominence. He brought the show to the attention of Ahmet Zappa, who made it the official podcast in 2018. Joe is now also a regular co-host of the show, and I know that your favorite thing about the show is when Joe talks about his work in the Vault. It’s my favorite thing too!

Now, to bring it back to yours truly, as I’ve said, Joe has been a good friend of mine for years. I value that friendship very much. If he needs something, I’m there., That’s kind of the deal. Joe is just one of those guys that I owe pretty much everything that I am and have to - no Joe, no me. That might sound like hyperbole, but it’s absolutely and demonstrably true. He’s a good guy, and we are all lucky to have him overseeing these releases.

So today, we should celebrate Sir Joseph on his birthday - whether he wants the celebration or not! Happy birthday, Joe, love you, brother! But you knew that ;-)

Quill, Brah!

Me and Joe on the field where the 1969 Woodstock festival was held, 2022

Folks, I’m away on vacation this week – well, it’s a sort of working vacation, since I’m going to be performing at the annual anniversary reunion celebration for the 1969 Woodstock Festival (see my post of the complete audio from Woodstock from a couple of weeks ago).

But because I didn’t want to leave you without something to hopefully enjoy this week, I give you what turns out to have been an unreleased FZ/Mothers album from 1971. This would have been known as The Official Mothers Of Invention Bootleg Album, and it was delivered to Warner Brothers sometime in mid-1971. The album would have function as a sort of “audio documentary”, chronicling a typical short Mothers tour from mid-1970. Frank put this album together from his candidly recorded tapes, and attempted to get Warner Brothers to release it to help fulfill his contract to them. As usual, with these more esoteric projects, the label rejected it.

Now I will say upfront that most of this material has been released on the 1992 album Playground Psychotics. This is kind of the usual deal with Frank’s unreleased projects – most of them were integrated into other projects, or released posthumously in their complete form. This project obviously was considered by Frank to be special enough to warrant release during his lifetime. It is worth noting that Frank also had a real fondness for this particular era of the band.

Listening to the album in its proper context, however, reveals that many of the tracks heard here are at least somewhat different from the versions that appear on Playground Psychotics. Several of the tracks are longer, for one thing. And we get an early performance of “Easy Meat” that I am fairly certain has not been released in this form. According to Mark Volman, this was recorded at a rehearsal, the date and location of which is unknown. It does have a killer Frank solo on it, however

And now the caveat: this tape was apparently acquired from Mark Volman, probably from a cassette. The copy that is circulating is several generations down from the master. It’s not exactly hi-fi. That’s not quite the point. For those of us who have good “bootleg ears“, this is still a very enjoyable listen and there’s plenty of variation here to make this worthwhile. This one has been circulating for years, but doesn’t get much love or attention. So I thought it would be good to shine a spotlight on it. You can download this tasty little sucker here.

Back next week with more wonderful Frank goodness! Have a great weekend everybody! And fuck food - buy Zappa!

To buy PDF copies of ALL of my books for $30, click here.

STOP THE PRESSES! IT’S TIME FOR SOME FRANK ZAPPA BREAKING NEWS!

Well, actually, it’s not exactly breaking per se, but it is the hot story of the week… The new 60th Anniversary Edition of Freak Out! is coming!

I have been asked by several of you whether or not my posts about the sessions for the album from the last few weeks tied into the announcement of the new release. Well, yeah, sort of, they did, kind of ;-)

This is a highly anticipated release, certainly by me anyway, and now you guys can get to share in that anticipation! For this week, I thought I would give a rundown as to what you can expect, especially for those of you who do not already know, and how this anniversary release differs from the 40th anniversary release, the MoFO project/object from 2006.

Basically, the crux of the biscuit here is that, bottom line, this appears to be all of the usable material from the Vault related to this album. And as some of you know, at least some of it was not even in the Vault to begin with. But thereby hangs a tale…

To get this one up and popping, let us start with the CD version of the box, which is reasonably priced here at the official Zappa Store for under $70 US (in fact, every format of this set is reasonably priced - and no, that is not hype, that is truth):

https://store.zappa.com/collections/mothers-of-invention/products/the-mothers-of-invention-freak-out-60th-anniversary-super-deluxe-edition-5cd-1br

As you can see in this photo, the box is in the 5-inch format that has been the preferred packaging for the recent anniversary sets. I know that a few people have said that it’s a bit of a shame that there is no 12-inch version of the CD box, but frankly, for me, the 5-inch is just easier to store (and the 12-inch fetishists can buy the vinyl box which we will get to in a bit).

DISC ONE

To begin with, we have a brand new 2026 remastered of the original stereo mix of Freak Out! I really enjoyed the 2006 remaster, but this promises to be punchier, and there’s been a lot of technological advances in the last 20 years that can make this mix sound closer to the original vinyl. I have not heard it, but I’m quite sure that it will be different enough from the 2006 to become everybody’s go-to for the stereo mix.

DISC TWO

Disc Two gives us the first legitimate release of the Pre-Master mix of the album. Somehow or other, the master tapes of this version wound up in Europe, and in 2011, the tapes released as a bootleg titled The Alternate Freak Out! Essentially, this is an early mix and assembly of the album, dating to late April 1966. The release of this is interesting for a few reasons; for one thing, it shows us that Frank did not go into the sessions with an absolute plan for the sequencing of the album. Another thing about this version that is significant is that it is very obviously much cleaner sounding than the original. In fact, to my ears, it is remarkably cleaner – the utilization of reverb gives the final mix and mastering its character, but to hear the tracks without the added effects is really interesting to say the least. Musically, the most notable difference in the tracks would be the unedited “Wowie Zowie”, which has an extra bar in the middle of the song (a breakdown, essentially) that was wisely edited out of the final version. Pretty cool!

It is worth mentioning that the master tapes for this version, which were living in Europe for some several years, have been returned to the Vault, an astonishing feet of generosity, the credit for which goes to Zappa collector and author extraordinaire Erlend Sundin. The tapes were freshly mastered for this release. So for those of you who have been wondering, it is not simply mastered from the bootleg. This will be definitive, folks!

DISC THREE

Disc Three gives us the original 1966 mono mix of the album, presented in digital for the first time, and released legitimately for the first time anywhere since the mono pressings were phased out around 1969. Now, as some of you know, I have a very special connection to this, and let me explain to you how I came to help out.

Sometime earlier this year, I got a call from His Vaultmeisterness, Joe Travers. The topic was something that I was familiar with - and we’ve probably spoken about this on this ZappaCast as well - that the original mono mix of Freak Out! does not exist in the Vault. As Joe pointed out in the promo video that was released on Tuesday, those tapes were never returned to Frank when he was given back his masters in 1981/1982. They’ve never been located, and are presumably lost in the ether somewhere. But the mono mix of the album is a legitimate, discrete mono mix, and deserves to be heard and made a permanent part of the catalog once again.

In order to get a usable mono version of the album without a master tape, you would pretty much have to turn to what is known as a needledrop. Basically, this translates to a recording from a vinyl source. To make this happen, and make it happen in a way that is up to the audiophile standard that has been set by Zappa releases since time immemorial, Joe needed the cleanest possible copy of the mono mix of the album.

But where to find it? Now, you guys may know that I am a voracious collector, with far too many copies of just about every Zappa album in my collection. I don’t know why I do this, my wife doesn’t know why I do this. But I do this. Given that, Joe called me and asked me what I had in terms of a clean mono copy of the album.

Now this, folks, is where paranoia sets in. I do have several mono copies of Freak Out!, But upon quick inspection, even the cleanest one had a few superficial lines in the vinyl. Nothing that would affect play, but not exactly virgin either. I made the decision that it would be wiser to scour the Internet and simply buy a new copy of the album, if I could find one in the condition that was required.

The first copy of the album that I bought was $75, but unfortunately, it was not in any better shape than the best copy that I already had. While I must say that there was absolutely no pressure being put on me to land this, I felt a duty to give it my all, for the benefit of my fellow Zappa fans, for the benefit of Joe, and for the benefit of Frank’s legacy. We feel it is our duty…

So it was that I happened upon a listing on the Discogs website. My fellow record collectors will know that this is, at best, a crapshoot, since the level of detail that you can get about records in advance on that site is, generally speaking, less than what you would find on eBay. So you really have to trust the word of the seller before you buy. And, as we all know, anything can happen.

The listing said something to the effect of “the records look like they have never touched a turntable”. Photos included with the listing seemed to confirm that. The vinyl looked shiny and absolutely virginal. Not a single line was noticeable to my eye. But photos are photos, right? A photo of something and the reality of it are two different things.

If you can purchase records off of vibes, then this seemed like a reasonable time to do so. After a couple of times corresponding with the seller, I took the plunge. $125. I had it sent directly to Joe. I am sometimes a glass half-empty kind of guy. I fully expected it not to be up to snuff. But it was worth the gamble, even if I’m not by nature a gambler.

About a week or so later, I got a call from Joe, who had just received the album. It was exactly as the seller had listed it! Probably never played. It certainly showed no signs of age or wear. It was a pristine mono copy of Freak Out!, Which could not have been better unless a sealed copy were to be found. (did they regularly seal albums back then?).

Actual pristine mono vinyl used for the box set

In the promo video that was released this week, Joe talks about how he got emotional when he heard John Polito’s master of the mono mix for the first time. He’s not kidding! I got a call from him right after he heard it. I can’t tell you how proud I was. I don’t often take pride in anything that I do, but I let a bit of it sneak in for this one. So I’m very honored to have played a small role in bringing this pristine copy of the mono mix to your ears. I have been very fortunate to have helped out on releases on occasion, and to have been able to do so when asked. I was and I am beyond delighted to have anything to do with bringing this mono mix back to the catalog permanently.

It is important to note that the three songs for which there extant mono mix tapes in the Vault, “How Could I Be Such A Fool”, “Who Are The Brain Police?” and “It Can’t Happen Here”, are taken from those tapes, and thus are the only tracks in the new mono master of the album to be taken from tape. These mono mixes, which are identical to the LP mono mixes, were used as the 45 single masters.

For a complete list of mono mix differences, I will refer you to Jacopo Muneratti’s superb document about the mixed differences of the early MOI albums, which can be found here. I could never dream of doing better than that!

(I contributed something else to the project as well by the way, but I will leave that to you to see for yourself!)

DISCS FOUR & FIVE

Disc Four is chock full of You’ve Never Heard Most Of This Before material. To start with, Joe gives us the entirety of the two shows the Mothers performed opening for Lenny Bruce at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco on June 24 & 25, 1966. Frank has issued material from these tapes before of course, going back to the 1985 Mystery Disc, but at long last we have this now in complete form. I will, of course, have more comprehensive reviews of these shows in a future post, but for now I will just say that it is absolutely amazing to have these very special tapes made available to us. Yes, some of the performances from the 25th were released on the 4-CD MoFO, but to hear it all in proper context is a special thing.

And here also, Discs Four and Five gives us something of a mystery that we didn’t know was a mystery: several tracks from a tape of a previously unknown show at the Fillmore on February 24, 1966. The tracks from this tape on Disc Five have “probably” listed next to the date; we definitely did not know that the Mothers were playing shows in San Francisco in February. In any event, from this tape we get two long stretches of the Mothers jamming, an arrangement of what I presume (having not heard it yet) to be Guy Lombardo’s “Coquette”, and “The Downtown Talent Scout”, which had of course been used to open the 1992 album You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore Vol. 5. I had previously misidentified this as being from one of the June shows in my book Hungry Freaks Daddy, but it’s apparently from February. Who knew?

Disc Five continues with the complete tape of the Seward Street rehearsals for Freak Out!, most likely from February 1966. We have of course had some of this before – a bit of conversation and “How Could I Be Such A Fool” appear on the 1985 Mystery Disc, and a bit more of the conversation can be heard on the 1971 David Walley interview tape. This is the first time that we’ve had the complete tape. Speaking of complete tapes, we then get something incredibly exciting – the complete set of the Mothers’ October 20, 1965 Original Sound Studio demos! Some of this has appeared on the Joe’s Corsage album, and a Frank edit of the demo for “Trouble Every Day” was released on the 2-CD version of MoFO. This is the first time that we’ve had the complete set of demos made available to us. Weirdly enough, what is apparently the master tape for the demo session is in the hands of a collector in Europe, so the version that is heard here is sourced from a copy of the master.

Original Sound Mothers demos master tape, 1965. Imagine breathing THAT mold in!

Up next is five mono vocal reference mixes from the Freak Out! sessions. I believe these were rough mixes that were designed to help Frank and Tom Wilson make decision regarding mixing. This is followed by another extreme rarity, a vintage 1966 radio ad for Freak Out!. a 1967 ad which combined hype for that album with hype for Absolutely Free was released officially on the 2-LP reissue of the latter album in 2017. For those of us true Zappa geeks who go into ecstasy over this kind of fetish stuff, this is brand new and will satisfy your heathen desires.

The final tracks on Disc Five provide us with a window into the final night of basic sessions for Freak Out!, a.k.a. the actual “Freak session”. Having not heard this yet, I will take a couple of educated guesses here and say that “Freak Out GTR Solo & Screams 7/4” is a previously unreleased FZ edit of material from the sessions, while “Freak Out Zilofone” was previously released on the 2-CD edition of MoFO. That leaves “Percussion Cue #3”, which I believe is another previously unreleased piece from the sessions.

THE BLU-RAY

Honestly, we have to give Universal a lot of credit for allowing the inclusion of a Blu-ray disc in this set. We live in an era where this sort of thing is disappearing as the market continues to shrink for physical product. Hell, just the fact that we can get a full CD box set at all is a minor miracle these days. And this is why we need to support these releases by purchasing them. The more we invest, the more product we get. It’s kind of as simple as that. There are plenty of other artists whose archive releases have all been dried up as sales have declined. For instance, it took the Beatles more than two years to release their forthcoming Rubber Soul box, and they are The Beatles. So this is just something to think about.

The Blu-ray gives us the usual mind blowing Dolby Atmos mix, along with a true 5.1 mix and 192/24 and 96/24 copies of the original 1966 stereo mix. Magnifique, non?

The CD box is being limited to four per customer, which indicates that the pressing run is fairly limited. So you will want to grab yours sooner than later, especially at that cheaper price point. These things do tend to sell out, and then the prices go through the roof. And while I hate to be a hype pitchman, I do this because I genuinely believe in the product and the only thing better than the Zappa that we already have is more Zappa. I’m sure you all feel the same way.

THE VINYL BOX

Wanna talk cool? Feast your eyes on the 5-LP vinyl box, all sparkling and shiny! Really, the presentation here is killer. Flip-top box? I’m in all day! For obvious reasons (it would be ridiculously expensive being the main one), the full CD box cannot be made available on vinyl. But what you will be able to put on your turntable is pretty notable. The first two LPs consist of the Pre-Master version of the album, properly mastered and utterly mind-blowing. LPs three and four consist of the 1966 mono mix, back in print on vinyl legitimately for the first time since 1968! Dreams come true here. I wouldn’t be surprised if this sounds significantly better than the 1966 original. LP five gives us the selection of curated highlights from discs four and five of the CD box, including the aforementioned 1966 radio ad. None of this material has been released on vinyl before, and it’s wonderful to be able to drop the needle on it.

COLORED VINYL

Finally, we have the 2-LP colored vinyl edition, or multicolored vinyl in this case, corresponding to the colors seen on the front cover of the album. It also includes the legendary Freak Out Map, which is also included in the CD and LP box set versions of the album. I’m not really sure why, but this is only available from zappa.com in the US, as there is apparently no European distribution for this version. A planned 2-LP black vinyl release was canceled:

In any event, this features the original 1966 stereo mix, taken from a 192/24 digital copy, which would probably make this the best-sounding version of this album ever. For those of you who worry about digital transfers, I can assure you that a ridiculous amount of attention to detail goes into the digital transfers of these tapes, and in the case of Freak Out!, the original album masters are on acetate tape, which is subject to warping after 60-plus years. The best way to preserve this, therefore, would be to create a high-resolution digital master.

So as you might be able to tell, I am VERY excited for this release! It is a fitting tribute to the album that, as you will probably know from my previous writings about it, utterly changed the course of my life. I encourage all of you who love Frank to pick this up, and get it while you can, this won’t be available for long, I suspect!

To buy individual PDF copies of my books for $5 each, click here.

To buy PDF copies of ALL of my books for $30, click here.

Folks, for this week, I thought maybe we would do something that I’ve been talking about doing for quite a while – using this platform to post occasional non-Zappa content (although there is a bit of Frank stuff here anyway, and don’t worry, our usual Frank fun will continue next week). Let’s see how you like this – if you are interested in this sort of thing, maybe we will do more stuff like this.

As some of you know, I’ve written books about more than just Frank Zappa. One of the topics that I am known for writing about is the 1969 Woodstock festival. Woodstock has been a passion of mine for decades. Having been born in 1971, I was a bit too late for the festival. I learned about it sometime in the mid-to-late 1970s, when my brother-in-law, Rick, returned home from his time in the military and handed me a bunch of records that he had bought in Korea. Among these albums was the 1970 soundtrack of Michael Wadleigh’s classic documentary, Woodstock. Even though the album cover looked like it had been bleached in the sun (typical Taiwanese pirate pressing), I listened to the music, and I was instantly transported to that field at Max Yasgur’s Farm in Bethel, New York. It felt instantly familiar. It felt like I had been there. I was about five years old at the time. To this day, I cannot explain how it happened, but this music and this event were clearly waiting to find me.

In the decades since, I have researched Woodstock extensively, and these days, I am privileged to be the host of a podcast called KEEP THE DREAM FLOWING, which is dedicated to preserving the history of the festival. We have interviewed loads of people who either performed at, worked on, or attended the festival. In the event that any of you are interested in such a thing, you can find the podcast here:

https://open.spotify.com/show/64gUskecIQzHKNaMAVXR1g?si=PSiz5rtuR8qk0JE0U3TtvQ&utm_source=copy-link

Older episodes can be found here (these were originally posted to a different podcast server that went away under mysterious circumstances):

https://open.spotify.com/show/6EvTIocDbB9gWaoiGKSjIk?si=ngNY81U4TOiFojv8zJY0nA&utm_source=copy-link

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Back in the year 2000, I started work, with my collaborator Kenny Sahr, on a project called Woodstock Complete. This was an audio project whose goal was to gather all of the available Woodstock audio, from official and unofficial sources. Kenny had actually started this before I got involved, but together we released the first edition of the project in 2004. It was updated fairly regularly over the years, but there were still big gaps in the available Woodstock audio, up until 2019 when Rhino Records released Woodstock – Back to the Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive, a massive, limited edition (1,969 copies) 38-CD box set containing almost all (It is missing exactly one and a half songs) of the performances from the festival. Following this release, I updated Woodstock Complete for the last time (actually, I still update it fairly regularly, but just for minor upgrades). This release was never officially distributed, although other folks have created their own versions of it.

Ahead of the 57th anniversary of the festival, which begins on August 15th, I thought I would share a link to the most recent iteration of Woodstock Complete. While there is no Zappa content here, lots of you may find something to enjoy here. And you never know, Woodstock may become the rabbit hole for some of you that it is for me! There is also a video version of this set, which I will be happy to share if there is enough interest in it. But just as an experiment, here is Woodstock Complete, the 2026 version:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1441nNvGzXws-iz4vO1KUhvcr3ItmWcHL?usp=drive_link

Just to throw some Frank content in here, it might be worth addressing why it was that Frank and the Mothers did not play at Woodstock. Frank himself said in interviews that he turned down an offer to perform at the festival. It is unknown as to whether or not the Mothers were approached to play, but it is not impossible, since they played festivals in Denver and Atlanta in the weeks and months preceding Woodstock. If they had played at Woodstock, it would have been one of the last shows that the band played. That August weekend, the Mothers were in Canada, playing their final shows together. It is very possible that if they had been given the opportunity to play at Woodstock, they may have turned it down simply because they were already booked up north.

So, for those of you who are crazy like myself, and enjoy deep, immersions in a project that it would literally take you days to listen to straight through, please enjoy Woodstock Complete. I’ve done lots of things like this, and if you like this, I can share more stuff along these lines. As always, thank you so much for your support, it means the world to me!

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And now, let’s conclude our look at the Freak Out! sessions, shall we?

March 11, 1966
TTG Studios, Los Angeles, CA
48 minutes, A

Objects (4:32)

Help, I’m A Rock (Take 1) including:
Freak Out Zilofone (3:00)
Vito Rocks The Floor (Greek Out!) (6:09)

The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet (basic track) (a.k.a. Cream Cheese (Work Part) (8:18)
Freak Trim (Kim Outs A Big Idea) (5:14)
Lion Roar & Drums From Freak Out (5:36)
Freak Out Drum Track w/ Timp & Lion (4:04)
Percussion Insert (a.k.a. Percussion Insert Session Snoop) (tks. 1-2) (3:18)
Percussion Object 1&2 (6:01)
“Low Budget Rock And Roll Band” (2:14)

At this point in the sessions, by the standards of the day the recording of the album had already been a monumentally costly project. This was mostly due to FZ’s determination to hire what amounted to a session orchestra to supplement the band. By the time that Friday had rolled into Saturday however, the band had more than enough material for a standard-length vinyl LP. Not being one to waste any tracks that the band had worked so hard to put together, Frank Zappa hatched a plan to expand the single album to a then unheard-of double album.

The question was a simple one: what to do? The Mothers had, by and large, exhausted their repertoire of recordable tunes (“Plastic People”, which had been demoed the year before, was notably absent from the list of songs Frank wanted to record at these sessions). The idea that Frank came up with was relatively simple in concept: He would invite the Freak contingent of Los Angeles, led by Vito Paulekas and Carl Franzoni, into the studio to do what the Freaks always did - improvise an on-the-spot happening, with The Mothers providing musical accompaniment. This was brilliant on several levels - not only did it fill out the time required to bluff out the album into two long-playing records, but it also gave the album an overall conceptual focus that would extend to the title of the finished product. Furthermore, Frank could reveal The Mothers to be part and parcel of the Freak movement, thereby immediately getting the group, and the Freaks, some much-needed attention on a larger scale. Finally, the music that he envisioned coming out of this happening would be controlled and/or otherwise modified to pay tribute to some of his earliest non-rock and roll musical influences. For the young composer, it was an important opportunity to create a composition from, essentially, nothing.

The only hurdle to be cleared was that the project had to be authorized by its nominal producer. Tom Wilson had, as Zappa would later recall, already “stuck his neck out” quite a bit to get this album recorded, with the project running up exorbitant studio and session musician fees. Now Frank had to talk Wilson into financing this ‘happening’, which would essentially create a sort of controlled anarchy in the studio. This anarchy would have to be captured on tape, which would again doubtless require much more expensive studio time to edit and make presentable to the great record-buying public. On top of this, Frank would have to rent additional percussion for the event, to the tune of $500.00. This was, at the time, quite an expensive undertaking. Even though he would be risking his sweetheart deal with MGM/Verve by agreeing to fund such a left-field concept, to his eternal credit Wilson gave Frank the green light to go ahead and bring the Freaks in. The session was to begin promptly at the stroke of midnight on March 11, 1966, the fourth day of sessions.

Attempting to figure out what exactly went down at this session is something of a frustrating task. Essentially, the session took the form of a greatly extended series of improvisations, only one of which was set to a previously composed ‘song’, which consisted of one straightforward vamp. The Musicians’ Union documents for the session are, understandably, of little help in identifying the participants in the session, the vast majority of which weren’t exactly union professionals. In addition to the aforementioned Freaks (which included, among many others, future record producer David Anderle, future Monty Python animation genius Terry Gilliam and Sunset Strip agitator/hype specialist Kim Fowley), the session included contributions from Zappa’s Cucamonga-era buddy Jim “Motorhead” Sherwood, pianist Les McCann and almost-honorary Mother Gene Estes on percussion. Future Three Dog Night vocalists Danny Hutton and Cory Wells were in attendance too, as was Mike Clarke, the drummer for L.A. folk-rock hitmakers The Byrds. Blues harmonica God Paul Butterfield also showed up but doesn’t appear to have played. “Eve Of Destruction” songwriter P.F. Sloan apparently at least tested a tympani at the session (a photo of him doing so can be seen in the album’s gatefold sleeve), and a refreshing bit of darkness came with the presence of musician/future Manson Family member/murderer Bobby Beausoleil, who joined in on vocals.

Another musician who played on this first day of sessions was Mac Rebennack, who would later find fame as the New Orleans “Night Tripper” Dr. John. Rebennack had rehearsed with the Mothers as their keyboard player earlier in the year, an arrangement which did not last long. Hired back as a session musician, Rebennack reportedly left the studio in a huff in the middle of this session, unimpressed by the ‘weird’ music he was expected to play and the weird people he was expected to play with. As he would recall several years later: “Frank had written me this part to play, five or six notes on the piano over and over - not much different than Sonny and Cher. In the background a twenty-voice choir croaked out monster sound effects, something like “Gggrrrrrrhhhhrrr!” When I had had about all I could take, I asked Les McCann to hold down my chair, telling him I had to go to the bathroom. I walked out of there and never came back”. Given this, while it is unknown if he contributed anything instrumentally to the album with any real certainty, it certainly sounds like the song he references is the first piece cut during this session, “Help, I’m A Rock”. This features a repetitive piano part similar to what Rebennack describes and lots of weird “monster sound effects”. Unfortunately, there is no definitive proof of any of this, and neither the multitrack tape nor FZ’s mono ‘spy’ recording reveal anything.

The 4-CD MoFO set includes quite a bit of material culled from this final night of sessions, much of which comes from snippets of the session tapes edited by FZ himself. Taking all of these into account, it is possible to construct an approximate sequence of events, though this sequence would most likely be pure, albeit educated, conjecture. The earliest recording to come from this session was issued on the 4-CD MoFO set as “Objects”. In this piece, Frank coaches hypophone maestro Kim Fowley and the Freaks to provide vocal noises based on four conducted hand cues. This way of conducting would become something of a Zappa trademark and was a common feature in Zappa/Mothers performances for the remainder of his career. The Freaks do not quite hold it together but make up for their looseness with loud enthusiasm. In the end, only bits of these recorded groans and shrieks made it onto the finished album.

Without a doubt, the main task that Frank Zappa had in mind for this session was the recording of the basis for what would become one of the more memorable pieces on the album, “Help, I’m A Rock”. The lyrics to this piece, improvised live on-the-spot as the tapes rolled, were chanted and/or spoken against the vamp. Participants included FZ on lead vocal, Ray Collins on backing vocal and assorted members of the Freak contingent (notably Kim Fowley) making additional noises behind them. The construct of the head of the piece is fairly loose, consisting of a singular, repetitive vamp. The cutting of the basic track was accomplished in a single take and in its original form went on for quite a while. Two segments of the backing track were used in the finished edit.

Two further excerpts of the backing track appear on the MoFO sets. The first of these, edited by FZ and given the title “Freak Out Zilofone” by Gail Zappa, features Frank and Elliot trading off bluesy guitar licks while Ray blows his harmonica and the Freaks can be heard cavorting in the background. The tempo increases, and the intensity reaches a peak as Kim Fowley babbles away in mock-Spanish and another mysterious voice (who can also be heard on the released “Help, I’m A Rock”) mutters the word “xylophone” over and over again. The hypnotic effect is shattered by the sound of a door slamming shut, added subsequently by Vaultmeister Joe Travers (and sampled from the track “Prelude To “The Purse”” from the 2005 Vaulternative Records release Joe’s Xmasage).

Another snippet from this backing track, included on the 4-CD MoFO set, is titled “Vito Rocks The Floor (Greek Out!)”. This section follows on from “Freak Out Zilofone”, losing an indeterminate amount of tape between the two tracks. While Ray wails away on the harmonica, Vito dances in his typical dervish style, which produces various hoots and hollers from the assembled in-studio guests. The tempo speeds up again, and we can hear a pianist (probably Mac Rebennack) plunking away on piano in the background. Finally, the tension breaks, and the band backs down from the rushed tempo into a slower improvisation on which they are joined by unknown musicians on tympani and gong (possibly played by Gene Estes and/or Kenneth Watson, though it is equally possible that some unknown Freaks could be playing the instruments). The track ends with a curious crossfade into another part of the improvisation, and the band again ramping up the speed.

Somewhat similar to this is a piece snipped out of the session tapes by Frank and edited into a track titled “Freak Trim (Kim Outs A Big Idea)”, the title of which combines FZ’s working label with a more descriptive phrase from Gail Zappa. Kim Fowley gets the spotlight here, singing an improvised lyric while some Freaky folks moan into another microphone and The Mothers rock out on a bluesy vamp, which builds in a manner similar to the “Help, I’m A Rock” backing track. This piece was also released on the 4-CD MoFO set.

The end of the session with the Freaks was also captured on tape and released on the 4-CD version of MoFO as “Low Budget Rock And Roll Band””. Frank addresses the Freaks, thanking them for coming to the studio. He declares that the session is over and that the crowd must leave so that the musicians can get on with the task of further recording. He also politely asks that the participants not steal any of the (presumably percussion) instruments laying around in the studio as “they don’t belong to us!” It would appear that the participants then dispersed in a reasonably calm and swift manner, though there was still plenty of work left to do on this final night of basic tracking.

The final piece recorded for the album would wind up encompassing all of side four of the two-record set. “The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet” was described on the album cover as an “Unfinished Ballet in Two Tableaux”. Frank would later blame the ‘unfinished’ nature of this ‘ballet’ on MGM, who decided to limit the funds for the sessions after this evening. As the multitrack tape boxes for the album session reveal, the working title of this track was “Cream Cheese” although this title was probably given to the track sometime after the March 12^th session, as this initial tracking session yielded a series of improvisations that would be sifted through and used as the bed for the piece.

The recording of this piece was apparently split into at least three different sections, which were logged on the Musicians Union documents for the session as “The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet”, “One For Parker Army” and “Since Cisos”. The last two titles are perhaps the greatest mysteries remaining from these sessions – none of these titles are listed on the multitrack tape boxes for these sessions (although obviously the first of these would later be revived and used as the final title for the piece). There is also no trace of them on the multitracks themselves. This would lead us to the conclusion that those titles were given to some of the improvisations that FZ led the musicians through at the end of this session, just so that the ‘tracks’ could be appropriately logged, thus keeping the Union happy.

Assembling the various extant bits and pieces into anything approaching an approximate order is something of an impossible task. Several of these tracks were mixed down by FZ and subsequently assembled into “build reels”, reels of tape containing compilations of material that could be used for prospective future projects.

The basis for “The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet” was a Jimmy Carl Black drum track, overlaid with various effects. Various attempts were made to come up with a ‘beat’ that would be suitable as the bed of the piece, and two alternate takes can be heard on the 4-CD MoFO set. The first of these, subsequently titled “Lion Roar & Drums From Freak Out” by FZ, features the Composer on a second drum and percussion kit setup playing figures against Jimmy Carl’s steady backbeat. They are accompanied by a groaning lion’s roar drum, which is essentially a drum with a string that is pulled through it. When the string is pulled, the effect is similar to the sound of a lion roaring. This effect was a favorite of FZ composer/idol Edgard Varèse, the obvious inspiration for its use here.

A second attempt to produce a usable bed track was subsequently excerpted from the mono tape FZ recorded documenting the sessions-as-they-happened by FZ and given the title “Freak Out Drum Track w/ Timp & Lion”. This is similar to the previous attempt, with a more assertive backbeat being the key difference. FZ’s performance on drums and percussion is less tentative, and there is another unknown musician (possibly Gene Estes) banging away on tympani. The lion’s roar drum takes a step back for this attempt but can be heard occasionally throughout.

A third attempt would nail it. This formed the basis for the finished the backing track for “The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet”, overlaid with everything FZ had at his disposal. An alternate mix of this same performance, mixed at the Record Plant in 1970 and titled “Cream Cheese (Work Part)” by FZ, gives us an opportunity to examine the track in a more basic form, with overdubs that were likely added at an undocumented later session. The basis for the track is Jim Black’s backbeat, which is gradually altered in speed and urgency. FZ plays along again on percussion, while various other Mothers work with the prepared piano and Roy Estrada adds some “boy soprano” vocal parts. The Mothers (plus some other hangers-on, presumably) can also be heard making vocal noise contributions, including one section in which they sing -- in a decidedly ugly, off-key fashion -- the famous riff from the Richard Berry classic “Louie Louie” (which had been a huge hit for the garage-rock band The Kingsmen a few years earlier). Following the laying down of this basic track, FZ overlaid much in the way of other effects including some of the conducted noises from the Freak contingent, recorded at the start of the session.

The final pieces recorded at these sessions made heavy use of the $500.00 worth of percussion that had been rented for this session. These pieces betray the influence of FZ’s recently deceased ‘serious music’ idol Edgard Varèse, who had also made extensive use of percussion implements in his work. Two of these pieces were excerpted by FZ with the intention of being included in later projects, though both would remain unissued until the release of the 4-CD MoFO set in 2006.

The first of these pieces is a combination of two takes of what Joe Travers and Gail Zappa would later title “Percussion Insert Session Snoop”. This piece starts with FZ issuing instructions to Ray Collins, who may or may not be involved in the improvisation (very difficult to tell who is playing what on these session tapes, and no other documentation exists. Perhaps Ray was working with the lion’s roar drum). One of the musicians (who appears to be a skilled percussionist, possibly session musician Kenneth Watson) works out an Asian-influenced melody line on a set of tubular bells while (possibly again) Gene Estes pounds out a sparse rhythm on timpani. When all is set, FZ gives the nod to engineer Ami Hadani to roll tape. Hadani calls out the piece as “God Knows What, take one!”, though this is quickly corrected by FZ to “Percussion Insert Number One, take one”. Jimmy Carl Black strikes up a beat, which breaks down immediately. Take two is spirited, with Jimmy Carl’s drums being joined by timpani, tubular bells and lion’s roar drum while FZ plays contrasting melodic lines over the top on a second drum kit. Despite the promise of the resulting improvisation, the piece was deemed unusable for the finished album. Interestingly enough, similar drum duets between FZ and Jimmy Carl Black would become a feature of Mothers live performances over the next couple of years.

The second of these improvisations to see the light of the day on the 4-CD MoFO set is a piece that would be given the title “Percussion Object 1&2” by Joe Travers and Gail Zappa. This begins as an improvisation for vibraphone, tubular bells and crotales (small, tuned cymbals, probably played by FZ). Eventually they are joined once again by tympani (presumably once again played by Gene Estes), which provides a ‘beat’ over which FZ and Jimmy Carl Black work out. An unknown musician (presumably not one of The Mothers although it could possibly be FZ) delivers a breezy solo on the vibraphone before an all-out, and rather chaotic, drum duet breaks out between Mr. Black and Mr. Zappa, which carries out the remainder of the track.

With that, the basic tracking sessions for the first Mothers album came to an end. Another two weeks would be required to complete the project, in which much time was spent editing the recordings –which included the assembly of the improvisations recorded on the final night of basic tracking sessions into songs. And there was still a bit more recording to do as well before the album was complete. At least one session was booked on April 3^rd for further editing and overdubbing.

April 3, 1966 (and possible other dates)
TTG Studios, Los Angeles, CA
73 minutes, A

Hold On To Your Small Tiny Horsies… (5:14)
Help, I’m A Rock (FZ Edit) (5:48)
Help, I’m A Rock (1970 FZ Remix) (4:43)
Help, I’m A Rock (1966 Stereo Mix) (4:42)
Help, I’m A Rock (1966 Mono Mix) (4:42)
Help, I’m A Rock (1970 Stereo Mix) (4:43)
It Can’t Happen Here (1966 Stereo Mix) (4:00)
It Can’t Happen Here (1966 Mono Mix) (3:58)
It Can’t Happen Here (1969 Stereo Mix) (3:19)
It Can’t Happen Here (1970 Stereo Mix) (3:58)
The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet (1966 Stereo Mix) (12:21)
The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet (1966 Mono Mix) (12:25)
The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet (1987 Stereo Mix) (12:19)

While there may well have been more sessions that were required to complete Freak Out!, the only one that is verifiable is this April 3^rd session. One piece known to have been cut after the basic tracking sessions for Freak Out! was a short insert piece consisting of, at least, The Mothers (notably Ray Collins) making ape-like noises while a friend of the band by the name of Jeannie Vassoir engages in some decidedly orgasmic groaning. It is safe to assume that this piece, which after being beefed up with some subsequently added percussion overdubs would become the second of three movements in the “Help, I’m A Rock” suite, is something of a nod to the (by all accounts rather tame) ‘sex tape’ that FZ had been busted for manufacturing in Cucamonga the year before. This same bit would also be used in “The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet” featuring a different set of percussion overdubs but running at twice its normal speed and a bit longer at the start than the version used on the album edit of “Help, I’m A Rock”. A 1970 FZ remix of “Help, I’m A Rock” includes this section running at normal speed and running slightly longer than FZ’s 1966 mix/edit. This remix can be found on the 2-CD version of MoFO.

“Help, I’m A Rock” was completed with the recording of two further sections. The first of these was a lovably off-the-wall a cappella ditty known as “It Can’t Happen Here”. This celebration of the Freak scene was recorded with the assistance of assorted Mothers, Motorhead Sherwood and Jeannie Vassoir. FZ leads the ensemble through the lyric emphasizing the words which could be described as aural representations of the Freak Outs described within. The completed track would turn out to be perhaps the most effective use of ‘conceptual grounding’ on the entire album, and would also go on to make a rather improbable B-side for the first Mothers single, issued several months later.

In all likelihood, the last piece of the “Help, I’m A Rock” puzzle to be committed to tape was another short insert piece consisting of some bebop-style drums, over which FZ lays down a piano track which is similar in approach to pieces written by the legendary avant-jazz composer Cecil Taylor, whom FZ would point to as something of an ideal pianist in an interview with Hit Parader magazine in December 1966 (it is important to note that it is very possible that FZ did not know where he would employ these insert pieces when they were recorded; that he simply inserted them into large pieces in a random fashion. This ‘jigsaw’ method of compositional creation would also be used by Brian Wilson later in the year in the creation of the Beach Boys’ album Smile. Unfortunately, Wilson was less successful at putting his various pieces together into a workable whole, and that album remained unfinished in its original form).

At some point during the April 3^rd session, FZ recorded another improvised piece that would go on to close the finished album. This was a chanted improvisation based around the words “Cream Cheese”, again featuring the dulcet tones of Jeannie Vassoir, alongside several other participants whose identities can only be guessed at (and again including assorted Mothers plus friends such as Motorhead Sherwood). FZ plays some decidedly bent avant garde piano, again in the style of Cecil Taylor, to back them up. At one point, while FZ was dropping some objects inside the piano to get various sound effects, he dropped one of these objects onto his finger, resulting in a cry of “FUCK!” from Frank which was captured on tape. On the finished album, FZ managed to sneak this past the censors at MGM/Verve by featuring the second half of the piece (including the offensive word) played at twice its normal speed. This segment, this time running at normal speed, can be heard on the 4-CD MoFO set under the title “Hold On To Your Small Tiny Horsies…”

By the end of the April 3^rd session, the title of “The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet” had become “Cream Cheese”. It would be switched back to its original title just prior to the album’s release. The multitrack tape boxes list the track as “Cream Cheese”, as do the reels for the April 16, 1966 first assembly of the album, and the final stereo mixdown reels. Curiously, FZ reverted to the “Cream Cheese” title when preparing the reissue of Freak Out! in the 1985 Old Masters box set; this is presumably because he was going by the title given on the tape boxes and either didn’t remember or didn’t like the final, released title.

It seems likely that at some point either during or after the April 3^rd session, FZ took the “Cream Cheese” motif that had been tossed around during the last verified tracking session and created from it one of the most celebrated characters in the Project/Object; Suzy Creamcheese. Suzy was portrayed as something of a typical American teenage girl, the like of which would clearly have a tough time understanding the socio-musical concepts immortalized on the first Mothers album. Armed with this new character, Frank headed back into TTG Studios sometime after the April 3^rd session and cut what was probably the final two portions recorded for the album. The first of these would be used as the ending of the “It Can’t Happen Here” section of “Help, I’m A Rock”, and featured Jeannie Vassoir, in the role of Suzy Creamcheese. For her first appearance on a Zappa album, Suzy Creamcheese’s presence was rather innocuous, with the innocent young maiden being questioned by the leader of (presumably) a certain rock and roll group noting that they have taken a keen interest in her “development” following Suzy’s treatment to enlarge her breasts with the help of paraffin injections. This last line, unfortunately, would not pass the MGM/Verve censor, resulting in the reference to paraffin being trimmed from initial releases of the track. This reference was restored for the remix of the track heard on the 1969 compilation Mothermania; this is also included on the 4-CD version of MoFO, along with a 1970 FZ remix that is joined to the aforementioned of “Help, I’m A Rock”.

Finally, the principal recording of the album was wrapped up with the cutting of another brief Suzy Creamcheese skit. This was used as the intro to “The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet” on the finished album, and featured FZ as the “voice of [Suzy’s] conscience”, asking her the immortal question “Suzy Creamcheese, honey, what’s got into you?” “The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet” was also the recipient of percussion overdubs and further electronic noises (notably the use of oscillators to create proto synthesizer-type sounds), which were overdubbed onto the 4-track master. Specific tracking details of these overdubs would appear to be lost in the mists of time, Again, it is possible that more sessions were required to complete the album. In any event, the album would surely have been completed before Frank and The Mothers took off for Hawaii on April 7^th to begin an eight-day residency at a Honolulu club known as Da Swamp.

In addition to the mixes of “Help, I’m A Rock” and “It Can’t Happen Here”, the original 1966 mono and stereo mixes of these tracks and “The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet” can be found on those respective versions of Freak Out! A 1987 remix of “Monster Magnet” can be heard on the standard CD version of that album.

Folks, for this week, I am on vacation, but I hope that you do not mind if I share an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Hungry Freaks Daddy Re-imagined. In this excerpt, we look at the second day of sessions for the Freak Out! album as part of our 60th Anniversary celebration of that album. We will wrap this up next week. Please bear in mind that these excerpts are in rough form, and not necessarily how they will appear in the finished book. Happy July!

March 9, 1966
TTG Studios, Los Angeles, CA
37 minutes, A

I’m Not Satisfied (2^nd Vocal Overdub Master, Take 2 (Rough Mix)) (2:38)
I’m Not Satisfied (1966 Stereo Mix) (2:41)
I’m Not Satisfied (1966 Mono Mix) (2:43)
You Didn’t Try To Call Me (Basic Tracks) (3:00)
You Didn’t Try To Call Me (1966 Stereo Mix) (3:22)
You Didn’t Try To Call Me (1966 Mono Mix) (3:21)
I Ain’t Got No Heart (Basic Tracks) (2:36)
I Ain’t Got No Heart (Vocal Overdub Master Take) (2:37)
I Ain’t Got No Heart (1966 Stereo Mix) (2:34)
I Ain’t Got No Heart (1966 Mono Mix) (2:35)
How Could I Be Such A Fool (Basic Tracks) (2:24)
How Could I Be Such A Fool (1966 Stereo Mix) (2:16)
How Could I Be Such A Fool (1966 Mono Mix) (2:14)

The second day of sessions for Freak Out! was another session spent producing backing tracks, with Ray Collins taking the night off. The remaining Mothers, accompanied by an expanded group of studio musicians, including cellists Raymond Kelley, Paul Bergstrom, Emmet Sergeant, Joseph Saxon, Kurt Reher and Edwin Beach. Johnny Rotella, who would work with Frank on other studio projects, played three unspecified doubles, possibly including bass saxophone. Arthur Maeve and George Price played French horn, and the brass/wind section was rounded out with John Johnson on tuba, Virgil Evans on trumpet, David Wells on trombone and Plas Johnson on flute. Dividing the percussion duties were Gene Estes on tuned percussion, and Kenneth Watson on tympani. Eugene DiNovi returned from the previous session to take his place at the piano. Carol Kaye, one of the greatest session bass guitarists of all time, joined the ensemble playing acoustic 12-string guitar.

This ensemble tracked four songs, all of which would appear on the album. “I’m Not Satisfied” had been written the previous year, seemingly as a rather introspective look at Frank’s mindset in the wake of the Cucamonga bust. “You Didn’t Try To Call Me” was a recently written tune, and while it is tempting to speculate that it may be another song written about Frank’s divorce from Kay Sherman, this rather sincere song may be less personal than it seems (this is exactly the kind of lyric that Frank would step away from writing in the near future). “I Ain’t Got No Heart” had been demoed the previous fall and revealed the extent of Frank’s cynicism about matters of the heart, a cynicism that would stick with him for the remainder of his life. The final track to be recorded on this date was “How Could I Be Such A Fool”, a tearjerker ballad that was definitely written in the week of Frank’s divorce.

Unfortunately, the multitrack session tapes for this session appear to no longer exist. As a result, we do not know how many takes of each song were recorded, but we do know that all four were tracked and completed speedily within four hours, in a session that ran from 2 to 6 PM. Incidentally, the master tapes for this session were most likely missing at least since the 1980s, as Frank was forced to use the original mixes for the CD version of Freak Out!, treating them mainly with EQ to give them a more modern sonic sheen. It is worth mentioning that the CD version of “You Didn’t Try To Call Me” is inexplicably slightly shorter than the original, fading out where the original album versions have a complete ending. The basic tracks for “You Didn’t Try To Call Me”, “I Ain’t Got No Heart” and “How Could I Be Such A Fool” can be heard on the 4-CD MoFO. This set also includes the raw overdub master takes of “I’m Not Satisfied” and “I Ain’t Got No Heart”.

March 10, 1966 was the third day of sessions for the album. This was what was known as a “sweetening session”, or a session of overdubs. Judging by the list of musicians submitted to the Musicians’ Union, this was a session of instrumental overdubs onto the existing backing tracks recorded in the previous two days (for that reason, there is no separate entry for this session in this book). Joining the four instrument-playing Mothers on this afternoon (which incidentally ran from 2 to 5 PM) was percussionist Gene Estes and Benjamin Barrett, who appears to have worked primarily as a contractor for these sessions although he is reported to have possibly contributed violin or cello parts. According to Musicians Union records, the tracks subject to ‘sweetening” at this session were “Any Way The Wind Blows”, “I’m Not Satisfied”, “I Ain’t Got No Heart” and “How Could I Be Such A Fool”.

It is worth mentioning at this point that there is a mystery involving these sessions that may never be solved. Essentially, there is a discrepancy between what has been long thought of as the standard dates of the sessions for this album, and the dates that are given on the multitrack tape boxes. The date filed for the first session with the Musicians’ Union is March 9th, 1966, but the actual tape box lists the date as the 8th. This odd discrepancy continues through the remainder of the sessions. Complicating things somewhat is the fact that a fair amount of material recorded during these sessions was actually discarded after edits were made by Frank and Tom Wilson. So it’s probable that we will never know what the actual date of the first session was.

In order to make this post worth your time, here are a couple more excerpts from the book, detailing the earliest known recordings of the Mothers Of Invention:

May 1965 (exact date unknown)
The Broadside, Pomona, CA
10 minutes, A

Louisiana Blues (a.k.a Original Mothers At The Broadside) (1:17)
My Babe (3:47)
Wedding Dress Song/Handsome Cabin Boy (1:02)
Hitch Hike (2:54)

Following Frank’s humiliating bust in Cucamonga, he might have been forgiven for thinking that he was now out of options, and that his future looked bleak. For the first time in his life, he was truly adrift, with no clear plan for the future. Enter his old buddy Ray Collins, who offered Frank a gig playing guitar with a local R&B group, The Soul Giants, with whom Ray was the lead vocalist. Knowledgeable Zappa fans will be quite well familiar with this story; Frank came in to replace the Soul Giants’ guitarist, Ray Hunt, who was ousted from the group after coming out on the less fortunate end of a fist fight with Ray.

By the standards of local R&B, bands, the Soul Giants had their act together pretty well. The rhythm section tag team of bassist Roy Estrada and drummer Jimmy Carl Black had a nicely pulsating groove to it, and the group boasted the melted butter vocal stylings of Ray Collins. When Frank joined, a sax player named Dave Coronado was also with the group. But Frank being Frank, it did not take long for him to start cajoling the band into allowing him to make the group a vehicle for his own musical ambitions, insisting that if the group were to play his music, he would bring them fame and fortune, taking what he knew would be a unique sound out to Los Angeles, one of the biggest entertainment markets in the country. To make it easier for the group, Frank rehearsed the band at Studio Z, the last musical work that would be done at the studio before it finally folded.

The band decided to throw their lot in behind Frank, with the exception of Dave Coronado, who stuck to his assertion that a bar band playing original music would not be able to get a gig. Coronado left the group, and as Frank subsequently pointed out, his assertion was correct, at least in the short term. Recognizing that the Soul Giants might be seen as a bit passé in terms of a name for a rock ‘n’ roll combo in 1965, Frank experimented with different names for the group, which briefly played shows under the names The Blackouts (the name stolen from Frank’s early R&B combo), The Batmen and Captain Glasspack and His Magic Mufflers. Finally, on May 9th, 1965 - Mother’s Day in the United States - the group was officially renamed The Mothers.

Strangely enough, as far as is known, Frank did not run tape on the early Mothers rehearsals at Studio Z. The earliest known recording of the Mothers appears to be a tape made sometime in May at the Broadside, a popular bar in Pomona. In charge of running the tape was the ever-faithful Motorhead Sherwood. Apparently at least one full set was recorded; bits and pieces of this have appeared on official releases and more exists in the Zappa Vault. The earliest excerpt from this tape is a version of Muddy Waters’ classic “Louisiana Blues”, which Frank issued on the 1985 album Mystery Disc under the title “Original Mothers At The Broadside”. It’s obviously just an excerpt, but it gives you an idea of the kind of danceable groove that the original band had, which certainly would have at least attracted some attention from the music lovers in the area. A slightly longer version of this was played by Frank in the 1975 radio show on KWST-FM, over which Frank and his buddy Captain Beefheart sing a verse over the tape (it is very difficult to hear whether there is a Frank and/or Ray Collins vocal on the original).

More excerpts were released on the 2004 album Joe’s Corsage, plucked from the original tape by Zappa Vaultmeister Joe Travers. These excerpts kick off with a performance of the recent Righteous Brothers hit “My Babe”, giving the hard-core Zappa historian one of the very few glimpses of the nascent Mothers as a top 40 cover band. Another example of this can also be heard on the album, this being an excellent cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Hitch Hike”. Frank and Ray share most of the lead vocals, a practice that would continue into their first couple of studio albums. As an intro to “Hitch Hike”, we are also treated to the first recorded performance of a medley that the band would continue to perform for the next few years, consisting of two traditional pieces, “The Wedding Dress Song” and “The Handsome Cabin Boy”, the latter of which was first head by Frank on an album by legendary folk artists Ewan MacColl and A.J. Lloyd, Blow Boys Blow. The arrangement of this is embryonic, but enough can be heard in it to know that this was a very different band than pretty much anybody else on the scene at that time. There would definitely be challenging times ahead, but The Mothers were a band that was destined to draw attention.

Summer 1965 (approximate date)
Location unknown, Franklin Street, Hollywood, CA
2 minutes, B+

Party Scene From Mondo Hollywood (1:54)

When Frank Zappa assumed stewardship of The Soul Giants, he promised the other members of the band that if they were to play his music, he would lead them to fame and fortune. For an ambitious bar band from the greater Pomona area, the obvious place to go was a half hour west by car to Los Angeles, and specifically to Hollywood. Prior to 1965, the “rock scene” in Hollywood consisted mostly of surf bands, who were following the lead of local-boys-who-made-good The Beach Boys. But by the summer of 1965, several new Los Angeles area bands were making noise nationally. Most notable among these would be The Byrds, who catapulted folk rock into the mainstream. The music scene in Los Angeles in the summer of 1965 was awash in this sound, the result of The Byrds taking their cover of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” to the top of the charts in America and the UK. Suddenly, Los Angeles was the place to be, as new bands sprung up virtually overnight all over town.

Into this fray came The Mothers. The band’s sound was bluesier than the currently in vogue folky jangle of The Byrds, as the band was still making the transition from its early bar band repertoire to a more original approach. One thing that the Mothers specialized in was long improvisational jams with a throbbing teenage rhythm and lengthy guitar solos, and as it turned out, this was something that was unique enough to capture the attention of some very hip people in Los Angeles. Sometime in the summer or perhaps early fall of 1965, the Mothers somehow got a most interesting gig, playing music for a crowd of hipster L.A. revelers which was being filmed for a movie about the Los Angeles underground scene called Mondo Hollywood.

This film, directed by Robert Carl Cohen, was intended to showcase the outré side of the Los Angeles hip scene, as it was moving away from the clean-cut surf image into something significantly weirder. Whether Cohen knew it or not, The Mothers were the perfect band to play for this group of what would soon become known as the Freaks, even though the band themselves were in no way shape or form particularly freaky themselves at this time. Drummer Jimmy Carl Black would later remember that the band was still wearing uniforms at this point, complete with homburg hats. Even in their relative straightness, they must have looked incredibly bizarre to the Freak contingent, who included the middle-aged former beatnik who would become the center of the Freak scene Vito Paulekas, and his second in command Carl Franzoni, who danced like a madman and boasted the longest tongue in town. Their following consisted mostly of disaffected kids who otherwise would have been on the streets, and although they were still relatively small in number, the Freaks would become incredibly influential in town.

Jimmy Carl Black remembered the party is having taken place on Franklin Street in North Hollywood, though the owner of the house and his connection to film director Cohen remains lost in the mists of time. In any event, about an hour of Mothers music was recorded on audiotape that day. This tape was from an offline source, recorded with what was probably a single microphone in the room. Frank would pluck out a two-minute excerpt from this tape and release it on the 1985 album Mystery Disc. Although the finer details in the playing are difficult to hear with all the crowd reverie going on, this is obviously an excerpt from a longer jam, with that lewd, pulsating teen rhythm that was guaranteed to get the Freaks all hot and bothered. It was easy to see why they would latch onto the band, which opened some very notable doors for the Mothers, who were instantly accepted into the hip Hollywood underground scene. The remaining audio material recorded for the film still exists in the Zappa Vault, though much of it is somewhat marred by the sound of people, either drunk or stoned or both, screaming into the recorder’s microphone.

As great as this opportunity was, the film itself only features a few seconds of precious Mothers footage, in which extremely brief glimpses of Jimmy Carl Black, Ray Collins and Frank Zappa can be seen. The movie was released in 1967 but didn’t have the opportunity to make much noise before it found itself banned as a supposed pornographic film (which it is absolutely not). It would take decades for the film to reach a larger audience. It remains an obscure but interesting little time capsule. Interestingly, a young woman can be seen in the background of a sequence featuring a performance by her boyfriend Bobby Goldsboro. This woman was Gail Sloatman, later known to the world as Gail Zappa.

1974-11-15
Memorial Auditorium, Buffalo, NY
81 min, SBD, A-/A

Pre-show Ambience (0:11)
Tush Tush Tush (A Token Of My Extreme) (4:08)
FZ Introduction (0:43)
Stinkfoot (5:27)
RDNZL (10:06)
Village Of The Sun (4:45)
Echidna’s Arf (Of You) (3:18)
Don’t You Ever Wash That Thing? (6:46)
Penguin In Bondage (9:36)
T’Mershi Duween (3:27)
Dog/Meat (2:59)
Building A Girl (2:59)
FZ Introduction (2:19)
Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow (2:48)
Nanook Rubs It (5:02)
St. Alphonzo’s Pancake Breakfast (2:07)
Father O’Blivion (3:02)
Tush Tush Tush (A Token Of My Extreme) (0:35)
FZ Introduction (1:39)
Camarillo Brillo (3:03)
More Trouble Every Day (6:02)

The very next night, FZ and The Mothers found themselves playing in a driving snowstorm in Buffalo (with nearly a foot of the white stuff reportedly falling on this date). The crowd managed to risk their lives finding their way to the show however, and FZ expresses his gratitude for this during the “Token” intro. The show is preserved for the ages on a soundboard recording from the Dick Barber collection, in a recording of outstanding quality with an all- around, beautifully-balanced mix.

With the storm raging outside, Frank is determined to give the Buffaloes their money’s worth, and his solo in “Stinkfoot” winds up being something of a ferocious statement of intent. Ruth is spotlighted for “RDNZL” which is indeed a rush supreme—hard to see where FZ might argue with her ‘solo’, while his own effort uses that cutting razor-blade SG tone we all love and dances on the precipice throughout, with some nicely-desiccated use of Hungarian Minor. The “we could share some dog” bit has become more organized and now acts as a retelling of the Memphis Marty story, with FZ repeating “ever Holiday Inn has a kennel in the back of it”. At the end he reveals that “our Holiday Inn has a snowshoe in the back of it”. This gives away to a sweet George piano/synth combo solo, with an unusually-high-in-the-mix Tom Fowler ripping it up with Chester in the background.

Speaking of ripping it up, Napoleon has a good time doing just exactly that in his “Village Of The Sun” solo—he seems to have even more energy here than usual. The final line of the song is changed here to “what you gon’ do, Georgie-poo?” Following one of the best (in terms of performance and sound mix), most powerful versions of “Echidna’s Arf (Of You)” that you’ll ever hear, the band blasts off into what will become the Big Monster Song of the evening, “Don’t You Ever Wash That Thing?” after a compact, revved-up FZ solo, we learn that all through the show, Ruth has been thinking “I wonder if George is gonna do it again tonight?” During his solo (which again tosses in a random “Who Needs The Peace Corps?” quote”, George asks “Do what?” to which Frank replies “grab another Booger, of course!” Chester’s solo features a number of conducted interjections for a sci-fi effect, and FZ even throws in “hurt me” a few times, a reference to “St. Alphonzo’s Pancake Breakfast”.

From here the band is off into “Penguin In Bondage”, with a Secret Word emerging: “jailbait”. FZ’s solo is a hotbed of pure, blues-based goodness, and The Composer is inspired enough to extend out the effort somewhat. “T’Mershi Duween” kicks off with the usual extended percussion intro, with Ruth’s ratchet percussion quite high in the mix. Frank references Carl Douglas’ recent hit “Kung Fu Fighting” before the band kicks into the body of the piece—a probable reference to the onstage theatrics that we unfortunately can only imagine.

There is a major cut near the end of “T’Mershi Duween” due to a tape flip, which takes us into the “Dog Meat” medley for the last minute or so of “The Dog Breath Variations”. “Jailbait” again pops up as an interjection during “Uncle Meat”. A deeply atmospheric and dynamic “Building A Girl” rounds out the lengthy sequence, with Napi’s flute contribution very much to fore.

The rather short main set (perhaps is concerned about the deteriorating travelling conditions outside) concludes with the “Yellow Snow” medley. “Jailbait” again makes an appearance during “Nanook Rubs It”, as does a reference to local sandwich shops whose owners may be related to St. Alphonzo. The remainder of the suite rounds out with minimal variation, until Frank reveals at the end of “Father O’Blivion” that the line “Good morning, Your Highness” is taken from a TV commercial for Imperial Margarine (which also inspired other lyrics in the suite, no doubt).

Strolling out for the encore, FZ informs the audience that “we’ve got time for a quick something”. This turns out to be “Camarillo Brillo”, and the audience cheers for the line “by the bush in Buffalo” (natch) and Frank’s claim that it was “snowing so hard that we have to get home”. As it turns out, the band also has time for one more ‘something’, with this particular something being a smooth segue into “More Trouble Every Day”. Frank mutates one line into “I watched them throwing snowballs and stuff/and choking in the heat”, before realizing “that didn’t make any sense at all, did it? Oh well!” Frank leaves the denizens of Buffalo with a brief but intense guitar solo before wrapping up the show with an advisement to the crowd that they’d better get going home as it will take them a long time to get there. The final line of the song is mutated into “there’s no way to delay that jailbait’s coming every day”. Before “Tush Tush Tush (A Token Of My Extreme)”:

Napoleon Murphy Brock: Tres, quarto!

During “Tush Tush Tush (A Token Of My Extreme)”:

FZ: Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Listen--sit down, make yourselves comfortable. Before we start the show, I just wanna say that I appreciate the fact that you came out in this wonderful weather, and we’re going to see to it that you have a wonderful time this evening, folks. Of course I’m gonna have very little to do with it—it’s Ruth Underwood on percussion that’s gonna take care of business for ya, Napoleon Murphy Brock on tenor sax and lead vocals, Chester Thompson on drums, Tom Fowler on bass, George Duke on keyboards. Let me get myself tuned up here.

Before “Stinkfoot”:

FZ: The name of this song is “Stinkfoot”.

Before “Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow”:

FZ: Thank you. That last little adventure was Ruth and Bill Romero. Just a minute. Alright, the name of this song is “Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow”. What? What? What is it? That’s it, everybody talk at once! I can understand all of you. And don’t eat any of that other stuff that’s out there either. Where is it? W-where i—we’ve had a, a question. The question has been raised by a gentleman in the front who says “hey Frankie, where’s Nanook?” And the answer to that question is “Nanook is coming right up!” One-two-three-four.

During “Father O’Blivion”:

FZ: You know where “Good morning, Your Highness” comes from? Did you ever see that commercial for Imperial Margarine? Do they have it here? You know that guy sitting in bed, and the chick comes in with a sleazy breakfast and lays it on him? It says “Good morning, Your Highness”, and he pretends like he’s really going to enjoy it? Well, that’s where this came from. Ladies and gentlemen, it has been Ruth Underwood on percussion, Napoleon Murphy Brock on tenor sax and lead vocals, Chester Thompson on drums, Tom Fowler on bass, George Duke on jailbait. Thank you very much for coming to the concert, hope you enjoyed it, drive safely on the way home. Goodnight.

Before “Camarillo Brillo”:

FZ: Thank you. Ah, Pocahontas! Alright, we’ve got time for a quick, a quick something.

During “More Trouble Every Day”:

FZ: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for coming to the concert. Listen, it’s gonna take—it’s gonna take you all a long time to get home, so you’d better get going now. Goodnight.

She has one wish, and that is to see the field where Woodstock took place one last time, while she is still healthy enough to fully appreciate it.

So I have taken it upon myself to help her to get there, for the annual Yasgur Road Reunion celebrating the anniversary of Woodstock in mid-August (at which I have been a regular for the last 15 or so years). I have set up a Gofundme to raise $800, and we are currently a a little less than halfway there. So I am hopeful that this PDF book offer will help seal the deal.

What will you get for your $30? All of my books in PDF format:

Hungry Freaks, Daddy: The Recordings Of Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention Volume 1 1959-1969

Strictly Genteel: The Recordings Of Frank Zappa Volume 2 1970-1971

The Zappa Supplement One: A Box Of History And The Mud Shark Saga

Blessed Relief: The Recordings Of Frank Zappa Volume 3 1972-1973

The Hook: The Recordings Of Frank Zappa Volume 4 1973-1974

The Return Of Rondo Hatton: The Recordings of Frank Zappa Volume 5 1974-1975

Your Five Closest Relatives: The Recordings of Frank Zappa Volume 6 1975-1976

Frank Zappa vs. The Be-Bop Samurai: The Recordings of Frank Zappa Vol. 7 1976-1977

PREPOSTEROUS! Frank Zappa On Stage Volume Eight 1977-1978

THE BIG ONE: Frank Zappa On Stage Volume Nine 1978

The Making Of A Freak Out: FRANK ZAPPA and the world’s first concept album

DISCORPORATE! Frank Zappa in the Studio 1966-1967

The Waldo Scrapbooks: Articles about FRANK ZAPPA from the collection of Walt Quadrato

The Mother People Chronicles Vol. 1 (US 1980s Zappa fanzine)

The Mother People Chronicles Vol. 2 (US 1980s Zappa fanzine)

Woodstock Documented: Recordings That Documented The 1969 Woodstock Festival

KISS Documented Volume 1: Great Expectations 1970-1977

Who Did What: The Recordings Of THE WHO Volume 1 1964-1970

GOOD CLEAN FUN: Audio and Visual Documents Of THE MONKEES 1956-1970

Alternately, I would be happy to sell physical copies of the books during this sale for $15 each, shipping included.

If you are interested, you can send orders over to my Paypal at musichouse2@snet.net .
Please make sure to include your email address, or physical address for physical copies of the books.

For those of you who want to check out the Gofundme, you can check it out here;
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-lauras-journey-back-to-woodstock

This sale will be up until the Gofundme is filled.

Thank you all so much! You guys, and music, are the best!
Scott (Your Humble Author)

However, the Verve/MGM era material, aka the Zappa/Mothers albums released before Frank founded Bizarre Records and moved to Reprise, is a particularly interesting mess. Not only were those albums remixed and changed over the years, but they also received different mixes back in the day. “Freak Out!”, “Absolutely Free” and “We’re Only In It For The Money” were also released in mono, and only the latter of those has been made available on CD, 40 years after its original release. Add to that, the odd alternate mix for the foreign market or single, and you already get enough material to compare.

However, things get even more fascinating. First of all, FZ left Verve/MGM with a compilation entitled “Mothermania”. He didn’t merely pick 11 selections from the first three albums: he also made sure to give most of them new mixes, some of which restored material he had been originally forced to censor.

It gets even better, though: when Frank reacquired the rights for those albums in the mid 80s, he finally made them available again on three deceptively titled “The Old Masters” boxsets, after years of being out of print and difficult to find. Of course, being Frank, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to fool around with them. The changes went from applying completely different equalization and reverb, to freshly remixing them and, in two cases, even overdubbing new drums and bass performances to replace the original tracks, something that horrified and enraged fans all over the world.

“Why did he do that?”, you may ask. Short answer: because he could.

“Okay, but what made him want to do that in the first place?”

There are various reasons. First of all, Frank had always been displeased by the way the original records sounded. The EQ changes were made to make them sound a bit more modern and, possibly, to mask some of the tape damage. About this later issue, there were cases in which Zappa was, in fact, somehow forced to remix the original material. Case in point: “We’re Only In It For The Money”. When the original 2-track masters were returned, they were in awful shape: splices had come off and the tapes had deteriorated to a point that the oxide had fallen off, making some of those sections virtually unplayable. As a proof, when Frank and Spence Chrislu undertook the daunting task of restoring the original mix, they had to literally reconstruct it from various sources, including safeties. As such, the sound quality of the CD version of the original stereo mix of the album ranges from very good, to worn off, depending on which song you are listening to.

Of course, having to remix an album from scratch doesn’t mean that Frank was forced to overdub new performances. For a long time, there was a misconception that Zappa had to replace the bass and drums tracks because those particular performances were damaged on the original multitrack tapes or were, somehow, the only elements that became unusable on the 2-track stereo masters. Again, the truth is that Frank did it because he wanted to do it. Had he wanted, he could have made a vintage-sounding but clearer remix of “We’re Only In It For The Money” without having to resort to replacing the rhythm section. And, in any case, that wouldn’t have explained why he did the same thing to “Cruising With Ruben & The Jets”, an album whose original stereo master had been preserved just fine.

The aim of this document is to present every difference between the original mixes and the alternative vintage ones. I decided to concentrate on mostly on the stuff that was released when Frank was alive, but be aware that over the past 20 years, vintage alternative mixes of this material has been unearthed on excellent archival releases such as “The MOFO Project/Object”, “Lumpy Money” and “Greasy Love Songs”. Someday it will be interesting to compare them to the others discussed here. And, of course, the rest of the catalogue suffered a similar fate and in some cases (”Sleep Dirt”, “The Man from Utopia”) the differences were as severe as those early Mothers albums.

Special thanks go to:

· Information Is Not Knowledge website for providing the basis for my comparison between the original stereo mix of “Freak Out!” and the 1987 remix (special thanks to Charles Ulrich and Pat Buzby).

· The Zappa Patio for providing the basis for my comparison between the various mixes of “We’re Only In It For The Money” and the mixing differences in “Mothermania”.

· The anonymous author of the “Way Beyond Just Drums & Bass” article featured on the Cheekbone Crush bootleg CD of the original mix of “Cruisin’ with Ruben & The Jets”.

· Johnny, for his invaluable assistance and additional comments.

· Steve Hoffman forums member PIGGIES for additional comments and corrections.

FREAK OUT!

Original release date: 27 June 1966

The album was released in the US as a double vinyl and as an 8-track cartridge in June 1966. The stereo mix of the album remained in print until around 1976, after which it was discontinued. The album became unavailable for years, until Frank re-released it as part of “The Old Masters Box One” in April 1985. It also received a stand-alone vinyl reissue. It’s worth noting that those 80s reissues use the original vinyl mix, as opposed to the later remix. The original mix received its first CD release in 2006 as the first disc of either edition of “The MOFO Project/Object”.

The mono mix of the album was released simultaneously with the original stereo version. The masters of this mix are apparently not in the vault and, as such, it has never been re-released since 1966. That said, two songs (”Who Are The Brain Police?” and “How Could I Be Such A Fool?”) appear on the double CD version of “The MOFO Project/Object”. These particular mixes have been used on singles, which is likely why they survived on separate reels.

“Freak Out!” was released in Europe a year later (July 1967) as a single LP, in mono and stereo. The European version was missing three songs (”Go Cry On Somebody Else’s Shoulder”, “How Could I Be Such A Fool?” and “Anyway The Wind Blows”) and had a unique shorter mix of “Trouble Every Day”. “How Could I Be Such A Fool?” appeared as the B-side of “It Can’t Happen Here” in the UK (weird choice for a single, huh?), but the other two songs remained unheard in Europe until 1971, when the original double version of the album was finally released over there.

The album was released on CD in 1987 as a partial remix: some songs were newly mixed, while others were simply re-equalized. This version appears on every regular CD edition of the album, including the 2012 UMe currently in print.

There is also an alternate master of the original stereo vinyl mix, with brighter EQ, that has been bootlegged. This tape is a fascinating mystery, because we don’t have much information about it. First of all, except for tape print-through problems, where one can hear remnants of a previous recording, its fidelity is higher than that of the regular stereo version of the album. The track order is completely different: it’s unclear whether this is an early configuration or a compilation of mixes. Most importantly, though, it includes an uncensored “It Can’t Happen Here” and a different edit of “Wowie Zowie”, including a short section that was removed from the final master, possibly at MGM’s request (see below). This version of the album is still unreleased.

1. HUNGRY FREAKS, DADDY

1966 Stereo Mix: Drums and guitars on the left, centered vocals and kazoo, bass, vibes, and tambourine on the right.

1966 Mono Mix: Most likely a fold-down: the balance of the instruments doesn’t seem to be any different from the stereo.

1987 CD Remix: Drums and guitars on the left, bass, vocals, and kazoo in the center, tambourine, percussion, and piano on the right. No echo on the vocals (“the great society!”). The remix is also a lot less muddy and more polished than the original, and the panning of the instruments is not as extreme.

2. I AIN’T GOT NO HEART

1966 Stereo Mix: Bass, guitars, percussion, vibes, and piano on the left; vocals in the center; drums and orchestration on the right.

1966 Mono Mix: The equalization between the mono and stereo mixes is quite different, with the stereo mix sounding muddier, whereas the mono mix is clearer. Additionally, the orchestra is a bit louder during the verses.

1987 CD Remix: Same as the original mix, but the equalization is brighter, and the stereo image has been slightly narrowed down.

3. WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE?

1966 Stereo Mix: Drums and guitars on the left, vocals and kazoo in the center, bass, piano, and percussion on the right. There’s some distortion present on the bass in this mix, which gives the track a more “evil” feel. However, as this has not been replicated in any other version, it may have been unintended.

1966 Mono Mix: The mono mix doesn’t have the distortion issues in the bass frequencies found in the stereo mix. The guitar is slightly louder in certain sections, particularly in the intro. It also fades out two seconds later compared to the stereo mix.

1987 CD Remix: Drums and guitars on the left, centered bass, vocals and kazoo, piano and percussion on the right. The reverb on some of the words (“home”, “chrome”, “off”…) has been digitally recreated and it now sounds smoother. Much like the mono, this mix doesn’t have distortion problems either. While all the other mixes have a complete fade, this one also starts fading out but eventually ends cold revealing the actual ending of the take.

4. GO CRY ON SOMEBODY ELSE’S SHOULDER

1966 Stereo Mix: Bass, drums, and guitars on the left, all vocals in the center, vibes, and piano on the right.

1966 Mono Mix: The piano and vibes appear to be slightly louder, but otherwise, it’s pretty similar to the stereo mix. The fade-out is longer.

1987 CD Remix: This is an interesting mix: most of the instruments are centered in the soundstage, except for the piano, vibes, and some background vocals on the right. The vocals have also been processed. However, due to the applied effects, the mix still maintains a spacious sound. The fade-out is slower compared to the mono mix, but the track ends at the same point.

5. MOTHERLY LOVE

1966 Stereo Mix: The guitars and drums are on the left, vocals are centered, and the bass, piano, tambourine, and vibes are on the right.

1966 Mono Mix: The guitars are slightly louder. It fades out a few seconds later than the stereo mix.

1987 CD Remix: A narrowed down and re-equalized version of the original mix. It also has an earlier fade-out.

6. HOW COULD I BE SUCH A FOOL?

1966 Stereo Mix: The bass, electric and acoustic guitars, vibes, and piano are on the left, vocals are in the center, and drums and the rest of the orchestration are on the right.

1966 Mono Mix: The piano and vibes are slightly louder, and the horns during the last verse are more prominent. After the song finishes, the last note echoes for a little longer.

1987 CD Remix: A remastered version of the original mix.

7. WOWIE ZOWIE

1966 Stereo Mix: The guitars are on the left, vocals and snaps are in the center, and the bass, tambourine, piano, and vibes are on the right. There’s a very jarring edit at around 2:00”. Frank spliced in a repeat of a previous section of the song but used a different mix, where everything is mono aside from very faint vibes on the left channel. On the alternate master of the album discussed above, Frank and Ray appear to be simulating the sound of puffing on a joint during this section, so the poor editing job may have been the result of a last-minute decision at MGM’s request.

1966 Mono Mix: As opposed to the stereo mix, the tambourine is louder than the finger snaps and, in general, seems to be much higher in the mix. The edit point is a lot smoother, and during that section, the vibes are upfront and fully audible. Unfortunately, it’s still not perfect, and the edit back into the regular take is pretty noticeable. The track also fades out a good 5 seconds later compared to the stereo mix.

1987 CD Remix: Mostly a remastered version of the original mix, jarring edit and all. However, at that particular point, this time we can also hear the tambourine on the right which was almost inaudible on the original mix.

8. YOU DIDN’T TRY TO CALL ME

1966 Stereo Mix: The bass, guitars, and vibes are on the left, vocals are in the center, and drums, percussion, and orchestration are on the right.

1966 Mono Mix: Contrary to popular belief, the mono version of this song is not longer than the original stereo mix (that being said, both 1966 mixes are longer than the CD version). In fact, I’m almost tempted to declare this mix a fold-down of the stereo, if not for the fact that the drums seem to be slightly louder. However, this could also be a result of the compression used on the mono master.

1987 CD Remix: A narrowed down and re-equalized version of the original mix that fades out instead of ending cold. Bah!

9. ANYWAY THE WIND BLOWS

1966 Stereo Mix: Drums and guitar on the left, vocals in the center, bass, tambourine, vibes and piano on the right.

1966 Mono Mix: Similar mix but the vocals are drier and treated slightly differently.

1987 CD Remix: A re-equalized and narrowed down version of the original mix. It’s worth noting, though, that Frank had actually remixed the song in 1987, and that mix appears on both versions of “The MOFO Project/Object”. Upon listening back, I think that mix sounded overprocessed, which could be the reason why FZ eventually decided to remaster the original instead.

10. I’M NOT SATISFIED

1966 Stereo Mix: Bass, guitar, piano and vibes on the left, vocals in the center, drums and orchestration on the right.

1966 Mono Mix: Guitar and orchestration are overall louder in the mix, while the vibes are turned down a little at the end of the song.

1987 CD Remix: A brighter sounding version of the original mix.

11. YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING WHY I’M HERE

1966 Stereo Mix: Guitar and drums on the left, centered vocals and kazoo, bass, vibes, piano and tambourine on the right. Interesting slapback echo effect applied to the guitars.

1966 Mono Mix: A bit indistinct, but likely not a fold-down. There appear to be slight differences in the way the vocals and the slapback echo on the guitars have been treated.

1987 CD Remix: Guitars and drums on the left, bass, vocals and kazoo in the center, vibes, piano and tambourine on the right. No slapback echo that I hear of!

12. TROUBLE EVERY DAY

1966 Stereo Mix: The drums and one of the guitars are on the left, most of the guitars and vocals are in the center, and the bass, harmonica, and another rhythm guitar are on the right.

1966 Mono Mix: It starts with a drumbeat that is missing from the stereo mix. The guitars and vocals are mixed differently in places, most notably the rhythm guitar on the fourth verse. Although it’s difficult to report more specific differences in the instrument balance, this is clearly a distinct mix and a more aggressive one at that. It also fades out a few seconds later.

1966 Mono Single Mix: Similar to the regular mono mix, but not quite the same. The drumbeat that starts the mono version is also present here. This mix is also quite crunchy and aggressive, but it focuses more on the guitars, whereas the harmonica was a bit louder on the mono vinyl version. The song has also been edited down to 2:35”, losing the third and fourth verses, a chorus, the fast paced coda and Frank’s brilliant “I’m not black but there’s a whole lots a times I wish I could say I’m not white” interpolation in the process.

1967 Stereo Mix: Fascinating: the song is not merely a shorter edit on the European single vinyl version of the album, but it’s actually a unique stereo mix! The sound is spread differently, with the vocals more centered and the guitars having a wider pan. The guitar in the center and the harmonica/bass guitar on the right have switched positions, and the harmonica during the verses is mixed higher. The mix follows the same structure as the mono single version, extra snare beat included, but the edits happen at different points, as can be clearly heard, for example, when comparing the intro. This mix is very much on the bright side, but it may just be because of how the European version of “Freak Out!” was mastered. This alternate mix has never been released in the US, and it has only ever appeared twice more on two unauthorized Verve/MGM compilations: “Pregnant” and the Mexican-only release “Frank Zappa y The Mothers Of Invention”, both from 1972.

1987 CD Remix: It is a narrowed down and re-equalized version of the original mix. It fades out a couple of seconds earlier. Generally, the equalized versions sound okay, and the preference for which one to choose depends on personal taste but this particular song sounds noticeably messier to my ears.

13. HELP, I’M A ROCK!

1966 Stereo Mix: In the first part of the piece, Zappa and Ray Collins’ vocals are positioned on the left, the rhythm section, piano, and guitar are centered and the rest of the vocals are on the right. During the freak-out final section, the drums are on the left, vocals are centered, and the percussion are on the right.

1966 Mono Mix: The first part of the piece is pretty similar to the stereo, but there seem to be some slight but distinct differences, at least in the way the drums and vocals have been mixed. Again, I wonder if this is due to the compression rather than being a different mix. However, the last part of the track (the freak-out section with heavy breathing) is a radically different mix with the percussion turned up a lot higher than in the stereo. The edit point is also a lot smoother.

1987 CD Remix: A remaster of the original mix. The reverb here sticks out more than most of the rest of the album.

14. IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE

1966 Stereo Mix: Different vocals are spread around the sound-stage. In the brief avant-garde section, two separate drum tracks are played in different channels, while the piano is centered.

1966 Mono Mix: I don’t think a true mono mix was attempted. However, it seems like the “since you first took the shots” line had to be removed after the stereo mix was folded down, as the edit point appears in a slightly different spot.

1987 CD Remix: Another remaster of the original mix. The effect usually applied to the vocals on the remix is now applied to all the a-cappella sections, making them sound clearer and brighter.

15. THE RETURN OF THE SON OF MONSTER MAGNET

1966 Stereo Mix: Difficult to describe the complex soundstage of this piece. The vocals are scattered all around, while the drums and the rest of the orchestration tend to stay centered. The siren and electronic instruments are mostly on the left, and the prepared piano is mostly on the right. The spoken introduction is panned to the left.

1966 Mono Mix: The first part of the piece (0:00-8:22) is definitely a unique mix. The vocals, percussion, and electronics are treated differently and are turned up and balanced in different spots. However, the second movement is less distinct, although it has been mastered in a way that makes it sound more upfront.

1987 CD Remix: The full piece has been remixed and, as usual, the vocals have been processed and have reverb added to them. Interestingly, the remix seems to be more focused on the right channel. The spoken introduction is centered with stereo reverb applied to it. In contrast with the rest of the remix, this piece sounds even more chaotic than the original!

Conclusions:

The original stereo mix is the perfect proof of how shocking this album may have sounded in 1966. The album is not just funny: it’s also menacing, gloomy and definitely pessimistic. If The Rolling Stones were known as the bad guys in 1966, The Mothers of Invention were on a whole different level. Some of the darkness and dullness of the album may have been unintended: this is the only mix with distortion problems on “Who Are The Brain Police?” and the alternate master tape that came into circulation a few years ago suggests that, originally, FZ intended to use an equalization similar to that of all the later remixes he made over the years. Nonetheless, the dullness somehow worked in its favor and, while modern listeners may prefer the later mixes of those songs, the original is the only one that possesses those particular qualities.

The mono has somewhat acquired a mythical status among fans, perhaps because it has been unavailable for years. I would presume that the reason many seem to think it’s a radically different mix is because it might have been compared to the CD remix, which effectively sounds quite different. However, it’s clear to me that Frank was thinking in stereo when he and Tom Wilson produced the album in 1966. Not much thought or time seems to have been spent on the mix: aside from a couple of tracks, the instrument balance is pretty similar to the original stereo, and some songs even sound like direct fold-downs. Still, it has its moments, most notably “Trouble Every Day” and “The Return of The Son of Monster Magnet”, and it’s mastered in a way that makes it sound pleasantly punchy. If the missing masters miraculously turn up, it’s certainly worth a re-release. Side note: I don’t know if it’s inherent to the rip I’m using for comparison, but the mono mix appears to have inverted polarity compared to the stereo.

Compared to most of the other “updated” Zappa masters, the 1987 remix doesn’t sound too bad overall. The notorious reverb that often plagues FZ’s remixes and remasters is also present here, but it’s not as annoying as on some other releases. The equalization choices are not bad at all, and the mix sounds clearer compared to the original. However, as a side effect, the album now definitely sounds less shocking, raw, and impactful than it did in 1966.

Now, the billion dollar question: can we absolutely confirm that, aside from “Trouble Every Day”, the rest of the European version of “Freak Out!” matches the regular stereo mix? What about the mono version?

ABSOLUTELY FREE

Original release date: 26 May 1967

The album was released worldwide in May 1967 on vinyl, 8-track and 4-track. The stereo mix of the album remained in print until about 1975. Just like it happened with “Freak Out!”, the album was finally re-issued as part of “The Old Masters Box One” in April 1985. It wasn’t remixed, but the new master was smothered in reverb and the equalization was completely changed, resulting in a different sound.

Just like with “Freak Out!”, the master tape for the mono mix of “Absolutely Free” is missing and, as such, it has never been re-released since 1967. Occasionally, EU versions of US mono albums were fold-downs (Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band’s “Safe as Milk” being a famous case), but the EU mono “Absolutely Free” was confirmed to match the US version.

This is one of the few Zappa albums that has never been remixed. CD editions prior to the 2012 UMe currently in print used the “Old Masters” version. The 2012 UMe CD reverts to the original dry vinyl: it has some tape damage here and there, most notably on “Plastic People”, but it is, by far, the best-sounding version of the album I’ve heard. All CD editions include the “Big Leg Emma”/”Why Don’tcha Do Me Right” mono single as bonus tracks: as these two songs never received an official stereo mix, they haven’t been analyzed here.

It’s worth noting that Frank did, in fact, make new mixes of at least three songs from “Absolutely Free” in 1969 (”America Drinks”, “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It”, and “America Drinks and Goes Home”), all of which can be found on the 50th Anniversary vinyl edition of the album and, in the case of “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It”, also on “Frank Zappa for President”. Those remixes differ quite a bit from the original. One of the reasons for this is the fact that some of the overdubs aren’t on the 4-track masters themselves and were probably added during the stereo mixing; for example, the crowd noise is absent on the 1969 remix of “America Drinks & Goes Home”.

SIDE ONE

Mono: While comparing the two mixes, I kept noticing the same things: vocals treated very slightly differently, drums appearing to be turned up higher in mix, and the tambourine standing out more in mono. I have come to the conclusion that the entire side is actually a fold-down, which has been mastered to sound more punchy and compressed, resulting in these perceived minor differences. The balance of the instruments itself doesn’t seem to be any different in the mono mix. The only actual difference I could find is that the side ends 0.5 seconds later compared to the stereo mix (at least, in the version included on the 2012 UM CD), but the “extra material” is only a little more ambience.

8. AMERICA DRINKS

Mono: Up to the editing point into the circus music, I can’t hear any noticeable differences. After that, it seems to switch into a slightly different mix where the rhythm section is pushed forward. The edit between the two sections is also cruder in the mono. Finally, the final gong beat resonates for a longer time in the mono mix.

9. STATUS BACK BABY

Mono: The mono mix is bass-heavier than the stereo. Most importantly, an extra guitar phrase during the “Pethruska” section of the song that had been edited out of the stereo version is here in all of its glory!

10. UNCLE BERNIE’S FARM

Mono: No actual discernible differences. Most likely a fold-down.

11. SON OF SUZY CREAMCHEESE

Mono: Once again, I can’t hear anything different going on.

12. BROWN SHOES DON’T MAKE IT

Mono: Louder vocals on the “TV dinner by the pool” section. The guitar is more prominent during the first part of the song. The vocals are a bit out of sync with the backing track on the “do it again and do it some more” section and that whole bit, in general, seems to be mixed quite differently, at least vocally: FZ comes in louder, whereas on the stereo, it sounds like he’s being slightly faded in. During the “if she were my daughter, I’d…” bit, you can hear the wind instrument underneath the synth much more clearly and, after that section, the cymbals are mixed louder. During the ending, the piano is turned up louder.

13. AMERICA DRINKS & GOES HOME

Mono: Back in fold-down land. No differences to report between the two mixes.

Conclusions:

The most disappointing of the mono mixes: the vast majority of it is simply a remastered fold-down of the stereo mix, and many of the actual differences between the two mixes aren’t very noticeable. As I have mentioned, the fact that some of the overdubs likely aren’t on the 4-track masters themselves probably made creating a mono mix up to Frank’s standards a difficult task. All things considered, the mono “Absolutely Free” is nothing more than an oddity for collectors. If the masters weren’t missing, rather than deserving a stand-alone reissue, it could have been re-released on vinyl for Record Store Day or something like that.

That being said, the unique mono mixes certainly have enough merit to be digitally released alongside the 1969 stereo remixes in a “The Mothers 1967” kind of package, “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It” in particular. We can dream, I guess!

WE’RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY

Original release date: 04 March 1968

This is arguably the Zappa album with the most complex release history.

The original stereo mix was released in the US in 1968 after going through several changes at the request of Verve/MGM. This version of the album was released in the US and remained in print until around 1974.

For some reason, the version of the album distributed in Canada came from a slightly different, earlier edit of the album: Gary Kellgren’s comment about The Velvet Underground on “Concentration Moon” is uncensored, and there is no backwards “Mother People” verse yet on “Hot Poop”. This alternate master was used to create the so-called ‘heavily censored’ version of the album distributed in Europe, which underwent additional editing without Frank’s knowledge or consent.

The original mix was released on CD for the first time in 1995. However, due to the rough condition of the original master, this version was assembled by FZ and Spencer Chrislu from various sources, including safety copies. As a result, the sound quality of the CD is inconsistent, with some songs coming from tapes in poor shape. Nevertheless, in my opinion, those sourced from tapes in decent condition sound better than the original vinyl, which has an overall muffled and congested sound. The CD version follows the structure of the original US version, except for a slightly different segue between “What’s The Ugliest Part Of Your Body? (reprise)” and “Mother People”.

The mono mix appears to have been released in the US only as a promo. Fortunately, this time, the master tapes of it survived and a CD release is available on “The Lumpy Money Project/Object” 3-CD set. Aside from a couple of tape glitches on “Concentration Moon” and “What’s The Ugliest Part Of Your Body? (reprise)”, the digital version sounds really good as the master tape appears to have survived in a better state compared to the stereo master. It was also reissued on vinyl as a picture disc for Record Store Day in 2018. This was the last Mothers album to receive a proper mono mix.

The EU mono version of the album is a strange beast. It is, apparently, the same mix as the regular US version, but it follows the “heavily censored” version edit. In other words, it has the Velvet Underground line edited as in the heavily censored version and the truncated “Hot Poop” with the alternate snork at the end. This is puzzling, to say the least: it means that when they got the mono masters they took their time to create an edit that matched their butchered stereo version, likely copying those sections from another tape as those two bits cannot be retrieved from the original mono master. Sounds like a lot of work for nothing!

The original 2-track stereo masters of the record were in bad shape in 1984 so, when Zappa regained the rights for the album, he decided to remix it and rebuild it from scratch. Controversially, he also decided to replace the original bass and drums tracks with new performances by Arthur Barrow and Chad Wackerman, respectively. This new version of the album was initially released on the vinyl version included in “The Old Masters Box One” in 1985 and on the first CD edition, where it was coupled with “Lumpy Gravy”. After remaining out of print for years, it was later re-released on “The Lumpy Money Project/Object” in 2009.

The remix is a completely different construction, and trying to note every single different positioning or balance in the mix would be too time consuming, not to mention pointless. Therefore, I will only mention the presence or absence of elements that were recorded during the original sessions.

1. ARE YOU HUNG UP?

1968 Mono Mix: The mono mix starts half a second earlier compared to the stereo version but, apart from that, the rest of it sounds like a fold-down. Gary Kellgren’s spoken bits sound clearer because they are now centered and have less processing.

1984 Remix: Incredibly enough, Frank completely remixed this sound collage: the stereo placement is completely different and different effects are featured prominently. Kellgren is way more upfront and the reverb on the whispering has been recreated from scratch. The track has also been reassembled with the edits appearing in different spots. It starts where the mono mix starts.

2. WHO NEEDS THE PEACE CORPS?

1968 Mono Mix: The mono mix runs approximately 1.5% faster. The acoustic guitar during the intro is mixed louder. While the stereo mixes out the sax solo during the outro, except for the last phrase, here it’s gradually faded in. However, the last phrase of the solo is mixed at a lower volume compared to the stereo.

1984 Remix: The remix runs approx 1% slower compared to the original stereo mix. The saxophone solo at the end is clearly audible from the start. Frank’s monologue is also slightly longer (”I won’t care because…“).

3. CONCENTRATION MOON

1968 Mono Mix: The lead vocals are mixed very differently throughout the song: for a clear example listen to the “with all of my friends still running free” bits. In those sections, the stereo mix features accompaniment by acoustic guitar, whereas the mono mix replaces it with an electric piano. Additionally, the edits between the various sections occur at slightly different points.

1984 Remix: The remix runs around 10.5% faster. During the “with all of my friends” bit, you can hear both the acoustic guitar and the piano. Interestingly, the original drums can still be faintly heard in the background and I believe the reason Zappa chose to increase the tape speed is to mask them. Once again, Gary Kellgren’s whispering has been remixed and reconstructed in this version. The “Velvet Underground” line is, of course, completely uncensored here.

4. MOM & DAD

1968 Mono Mix: The mono has a different equalization compared to the stereo and the acoustic guitar is mixed higher.

1984 Remix: A flute recorder absent from the original mixes can now be heard throughout the song. There’s a strange sound during the instrumental chorus that sounds a bit like guttural noise singing the melody.

5. TELEPHONE CONVERSATION

1968 Mono Mix: Nothing to report. This fragment of audio verité was in mono even on the stereo mix.

1984 Remix: While the other mixes cut abruptly from “Mom & Dad” to this, here Arthur Barrow’s final bass note is left ringing through the very beginning. The whole piece has been newly equalized and stereo reverb has been applied to it.

6. BOW-TIE DADDY

1968 Mono Mix: The piano seems to be mixed a little louder.

1984 Remix: The remix runs around 1.8% slower.

7. HARRY, YOU’RE A BEAST

1968 Mono Mix: I can’t hear many differences in the main song itself. However, the part with the snorks and the celeste lacks reverb in the mono mix, and the censored verse has been assembled differently. That section has a more natural equalization in the mono, whereas on the stereo mix it’s very midrangey.

1984 Remix: Equalization has been applied to the mid-song break and the uncensored verse is here in all of its perverted glory.

8. WHAT’S THE UGLIEST PART OF YOUR BODY?

1968 Mono Mix: The guitar in the first part of the song is mixed a lot louder. In the second part of the song, the backing vocals are louder, and there is less reverb on the “where did Annie go?” section compared to the stereo mix.

1984 Remix: Do I hear a bad edit at the beginning of the song? It sounds like the first snare-hit is cut. The acoustic guitar that was prominent in the mono has been brought in here as well.

9. ABSOLUTELY FREE

1968 Mono Mix: The mono mix runs approximately 0.5% slower than the stereo version. The background vocals in the song are mixed quite differently, featuring less reverb compared to the stereo mix. The acoustic guitar at the end of the song is a lot more prominent.

1984 Remix: The remix is around 1.5% slower than the original stereo mix. The original drums can be heard quite clearly in the background playing along the new ones. Suzy Creamcheese’s little bit of dialogue at the beginning has been hit by reverb. Several background vocals that were previously mixed out of the original mixes are now audible throughout the song. The various echoing effects (“Flower power sucks!”, “boing”) have been recreated.

10. FLOWER PUNK

1968 Mono Mix: Probably a fold-down. I can’t hear anything different going on.

1984 Remix: The original mixes start with a sound effect that replaced “one” of the beat of the original melody. The remix has the sound effect but it also retrains the original “one”. The remix includes background vocals that were mixed out of the first verse. The “Wild Thing” quotes have been mostly removed: no “punk, I think I love you/I wanna know for sure” on the remix. Additionally, the sound effects during the ending monologues have been altered and are less prominent. Side note: this is where Frank had Arthur Barrow quote “My Sharona” later causing controversy with writer Barry Miles who blamed the bass player for it.

11. HOT POOP

1968 Mono Mix: The reversed censored “Mother People” verse is edited differently. For a lack of better description: on the stereo mix it’s “shut your f- mouth about the length of my hair”, on the mono it sounds like “shut your -kin’ mouth about the length of my hair”.

1984 Remix: As per usual, the reverb on Kellgren’s whispering has been recreated. There is some extra grunting before the line “I wonder what everyone else is whispering about”. The reversed “Mother People” verse and the final snork have been hit by equalization and reverb.

12. NASAL RETENTIVE CALLIOPE MUSIC

1968 Mono Mix: Unsurprisingly, nothing to report.

1984 Remix: This is fascinating; other than being a re-equalized and reverberated version of the original mix, it sounds like it was actually remixed in parts! Either that, or Frank used a different tape for inclusion in the remix. Whatever the case, some of the sound effects are definitely treated differently. For example, compare the section that runs approximately from 0:51” to 1:05”.

13. LET’S MAKE THE WATER TURN BLACK

1968 Mono Mix: Could easily pass for a fold-down but I’m convinced the piano is mixed differently throughout the song. Who knows?

1984 Remix: The remix runs approximately 11% faster. The original drums can be heard in the background so I reiterate my earlier theory that the tape speed change was an attempt to mask their presence. There is a really nice acoustic guitar playing along with the melody of the song which wasn’t present in the original mixes. As per usual, Dick Kunc’s slate and Ronnie Williams’ reversed singing at the end have been equalized and hit with reverb.

14. THE IDIOT BASTARD SON

1968 Mono Mix: Other than running approximately 0.5% slower, the mono mix doesn’t seem to offer anything different and it’s most likely a fold-down.

1984 Remix: The remix rounds around 6% faster. The electric wah-wah guitar, which was prominently mixed in the original version, is mostly absent in this remix, except for the third verse and selected moments in the second half of the song. In its place, there are woodwind instruments accompanying the vocal melody: these were also present on the original mix but were occasionally turned down, whereas here they are present during the whole duration of the song. There is also piano present on the first “try and imagine the window all covered in green” verse, which was not present in the original mix. The mid-song break has received the same fate as the other audio verité moments present on the album (reverb and equalization) as did Gary Kellgren’s whispering after the song (clearer sounding, reconstructed reverb).

15. LONELY LITTLE GIRL

1968 Mono Mix: The acoustic guitars are mixed much louder. The guitar freak-out at the end of the song is edited differently and contains several bits that are not present in the stereo mix.

Mono Single Mix: Released in November 1967. The first part of the song matches the mono mix, until the “so you’re lonely, lonely, lonely little girl”. For that section, the song switches to a completely different take. After a couple of sound effects, the single edits into the complete mono mix of “Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance” (in fact, the single is more “TYCOFWD” than “Lonely Little Girl”). After some more sound effects, the single fades out with the backing track of the original Cucamonga version of “Love of My Life” (as released on “Greasy Love Songs”, track 21) playing at double speed.

1984 Remix: The remix brings in an electric guitar playing along with the melody of the song. The extra bits during the final part of the song present in the mono mix are also here. It also runs a few seconds longer at the end.

16. TAKE YOUR CLOTHES OFF WHEN YOU DANCE

1968 Mono Mix: The vocals are mixed very differently: the falsetto ones in particular are mixed at a louder volume. The final “dlee dlee dlee” is missing. This mix has been used as part of the single version of “Lonely Little Girl”.

1984 Remix: The remix runs approximately 1.5% slower and includes wordless singing along with what on the original mixes was the instrumental break.

17. WHAT’S THE UGLIEST PART OF YOUR BODY? (REPRISE)

1968 Mono Mix: The acoustic guitar is mixed louder and it’s audible for a short time even when the song breaks down.

1984 Remix: At the start of the song Arthur and Chad play the riff that begins the “regular” version of the song instead. The presence of a guitar on that little riff suggests that FZ edited it in from the other version of the song. The remix includes backing vocals during the first verse which were inaudible on all the other mixes. The sound effects at the end are hit by reverb.

18. MOTHER PEOPLE

1968 Mono Mix: The vocals and the guitars are mixed louder in the mono. Additionally, all the vocals are dry, missing the echo present in the stereo. The edit point before the record scratch is at a slightly different spot. This mix was used on the B-side of the “Lonely Little Girl” single.

1984 Remix: The song is, of course, completely uncensored. The acoustic wah wah guitar before the choruses has been muted. The original drums are there in the background but they are well hidden. The edit at the end of the song into the record scratch is crude on the original mixes, but here the final note is left fading out naturally before going into that section.

19. THE CHROME PLATED MEGAPHONE OF DESTINY

1968 Mono Mix: The only difference with the stereo mix is that the last note was faded out more quickly. The rest of the piece is, unsurprisingly, a complete fold-down.

1984 Remix: Aside from the very beginning of the piece, the reverb here is applied very discreetly and Frank didn’t even alter the overall equalization.

Conclusions:

This is unquestionably the most interesting mono mix of the three that were made. Surprisingly, instead of taking the easy route and simply doing a fold down of the stereo mix, Frank decided to invest more time in the mono, resulting in a noticeably different mix with its own peculiarities, including the occasional different edit. It’s a relief that this mix survived in the vault, as it’s the only one that truly deserved to receive a CD release.

Conversely, the 1984 remix is, simply put, a disaster. The sound and the vibe of the new overdubs don’t fit the material and it really sounds like two guys playing along with tracks recorded two decades earlier. The only redeeming qualities of the remix are the lack of censorship and the fact that FZ disregarded many choices made in the original mixes, allowing us to hear several instrument and vocal tracks that were recorded in 1968 but went originally unused. Aside from that, Frank’s approach was an ill advised idea from the get-go and I would recommend it only to hardcore fans who want to hear everything. This is a shame because a well-done remix of the album would bring immense benefits to the music. The backing tracks on “The Lumpy Money Project/Object” sound superb and provide an indication of the kind of approach that could have been taken instead.

An acetate of the album (one side stereo, one side mono) with an early different tracklist, no censorship and unique mixes/edits exists. Unfortunately, the circulating copy is sourced from a cassette tape and not from a direct transfer so sound quality is a bit subpar.

LUMPY GRAVY

Original release dates:

07 August 1967 (Capitol Version, recalled)

13 May 1968 (Verve Version)

Much like its sister album “We’re Only In It For The Money”, “Lumpy Gravy” also had a complex release history. The project began during the “Absolutely Free” sessions when producer Nick Venet approached Zappa about creating an orchestral album for Capitol, offering a budget and studio time. At the time, Frank, along with The Mothers of Invention, was signed to MGM as a recording artist, but his contract supposedly didn’t preclude him from conducting. A master was completed in mid-1967, and Capitol was ready to release it on vinyl, with even a few ads appearing in music magazines. However, before any copies were pressed, MGM raised objections, leading to a legal dispute that indefinitely delayed the album’s release.

The Capitol version of the album did manage to receive a short lived release on an obscure format (4-track tape) before being recalled. Very few copies are known to exist, and even Frank himself said it was the ultimate Zappa collector’s item. It’s so rare that only a couple of those ever ended up on eBay, and we don’t even have access to a direct transfer of the tape. As such, we still aren’t sure of what exactly was on the Capitol 4-track, as there are three different versions of that sequence circulating:

· Mono ¼ analog tape, dated May 19, 1967. Officially released on CD on “The Lumpy Money Project/Object” in 2009. Part One starts with the engineer reading the ID of the tape and a percussive instrumental.

· Stereo acetate from Capitol Records, dated September 18, 1967. Part One starts with the piece of music that will later be known as “King Kong”.

· Mono ¼ analog tape, unknown dating, labeled “Final”. Officially released on vinyl in 2018 as “Lumpy Gravy Primordial”. The beginning of Part One matches the stereo acetate.

Considering its release date and other clues, I would presume that the 4-track tape very likely played the second version of the sequence but, until a direct rip surfaces, we have no way of confirming that.

Originally, the movements were titled as follows:

PART 1:

· Sink Trap

· Gum Joy

· Up and Down

· Local Butcher

PART 2:

· Gypsy Airs

· Hunchy Punchy

· Foamy Soaky

· Let’s Eat Out

· Teenage Grand Finale

The mixes on the stereo acetate match the same sections that were also included on the Verve version, and the mono tapes appear to be fold-downs. Aside from the beginning of Part One, the contents of the two mono tapes seems to be the same, although the later master sounds slightly better.

Eventually, MGM bought the masters from Capitol, and instead of simply re-releasing the album, Frank created a new version of it. This version included most, but not all, of the orchestral music from the Capitol version and integrated it with other material recorded at Studio Z, the Apostolic Blurch Injector, brief fragments by The Mothers of Invention, the infamous piano people (various characters speaking inside of a piano, with the strings resonating with the sound of the voices), and a multitude of other sources. To do so, Frank likely disassembled the original stereo master from the Capitol version, which might explain why no stereo copy of it has been located in the Vault so far.

This second version of the album, which was now conceptually linked to “We’re Only In It For The Money” received a wide release in May 1968. Although the album remained in print until around 1973, it seems to have been somewhat hard to obtain even during that period of time: in an October 1971 interview at KBEY-FM (Kansas City), released as track 7 of disc 3 of “The Lumpy Money Project/Object”, you can hear one of the interviewers lamenting that he couldn’t find a copy. Mono copies were also issued, but unlike the three previous MGM Mothers albums, they were not a dedicated mix.

When in 1984 Zappa prepared a version of the album to be included in “The Old Masters – Box One”, he initially created a third master, recreating the various segues and overdubbing new performances by Arthur Barrow (bass), Chad Wackerman (drums), Jay Anderson (acoustic bass), Ray White and Ike Willis (vocals). A portion of this remix (”Almost Chinese”, “Switching Girls”, “Oh No Again” and “At The Gas Station”) was released on the promotional LP “The Old Masters Box I Sampler”, destined to radio station program directors. However, ultimately, Frank, advised by his sound man Bob Stone, decided against using this new version, and it wasn’t released until 2009 on “The Lumpy Money Project/Object”.

What was eventually included on “The Old Masters – Box One” (April 1985) was, instead, an EQed digital transfer of the original stereo mix with the usual addition of reverb, although in varying amounts and not in every section: for example, the first four minutes of Part One seem to be dry. This was also the version that was released on CD in 1986 as part of the two-fer with “We’re Only In It For The Money”.

When it was time to re-release the album as a standalone, Frank and Spence Chrislu took the same approach as they did for restoring the original mix of “We’re Only In It For The Money”: they created a new master which replicated the flow and the edits of the original by using a wide variety of various sources, including safeties. For the first time, Frank divided the two halves of the album into 22 different movements with new titles. This master was used for the first time in 1995, two years after Frank’s death, and it’s the version of the album available on the 2012 UM edition of the album currently in print. It mostly matches the original vinyl, except for a few sections.

Any track timing referenced on the subsequent analysis is taken from the 2012 UM CD, except where noted:

LUMPY GRAVY - PART ONE

1. The Way I See It, Barry (0:00-0:06)

1984 Remix (0:00-0:07): An omen of things to come: Frank couldn’t leave the iconic spoken opening line of the album alone. There’s an extra pause between “the way I see it” and “Barry” which had been edited out of the original. Just like the other bits of the Piano People around the album, it was hit by reverb which spoils the effects of the strings resonating with the frequencies of the voices.

2. Duodenum (0:06-1:38)

1984 Remix (0:07-1:44): The remix runs approx 6.5% slower. Overdub galore: new bass, drums, and lead vocals by Ray White and Ike Willis with new lyrics related to the Mammy Nuns and Brown Moses, linking this version of the album to “Thing-Fish”, as part of Frank’s project/object philosophy. This piece was originally recorded in Cucamonga around 1963 and seems to have survived only as a mono mixdown: the new overdubs are just playing along with the original, which is volume controlled and hit by a ton of reverb.

3. Oh No (1:38-3:41)

For convenience, we’ll subdivide this movement into three additional parts:

· A short piece of music originally written for the soundtrack of “The World’s Greatest Sinner” (1:39-1:48)

· A piece of music originally written for the soundtrack of “Run Home Slow” (see “Run Home Cues, #2” on “The Lost Episodes”) plus “Oh No” proper (1:48-3:31)

· Coda, recorded by The Mothers Of Invention at Mayfair Studios during the sessions for “We’re Only In It For The Money”. Originally part of “Lonely Little Girl” as can be heard from the circulating acetate (3:31-3:42)

1984 Remix (1:44-3:48): Chad and Arthur continue playing from the previous movement and also overdub section #1. Section #2 runs approximately 0.5% slower and has been completely re-equalized and reverberated but is otherwise the original mix without overdubs. Section #3 jumps back at the correct speed but includes bass overdubs, which sound a little out of key.

1993 Master: Section #2 of the movement is from a mono safety which runs around 0.7% slower with some slight fake stereo ambience on it. The transition to section #3 is a little different and very abrupt, as the soundstage suddenly becomes wide.

4. Bit of Nostalgia (3:41-5:16)

1984 Remix (3:48-5:27): For some reason, Frank reassembled the first part of the movement. The first burst of noise from the Apostolic Blurch Injector doesn’t match the original mix and is instead taken from a later moment on Part One (14:08-14:20). The second burst of noise is the same as on the original mix but is cut short by a snork from, again, later in the program (6:42). I have no clue why Frank decided to do this, but my guess is those sections were damaged on the tapes he was working with, so he decided to replace the source material with something similar that had the overall same effect.

5. It’s From Kansas (5:16-5:18)

1984 Remix (5:27-5:56): No differences to report.

6. Bored Out 90 Over (5:45-6:17)

1984 Remix (5:56-6:27): Motorhead Sherwood’s brief spoken bit comes from a different tape. It’s mono, for one, and although that fragment is too short to make a proper comparison, there are some audio effects in the background which seem to be slightly different.

7. Almost Chinese (6:17-6:42)

1984 Remix (6:27-6:52): More like “almost identical”. The only tiny difference is at the end: the segue into the next movement is slightly more abrupt. In the original version, the final snork was allowed to decay a little more.

8. Switching Girls (6:42-7:11)

1984 Remix (6:52-7:21): Motorhead’s spoken bit at the beginning is mono, whereas on the original mix, it was slightly panned to the left. The orchestral bits at the end feature new bass and drum overdubs.

9. Oh No Again (7:11-8:24)

1984 Remix (7:21-8:34): The entire movement features bass and drum overdubs. Listening to this made me realize that Frank very likely didn’t have access to any multitrack recordings while preparing the remix. It sounds like the new rhythm section is simply playing on top of the existing mix.

10. At The Gas Station (8:24-11:05)

Again, for the sake of convenience, we’ll divide this movement into two halves:

· An orchestral composition based on the coda of “Oh No” (see “Unit 2, Take 9” on “The Lumpy Money Project/Object”) (8:24-9:18)

· An avant-garde piece featuring spoken word by Motorhead Sherwood with people talking, doors slamming, and drums gradually fading in the background (9:18-11:05)

1984 Remix (8:34-11:15): Section #1 features bass and drum overdubs. The original mix here had an extensive use of stereo panning, but here everything sounds like it was folded down to mono and slightly shifted towards the right, with only the new overdubs in proper stereo. The second section also had an interesting use of panning in the original mix: the various elements started in different positions of the soundstage and gradually moved around from left to right. In the remix, everything is in mono, except for the brief burst of “Louie Louie!”.

1993 Master: The beginning of the movement (8:25-8:39) has been patched in from a mono safety tape. Unfortunately, the transition from “Oh No Again” now sounds a bit wonky due to a small fragment at the beginning remaining in stereo, and the safety didn’t run at the correct speed either (approximately 0.5% slower).

11. Another Pickup (11:05-11:59)

1984 Remix (11:15-12:08): Digital reverb has been added, but otherwise, it’s exactly the same.

12. I Don’t Know If I Can Go Through This Again (11:59-15:51)

1984 Remix (12:08-15:56): Again, other than adding digital reverb, the two versions are the same. Side note: I’ve loved this album for ages, and only during this listening comparison I noticed that the final seconds of Part One are at double speed!

LUMPY GRAVY - PART TWO

1. Very Distraughtening (0:00-1:33)

1984 Remix (0:00-1:34): Drums and upright bass have been overdubbed onto this movement, which mostly consists of spoken word. No doubt, this was done in order to make the remix sound more similar to the “Thing-Fish” album, to which this remix seems to be linked. As further proof, some of the new overdubbed backing track matches a section on “Briefcase Boogie”, as evidenced in the clip below. The Piano People elements have been completely re-edited and don’t always match the original version. The movement now ends abruptly after the “Merry Go Round” quotation.

“Very Distraughtening” vs. “Briefcase Boogie”

2. White Ugliness (1:33-3:55)

1984 Remix (1:34-3:55): The transition to the next movement is very slightly longer but I otherwise don’t hear anything different going on.

3. Amen (3:55-5:28)

1984 Remix (3:55-5:28): Seems to be the same as the original mix. Perhaps some digital reverb was added?

1993 Master: The big ending has been patched in from a mono safety.

4. Just One More Time (5:28-6:26)

1984 Remix (5:28-7:55): Another predominantly spoken word bit with bass and drum overdubs. Just like with “Very Distraughtening”, this has been completely re-edited and now runs about a minute and half longer compared to the original. Once again, part of this backing track matches a section of “Briefcase Boogie”. It sounds like the “Lumpy Gravy” remix has an Arthur Barrow bass track, while on “Thing-Fish” FZ used Jay Anderson’s upright bass instead.

“Just One More Time” vs. “Briefcase Boogie”

5. A Vicious Circle (6:26-7:39)

1984 Remix (7:55-9:06): Almost the same, but the segue into the next movement has been slightly shortened. Interestingly, this shorter segue was also used on the 1985 Master of the original mix, which is otherwise the same as the original vinyl (except for the digital reverb).

6. King Kong (7:39-8:21)

1984 Remix (9:06-9:48): Just as I was about to mentally write off the remainder of Part Two as basically the same, Frank throws a curveball. This sounds like a rough mix compared to the original. Everything is similarly positioned but more centered, especially the tambourine. It also runs approximately 0.6% slower.

7. Drums Are Too Noisy (8:21-9:19)

1984 Remix (9:48-10:46): “When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed”

8. Kangaroos (9:19-10:16)

1984 Remix (10:46-11:43): “Say something once, why say it again?”

9. Envelops The Bath Tub (10:16-13:58)

1984 Remix (11:43-15:23): “Same as it ever was… Same as it ever was… Same as it ever was…”

10. Take Your Clothes Off (13:58-15:50)

1984 Remix (15:23-17:16): And again, nothing to report, except for a quicker fade at the end. Aside from overdubbing bass, drums, or Thing-Fish vocals, which he thankfully did not do here, I doubt Frank could have remixed this, as I believe only a mono mixdown of it survives.

Conclusions:

This was a more difficult task than I expected it to be.

The Capitol version of the album is a different beast compared to the later canonical one, and as such, there’s little point in comparing it with the others. All I can offer is a personal assessment, and in my opinion, as an album, it simply doesn’t work as well as the Verve version. I consider the Verve “Lumpy Gravy” one of Frank’s greatest achievements because, despite being a hodge-podge of different material that should never blend well together, it works fantastically well as a cohesive piece. Frank really used “sound” as part of the composition (musique concrete), and more than the dialog itself, it’s the ambiance of the Piano People that makes it interesting. The same goes for the sped-up sections and the Apostolic Blurch Injector sound effects, which are totally missing from the Capitol version and which I love to bits. The original all-instrumental version is certainly an interesting piece of work, and it has some swell bits of music that are absent from the Verve version, most notably the piece that mixes “Oh No” with “Pound for a Brown”, but it also has too much repetition of the same material, and personally, I don’t think it flows as well as the Verve version, although the latter is admittedly more fragmentary. Incidentally, this feels like a good place to mention that the first repetition of the piece known as “At The Gas Station” (”Gum Joy” 1:53-2:34) is actually an alternate take: it sounds very similar, and the differences are subtle, but they’re there. It may be the same as “Unit 2, Take 9” on “The Lumpy Money Project/Object”.

The 1984 Remix is the worst of the ones he did back then. Zappa was notoriously hard-headed when it came to questioning his own decisions, and I think the reason Bob Stone managed to talk him out of releasing it is that he must have realized that it simply didn’t work. The limitation of using mixdown tapes meant that the new overdubs had to be made without access to the multitracks, so those sections just feel like two musicians in a studio warming up playing over a record. Most importantly, though, none of the new additions make any sense, and twist the original album in a bad way. The longer edits of the Piano People would be used to better effect on “Civilization: Phaze III”. As part of an archival release, it’s interesting, but it can’t replace the original, which, again, in my opinion, is one of Frank’s most important albums and a masterwork.

The 1993 Master is, overall, the best sounding version of this title and will likely be a satisfactory option for most listeners. Compared to the original vinyl, it has much more detail and better equalization and, while the 1985 Master wasn’t awful, the unrepentant usage of digital reverb automatically disqualifies it as a go-to version. While the fragments from the mono safeties (same masters as the Primordial Lumpy Gravy released in 2009 and 2018?) bring the thing down a little, the truth is they’re only really noticeable on “Oh No”. In fact, I don’t think before this analysis anyone pointed out that there were other bits not in stereo compared to the original.

Some questions have yet to be answered:

• What are the exact contents on the Capitol 4-track tape? Is it Mono or Stereo?

• There’s a video called “Frank Zappa And The Original Mothers Of Invention” directed and edited by Ed Seemen, released in 1968, which apparently includes Side One of the Capitol Lumpy Gravy as a soundtrack. It has been released on DVD. Anyone who has seen it, can tell us if the soundtrack is Mono or Stereo?

• The 2016 vinyl reissue is said to use a new master that matches the original mix, and is apparently sonically better than any other version. Can anyone confirm that?

CRUISING WITH RUBEN & THE JETS

Original release date: 02 December 1968

The original stereo mix was released in 1968 and remained in print until around 1974. Some non-US copies, for some reason, are missing the song “Deseri”. After being bootlegged for years, the original mix was finally released on CD in 2010 as part of “Greasy Love Songs”.

All mono copies of the album were fold-downs. The only song that was mixed to mono was “Jelly Roll Gum Drop”, which appeared on the flip-side of the “Deseri” single.

Although the original 2-track masters of the album were in good shape, when Zappa regained the rights to the album, he still decided to remix it and replaced the original bass and drum tracks with overdubs by Arthur Barrow, Chad Wackerman, and Jay Anderson. This remix has been the version of the album in print since then, appearing on the vinyl version of the album included in “The Old Masters Box One” and on every CD edition since then. Hence, it’s worth repeating: if you are looking for a legit digital edition of this mix, you must get “Greasy Love Songs”, as any other CD version will give you the overdubbed remix.

The only major difference between the Old Masters vinyl and the CD concerns “Stuff Up The Cracks”. Since the 8-track tapes for the song couldn’t be located in 1984, that song didn’t receive overdubs, and The Old Masters vinyl version simply utilizes a remastered version of the original mix. However, by the time the album was released on CD in 1987, either the multitrack tapes were found, or FZ chose to use an alternate mix because the version that appears on CD is a completely different mix. Oh and nerd alert: the fade-outs have been re-applied on the CD master of the remix and are smoother and very, very slightly shorter (we’re talking about a split second difference or so).

Much like what happened with “We’re Only In It for the Money”, when Zappa remixed this album, he didn’t use the original as a reference. Hence, aside from the new overdubs, the differences between the two mixes are extreme. Instead of mentioning every different placement or positioning in the remix, I’ll concentrate yet again on the presence or absence of elements that were recorded during the original sessions.

1. CHEAP THRILLS

1984 Remix: The remix runs approximately 3.5% slower. The original bass track is still present, although Jay Anderson’s newly recorded upright bass is playing along with it. This may also be true for the original drums, but if they are present, they are well buried in the background.

2. LOVE OF MY LIFE

1984 Remix: The remix is around 0.7% slower. The sound of a crumpled paper sheet during the spoken monologue has been removed: on the “Cheekbone Crush” article that came with the bootleg, they describe it as being altered to sound “like someone dropping a ping-pong ball on a table-tennis table”, but what they are hearing is the attack of one of the notes of the upright bass. While in the original mix, the backing track is muted during the fade-out, leaving only the vocals, in the remix, the overdubbed instruments continue playing.

3. HOW COULD I BE SUCH A FOOL?

1984 Remix: The sound of Ray Collins smacking his lips before starting to sing has been removed. The piano fades out during the first verse, whereas in the original mix, it continues playing throughout. There’s a rhythm guitar playing along that wasn’t present in the original mix. Different background vocals have been used on the choruses: in the original mix, it sounds like Collins and Estrada, whereas in the remix, it’s clearly Zappa. The guitar soloing during the coda starts earlier in the remix, but the rhythm guitar has been muted. The fade-out is slightly longer and smoother.

An interesting comment from Pat Buzby:

“Trivia note: apparently the fretless bass on the “How Could I Be Such A Fool” remix was Patrick O’Hearn. As I recall Charles Ulrich heard from Barrow that Barrow did not play it, and asked O’Hearn on email about that part and O’Hearn replied that it “rang a bell” or something else to indicate that he wasn’t positive but that it may have been him.”

4. DESERI

1984 Remix: The remix is around 1.5% slower. Zappa’s acoustic rhythm guitar has been mostly removed. A flute playing during the verses, which was absent from the original mix, can be heard here. Two mistakes in the vocal tracks from the original mix have been removed: one in the backing vocals at the beginning of the song and the other one during the spoken monologue. In the original mix, the band stops playing mid-through the fade-out, whereas in the remix, the new drums continue playing and fade out alone at the end.

5. I’M NOT SATISFIED

1984 Remix: The remix is approximately 0.5% slower. The original mix had two guitar tracks: one rhythm guitar and another one that doubled some of the phrases at an octave higher. The remix retains only the latter. The sax is used in different parts of the song: you can now hear it on the first verse but not on the chorus, whereas on the original mix it was the opposite. The fade-out is much longer and smoother: in the original mix, everything starts to fade out together, but the backing track and backing vocals are abruptly muted, leaving only the lead vocal, which naturally fades out in the remix.

6. JELLY ROLL GUM DROP

1968 Mono Single Mix: The acoustic guitar is louder, and there’s a timpani track during the chorus that is not present in the original mix. Some different ad-libs later used on the CD edition are also heard here, but they are mixed low. The fade-out is longer than any other mix, and it reveals the actual ending of the take.

1984 Remix: The remix runs around 1.5% slower than the original mix. The song starts at 4 of the beat instead of 1. As mentioned, different vocal ad-libs have been used throughout the song. The saxes have been mixed out. Other than Barrow’s new funky bass, the original bass track can also be heard in the mix. Longer fade out at the end.

7. ANYTHING

1984 Remix: FZ didn’t replace the original bass track on the remix. There are more backing vocal tracks mixed in. In general, the backing vocals are presented differently on the remix. The fade out is also longer.

8. LATER THAT NIGHT

1984 Remix: The remix runs approximately 1% slower. The remix opens with an extra phrase of the main theme: it’s not a loop but a longer edit. The song ends earlier and the final lines (“There’s no room to breath in here/That’s right, honey, you can come out of the closet, now”) have been removed. I don’t think this is self-censorship as suggested in the Cheekbone Crush article, as they are still present in the lyric sheet. Oh and yes, the tambourine track is the same on both mixes.

9. YOU DIDN’T TRY TO CALL ME

1984 Remix: More electric rhythm guitar tracks are mixed in compared to the original mix. During the first burst of soloing, the original mix appears to combine two lead guitars, whereas the remix retains only the main one. The remix also includes backing vocals on the final verse that were absent in the original mix. The fade-out is longer.

10. FOUNTAIN OF LOVE

1984 Remix: The remix runs approximately 1.5% slower compared to the original and it starts with a slate recorded during the original sessions where you can hear Dick Kunc’s voice and a count-in (likely Ian Underwood). There are additional background vocal tracks that were not present in the original mix, especially noticeable before the choruses. The fade-out is considerably longer.

11. “NO. NO. NO”

1984 Remix: The remix starts on 3 of the beat, as opposed to the original who started on 1. The song is edited differently compared to the original vinyl: as a reference, listen to the long and probably uncut version on “Greasy Love Songs” (track 15). The remix includes extra bars between the verses, and while the original vinyl had the third verse sung twice, the remix only retains the second performance.

12. ANYWAY THE WIND BLOWS

1984 Remix: The remix runs around 1% slower. Zappa removed the saxophone from the remix and didn’t let Chad play at the very beginning of the song, so the remix starts with the vocals acappella. A keyboard part that was absent from the original mix has been mixed in during the verses. The fade-out is a few seconds longer.

13. STUFF UP THE CRACKS

CD Mix: The original mix mostly used one drum track only on the right channel and slightly turned up the second drummer only at the end of the song. In the CD remix, both drummers are panned to the right and left channels and can be heard throughout the song. There’s some sax soloing over the first verse that was missing on the original mix. The guitar solo gets faded in sooner on the remix and it’s extended: the part from 2:59” to 3:05” on the CD is not present on the vinyl. Not a bad mix at all and it sounds vintage enough: if FZ really wanted to remix the whole album he could have done something like this instead. But hey, are you the one who is going to volunteer to tell Frank Zappa what he should do?

Note that while most of the original vinyl copies had a bad tape wobble at the beginning of the song, neither the remix or “Greasy Love Songs” have this anomaly.

Conclusions:

While the idea of slapping 80s tracks on a 60s hommage to 50s doo-wop (!) is messed up to say the least, I somehow find this remix to be not as horrible as the “We’re Only In It For The Money” one. This time there was, at least, an attempt to integrate the new drums and bass into the mix, although the ending result is still far from being desirable. It’s worth noting that the new overdubs are played in a completely different style compared to the originals: in the original mix, the bass was not very present, and the drums often sounded like loops while on the remix, the new players adopt a more straightforward approach. Once again, we are treated to the addition of instrument and vocal tracks that date from the original sessions but weren’t used in the original mix, and some of them are pretty neat. On the other hand, the 80s production and the new overdubs don’t fit the music at all, and this is probably the album where it makes the least sense to do something like that.

If you haven’t heard this album, buy “Greasy Love Songs” instead: it sounds good enough and it also includes a few enjoyable bonuses that won’t overwhelm newcomers. Get the remix only if you really like this album and want to have an alternative perspective on it.

MOTHERMANIA

Original release date: 24 March 1969

The last album distributed by Verve/MGM was this compilation, assembled by Zappa himself. To create the tracklist, Frank chose 11 tracks from the first three albums, excluding anything from “Cruising with Ruben & The Jets”. While assembling the master, FZ decided to revisit some of the songs, either remixing them with newer, more sophisticated mixes or removing censorship he had been forced to apply. “Mothermania” remained in print until around 1976 and then became unavailable for decades. It wasn’t part of the CD reissue campaign and, because of that, it was often bootlegged. It was finally released as a lossless digital download in 2009, before receiving its first legit CD reissue in 2012.

Due to censorship in Spain, the album wasn’t released there until 1974 and, when it did, it had a different track order. Three songs (”Brown Shoes Don’t Make It”, “Mother People” and “The Duke of Prunes”) were replaced by “Who Needs the Peace Corps?” and “Concentration Moon” from the heavily censored version of “We’re Only in It for the Money”.

After Zappa left the label, Verve/MGM issued a plethora of compilations over the years (”The **** of the Mothers”, “The Worst of the Mothers”, “The Mothers of Invention”, “Pregnant”, “Transparency”, “Mother’s Day”, “Pop History”, “Frank Zappa y The Mothers of Invention”, “Pop Giants”, “Superstarshine”). These compilations offer no unique material and most of them, especially the ones created for the European market, tend to feature the heavily censored edits of the “We’re Only in It for the Money” songs.

1. BROWN SHOES DON’T MAKE IT

This track, along with all the others from “Absolutely Free”, is presented in its original mix, with no mixing differences whatsoever. As mentioned previously, Frank did remix a few of the “Absolutely Free” songs in 1969, but none of those new mixes were used at the time.

2. MOTHER PEOPLE

Alternate mono mix, similar to the mono version of “We’re Only In It For The Money”. This mix runs around 0.5% faster compared to the album and it’s overall more compressed. The song is completely uncensored and this is the only official release where you can find the missing verse with the original bass and drums.

3. THE DUKE OF PRUNES

See “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It”. This selection includes the complete suite (”Duke of Prunes”, “Amnesia Vivace” and “The Duke Regains His Chops”).

4. CALL ANY VEGETABLE

See “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It”. Again, it includes the complete suite (”Call Any Vegetable”, “Invocation and Ritual Dance of the Young Pumpkin” and “Soft-Sell Conclusion”), although the part with the solos has been edited out.

5. THE IDIOT BASTARD SON

Alternate mono mix and edit, runs around 4.5% faster compared to the stereo mix of “We’re Only In It For The Money”. This version doesn’t include the interlude in the middle of the song nor Gary Kellgren’s whispering at the end. There’s a piano, timpani and vibes intro that has been cut out of the original album. I hear vocal harmonies during the first verse that were absent on the original mixes. Acoustic guitars and winds higher in the mix. No electric guitar during the penultimate verse compared to the original mix. The final verse includes some nice piano that was buried on the original mix. There are also fewer snorks. Reverb has been applied to the end of the song.

6. IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE

Completely remixed and re-edited. The stereo placement of the vocals is different and there’s no avant-garde jazzy middle section. The song is uncensored and the very end has been looped.

7. YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING WHY I’M HERE

New dry mix. Guitars and drums on the left, bass, vocals and kazoo on the center, piano, vibes and tambourine on the right. Just like the other “Freak Out!” remixes, these new mixes aren’t as hard panned as the originals and sound more natural.

8. WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE?

New mix, drier than the original. The distortion problems that plagued the original mix are absent here. Piano, timpani, and percussion on the left, bass, vocals, and kazoo in the center, drums and guitar on the right. The guitar and drums at the beginning of the song move around the stereo field. The reverb effects (“home”, “chrome”, “off”…) have been re-created. During the middle section, the timpani percussion is higher and clearer. It fades out later than both the original stereo and mono mixes (but not the 1987 remix).

9. PLASTIC PEOPLE

See “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It”. Note that the CD edition of “Absolutely Free” includes some tape damage on this song so, if you source it from “Mothermania” you can assemble a great sounding clean version of the album.

10. HUNGRY FREAKS, DADDY

Another new mix. Tambourine, vibes and piano on the left, vocals and kazoo in the center, bass, drums and guitars on the right. No echo on the vocals on “the great society!”.

11. AMERICA DRINKS & GOES HOME

See “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It”.

Conclusions:

This is about the only essential Zappa compilation for fans (except for “Have I Offended Someone?”). Since it was assembled by Frank himself, it works as a sequence better than any of the other Verve/MGG compilations and, of course, the inclusion of unique material makes it very palatable.

The uncensored tracks are worth the price of the album alone, and all the alternate mixes are good: the “Freak Out!” ones could even be the definitive versions of those songs, except arguably for “Who Are The Brain Police?”, which trades much more clarity for less “ugly” impact. Although the “We’re Only In It For The Money” alternate mixes also sound really good, given that both are mono, I believe these may have been rough mixes made during the development of the album rather than new ones made in 1969. Johnny came up with an interesting explanation about why that may happened:

“FZ likely had access to the “Money” multi-tracks. It’s a 12-track machine to PLAY the tapes that he wouldn’t have had access to. It was an extremely rare machine even then, and Frank was working 3,000 miles away from Apostolic in 69, if it even still existed and/or still had that machine by then. That’s the most sensible explanation IMO as to why he would have used mono roughs in order to utilize uncensored versions for that album.”

With the album now readily available and back in print, there is no reason not to own it, even if you already have all the albums this material originally appeared on!

Folks, for this week, family stuff prevented me from finishing any of the pieces that I’ve been working on, so with your kind permission, I’d like to dive in once again into two of my favorite Zappa performances.

Some of you know that I live in Waterbury, Connecticut. Waterbury is a small city (not so affectionately known as the “Dirty Water”), with nothing particularly special to recommend it apart from the fact that Waterbury boasts a theater that was one of the more notable northern East Coast rock venues of the 1970s, the Palace Theater. The Palace is your typical small theater. At capacity it seats about 2500 people. The intimate nature of it made the Palace a popular stop over for mid-level touring acts back in the 70s.

And there were some very notable concerts that happened in this town. Bob Dylan played one of his legendary Rolling Thunder Revue shows here. The Ramones played their first show outside of New York City here in 1976, opening for Johnny Winter of all people (and getting booed off stage). Pink Floyd played here very shortly after The Dark Side Of The Moon was released. Queen played here on their first and second US tours. The Grateful Dead played a couple of very long and brilliant shows here during what was arguably their live peak in 1972.

Like a lot of musicians that preferred to have the complete attention of their audience, Frank Zappa liked to play shows in smaller venues. Frank believed that the finer details in his music got lost in bigger venues, and he was probably right. Even on his final tour in 1988, Frank played mostly in theater or small arena venues, with the only big arena gig being the very last show that he ever played in the United States, at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.

One venue that Frank visited several times between 1972 and 1975 was Waterbury’s humble Palace Theater. His last couple appearances at the Palace were sort of warm-up gigs for the bigger New York City Halloween shows, and much like those New York performances, the vibe at the Waterbury shows had a bit of extra energy to it. By all accounts, Frank always seemed like he was in a good mood in Waterbury.

Frank first played in Waterbury on November 1st, 1972. He was touring with the version of the Mothers known as the Petite Wazoo, on a bill that had Tim Buckley opening. While no complete tape of this show has ever surfaced, we know that Frank recorded it on his four-track setup, and this show still exists in the Zappa Vault, as “Imaginary Diseases” from the show was released as the title track of the 2006 album compiled from recordings of this tour.

A little over a year later on November 16, 1973, Frank played for the second time at the Palace. Sadly, there is no known recording of this performance. We have only a fragmentary recording of the October 28, 1974 Waterbury show, which features the band performing the “Yellow Snow” suite. Presumably the rest of it was recorded, though this may be all that survives from this show.

The 1975 performances in Waterbury would be, unfortunately, Frank’s last. But as the audience tapes below prove, they were some fun gigs. It’s probable that at least some of Frank’s fans from the greater New York area made the drive north for this show, and there is a wild atmosphere that pervades throughout the performance. Watch out in the early show performance is “Stinkfoot” for Frank’s reference to Holy Land, U.S.A., a sort of semi-decrepit religious monument/park that still can be seen on the hill overlooking the city as you’re passing through on the highway to this day.

So for this week, I give you the only complete recordings I know of to exist of Frank’s performances in my home city of Waterbury. Enjoy!

October 29, 1975
Palace Theater, Waterbury, CT (early show)
88 minutes, AUD, A-/B

Naval Aviation In Art? (intro tape) (1:40)
Stinkfoot (10:39)
Dirty Love (3:49)
How Could I Be Such A Fool (4:22)
I Ain’t Got No Heart (2:26)
I’m Not Satisfied (1:46)
Black Napkins (incl. Tryin‘ To Grow A Chin) (7:35)
Advance Romance (9:46)
Honey, Don’t You Want A Man Like Me? (3:56)
The Illinois Enema Bandit (17:04)
Carolina Hard-Core Ecstasy (5:52)
Lonely Little Girl (2:42)
Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance (2:09)
What’s The Ugliest Part Of Your Body? (1:08)
Chunga’s Revenge (12:56)

Not too far from the very place Your Humble Author is typing these words lies the ancient and venerable Palace Theater of Waterbury, Connecticut. This particular Groovy Old Building hosted a large number of concerts by Important Rock Acts, and on this evening Frank Zappa and his Mothers Of Invention are here to whip two big shows on the local Zappa-loving contingent. The early show comes through the years to us in the form of an excellent audience tape, crystal clear and a contender for best recording of this type from this era. Unfortunately it is incomplete, requiring a second recording (not as good but still decent) to complete it. With this as the last stop before the Halloween New York City extravaganza, the band is ready to whip out a few surprises, tasty treats for the fans who have been following the group around of late.

As is often the case with these early shows, this one is tightly paced. The recording begins with the “Naval Aviation In Art?” intro tape, and Napoleon is already onstage and making his monster noises into the mic before it ends. The usual blues jam starts the night, and abbreviated solos from André and Napoleon entertain the crowd before FZ arrives. After checking his guitar and introducing the band (tonight FZ is apparently 1940s character actor Cecil Kellaway), the audience is delighted to recognize the “Stinkfoot” opener. FZ draws some applause from the locals with a mention of local attraction Holy Land USA (a hilltop monument famous for its huge crucifix, easily visible from the highway). FZ’s closing solo is a very serious affair indeed, gloriously menacing and going much further afield than most of his “Stinkfoot” outings. This is going to be a serious evening for FZ’s guitar.

Monitor issues -- mostly related to the fact that the mixing console has to be setup on the side of the venue -- are addressed before and after “Dirty Love” The attempt to rectify these problems results in feedback marring the start of “How Could I Be Such A Fool”. Everything is copasetic for the remainder of the Freak Out! medley however, and the PA hassles do not dampen FZ’s good mood. Feedback and hum return for the start of “Black Napkins”, and FZ is moved -- perhaps as a stall tactic -- to recite the first verse of a brand new song, “Tryin’ To Grow A Chin”. This tune will soon become a full-blown vocal extravaganza for little skinny Terry Ted Bozzio, but here it is simply a recitation before FZ breaks into another deep solo on this still-untitled tune. He plays around with some ‘ugly notes’ at one point, though this sounds more like he made a mistake and was trying to salvage something out of it.

“Advance Romance” is longer than usual, with FZ raging so mightily on his SG in the solo that his guitar is quite out of tune before the end. A slight miscue occurs over the final chorus, possibly as a result of the continuing monitor problems. Despite this, “Honey, Don’t You Want A Man Like Me?’ is strong and proves popular with the crowd.

In lieu of solos, “The Illinois Enema Bandit” features a new routine tonight. A young audience member by the name of Kelly Bruckner (from Stonington High School -- anyone know her?) gets to come onstage and pretend to be the Enema Bandit’s (played by Roy, with assistance from Napoleon) victim. Kelly is tied up with wire and forced to lay down on stage while Roy and Napoleon “administer” to her. It appears that this as far as the routine gets, although Kelly is a good sport about it all, even offering to hop her way offstage without being untied.

The vacuum left by the lack of a solo in “The Illinois Enema Bandit” is filled neatly by an electrifying outing in “Carolina Hard-Core Ecstasy”. This is cut short by FZ before it properly resolves, for reasons unknown. The band then works through the fun of the We’re Only In It For The Money medley (with FZ flubbing the end of his ‘solo’ in “Lonely Little Girl”) and on into “Chunga’s Revenge”.

Napoleon gets all wrapped up in his Echoplex-enhanced sax squealing to start the solo cycle; this gives way to André and his Melodica, and FZ covers for him while he prepares the instrument. Interestingly, he is something of a Melodica virtuoso; he could probably play the entire solo without a switch to the Mini-Moog and all would be just dandy. In any case, his Mini-Moog solo consists of little more than a single, piercing note. Terry’s usual Animal-esque (the Muppet character, that is) drum bashing has been moved to third in the line of “Chunga” solos tonight; this appears to be due to time constraints as FZ brings the main set to a close following this without a guitar solo. If there was an encore, the tapes do not tell the tale. See you back here for the late show!

During “Stinkfoot”:
FZ: Good evening ladies and gents, welcome to the Mothers Of Invention Waterbury, Connecticut extravaganza 1975, which features -- for your dancing and listening pleasure --Napoleon Murphy Brock on tenor sax and lead vocals. The dynamic André Lewis on keyboards and thing that he blows in the middle of the show, little skinny Terry Ted Bozzio on drums, Roy Ralph Moleman Guacamole de Managua Estrada on bass. And yours truly, Cecil Kellaway on guitar. And now…

Before “Dirty Love”:
FZ: And now we have another song that deals with the relationship between good dog and your Mom. And we also have a -- just a slight, just a slight twinge of a midrange ring in the monitor here, it seems to be located somewhere around 500 cycles. Maybe you could d -- yeah, that’s a lot better. Just pull it down a little bit, right around 500 cycles. A little lower. Hellooooo. That’s better. Yes.

Before “How Could I Be Such A Fool”:
FZ: Now wait just a moment, all the time while the poodle has been biting and chewing it and everything, we have been experiencing a drastic reduction in the overall presence of the monitor system up here. I know it’s very difficult to function in this hall because of the fact that the mixer is over there on the side, he can’t tell what you’re hearing out there, and he has certainly no idea what we’ve got up here. But you can reduce the level of the drum monitor a little bit, and that would help us. Just a nerd. And while we, while we smooth into another song of ancient vintage, this one extracted from the Ruben & The Jets album. The name of this song is “How” -- and I mean to apply this to each and every one of you -- “How Could I Be Such A Fool”.

Before “Black Napkins (incl. Tryin‘ To Grow A Chin)”:
FZ: Thank you.

Before “Honey, Don’t You Want A Man Like Me?”
FZ: The name of this song is “Honey, Don’t You Want A Man Like Me?”

Before “The Illinois Enema Bandit”:
FZ: Alright, now this is another -- bring the band on down behind me boys. This is another sad but true song. This is the story of the legendary Illinois Enema Bandit. Has anybody here ever heard of the Illinois Enema Bandit? You have. Who has not heard about the Illinois Enema Bandit? Alright, I’ll tell you about the Bandit so that you’ll all know what’s going on. This is a real guy in a town called Bloomington, Illinois. It was written up in the Police Gazette and in newspapers across the country. If you read the little articles in the papers, you might have seen something about this guy. What he does is he puts on a ski mask, and he breaks into the homes of college-educated women with a briefcase, he’s got a little pistol, and in his briefcase he’s got an enema bag and a thermometer and some rope. He gets in there and he points the gun at these college-educated women. And he makes them lay down; he ties them up face down on a bed or something. And then he takes their temperature, he makes sure that they’re OK, and then he runs into the bathroom, he fills the bag up -- this gurgling, pinkish sort of a bag -- he fills it up with tepid water, and then he dashes back into the main arena, and spreads ‘em like that and it’s GOING IN! He rams it right in there and stands by -- stands by in sort of a testifying kind of a pose -- he’s holding the bag, pumps ‘em, pumps ‘em up with about a quart and a half -- -- give it to ‘em right there. And then when they’re all filled up he pulls it out, lets ‘em go to the toilet and poot it out. Meanwhile, he’s jerking off all over himself. And then --sounds like somebody over there is doing the same thing! Want a napkin? OK. Anyway, really it’s a lot of fun; try it on your friends. They caught this guy, finally caught him, his name is Michael Kenyon, and he’s going to have to stand trial in Bloomington. I believe the charge is going to be “rape with a foreign object”. The question of the day is does it constitute rape if you give a college-educated woman an enema? Some of us think perhaps not. The worst has already been done at school. And here’s the song.

After “Chunga‘s Revenge”:
FZ: Napoleon Murphy Brock on tenor sax and lead vocals, André Lewis on keyboards and things that he blows in the middle of the show, little skinny Terry Ted Bozzio on drums, Roy Ralph Moleman Guacamole The Man With One Leg Estrada on bass. Thank you very much for coming to the concert; hope you enjoyed it, and goodnight.

October 29, 1975
Palace Theater, Waterbury, CT (late show)
125 minutes, AUD, B/B-

Naval Aviation In Art? (intro tape) (1:23)
Stinkfoot (12:17)
Dirty Love (2:23)
Sleep Dirt (8:12)
How Could I Be Such A Fool (4:18)
Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up (2:46)
I Ain’t Got No Heart (2:28)
I’m Not Satisfied (1:58)
Black Napkins (6:17)
Honey, Don’t You Want A Man Like Me? (3:45)
The Illinois Enema Bandit (8:46)
Carolina Hard-Core Ecstasy (6:20)
Lonely Little Girl (2:24)
Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance (2:10)
What’s The Ugliest Part Of Your Body? (1:05)
Chunga’s Revenge (Incl. Sy Borg, Tryin‘ To Grow A Chin, Wipe Out) (23:38)
Zoot Allures (7:00)
Swallow My Pride (4:26)
Any Downers? (7:28)
Packard Goose (3:40)
I’m The Slime (5:10)
Camarillo Brillo (3:10)
Muffin Man (3:58)

The late show in Waterbury’s fabulous Palace is preserved for general eternity on an audience tape which, unfortunately, is nowhere near as good as the recording of the early show. The worst parts of the recording suffer from slight amounts of distortion. It is still fairly listenable however, and the band is certainly pumped up and ready to deliver the goods tonight.

The tape begins with the “Naval Aviation In Art” tape once again, with Napoleon accompanying this with his guttural growling. The ensemble then alights into dem ol’ “Stinkfoot” blues, keeping the crowd entertained until FZ makes his Grand Entrance onto the stage. For this show, he introduces himself as Wendell Willkie, a man most famous for losing to Franklin D. Roosevelt as the Republican nominee for President of the United States in 1940.

FZ’s “Stinkfoot” solo is a slow builder, taking its sweet time to mutate from a rather light blues outing to some Hungarian Minor-infused weirdness. The solo ends with a quote from a piece known to fans as “Mystery Tune”, an apparently untitled and possibly unrecorded instrumental that would occasionally pop up on Zappa recordings over the next several years. “Dirty Love” is cut midway through the second verse, and it isn’t until midway through the third verse that we return to the action.

Breaking from the usual program sequence, FZ directs the band into “Sleep Dirt”, the final known live version of this piece (it will be revived in 1988, but it will never make it out of rehearsals). This is probably the most gorgeous live version of this piece available, which has now lost favor in the live set in favor of the melodically not dissimilar “Black Napkins”. This is the sort of composition that encourages the soloists (Napoleon, André and FZ) to approach it with a different mindset, and all three are well up to the challenge.

We are then off into the Freak Out! medley. Following “How Could I Be Such A Fool”, the band breaks into “I Ain’t Got No Heart”, apparently not looking at their setlists as FZ has planned another surprise for the Waterbury faithful. He then leads them into “Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up”, another last-known version for this tour (it will be revived in 1980). This version is as pleasing as ever, but apparently there is no longer room in the program for this obscure (at the time) oldie. The crowd seems familiar with it however, and laps it up.

The Freak Out! medley then continues as scheduled with “I Ain’t Got No Heart” and “I’m Not Satisfied” before we land into the next stretch of guitar wrangling with “Black Napkins”. Although some clarity and detail is lost in the echo of the Palace, this is an absolutely brilliant, fleet-fingered exercise, and the crowd goes deservedly nuts at the end of it. “Honey, Don’t You Want A Man Like Me” is also quite popular with the crowd, though it is cut near the start with only a tiny bit missing.

FZ‘s solo in “The Illinois Enema Bandit” starts with him referencing the “Spoonful” riff, and this is the starting point for one of the more lyrical workouts he would whip out on this tune. Over the final chorus, FZ is amused by Napoleon’s ad lib of “tushy, tushy”, prompting him to comment “you’ve been hanging out with Beefheart too long!“ There is apparently some audience interaction during the verses in “Carolina Hard-Core Ecstasy”. He stays in lyrical mode for the subsequent solo, soaring heroically over the steady support of Terry’s drums. Unfortunately, there is another small tape cut just after the start of the solo. This section of new and recent material empties out into the We’re Only In It For The Money medley, with FZ providing some nice variations in the “Lonely Little Girl” solo.

At this point, we get what must be the high point of this show -- and one of the high points of the tour so far: the definitive monster version (for this era) of “Chunga’s Revenge”. Pushing 25 minutes, this is the longest version of this soloing vehicle the band has played so far, and it’s a doozy -- everyone is at their peak here. First up we get a powerful and dynamic Napoleon solo that incorporates all the tricks he has up his sleeve, building to an ecstatic, almost Volcanic finish. As André begins another fine Melodica workout, FZ indulges in some rhythmic riffing that sounds a bit like André Williams’ “Bacon Fat” (a longtime favorite of FZ). This is a short solo for André, and it appears that he does not go to the Mini-Moog to finish it off.

FZ’s solo is one of the longest of the tour, and no time is wasted in getting right down to it. He starts off with a gentle pass through the “Sy Borg” melody before leading the band through an instrumental version of “Tryin’ To Grow A Chin”, the lyrics to which he had recited in the early show. This breaks down to abstract lines played against an almost non-existent backing, with FZ randomly drifting in and out of modes and melodies. At one point the touches on “Blessed Relief” from the 1972 album The Grand Wazoo, and this merges back into more mangled references to “Sy Borg”. This leads into a snatch of “Ship Ahoy”, and by this time the rest of the band is completely silent, letting the man do his thing.

The band charges back in when FZ thrusts forward with some heavy metal riffs, and this leads into a single-chord blues workout with Our Hero brilliantly continuing his mind-bending wailing. Again this breaks down into a bit of Hungarian Minor before FZ’s guitar finally goes silent. After this pregnant pause, he kicks into the “Wipe Out” riff, the signal for a most energetic Terry Bozzio drum clinic. Unfortunately, bits are this are lost owing to a pair of tape cuts. Regardless, this is a “Chunga” for the ages, and it must be heard by anyone with even a passing interest in Frank Zappa’s live performance art.

But FZ is not through with his guitar explorations. The band moves into “Zoot Allures”, and almost as soon as the solo starts, everyone else onstage has largely given up trying to follow The Maestro. Minimal accompaniment is a major advantage in that FZ is allowed to go wherever his mile-a minute mind wants to take him, and so he wanders all over the place here without landing on a single solid idea. This is, without doubt, some of the finest and more exhaustive guitar explorations that he would indulge in during his career.

Suddenly, the mood is broken as FZ bursts into “Swallow My Pride”. After spending the last half hour-plus in the stratosphere, this is a nice bit of contrast and relief for the audience. It is also the main set closer tonight, taking the audience out on an upbeat note. Despite the calls from the audience for “Dinah-Moe-Humm”, “Big Swifty” and other tunes this band doesn’t know, FZ opens the encore with “Any Downers?” For the most part, this is a showcase for the antics of Roy and Napoleon, doing their usual drug-addled routine. Despite FZ’s cranking up with his usual heavily-metallic riffage (shades of secret FZ favorite Black Sabbath), there is no guitar solo on this tune tonight.

Instead we get a real treat: a full-blown rendition of “Packard Goose”, the lyrics to which FZ has recited earlier on this tour. He dedicates the song to “everyone who writes for a rock and roll newspaper”, he sings what would become the basic melody of the song over a variation of the “Any Downers?” vamp. The lyrics are quite a bit different, but the message is the same -- the song has now become a scathing commentary on rock and roll journalism, and would become even more scathing as the lyrics were refined over the next few years.

Noting that he can’t think of anything else to say to the rock journalism contingent, FZ jumps into “I’m The Slime” to cheers from the just plain folks of Waterbury. Something grabs his attention at one point, causing him to alter one line to “eat the cucumbers that I feed you”. His solo touches on the jazz standard “Little Coquette” and his own “Willie The Pimp”, and is partially played unaccompanied once again. The crowd goes even crazier for the solid “Camarillo Brillo” that follows, with another tape cut losing a small piece near the end. “Muffin Man” closes out the evening with another brief but ferocious FZ solo. Sadly, this was the final occasion in which FZ would play in Waterbury -- his Connecticut gigs would be in the bigger cities of Hartford and New Haven from here on out.

During “Stinkfoot”:
FZ: Good evening ladies and gents, welcome to the Mothers Of Invention extravaganza number two for Waterbury, Connecticut 1975, featuring the dynamic and ubiquitous Napoleon Murphy Brock on tenor sax and lead vocals, André Lewis on keyboards and thing that he blows in the middle of the show, little skinny Terry Ted Direct From The Jazz World, Bowtie And (…) All Over His Body Bozzio on drums ladies and gentlemen, Roy Ralph (…) Managua (…) Jesus Mendoza de la Guacamole Estrada on bass. And yours truly, Wendell Willkie on guitar. And furthermore…

Before “Dirty Love”:
FZ: And now another song in the, in the (…). Oh thank you, music lovers. This is being brought to you direct from the Over-Nite Sensation album (…), and this is a song that I really enjoy singing because I hope that one day it will do some good.

Before “Sleep Dirt”:
FZ: Now in this episode, where the poodle is biting and chewing and everything, we are going to play a song that might be suitable for -- let’s see, hold it. What’s the most tasteful (…)? This, this song is suitable (…) purposes, if you know what that is.

Before “How Could I Be Such A Fool”:
FZ: More, (…).
Before “Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up”:
FZ: No no, I was gonna give you a surprise. It goes like this.

Before “Black Napkins”:
FZ: Thank you!

Before “Honey, Don’t You Want A Man Like Me?”
FZ: And now, “Honey, Don’t You Want A Man Like Me?”

Before “The Illinois Enema Bandit”:
FZ: And now, once again, the terrible true story of “The Illinois Enema Bandit”. For those of you who might not have heard of the Bandit, here is the complete package of information. In Bloomington, Illinois there‘s a guy that‘s running around with a ski mask on, and a little pistol and a briefcase. And in the p -- and in the briefcase he’s got an enema bag, a thermometer and some rope. And he would break into the homes of college-educated women and (…) and he’d go “OK, lay down” and he’d tie these chicks up, take their temperature, go into the bathroom, fill up the bag up with tepid water, and then he dash back to his victim, (makes various water-glugging noises) it’s GOING IN! (more glugging noises), lets them p -- lets them poot it out, jacks off a little bit and then leaves. (…) We’re trying, we’re trying to make him famous now. His name is Michael Kenyon, and he is going to have to stand trial. You can read about it in the newspapers. This -- the trial is coming up here pretty quick. And this is, uh, the story about him, “The Ballad Of The Illinois Enema Bandit”.

Before “Lonely Little Girl”:
FZ: Well, here we go again.

After “Swallow My Pride”:
FZ: Napoleon Murphy Brock on tenor sax, lead vocals and (…), André Lewis on keyboards and thing that he blows in the middle of the show, little skinny Terry Bozzio on drums, Roy Ralph Moleman Guacamole Managua Estrada on bass. Thank you very much for coming to the concert; hope you enjoyed it, and goodnight.

After “Muffin Man”:
FZ: Hey listen. Before we (…) everything up, I’d like to announce that tonight is Sydney’s birthday. Sydney is the man that has driven us up here from New York, working real hard to make sure (…) the show. And I would appreciate it if you all would just give around of applause for Sydney because it is his birthday. (…). Meanwhile, you have been listening tonight to the golden tongues of Napoleon Murphy Brock on tenor sax, lead vocals and stuff that he (…), André Lewis on keyboards and thing that he blows in the middle of the show. Where’s Sydney? Come here, Sydney. Happy birthday man! Little skinny Terry Ted Bozzio on drums, Roy Ralph Guacamole Estrada, the man who (…) Estrada on electric bass. And yours truly, (Stompin’?) Sydney on guitar. Thank you very much.

Folks, for this week, we have another excerpt from my forthcoming 20th Anniversary updated/re-imagined version of my first book, Hungry Freaks Daddy. This one focuses on the first day of sessions for the first Mothers album, Freak Out! As we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the release of this seminal record, I thought it would be good to look into the various material available from this first day of sessions and where you can find it all. In researching for this piece, I am indebted to Jacopo Muneratti for his superb article analyzing the various mixes of the tracks from the MGM/Verve albums, which I am hoping to bring to you in full here soon.

March 8, 1966

TTG Studios, Los Angeles, CA
144 minutes, A

Any Way The Wind Blows (Basic Tracks) (2:48)
Any Way The Wind Blows (1966 Stereo Mix) (2:55)
Any Way The Wind Blows (1966 Mono Mix) (2:57)
Any Way The Wind Blows (1987 Stereo Mix) (2:55)
Hungry Freaks, Daddy (Basic Tracks – 1970 FZ Mix) (3:37)
Hungry Freaks, Daddy (Basic Tracks -- 2006 UMRK Mix) (3:28)
Hungry Freaks, Daddy (1966 Stereo Mix) (3:32)
Hungry Freaks, Daddy (1966 Mono Mix) (3:31)
Hungry Freaks, Daddy (1969 Stereo Mix) (3:30)
Hungry Freaks, Daddy (1987 Stereo Mix) (3:30)
Who Are The Brain Police? (Section A, C, B – 1970 FZ Mix) (4:32)
Who Are The Brain Police? (Section B – Take 2) (1:15)
Who Are The Brain Police? (Basic Tracks – 2006 UMRK Mix) (3:41)
Who Are The Brain Police? (1966 Stereo Mix) (3:25)
Who Are The Brain Police? (1966 Mono Mix) (3:26)
Who Are The Brain Police? (1969 Stereo Mix) (3:31)
Who Are The Brain Police? (1987 Stereo Mix) (3:33)
You’re Probably Wondering Why I’m Here (Basic Tracks) (3:40)
You’re Probably Wondering Why I’m Here (1966 Stereo Mix) (3:40)
You’re Probably Wondering Why I’m Here (1966 Mono Mix) (3:42)
You’re Probably Wondering Why I’m Here (1969 Stereo Mix) (3:39)
You’re Probably Wondering Why I’m Here (1987 Stereo Mix) (3:38)
Go Cry On Somebody Else’s Shoulder (Basic Tracks) (3:42)
Go Cry On Somebody Else’s Shoulder (1966 Stereo Mix) (3:42)
Go Cry On Somebody Else’s Shoulder (1966 Mono Mix) (3:42)
Go Cry On Somebody Else’s Shoulder (1987 Stereo Mix) (3:41)
Motherly Love (1966 Stereo Mix) (2:49)
Motherly Love (1966 Mono Mix) (2:49)
Wowie Zowie (Basic Tracks – 1970 FZ Mix) (3:01)
Wowie Zowie (1966 Unedited Stereo Mix) (2:46)
Wowie Zowie (1966 Edited Stereo Mix) (2:54)
Wowie Zowie (1966 Mono Mix) (2:56)
Wowie Zowie (1987 Stereo Mix) (2:53)
Trouble Every Day (Basic Tracks) (7:10)
Trouble Every Day (1966 Stereo Mix) (5:52)
Trouble Every Day (1966 Mono Mix – LP version) (5:56)
Trouble Every Day (1966 Mono Mix – single version) (2:39)
Trouble Every Day (1967 Stereo Mix) (2:32)
Groupie Bang Bang (3:50)

The recording sessions for the first Mothers of Invention album, Freak Out!, started on this day at Hollywood’s TTG Studios, with Tom Wilson in the producer’s chair. Frank Zappa had worked out the arrangements of the songs in meticulous detail in advance, so the question of exactly what Wilson contributed to the sessions is debatable, but there is no doubt that he made a major contribution just in signing the Mothers, and then going to bat for Frank, who wanted to make a very specific and very different sort of album to anything seen before in pop or rock music. This first day of recording was divided into two individual sessions, separated by a break for dinner.

For the first session, which took place between 2 and 6 P.M., the Mothers were accompanied by pianist Eugene DiNovi, Gene Estes on percussion and Neil Levang on rhythm guitar. The first song to be tracked was “Any Way The Wind Blows”, Frank’s bittersweet kiss-off to his first wife Kay Sherman which had first been recorded in demo form back in 1963. Documentation no longer exists to tell us how many takes of the song were required before a satisfactory master was recorded, but the completed instrumental basic track can be heard on the 4-CD version of the 2006 release The MoFO Project/Object (hereafter simply MoFO) which documents these sessions. After the song received vocal overdubs on March 10th, mono and stereo mixes of the track were released on their respective configurations of Freak Out! An unused 1987 remix by FZ was included on the 2-CD version of MoFO.

The next song to be recorded was used to open the first Mothers album, would go on to be considered a Zappa classic. This was “Hungry Freaks, Daddy”, a song inspired by FZ’s experience of the Hollywood Freak scene. The song castigates the attitude of “Mr. America” toward the younger generation, and specifically what Frank termed “the left-behinds” of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”. In some respects, this song could have been considered Frank’s first political statement, and it was certainly received that way, setting the stage for years of misconception that Frank was somehow involved in radical progressive politics. This song was captured in 18 takes, and Frank thought enough of the instrumental backing track to do a mix of it in early 1970, for unspecified use, which can be heard on the 4-CD version of MoFO. As well as the mono and stereo mixes that can be found on the Freak Out! album, Frank remixed the track in 1969 for the compilation album Mothermania, and again in 1987 for the CD release of Freak Out! A 2006 remix of the basic track can be found on the 2-CD version of MoFO.

The next song to be recorded marked what could be seen as the first Serious Musical Statement in the career of Frank Zappa. It was this song that alerted Tom Wilson to the fact that the “white blues band” that he thought he was signing was, well, different. The song, “Who Are The Brain Police?”, appears to have been at least partially inspired by the extremely edgy stand-up comedy of Lenny, Bruce, who had been a hero of Frank’s for some time, not surprising given both Lenny and Frank’s anti-establishment leanings and their shared desire to hold a mirror up to American society. In the liner notes to Freak Out!, Frank would freely admit that the song, with its dark musical arrangement and even darker lyric, frightened him. But the song was an important one, not simply because it established Frank Zappa as a more cerebrally-minded lyricist, but because the combination of music and lyric was emblematic of a yet unknown genre that would become known as “outsider music“, music made by an outsider, for outsiders.

The tracking of this song was complicated, particularly by 1966 standards. It was recorded in three sections, which were then edited together. Sections A and C constituted the first and second halves of the song itself, and were laid down in five and two takes respectively, while section B featured the Mothers taking off on one of their patented breakneck-speed jams, recorded in two takes. Take 2 was subsequently overlaid with various strange voices moaning “I think I’m gonna die“. This rather bizarre concoction would be placed on the first side of Freak Out!, serving as a kind of warning that things might get deliciously weird if one were to continue to play the album past that point. In addition to the standard 1966 stereo and mono mixes, Frank remixed the track in 1969 for release on the Mothermania compilation, and again in 1987 for the CD release of Freak Out!. In 1970, Frank also mixed an edit of the track specifically designed to showcase the recording process of the song, in the original Section A, C and B order it was originally tracked in. This 1970 mix was released on the 4-CD MoFO set. This set also included a separate track featuring take two of the B section, and a 2006 mix of the basic tracks for the song.

For the remainder of the evening, Frank and the Mothers focused on what one might call more “normal“ material, by the standards of pop music in 1966 anyway. The early session on this date wrapped up with ten takes of “You’re Probably Wondering Why I’m Here”. This song was another one aimed at Square America, which was casting a presumably disapproving eye at those whose lifestyles deviated from the norm, and pointing out the lameness glaringly evident in the life of the average American teenager. The recording of this was a more straightforward endeavor, Frank and Ray once again sharing the lead vocal. The song was mixed into the usual stereo and mono variations, and Frank would remix the song into stereo twice, firstly in 1969 for the Mothermania compilation, and again in 1987 for the CD release of Freak Out! A mix of the basic tracks for the song can be heard on the 4-CD version of MoFO.

The band and crew took a break at this point, returning at 7 PM to cut five more tracks. First up was seven takes of Frank’s R&B kiss off to (presumably) Kay Sherman, “Go Cry On Somebody Else’s Shoulder”. This was a fairly straightforward recording, which was issued on Freak Out! in the usual mono and stereo mixes. Frank remixed this for the 1987 CD release of Freak Out!, and a mix of the backing track can be heard on the 4-CD iteration of MoFO.

We do not have take information for the remainder of this session, possibly because the multitrack tapes for at least three of the next four songs are missing from the Zappa Vault. Next in line for recording was “Motherly Love”, the so-called “body commercial” for the band that Frank penned in an effort to attract the attention of groupies. This song, which was frequently performed at Mothers concerts during this period, was not a candidate for remixing by Frank, and therefore all we have are the original 1966 mono and stereo mixes.

A new FZ pop parody, “Wowie Zowie”, was next to be assailed. This featured Gene Estes playing a lovely xylophone part, with Frank and Ray again handling the vocals. An early stereo mix of this song appeared on an early assemblage reel of Freak Out!, and this features an extra bar of breakdown that sounds suspiciously like a mistake, which was later excised from the released track. This track was first bootlegged on the album The Alternate Freak Out. Both the standard 1966 mono and stereo mixes are edited, and the track was remixed by Frank in 1987 for the CD release of the album. That makes this song the only one from this evening session to have a surviving multitrack tape (or at least it was surviving in 1987). A 1970 mix of the basic tracks, prepared by FZ, can be heard on the 4-CD version of MoFO.

The band then cut the master of the track that first attracted the attention of Tom Wilson to the Mothers, “Trouble Every Day”. Although a relatively simple track to record, with Frank overdubbing a positively stinging lead vocal, the release history of this song is somewhat complicated. The longer edit, running nearly 6 minutes, was issued in mono and stereo on the respective configurations of Freak Out! The song was issued as The Mothers’ second single, this time in a severely hacked edit coming in at less than three minutes. Both the 1966 LP and the 1966 single use the same mono mix, which features an extra Jimmy Carl Black drum beat at the beginning. Oddly enough, an alternate 1967 stereo mix, utilizing the same edit that appears on the mono single, was released on the truncated UK first edition of Freak Out!. As if that weren’t enough, the basic tracks for the song can be heard on the 4 and 2-CD versions of the MoFO set.

Left with some time at the end of the session, Frank and the band cut one more song, the only proper song tracked during these sessions which would not appear on the album. This was the illustrious “Groupie Bang Bang”, another jokey tune about rock stars and early groupie culture that Frank gave to Ray to sing. The vocal sounds like it was cut live in the studio; the song sounds more like a demo than a serious contender for the album, although it may have been considered for a single B-side. In any case, this track was completely unknown to Zappa fans before its release on the 4-CD version of MoFO.

Folks, here we have the second in my Substack podcast series. This one is for paid subscribers (thank you!!!), and it is something I’ve been trying to find a use for, for the the better part of eight years. This is the legendary LOST EPISODE of the ZappaCast, from 2018. For those of you who want to become paid subscribers - for a mere $5 a month - you can click the link below.

”Wait!” I hear you say. “Wasn’t there ALREADY a lost ZappaCast episode?” Well, yeah, there was. But this one is WAY more lost. From December 2018, this was to have been Episode 40, our 50th Anniversary celebration of Cruising With Ruben And The Jets. I’m the only person on the show, as I felt it best for Frank to tell the story of the album himself.

This one did not come out at that time because we became the official Frank Zappa podcast, which necessitated a different approach. So this would have been the last of the “old school” ZappaCast episodes before production standards were cranked up to something above caveman level. Honestly, I’m not even certain that anyone associated with the Zappa Trust or Universal ever heard this one. I think it sort of got subsumed.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to present this to you. I worked hard on it, as I recall. It deserves to have a moment. For you paid subscribers, again, THANK YOU. I am humbled by and grateful for your support.

This link to the episode is below. If it is locked for you, please consider being a paid subscriber (again, a mere $5 a month). The link will magically appear!

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On Sunday afternoon, May 17th, The Zappa community received the news that Ike Willis had passed away.

Ike had been off the grid for the past few years. He had been dealing with health challenges for some time. To address some of the online commentary this week, yes, some of these health challenges were of his own making. Stories of Ike’s escapades are legendary among Zappa fans. I have one or two stories of my own. But this is neither the time nor the place for such things. I believe that Ike lived the life that he wanted. He was probably the most visible of the Zappa alumni for many years, and he flew the banner high for Frank Zappa and his music. Like Ray White, another legendary Zappa voice, Ike never lost his vocal ability.

Unlike most other Zappa band alumni, we can pinpoint the exact date that Ike Willis came into Frank Zappa‘s orbit. That date was October 2nd, 1977, and the occasion was the Zappa gig at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. At many of the shows around that time, local fans would be rounded up to assist the crew with the loading in and out of equipment. On this date, Ike was part of that local crew and got the golden opportunity to make Frank’s acquaintance. Ike got to spend some quality time with Frank backstage, playing and singing for him. Frank was impressed enough to offer him the opportunity to come to LA and audition for him pretty much on the spot. Ike recalled these events in an interview for YouTube channel AirGigs’ In Session podcast:

The way I met Frank, I was in college. My girlfriend at the time, who became my wife, she was studying for midterm exams and I got myself on the local crew because one of my classmates was the head of the concert committee. So I convinced him to get me on the local crew so I could schlep equipment and take notes essentially, right? I just wanted to take notes and learn as much as I could from this guy, you know, to figure out how he did this. Now, by this time, this was 1977, and by the time, you know, I could go to a Frank Zappa concert and actually pay attention, you know, I’d already been playing and gigging for 12 years. So, you know, there I go. So I’m there to take notes. And all I’m all I’m doing is just a local humper, you know, I’m just schlepping equipment. And then it was very, very weird.

By the time soundcheck came around, we finished setting up for soundcheck and the band came in. Somehow, Frank made some eye contact and he nodded his head and said hi and all that stuff, which was kind of strange to me, because as far as I knew, well, this is the famous Frank Zappa and he’s a busy guy and he’s a legend and all that stuff. But after soundcheck, we go backstage to the hospitality room you know, to eat dinner, you know, the crew and the band, you know, just to eat dinner. And he had just happened to come in the hospitality room to eat. And he sat in a corner by himself. You remember those old Maytag commercials, “the loneliest guy in town”? He was the loneliest guy in town because they never broke down and stuff like that. And everybody was afraid of him. Nobody talked to him and stuff like that. Well, that was my nickname for Frank, the Maytag Repairman, because I was watching my classmates sitting at their table over in a corner and and whispering among themselves about “oh I heard this about Zappa and I heard he used to stomp babies on stage, I heard he shit on stage all this stuff, he’s the devil” and that other stuff, it is in all the all the rumors, all the legends you’ve ever heard about Frank Zappa. And Frank is sitting over in a corner all by all by himself eating alone, everybody’s afraid to talk to him.

And he looks up after about 15 minutes, he looks up at me because I was over on the other side. I was over on the other side of the room in a corner because I was the weird guy. I was the weird guy that stuck out like a sore thumb. And I had bands and stuff on campus, but it wasn’t a popular band. It wasn’t anything like that. It was kind of weird. And so I wasn’t in with the in crowd, and Frank looks up at me after about 15 minutes and he says, “hey, come here”. And I looked around because surely he couldn’t be talking to me, right? And he invited me over to his table. “Here, have a seat”. Because I used to wear this floppy knit hat when I was in college. And the thing he says to me, “you know what, man? You got to be a musician because you stick out like a goddamn sore thumb. You have to be a musician. I’m sure you play an instrument”. And I went, “well, yeah. I play a little guitar and I sing a little bit, you know, and I’ve had bands and stuff. But dude, you know, you’re eating your dinner. I don’t want to bother you. I don’t want to disturb you”, right? And that’s how our conversation started. And he goes, “no, no, you’re not bothering me at all. Come on, have a seat. You know, everybody’s afraid to talk to me. So have a seat. You go to school here?? I say, “yeah, I go to school here”. And we just started talking about music and, you know, and all that stuff. He’s asking me what instrument I played, what kind of music I liked, and all that.

And I told him, “yeah, I mean, I even know a couple of your songs, because I’ve got a band” and blah, blah, blah. He goes, “really? You know, I guess you’re not really too popular around here”. I said, “that is exactly right. I am not one of the popular guys and my bands are not the favorite bands and all that stuff”. So the conversation just continued on and on. And after a while, his manager comes in to tell him that they had a dressing room ready and it was time for him to go in and warm up and tune up his guitar and get ready for the show because they were running out of time. So he shakes my hand and then starts heading for his dressing room. And then as he got to the door, about to go through the door, he turns around and waves his hand and says, “come on, follow me”. And he ended up inviting me into his dressing room. And so I followed him. He says, “I wasn’t finished talking. We’re having a good conversation. And that’s rare. So, you know, we can keep on talking, you know, while I warm up”. I couldn’t believe it. Needless to say, I didn’t think this was really happening. And all my classmates were like, had their hands covering their mouths going, “what’s going on? I don’t believe it. Frank Zappa was talking to Ike Willis? The weirdest guy on campus?” You know, that was me.

And so, long story short, you know, he takes me to the dressing room, tells me to have a seat, get comfortable. He tunes up his guitars, you know, getting ready for the show. And after a couple of minutes, he looks up and goes, “you play guitar? Okay, here. Want to play this thing?” And he hands me his guitar and tells me to play something. He said, “you know some of my stuff, huh? Play one of my tunes”. And I did. Are you familiar with a song called “Carolina Hard-Core Ecstasy”? That song was from 1975. It was so funny, I start playing one of his songs and start singing, then he joins in and starts singing along and then the rest of the band comes in, they start singing along. It was like a hootenanny, you know? It was, needless to say, since I couldn’t believe any of this was happening, I kind of just played it by ear and just played it cool and did what the man told me to do, which turns out to be essentially my relationship with Frank. You know, once I, once I joined the band, that’s, that’s basically all I did. I did what he told me to do. You know, I think that’s, that’s, that’s pretty much it. And he liked what he heard and he said “oh man, you got a pretty good ear, you got a pretty good voice”. And then he starts telling me about by this time - this was 1977 - and he says “you know these tours have been kind of weird because I still haven’t been satisfied with my lead vocalists. I’ve been looking for a front man for years and it just hasn’t happened since Flo and Eddie and all those other guys.”

And he goes “I tell you what, every year after every tour I always hold auditions. I always hold auditions to prepare for the next tour. Hey, what do you think about me flying you out to L.A. to audition for the band?” I went “oh, sure” and he says, “yeah, man.” I mean, because he was just telling me to play this song, that song, this chord, that chord and, you know, I’m a self-taught guitarist so I don’t read music, and I never went to music school, I just taught myself. So all I was doing was following directions; he was telling me what to do, pretty simple instructions, and he was pretty pleased with it. And he introduced me to the band at that time - Adrian Belew, Tommy Mars, Ed Mann - and I was just, I was having a great time, and of course I was convinced I was dreaming, you know, I mean this isn’t really happening, but you know what, I’ll enjoy it while it’s going on because I couldn’t tell any of my friends. My best friend, who played sax in my on-campus band - he’s the one that taught me all about Zappa -brought me up to speed on the history, the bands, the the personnel and all that stuff. And I couldn’t tell him because I knew he just wouldn’t believe me.

And so after all this stuff, long story short, Frank says, “OK, well, it’s time for the show”, because everybody was out there yelling and screaming for Zappa to come out because the show was running late because he was backstage talking to me, including my best friend and my roommates and all that stuff. So he says, “well, don’t go anywhere, after the show is over, come on back and we can pick up the conversation where we left off, and also don’t forget to give me your address and your phone number and your vital statistics so that I can get in touch with you after the tour is over, and so I can fly you out there”. And so that’s what I did. And then the show was over, and then I go back to schlepping equipment and loading out, and Frank came and shook my hand, and told me how much he enjoyed talking with me and stuff like that. And he says “don’t forget, I think you got a good shot at being in the band, because everybody is afraid of my music but you don’t seem to have a problem with it, and I’ve been looking for a vocalist and I’ve been looking for a front man and I might as well try somebody new because everybody else that I’ve tried hasn’t worked.” So we shook hands, and I gave him my information and then went back to schlepping equipment. And then after the load out, I went back to my dormitory room, well, actually my girlfriend’s dormitory room, my girlfriend who is now my wife of 37 years. And I told her what happened and she’s going, “are you kidding me?” I said, “yeah, well, there you go”.

Fast forward again, I’m in summer school catching up on my credits so that I get to graduate, I’ve missed a half a semester putting my musical career together. And I’m in my dorm room, and the phone rings and it’s Frank. He just got back from Europe on the Shiek Yerbouti tour. And I was taking a nap, he wakes me up and says, “OK, can I speak to Ike? Hey Ike, this is Frank.” And I’m saying, “Frank who?” Because six months later and I was not entertaining any notions about him calling me back, but he actually did. And he said, “no, no, I’m a man of my word. I promised you that I was going to call you back and arrange it to fly you out to audition for the band. I was serious. So I just got back from tour. And just give me, I just need a week to rent a rehearsal soundstage”. And then this was like a Tuesday. And he says, “so I will call you back at the end of the week with your ticket information and stuff. And this is going to be great. I got a good feeling about you. I can’t wait to talk to you again”. And that was that. The following Tuesday, I left school. I had to talk to my advisor, my senior advisor, and ask for a leave of absence so that I could go out to L.A. and audition for Frank. Went home, told my parents. and my dad both my mom and dad were stupefied, but they were proud of me, very encouraging, and the first thing they said was “yeah doesn’t surprise me, you’ll probably do good, you’ll do well, go out there and make us proud, son.” That’s basically that’s basically how it happened, I flew to L.A. and I passed the audition and I stayed, and the rest of the rest, as they say, is history.

It was extremely apparent, right from the get-go, that Ike would fit beautifully in the band, taking the lead vocalist role that prior to this had been occupied by Napoleon Murphy Brock and Ray White. Frank broke Ike into the band gently, not overloading him with material to perform on his first tour, the 1978 world tour. For me personally, his tour-de-force on that first tour was his rendition of “Village Of The Sun”, one of the most poignant of all Frank Zappa songs:

Ike did not appear on the final dates of the 1978 world tour. As the story goes, Ike had taken a couple of shows off due to illness, and on a day when he was supposed to be resting, Gail Zappa spotted him drinking in a hotel bar. Frank gave Ike a ticket back to Los Angeles, but seemingly forgave his transgression, as Ike was back rehearsing with the band by December.

Ike would go on to be a major figure in this Zappa band for most of the remainder of Frank’s touring career, missing out only on the 1981-1982 world tour due to his wife Denise’s pregnancies (she bore Ike his first two children during this time). His role in the band and the music began to increase in 1979, and Frank tapped him to play the role of Joe in the Joe’s Garage project, which allowed that character and that music to truly come alive. That album is loaded with simply too many incredible Ike Willis vocal performances to list here, but my favorite of those performances would have to be “Outside Now”, a song that for me ranks as one of Frank’s most personal (if coded) and emotional lyrics. There were many stunning versions of this performed over the years, and Ike was pretty much perfect on every one of those performances, so I will just arbitrarily pick this performance, mostly for Frank’s breathtaking solo:

Ike was also a prodigiously talented guitar player and could really rip a solo. He wasn’t given too many chances to do this by Frank (Frank Zappa is the primary lead guitar player, you’re not going to take a lot of solos in the band), but when he was given the opportunity to take off, he soared.

Ike returned to the Zappa touring fold in 1984 and was a key component of the group that toured that year. Ike could always make Frank laugh, and many people who saw the interaction between the two of them will tell you that Ike was the only person who could consistently make Frank break up on stage. This back-and-forth reached a height on the 1984 tour, with shows dominated by Secret Word abuse on an almost nightly basis. The silliness was a serious plus, one which allowed Frank to relax and enjoy the performances. Ike was key to that.

Ike had a vocal partner in the form of Ray White, who rejoined the Zappa band in 1980. The two of them, often with Frank taking the bottom end of the harmony, had a heavenly blend, Ike’s husky voice perfectly complementing Ray’s pure gospel tenor.

Another Zappa character that Ike famously brought to life was de Thing-Fish, arguably the single most outrageous character Frank ever created. Ike pretty much invented the approach that he would take in voicing Thing-Fish, based on a parody of the character Kingfish from the old Amos and Andy TV show. When recording the album, Frank gave Ike a lot of leeway in terms of improvisation, and so a lot of the classic lines that you hear in that album where lines that Ike came up with himself. I know a lot of people do not love that album, but to me, it is easily one of Ike’s greatest achievements.

Ike and Ray were both called upon by Frank to tour with what became the 1988 band, with Ike becoming the primary vocalist (alongside Robert Martin) after Ray dropped out of the group. Ike’s influence was heavily felt on that tour – Ike was a huge Beatles fan, and encouraged Frank to put together his arrangement of “I Am The Walrus” and the three-song piece known as the “Texas Motel Medley”. Ike’s vocal on “I Am The Walrus” is something that I personally have always found profoundly moving:

Following the 1988 tour, there would be no further collaboration between Frank and Ike, as Frank dealt increasingly with illness and a turn away from his rock music work. According to Ike, he did phone Frank for what would be the last time somewhere around October of 1993, and in that call Frank is said to have personally given Ike permission to continue to play his music after his death. This would later be disputed by the Zappa Estate, but regardless of this, Ike continued to perform Frank’s music for the remainder of his touring life.

For the better part of the next 30-plus years, Ike kept himself busy touring with a variety of Zappa tribute groups. The first and perhaps most notable of these groups was Banned From Utopia, a collection of (mostly) Zappa alumni who began performing shows together after Frank’s death. The initial version of that band packed a mighty punch, with all of the musicians involved very much on top of their game:

Ike endeared himself to the Zappa fanbase over the years. He was endlessly approachable, and by all accounts treated every fan like a friend. As I alluded to earlier, there are myriad stories about Ike’s road escapades, stories that I put down to simply being a dedicated rock ‘n’ roll musician on the road. I would encourage all Zappa fans to not get involved in speculation about Ike’s death or the circumstances that may or may not have led to it. The bottom line is that Ike Willis flew the Zappa banner higher and longer than pretty much anyone intimately connected to the man and his music. I would make the argument that more than any of Frank’s alumni, Ike believed in Frank. His loss is a tremendous loss for this Zappa community. He is irreplaceable. He will only be missed more as time goes by.

This is just a little tribute to the man. I encourage all of you to go out and check out as many Ike Willis performances as you can, including the post-Frank years. You will not be disappointed.

Thank you, Ike Willis. For everything.

I would like to finish this post with the way that I believe that Frank and Ike should be remembered as an onstage twosome. Nobody could make Frank laugh like Ike.

INTRO/SEMI-NECESSARY HYPE: To obtain PDF copies of my books for a mere $5 each, go to the link below:

Folks, here we have another excerpt from the forthcoming 20th anniversary edition of my book Hungry Freaks Daddy, which is a description of the material that you can hear on the brand new FZ album Zappa ‘66 Vol. 1: Live at TTG Studios. As you may be able to tell, this is essentially a cleaned-up draft, written this morning in a bit of a rush so I can get it to you all on time. It will be included in the book, corrected and alongside the usual transcriptions. Until then, I hope you enjoy!

UPDATE: I forgot the link to the Sex In Today’s World documentary! Here it is. Very little Frank in it, but still cool…

First week of October, 1966
TTG Studios, Los Angeles, CA
73 minutes, B+

Improvisation (Sex In Today’s World Excerpts) (2:56)
Freak Chouflee’ (14:06)
Move On (3:44)
FZ and The United Mutations (2:05)
“Tommy Come Back!” (3:22)
FZ Directs The Freaks (1:38)
Pomp and Circumstance Sequence (1:31)
Legalize Abortion (3:17)
Twistin’ Again (1:33)
The Electric Banana (5:59)
I Could Be A Slave/A Story Untold (7:20)
A2 Jam (4:13)
Khaki Sack (9:29)
Duke Of Prunes (Edited) (3:27)
Victory Through Vegetables (10:19)
“We’re Havin’ A Freak Out!” (1:33)

By October 1966, the Mothers had been going full steam in Los Angeles for months, playing some of their first actual “concert” gigs and earning their reputation as the house band of the Freak scene in town. This was despite the fact that the number of places to play in Los Angeles was getting progressively smaller as the local government and police did everything they could to close down, or to make it difficult to work at, any place that allowed dancing. The Mothers had also gone out on their first tour in the summer, promoting Freak Out! on television and in live performances. They were shortly to expand their horizons further, heading out to New York for their first shows there.

That fall, word had gotten out to the media about kids who were “freaking out” in Los Angeles. This led CBS News to send a camera crew out to the City of the Angels to capture shots of this heathen out-freakage, and what better group to organize this “happening” with than The Mothers Of Invention. Frank decided to host what was essentially a party at TTG Studios, allowing the CBS crew a place to come and capture some of this Freak action. This footage would be used in a documentary titled Sex In Today’s World, which aired the following year on CBS. Rather tame by today’s standards, it was partly educational and partly scare tactic, designed to feed into the fears of the older generation about what their kids were potentially getting into.

Strangely enough, it appears that TTG did not run audio on this event themselves, and that Frank wound up capturing the action on his own portable reel recorder. In typical Zappa fashion, Frank cut up the master tape of this event, scattering the pieces all over the Zappa Vault. Vaultmeister Joe Travers was able to collect most of the recording, which was issued in May 2026 on the album Zappa 66 Vol. 1: Live At TTG Studios. In the liner notes to that album, Joe expressed his frustration at not being able to find the entire recording, and it is certainly true that the Sex In Today’s World documentary has a few pieces of audio not available on the album, including one excerpt in which Frank delivers a monologue aimed at the square parents watching at home, who were most likely disgusted by the cavorting they saw on the screen. At the start of the CD, Frank can be heard speaking during a radio interview with an unknown station in Santa Barbara, recorded in August 1966. This interview was conducted immediately after a Mothers gig at the Whisky. Frank notes that the band “had one heck of a really wonderful time for the kids” playing “commercial poop that would make you just dance”.

The available recording from TTG kicks off with a monster improvisation, later titled “Freak Choufleé” by Gail Zappa. An excerpt of this had been made available by the Zappa Family Trust on the 2014 digital-only release The Frank Zappa AAAFNRAA Birthday Bundle 21.12.2014. The recording begins in progress, and features a wailing guitar solo by Del Casher, who proves himself to be quite the skilled guitar picker on the only known extended recording that we have of him playing with the Mothers. The fuzzy guitar tone suggests that he is using a Maestro Fuzz-Tone, essentially the first mass-market produced fuzz pedal for guitar. Frank, who has been playing some aggressive rhythm behind Del, steps up for a solo of his own, and it’s very interesting to hear Del providing strong support behind him, and even some engaging interplay that Frank appears to respond to. Also getting some spotlight time here is Don Preston, Frank’s old Cucamonga era buddy, who has recently joined the group. A highly skilled musician, Don more than holds his own with a spirited workout on his organ and electric piano.

This opening jam ends to a smattering of applause (remember that these are mostly friends that the band is playing to), and Frank announces that the next piece will be a song called “Move On”. This is obviously a composed instrumental piece, but curiously it is one that will advance no further. It’s a gorgeous little ditty, with Arabesque passages that allow Frank to dig in with one of the fastest displays of fretwork that you will ever hear him pull off, obviously influenced by the speedy runs that Del peels off effortlessly. Once again, the support from Del is sensitive and impressive. It’s truly a shame that he did not stay on with the band longer.

A break in the tape takes us into the first improvisation of the evening to feature the Los Angeles Freak contingent, who have now been given the name “The United Mutations” by Frank. After a tentative start with some of the participants singing gloriously off-key quote from Wilson Pickett’s “Land Of A Thousand Dances”, Frank takes control and directs the throng into chanting, for some reason, “Tommy come back!” From here, Frank conducts the crowd into a chaotic vocal improvisation very similar to the recordings made on the final night of the Freak Out! sessions. In the aural chaos, Ray Collins adds some of his peculiar vocal noises, but this is mostly about the Mutations.

Frank asks Don to play the traditional British anthem “Pomp And Circumstance”. A tambourine and kazoo play along with this, and very shortly thereafter we are into another groove, faster than the opening improvisation. Ray sings a bit of Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Twist Again”, but the groove gets locked down enough for another round of solos. Frank begins to solo somewhat tentatively over this, with Del once again backing him up, but backs off from this approach to ask the crowd what they think of Planned Parenthood, the American organization that would primarily have been known to the public at the time as a facilitator of abortion. This was obviously a provocative topic that Frank felt would come up in the documentary.

Asked by the camera crew if the they could get some more action shots of the crowd, Frank asks the Mutations to do the twist long enough for the TV crew to get their shots. The band vamps for a couple of minutes, Ray again singing variations on “Let’s Twist Again”. Apparently, at this point, the camera crew needs more shots of the kiddies freaking out, so Frank calls for the band to play “Electric Banana” while the Mutations writhe around on the floor. This turns out to be an early instrumental version of a song that would become known as “Absolutely Free” when released two years later on the album We’re Only In It For The Money.

This drops away into the first proper vocal number of the session, the earliest known performance of the song previously known as “No Matter What You Do” but titled “I Could Be A Slave” on the Live At TTG Studios album. This is an expanded version of the song that collectors would be familiar with from 1967 Mothers live performances, which segues into a cover of the Nutmeg’s R&B classic, “A Story Untold”. This features the angelic vocal chops of Ray Collins, and segues back into “I Could Be A Slave” in a segue that was obviously standard repertoire for the band at that time.

Another Santa Barbara interview segment follows, Frank humorously explaining how the music of the Mothers keeps changing all the time because the band personnel keeps changing. Frank plays up the multicultural makeup of the current Mothers, offering particular praise for Del, who he describes the sounding like “Les Paul and Mary Ford at the same time”. When we rejoin the action at TTG, the band is into another jam, which possibly led out of “I Could Be A Slave”. Del whips out an absolutely incredible solo here, his frenzied fretting obviously influenced by classical Indian music (“raga rock” being a Mothers specialty at the time). Frank emerges from this with a quote from “Funiculí Funiculá” but steps out of the way to allow Don to work out like the mad genius that he is on the organ.

The band shifts into a prototype version of a piece that would later be known as “Khaki Sack”, played at a blindingly fast tempo for the era. Frank dips back in for a brief, measured solo before Don takes over, this time starting on the acoustic piano before heading over to the Hammond B3 organ, an unusual instrument for him (no doubt some of these instruments were the property of TTG). Frank can be heard directing the audience to “freak out”, implying that the camera crew is looking for more shots of the crowd doing very unusual things. Frank and Ray throw in a line about “Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches” as the band works itself into a lather behind them.

As this winds down, Frank introduces Ray, who is said to be “disguised as an elderly eunuch”. The assembled are then treated to a performance of what would come to be known as “The Duke Of Prunes”, performed here with its original non-prune-oriented lyrics (the composition originally being known as “And Very True”). This has been written back in Frank’s Cucamonga days, and it’s always interesting to hear a Zappa composition from that era before cynicism became a key part of his lyrics. As heard here, the song is basically the same musical arrangement as would be heard on the Absolutely Free album, which would be recorded a month later. The performance released on the Live At TTG Studios album is noted on the cover as being edited, a probable victim of Frank’s tendency to cut up master recordings and stick the bits to pieces of other performances in his Vault.

Up next is another jam, this time a slow blues with Jimmy Carl Black and new recruit Billy Mundi pumping out a rhythm not unlike that heard in performances of “King Kong”, the lengthy instrumental that would be the centerpiece of the Mothers show by the following summer. Don is again the primary soloist here, pumping out a solo on the organ that proves that his blues credentials are first-rate. Frank repeats the phrase “Victory Through Vegetables” over and over again, and it’s a shame that we don’t have film footage of this particular section as one can imagine the vegetable-oriented frolicking that must have been going on. This mutates into a peppy 1950s-style rock ‘n’ roll vamp, over which Del begins to peel off another crazy fast solo before Frank winds down the performance into a stereotypical blues outro, over which Ray sings “We’re Havin’ A Freak Out!” Frank informs the audience that they can “go outside and breathe freely“, and another Freaky night for Frank Zappa and the Mothers comes to an end.

Frank Zappa Research: The Continuing Adventures

The SPB Publishing Spring 2026 PDF Sale!

Happy Spring, folks! For this week, I have been unable to complete my planned post for what we shall call technical reasons (what I was going to write about has not arrived in the mail yet!). So let’s do this for now…

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6 months ago · 14 likes · Scott Parker

And now, for this week’s post…

The control room of Studio Z, Cucamonga, 1964

Folks, I’m just getting back into life after vacation, so I thought that for this week, I would share another piece of the BIG PROJECT I’ve been working on, the expanded, 20th Anniversary edition of my first book, HUNGRY FREAKS, DADDY. In this excerpt, we take a look at the few recorded bits & bobs from Frank’s time at Studio Z in Cucamonga, This period started out with an optimistic FZ thinking that he could turn Studio Z into a successful commercial property and Ground Zero for a series of television and/or film projects. It ended with Frank being railroaded on a charge of conspiracy to manufacture a “pornographic” tape recording, set up by a local Vice Squad intent on ridding stately Cucamonga of this “long-haired weirdo”. As this era of Frank Zappa’s life came to an end, FZ was very much at a crossroads, and at what was likely the lowest point of his life. But things were about to turn around in a very big way…

August 1, 1964
Studio Z, Cucamonga, CA
4 minutes, A/B

Opening Night At Studio Z (1:34)
“The Memo” (2:26)

By August of 1964, things had changed at Cucamonga’s Pal Studio. The studio’s owner, engineering genius Paul Buff, had by now moved on to work more exclusively with Art Laboe at his Original Sound Studio, leaving Frank Zappa more or less in charge of operations at Pal. Frank continued to work on sessions at Pal, notably with his production partner Dave Aerni, but when it looked like Aerni was going to move on to other projects, a decision had to be made about the future of the studio.

So it was that on August 1st, 1964, Paul Buff officially sold Pal Studio and the equipment therein to Frank Zappa. Considering all the work that had been done at Pal, Paul gave Frank a real sweetheart deal, charging him $1,212 for the equipment (equivalent to about $13,000 in 2026), plus Frank’s drum kit, his vibraphone and his Fender Jazzmaster guitar. Because the studio was fairly comfortable in terms of size, Frank could actually live there, figuring that continuing to make the studio available to local groups would ensure that both Buff and the incoming bills would be paid off. As it turned out, the newly renamed Studio Z would not take off as a commercial venture, and Frank would spend close to a year barely being able to feed himself. Despite this, lots of creative work got done there, and on August 1st, Frank celebrated the opening of Studio Z by inviting his friends over for a party.

Present at this opening night party is Frank’s old friend Don Vliet, with whom Frank would go on to record some demos at Studio Z. Don’s girlfriend Laurie Stone was also present, as were future Mothers Ray Collins and Jim Euclid “Motorhead” Sherwood. Rounding out the cast was Frank’s friend Bob Narciso, a local character who seems to have hung out around the studio for a time before disappearing into history.

Two recordings are available from this evening, both from edits made by Frank. The first of these, “Opening Night At Studio Z”, appeared on the 1985 album Mystery Disc. This is a rather typical Zappa collage, with Bob Narciso leading a sort of chorus of the damned on a song about how he smoked a Pall Mall cigarette and had a crush on his grandmother. Everybody sounds a bit lubricated, which of course means they are here for a proper party. Motorhead can be heard talking about a girl he’d had sex with whose girlfriends apparently liked to “compare” each other’s breasts and genitalia. For whatever reason, being told about this caused Motorhead to lose his sexual desire.

In the second clip, which was prepared for the unreleased box set The History And Collected Improvisations Of The Mothers Of Invention, Ray Collins performs an amusing parody of the Medallions’ classic “The Letter”. Apparently titled “The Memo”, Ray does a pretty credible imitation of Medallions vocalist Vernon Green’s smooth delivery, and while this is indeed a parody, it is done with respect for a song that was a favorite for both Ray and Frank. This particular recording circulates among collectors from an off-line tape, recorded by Zappa biographer David Walley in 1971 while Frank was playing him an edit of tracks from the History And Collected Improvisations set.

Fall 1964 (exact date unknown)
Studio Z, Cucamonga, CA
2 minutes, A

Theme From Lumpy Gravy (1:54)

Given the fact that he now had what amounted to a laboratory to work with, Frank recorded fairly obsessively at Studio Z. One of the tracks that he committed to tape would actually be released during the 1960s, this being what would become known as the main theme for the 1968 album Lumpy Gravy. On that album, the track would be presented in speeded-up form; the 2009 CD set The Lumpy Money Project/Object presents the track as it was recorded, which emphasizes the “western” feel of the arrangement. The musicians remain unknown, though it is most likely Frank on guitar, and it sounds like he is playing drums as well, though that would be purely a guess.

Interestingly enough, when Frank decided in 1983 to create a new version of the Lumpy Gravy album with new bass and drum overdubs by Arthur Barrow and Chad Wackerman, he also overdubbed vocals from Ray White and Ike Willis onto this track, both in character as the Mammy Nuns from Frank’s would-be Broadway extravaganza Thing-Fish. Although this overdubbed version of Lumpy Gravy was shelved at the time, it was released in full on the Lumpy Money Project/Object set.

Fall 1964 (exact dates unknown)
Studio Z, Cucamonga, CA
5 minutes, A

Metal Man Has Won His Wings (3:06)
Tiger Roach (2:20)

Among the tracks cut at Studio Z around this time or several demos made with Frank’s old buddy Don Vliet, who would soon be better known to the world as the inimitable Captain Beefheart. The name that Don would take as his stage name was conceived sometime in the fall of 1964, when Don was tapped by Frank to star in a never-realized film production entitled Captain Beefheart vs. The Grunt People. This oddball sci-fi adventure did manage to pick some local publicity for Frank, who spent a great deal of time constructing sets at Studio Z for the project. A screenplay was prepared, and music was written for the film, but the money to produce it never appeared (Frank made a second attempt to get it financed in 1969, writing an updated script for the project. This also was never produced).

Frank also produced a few demos around this time, collaborating with Don, a bassist known only as Janschi, and Vic Mortensen, who would later play with Don in an early incarnation of Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, on drums. This “band” was known at the time as The Soots. Two tracks cut at Studio Z would later be issued officially. “Metal Man Has Won His Wings”, which Frank would release on the 1985 album Mystery Disc, features Don improvising the lyric from the pages of a DC comic book titled Metal Men that Frank had pinned to a bulletin board near the door of the studio. Another track, “Tiger Roach” would be released on the 1996 compilation The Lost Episodes and again features Don improvising a lyric while the band works out on a blues riff behind him. Both are early examples of Don’s improvisational genius, even if neither track could be considered particularly serious as such.

Three other tracks cut by this ensemble around this time, “I’m Your Nasty Shadow”, an unreleased FZ composition called “Cheryl’s Canon” and a cover of Little Richard’s classic “Slippin’ And Slidin’”, remain unreleased, though they both still exist in the Zappa Vault. Frank sent the tape of the latter track over to Dot Records, seeking to be a recording deal for the group. Dot Records rejected the tracks on the basis that the guitar was distorted. Clearly the suits at Dot could not anticipate the future!

Fall 1964 (exact dates unknown)
Studio Z, Cucamonga, CA
8 minutes, A/A-

Charva (1:59)
The Birth Of Captain Beefheart (0:18)
I Was A Teen-age Maltshop (1:10)
Ned The Mumbler (1:45)
Ned Has A Brainstorm (1:59)

Captain Beefheart vs. The Grunt People was not the only major project that Frank was attempting to get off the ground in the fall of 1964. One project that came considerably closer to actually being realized was I Was A Teen-age Malt Shop, a so-called “teenage opera” that was once again intended to star Don Vliet, again in character as Captain Beefheart (and there may have been some plot continuity between this and Grunt People). Once again, Frank spent time writing a script for this and preparing a number of songs to be used in the production. This low-budget bit of weirdness was shopped to the CBS Network, who apparently had some level of interest in producing it, but ultimately this also failed to materialize.

Several songs from I Was A Teen-age Maltshop have become publicly available either through official or less-official means. The 1985 album Mystery Disc featured the instrumental title track for the production, a simple cocktail-lounge blues with Frank pumping away on the piano, Vic Mortensen on drums and Motorhead Sherwood on acoustic guitar. Don Vliet can be heard at the beginning of the track, in character, reciting the title of the program. Mystery Disc follows this up immediately with Don performing a bit more dialogue from the production, in a track titled “The Birth Of Captain Beefheart”. The last of these tracks to be featured on Mystery Disc is the hilarious R&B parody “Charva”, which is sung by Frank in character, though we do not know exactly who that character is. It’s hard to know whether this song was prepared specifically for the production or not, but Frank is playing all of the instruments on it, using Studio Z’s multitrack facilities.

Two more tracks from I Was A Teen-age Maltshop were aired by Frank during a 1975 radio broadcast on KWST-FM in Los Angeles, during which he played some early unreleased recordings and reminisced with his old buddy Captain Beefheart. “Ned The Mumbler” again features Frank on lead vocal, portraying the character of - you guessed it - Ned The Mumbler. The interesting thing about this track (which again most likely features Frank playing all the instruments) is that the lyrics are at least partially autobiographical, as Ned’s father works for the government, forcing Ned to change schools until “it’s a crying shame”. This segues in the KWST broadcast into “Ned Has A Brainstorm”, an instrumental that would later be known to Zappa fans as “Toads Of The Short Forest”. One final track from this product production that was included in the KWST broadcast was the early demo of “Status Back Baby” which had been recorded the previous year at Pal Studio and which features Paul Buff’s wife Alison on lead vocal, in character as “Nelda”.

October 31, 1964
Studio Z, Cucamonga, CA
2 minutes, A

Excerpt From The Uncle Frankie Show (0:40)
Uncle Frankie Halloween Message (0:48)

Despite the hand-painted sign on the front of Studio Z encouraging local musicians to “RECORD YOUR BAND”, the studio failed as a commercial venture for Frank. This did not deter him from attempting to make his name known to the public in other ways. Around October 1964, Frank landed a gig of sorts, producing his own show for KSPC, the radio station of Pomona College. These shows were prepared at Studio Z - although Frank would later claim that he snuck into the radio station studio at Pomona College and put the show out live on the air - and were partly a commercial for the studio and partly a commercial for Frank himself, who hosted the proceedings under the name “Uncle Frankie”. The show began airing on Halloween 1964 and appears to have continued into sometime in November when it was canceled - or Frank was otherwise stopped from doing it – by the college.

The first excerpt from The Uncle Frankie Show appeared on the 1985 Mystery Disc album. This short excerpt, from the Halloween 1964 debut episode, features Frank – who later claimed that he did not know how to play piano – giving a lesson on how to play basic rock ‘n’ roll riffs on the ivories. Mastering these riffs, Frank informed the audience, would give them the ability to play “I think it’s a total of 15,000 different rock ‘n’ roll songs that you can also sing at parties.” The riffs are all entry-level R&B in origin, and on the 1985 album Frank segues from this track into the ultimate illustration of what you can do with them, his R&B parody ”Charva”.

A second short excerpt from this program was posted on Halloween 2014 to the Zappa.com
website. In this brief excerpt, Uncle Frankie encourages his listeners to have a happy
Halloween, and that those who are partaking of Halloween festivities at Pomona College not
do anything that would be considered “nasty”, lest they find themselves expelled from the
school.

November 1964 (exact date unknown)
Studio Z, Cucamonga, CA
12 minutes, A

The Uncle Frankie Show (11:42)

The 2015 release Joe’s Xmasage closed out with a 12-minute excerpt from The Uncle Frankie Show, which was produced at Studio Z sometime in November 1964. And unknown emcee introduces Frank as “that foremost, author, world-renowned lecturer, writer of many books, musical director, singer, actor, producer, and water boy for the Cucamonga Killers…Frank Zappa!” Frank greets his listeners by expressing that “it’s just wonderful that you would come back and listen to me one more time“.

Frank then talks about I Was A Teen-age Maltshop, which he informs the audience is in the process of being produced for CBS Television. He describes it as “the world’s first rock ‘n’ roll teenage opera”, and then hilariously describes the plots of a number of other productions though he has planned for CBS, should this work out. Examples of these productions, none of which would be produced, include I Was A Teen-age Gas Station Attendant and the immortal I Was A Teen-age Artichoke.

Frank then goes into a lengthy bit wherein breaks down the recording of “Charva”, helpfully describing the multitracking process with which the song was pieced together. He then treats listeners to a bit of “old-time nasty blues”, played unaccompanied on acoustic guitar. After encouraging his listeners to write-in with their thoughts about The Uncle Frankie Show, “Uncle Frankie” signs off.

January 1965 (exact date unknown)
The Village Inn, Littlerock, CA
5 minutes, A-

The Village Inn (1:17)
Steal Away (3:43)

As 1964 segued into 1965, Frank Zappa was still struggling to make ends meet while trying to get things happening on a bigger scale at Studio Z. In order to make ends meet at least to some extent, Frank took a gig at the Village Inn and Barbecue, a dive bar located about an hour away by car from Studio Z in the town of Littlerock. Basically, Frank was the guitarist for the weekend house band, playing Friday and Saturday night for seven dollars a night (equivalent to around $175 in 2026). It wasn’t much, but it bought food and kept the lights on.

Accompanying Frank at the Village Inn was a small combo consisting of former Blackouts sax man Johnny Franklin on bass, Toby Tobias on drums and Frank’s old buddy Motorhead Sherwood honking away on tenor sax, an instrument that he never learned how to play properly. Frank naturally recorded at least a little bit of tape at one of these gigs, and this was released on the 1985 album Mystery Disc. The tape begins with an emcee enthusiastically introducing the band, forgetting Motorhead altogether and mangling Frank’s name, rendering it as “Frankie Zappo”. Frank would later recall Don Vliet, who may well have driven Frank to the bar, watching the proceedings from the audience.

In the next segment of tape, the band is joined by a woman named Cora Stacker, a local who was a regular at the bar. Later described by FZ as “this huge lady, who wore white socks rolled down over her shoes and sang like a man”, Cora applies her baritone to a rendition of the Jimmy Hughes blues standard “Steal Away”. Although Frank can be heard getting in an occasional stinging lick, the star here is Cora, and rightfully so as she gets very wrapped up in the performance, belting out the lyric with great feeling. This is a great and exceedingly rare example of a young FZ as accompanist, seemingly very little of which was committed to tape.

March 25, 1965
Studio Z, Cucamonga, CA
14 minutes, A

Bossa Nova Pervertamento (2:15)
GTR Trio (11:21)

By March of 1965, the reality was surely making itself clear to FZ that Studio Z was not going to become a successful business. Although Frank was encouraged and helped out by his group of friends, things were going to have to change if he was going to make enough money to survive. He did not know it on the evening of March 25th, 1965, but as fate would dictate, everything was about to change.

On this evening, Frank sat down with bassist Bobby Saldana and Les Papp, the drummer from his 1964 power trio known as The Muthers, to lay an experimental improvisation to tape. With Frank on his acoustic guitar, the experiment here appears to have been to contrast different time signatures against each other, something that of course Frank would later become quite known for. Two recordings from this evening have been released, the first being issued on the 1985 album Mystery Disc as “Bossa Nova Pervertamento”. The basic feel of the track is indeed a kind of perverted bossa nova, over which Frank works out on acoustic guitar, while Bobby Saldana holds down a simple riff on electric bass. The results are somewhat cacophonous to begin with but settle down as Frank plays some interesting and somewhat aggressive polyrhythmic chordal stabs.

A longer excerpt from this session was released on the 2005 album Joe’s Xmasage as “GTR Trio”, from the title written by FZ on the tape box. After tuning, Frank directs Les Papp to play a bossa nova, and after doing a bit of finagling to get the beat where he wants it, Frank works out a bass riff with Bobby, and they kick off a lengthy improvisation. It’s very interesting to hear such a lengthy performance from this era, as it shows Frank in an early tinkering mode. Although again the playing is fairly primitive, the trio navigates the off-kilter vamp reasonably well, and Frank shows off his already prodigious lead guitar chops, coming up with some ideas that are quite advanced for 1965.

The day after this tape was recorded, Studio Z was busted by the San Bernardino County Vice Squad. Desperate for money, Frank had taken a “job” wherein he manufactured what was described later as a “pornographic tape recording”, in a deal set up by an undercover agent after weeks of probably illegal surveillance, which involved spying on the occupants of the studio through a hole drilled into a wall. The tape, in which Frank could be heard faux-cavorting with his then-girlfriend Lorraine Belcher, was “enhanced” by the sound of creaking bedsprings. Although it was a tape that could barely be considered raunchy by today’s standards, it was very much so by the prudish standards of 1965. And so it was that Frank and Lorraine Belcher were duly arrested. It was no great secret that the town of Rancho Cucamonga would have liked to see Frank run out of town, as his offbeat “style” did not mesh well with the generally conservative vibe of the town. Looked at over 60 years later, it seems very likely that the bust, which of course was a complete setup that would barely rate a misdemeanor charge today, was intended to get the ball rolling on the closure of Studio Z.

This episode, which is best recounted in Frank’s autobiography The Real Frank Zappa Book, ended with Frank serving 10 days in Tank C at the San Bernardino County Jail. In short order, it would indeed lead to the demise of Studio Z, but it was also a major event that would point the way to Frank actually fulfilling his destiny. Obviously railroaded by the police, Frank developed an intense bitterness and general cynicism after this incident, which would become an important foundation for his general outlook on life. With Frank no longer able to live at Studio Z, and with his parents having effectively shunning him following the incident, Frank took up temporary residence at the home of Motorhead Sherwood’s mother, while he tried to figure out how he could bounce back. He wouldn’t have to wait long before fate intervened.

May 23, 1969
Lawrence University Chapel, Appleton, WI
80 min, SBD, A-

FZ Introduction (1:45)
Some Ballet Music (7:44)
Uncle Meat (3:28)
Drum Duet (3:47)
The Eye Of Agamotto (9:03)
My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama (3:42)
Improvisation (6:37)
Kung Fu (2:21)
Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue (7:47)
Hungry Freaks Daddy (4:48)
The Return Of The Son Of The Hunchback Duke (5:31)
Aybe Sea (1:34)
Transylvania Boogie (1:45)
Help I’m A Rock/Transylvania Boogie (4:57)
King Kong (14:35)
Igor’s Boogie (2:40)

This show is a true classic, and one of the best-known and best-loved of the MOI era. It has circulated among fans since around 1979, and excerpts from the tape were first bootlegged on Mud Shark’s 1981 12-LP box set Twenty Years Of Frank Zappa. It is also a brilliant performance in amazing stereo sound, apparently recorded by Don Presto - if so, it is easily the best-quality of Don’s “stage tape” cache. A separate recording of this show, made by FZ, exists in the Zappa Vault. This is the Mothers’ first show in Appleton, and right from the get-go you know it’s going to be a good show. FZ is in a good mood, the audience is appreciative even of the more “difficult” material, and the band is playing very well.

The show starts off with a new (for us) instrumental piece, known to collectors (from its appearance on the “Bizarre Records” 1984 bootleg The Ark) as “Some Ballet Music”. It is in fact music for an unnamed ballet (performed here without what was apparently was its usual choreography), sections of which would later be incorporated into Frank’s later work “The Adventures Of Greggery Peccary” (first issued in 1978 on the Studio Tan album). Following the main section of the song, it breaks down into a quiet passage with piano (through a wah pedal) played initially unaccompanied before the band joins in, creating a waltz-time bed that quickly becomes “Uncle Meat”.

“Uncle Meat” is as gorgeous and stately as ever, and moves into its usual drum duet section, with FZ playing alongside Jimmy Carl Black at Art Tripp’s drum kit. This stays rhythmic this time, not descending into the arrhythmic chaos that sometimes engulfs the duet. Polyrhythms are played in all variations against the basic pulse provided by Mr. Black. Don Preston can be heard playing the “Uncle Meat“ melody on piano at one point during the drum duet, joined by (presumably) Artie Tripp on percussion. Preston then adds percussive piano accents to the duet for a few moments before the band begin playing the next tune, Don Preston’s own “The Eye Of Agamotto”.

This is probably the best “Agamotto” we have on tape, a beautifully played, fully-realized affair with another oddball “bebop” section mid-song featuring horn squealing from Buzz Gardner, creepy vibes and keyboards, and Roy on walking bass. The “vamp” descends momentarily into chaos and then an into interesting space involving keyboards and vibes without accompanying rhythms. Preston then fires up his electronic workshop for a moment to close things out before heading back into the theme of the piece.

The next tune is the stage premiere of the full-blown version of “My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama”, last heard in an instrumental rendition at the Miami gig back in February. This version, with vocals by FZ, is similar to the later Weasels Ripped My Flesh album in that the tempo is upbeat; in this case it is much too fast for the vocals to fit comfortably well with the music. The slowed-down single version (which would be released later that year, in August) is a more successful marriage of the musical and vocals elements. FZ does get to rock out on the closing guitar solo however.

The solo vamp is ended by a sudden lunge into some improvisation featuring “Gas Mask” vocals by Roy, which quickly fade away into silence. FZ advises the audience to spend the time meditating, then shows them some of the hand signals he uses to conduct the band. With these signals he attempts to conduct band and audience into a spontaneous composition over a teenage rock and roll beat. This is in fact one of the most successful examples of this type of spontaneous Zappa composition of this period.

Then it’s time for the next sequence. This starts with “Kung Fu” (with a little random improv thrown in at the end) and moves quickly into another new piece, “Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue”. This beautiful instrumental piece (with prominent vibes again) would later be issued on 1970’s Weasels Ripped My Flesh. Following the head of the piece, Preston again begins playing with his oscillators, and the madness builds, finally exploding in a crazed 5/8 vamp with trumpet strangulation courtesy of Buzz. FZ then leads the band through more conducted improvisation, including the lounge vamp and a demented march during which FZ plays some quotes on guitar from the traditional “Teddy Bears Picnic”, the classics “It Had To Be You” and “Tea For Two” and Varese’s “Octandre”. The madness builds to a climax, and FZ jumps directly into “Hungry Freaks Daddy” (with clear vocal support here from Lowell), an excellent rendition marred only by a fault which causes FZ’s guitar solo to drop out at one point. Otherwise, this is perhaps the most fiery solo FZ ever played on this tune.

The next piece is one of the best full-blown versions we have of “Little House I Used To live In”, here under its working title of “The Return Of The Son Of The Hunchback Duke”. After the opening section (during which FZ gets in another killer solo with surf overtones), he brings the band down for a gorgeous rendition of “Aybe Sea” which moves without missing a beat into “Transylvania Boogie”, which is interesting to hear in a different context to the one in which it is usually performed (as part of “Help I’m A Rock”).

This breaks down into a few moments of quiet Don Preston organ passages before FZ jumps into “Help I’m A Rock” itself. The lyrics are more full-blown than usual here, with their usual variations (“it’s a drag keeping America safe for Americans…I’d even like to be a Nazi soldier!”). Following this, Frank jumps back into “Transylvania Boogie” again for a brief swing. Ian then plays the piece out with a subtle alto solo.

This leads into “King Kong”. Motorhead is audibly encouraged by his band mates and turns in his usual excellent baritone sax effort, and following the bridge FZ kicks off the main solo section. Initially hard-edged and aggressive, he quickly shifts gears into a thoughtful, melodic mode, with a few Hungarian minor passages thrown in.

He then hands the spotlight over to Buzz, who gives his usual stately effort over the vamp. The vamp is (as it typically is for Buzz) altered to a neo-shuffle over which Buzz gets in some truly beautiful playing. The band grooves along nicely, providing outstanding support.

Ian enters next, and begins what is initially another subtle effort. Then the vamp shifts to a sparse 5/8 vamp over which Ian blows a fine solo, picking up steam so that when the band return to the shuffle groove he is really riding high. FZ’s rhythm guitar is again loud and upfront. Next up is Preston, who starts to get into his solo only for the groove to rapidly dissolve into chaos. There follows some frenetic “Charles Ives”-ish improv, with squealing trumpet, and conduced vocal noises from the band.

Following this, the band launches into “Igor’s Boogie”. The vocals in the doo-wop section are best heard in this rendition and Roy sings along with the melody in the main “phases”. A final drum roll sounds, Frank says “Goodnight boys and girls”, and this superb show comes to an end.

Enough said. If you don’t have this one, get it!

Before “Some Ballet Music”:

FZ: Well, we’re gonna try to entertain you this evening. After we get tuned up, and make sure that all of our electric goodies are working, we’re going to play, uh, some music that we normally use for a ballet that we perform - the members of the group perform in halls where we have more room on the stage. It’s a little cramped up here today. So you can just imagine that the, the Mothers are dancing around while this music is going on. You can have some absurd Midwestern fantasies about that. Uh, you people are really happy! What’s wrong with you? OK? This piece is written for flute, alto flute, flugelhorn, vibes and percussion. It also doesn’t have an ending so when we get to the ending of where the music is we’re just gonna stop. The alto flute is the big tube. OK.

Before “My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama”:

FZ: Thank you. Thank you again. We’ve never tried this song before in concert. The - and we’ve been working on it for, I dunno, a couple of months now. We started putting it together in a recording studio in Miami, and, uh, every once in a while we’d think of trying to play it but just because this is Appleton, Wisconsin, and you happen to be an exceptionally responsive group - that’s called the hype - we’re going to play this tune for you. The name of this tune is “My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama”. Oh, I’m gonna give you a teenage one-bar count-off. Well, here it goes.

During “Improvisation”:

FZ: Meditate. That was good meditation, you guys! Now I’ll conduct the applause around the room, you’ll here it go around like this. As the finger goes by stop clapping. Try it once. Clap. No, this is upstairs. C’mon. Just like stereo. We would like to have you, we would like to have you sing along with us on this. Here’s, here’s how it goes. This means sing the highest note possible for a very short period of time. Like this. Try that? OK, now let’s see if we can make that go around the room. No no, just when it goes up. Wait a minute. You’re getting excited. Cool it. Here’s another one. This is a vomiting noise. Now let’s see if we can stretch that one around the room. No, come on now, we have to develop this into a valid piece of music. We don’t want to waste it. Very slowly. That’s the most disgusting noise I’ve ever heard. Now let’s see if we can combine into a valid piece of music. In order for a piece of music to be valid for a teenage audience it’s gotta have a good beat.

After “Improvisation”:

FZ: We’re, we’re taping this, I hope it comes out. No telling where your, uh, vomiting noises will wind up. “The Mothers Of Invention Appleton Album”!

Before “Kung Fu”:

FZ: Anytime.

Before “The Return Of The Son of The Hunchback Duke (Little House I Used To Live In)”:

FZ: Thank you. That’s the first time we ever tried that Frankenstein Monster business. That looks pretty good. If we could get the organ to be more stable as an operating table.

Various Mothers: (…)

FZ: Yeah, Yes, I know. And I stayed all night too.

Various Mothers: (…)

FZ: OK. Now, a - a rocking number. The name of this tune is The Return Of The Son of The Hunchback Duke”, otherwise known as “The Duke”.

Lowell George: Part one.

FZ: ‘Bout ready? Two bars.

Before “King Kong”:

FZ: “Kong”. “Kong”. The name of this song is “King Kong”. The roll on the tom-toms gives you the idea that it’s a jungle-y number.

Following “Igor’s Boogie”:

FZ: Goodnight boys and girls. Thank you.

Folks, for this week I’m presenting something of a rarity - this is a Q&A that Frank participated in at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville on April 28, 1969. This is a weird one, because the Mothers had no other business in Knoxville that we know of, but this speaking engagement comes in a gap of a few days between known dates of the band’s April/May east coast swing. It appears that this Q&A session followed a screening of Burnt Weeny Sandwich, the short film that Frank had assembled as a sort of preamble/promotional device for Uncle Meat, the movie that he was trying to get financed at the time.

There is much that Frank discusses in this hour, making this rare recording a most enjoyable listen. Enjoy!

Folks, this is a special post for paid subscribers only. If you feel so moved, you can use the link below, and for a whopping $5 a month (WHAT? In the depression and everything??), you can access the exclusive stuff being offered here. Otherwise, we shall see you tomorrow for our regularly scheduled post!

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