Sodoma E Gomorra

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Even if you use a mirror, it’s still in Italian

Call me crazy, but I like Italian Prog. I don’t know how long I’ve had this in my hard drive, or where it came from, but it rocks. And hard. This song is a kickass instrumental. The rest of the album has standard, but not odious, hard rock vocals.
It would have been a classic if made by an American, British, or even Australian band.

from http://www.italianprog.com

Il Rovescio della Medaglia were formed in Rome around the end of 1970 from the ashes of the beat band I Lombrichi. Enzo Vita, Stefano Urso e Gino Campoli founded the group, that had as lead singer first Gianni Mereu (not the guitarist of Logan Dwight), then Sandro Falbo (from Le Rivelazioni) and soon later Pino Ballarini, who had moved to Rome from Pescara where he played with Poema.
Their first great success was at Viareggio Pop festival and they soon became one of the most popular live bands in Italy during the early 70′s.

First LP La Bibbia, released in 1971, was basically a very good hard-rock album with slight prog influences, recorded live in studio and accompanied by a distinctive round medallion-shaped booklet
The second one, Io come io a year later, was in the same style, with ambitious philosophical lyrics inspired from Hegel works. A short album (less than 30 minutes) but again a really good one!

In 1973 a fifth member was added, keyboard player Franco Di Sabbatino, also from Pescara, like Pino Ballarini, and briefly with Il Paese dei Balocchi.
With their sound enriched by the keyboards, Il Rovescio released the third album, Contaminazione, with the help of argentine composer Luis Enriquez Bacalov, who had already worked with New Trolls for their Concerto Grosso and Osanna.
The album was obviously more in a symphonic direction, and was also released in an English-sung version and issued in many foreign countries, to try to launch the group abroad. The English language album appeared in Italy in 1975 only, when the band had already split up.

By this time the band was being renowned for their powerful performances, always played at the loudest possible volume and helped by a unique sound system. This is what the Contamination LP liner notes said about it (originally written in English, mistakes and all…): “Their instrumentation is among the moste interesting in Europe. The 6000 watt Mack vocal equipment is quadrophonic and is equivalent to 36 track amplifiers. The console table is really a portable recording studio with filters, compressors, etc. The guitar, the battery and the keyboards have 900 watt amplifiers. The keyboards consist of a vertical B Hammond organ, a harmonium, an eminent for the reproduction of strings, two VCS synthesizers, a 200 Harp [it was probably an ARP], and two mini moog synthesizers. The lighting equipment is also important. There are 50 spotlights which produce colors and special effects. On a special screen behind the group, slides and films are projected to produce abstract musical effects.”.
Not bad for an Italian band, and no one else in Italy had such a powerful live act!

But… in December 1973 the stealing of their big and expensive PA brought the band close to the end, with Pino Ballarini leaving for Switzerland (briefly replaced by Michele Zarrillo from Semiramis) and the others continuing as an instrumental-only band. The live album Giudizio avrai, privately released by the band in the late 80′s, contains a recording from this period, with the band’s sound dominated by the keyboards.

Last release is a single from 1975 (there’s a mention on its cover of a new album, but this was never released), then the band had various line-up changes up to 1977.

Bassist Stefano Urso founded Europe, authors in the early 80′s of an album (Bubble BLU-19609) and some singles in pop/rock style.
In early 90′s guitarist Enzo Vita reformed the band with a new line-up and released a new CD called Il ritorno, different from their past production and more AOR-inspired, as its followers Vitae (recorded earlier) and Microstorie, issued in 2011.

Sodoma E Gomorra

Lou Reed & Metallica

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Worse than You can Imagine

I just this minute found out Lou Reed and Metallica made an album. I sampled about a minute of each tune on YouTube and it’s effin terrible.

Except if “Iced Honey” had been on “The Bells”, or “Growing up In Public”, or “Mistrial”, or “Legendary Hearts”, or “Sally Can’t Dance”, or “Rock N Roll Heart”, or even “The Blue Mask”, it would have been the best song on the album.
I’m not saying it’s good, but it sounds like above average late period Lou. Someone will say “update of Velvets sound”. Not necessarily a good thing.

File Under: What Were They Thinking?

These guys are hard on their fans, that’s for sure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC9Z_D8hFiA

I saw this comment: “This oughtta make “St Anger” sound better”.

Can you say Super Heavy?

Jimmy Plagiarist

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Worth tracking downThis post began as a feature on the underrated, yet highly influential Davey Graham. I was blown away when I acquired his 1964 album Folk, Blues, & Beyond, and first heard his amazing rendition of “She Moved Through The Fair”.  I’ve been into the British Folkies since way before breakfast, and I’d heard of him, but never ran across any of his records.  I forget which of my favorite blogs first clued me in, but suddenly my whole understanding of the late ’60′s folk thing shifted.  The raga break in Fairport Convention’s “Nottamun Town” didn’t seem so brilliantly original.  That eastern flavor is Davey Graham’s contribution.  He developed the DADGAD tuning in order to play oud music on his guitar while travelling through Morocco. It’s also a sitar tuning.
Anyway “She Moved Through The Fair” sounded very familiar.  That’s because Jimmy Page, while a Yardbird, appropriated it, retitled it as “White Summer”, and has performed it as a showpiece and signature song without ever crediting Graham for the arrangement or the tuning making it possible.
I bought ”Hammer Of The Gods” for $2 at a flea market in Woodstock last weekend, and according to it’s author, after touring Australia with the Yardbirds,
“Jimmy flew on to India, where he wanted to hear Carnatic Music.  He arrived alone, in Bombay on the Arabian Sea at three in the morning with a duffel bag over his shoulder, and spent days in the streets, listening to itinerant musicians.”
I don’t know about you, but that sounds a little like a fantasy.
Two pages later when describing “Little Games”, the subsequent , final, and only Yardbirds album featuring Jimmy Page he mentions one of the highlights being,
“”White Summer,” Jimmy’s Carnatic madrigal that was his solo showpiece in concert”
I figure since he’s a plagiarist he’s probably a liar, too.  I don’t know about his India story, but as long as he’s stealing a man’s music, why not some of his legend as well?
Here’s a little wikipedia on Davey Graham:
“Graham’s spontaneity made him unreliable and unpredictable, which did little to advance his fame or endear him to concert organisers and the more commercial elements of the music world. In the late 1960s he was booked for a tour of Australia but, when his plane stopped for an hour in Bombay, he changed his plans and spent the next six months wandering through India.”

Martin Carthy from the back of Folk, Blues, And Beyond
“Davy is one of the great originals on the folk scene; in fact I think he’s probably the great original. Davy’s discovery of DADGAD really was the great leap forward and his performance of “She Moved Through The Fair” in this tuning at the troubadour was mind blowing.”

Carnatic madrigal my arse.
Many of Led Zeppelin’s signature tunes are shameless rip-off’s of other artist’s ideas. All I can figure is that their manager, Peter Grant said something like, “They can go broke suing us.”

Jimmy bought this album in 1967

In a 1990 interview with Musician magazine, Jimmy Page quickly soured when questions veered into this territory. The Q and A exchange is quoted below.

Musician: I understand “Dazed & Confused” was originally a song by Jake Holmes. Is that true?

Page: [Sourly] I don’t know. I don’t know. [Inhaling] I don’t know about all that.

Musician: Do you remember the process of writing that song?

Page: Well, I did that with the Yardbirds originally… The Yardbirds were such a good band for a guitarist to play in that I came up with a lot of riffs and ideas out of that, and I employed quite a lot of those in the early Zeppelin stuff.

Musician: But Jake Holmes, a successful jingle writer in New York, claims on his 1967 record that he wrote the original song.

Page: Hmm. Well, I don’t know. I don’t know about that. I’d rather not get into it because I don’t know all the circumstances. What’s he got, The riff or whatever? Because Robert wrote some of the lyrics for that on the album. But he was only listening to… we extended it from the one that we were playing with the Yardbirds.

Musician: Did you bring it into the Yardbirds?

Page: No, I think we played it ’round a sort of melody line or something that Keith [Relf] had. So I don’t know. I haven’t heard Jake Holmes so I don’t know what it’s all about anyway. Usually my riffs are pretty damn original. [laughs] What can I say?

from wikipedia:

During a 1967 tour of the United States by English rock group The Yardbirds, Jake Holmes performed as the opener at the Village Theater in Greenwich Village on August 25, 1967. The Yardbirds were inspired by his performance and decided to work up their own arrangement. Their version featured long instrumental passages of bowed guitar courtesy of Jimmy Page, and dynamic instrumental flourishes. Page has stated that he obtained the idea of using a violin bow on his guitar from a violinist named David McCallum, Sr*., during his session days before joining the Yardbirds in 1966. At that time, it even had a little Eastern influence, as can be heard on some French television appearances. It quickly became a staple of The Yardbirds’ live performance during the last year of their act.
The song was never officially recorded by the band, although a live version recorded on 30 March 1968 is included on the album Live Yardbirds: Featuring Jimmy Page under the alternate title “I’m Confused”. Notably, it is the only track that has no songwriter credits on the release. Another live version of the song, recorded on the French TV series “Bouton Rouge” on 9 March 1968, was included on the CD Cumular Limit in 2000 and was credited “by Jake Holmes arr. Yardbirds.”

When the Yardbirds disbanded in 1968, Page planned to record the song yet again, this time with Led Zeppelin. According to Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, the first time he heard the song was at the band’s very first rehearsal session at Gerrard Street in London in 1968: “Jimmy played us the riffs at the first rehearsal and said, ‘This is a number I want us to do’.” Led Zeppelin recorded their version in October 1968 at Olympic Studios, London, and the song was included on their 1969 debut album Led Zeppelin.
The Led Zeppelin version was not credited to Holmes. Page used the title, penned a new set of lyrics, and changed enough of the melody to escape a plagiarism lawsuit from Holmes — the song’s arrangement, however, remained markedly similar to the version performed by The Yardbirds the previous year.While Holmes took no action at the time, he did later contact Page in regards to the matter. Page had not replied as of 2001. In June 2010 Holmes filed a lawsuit in United States District Court, alleging copyright infringement and naming Page as a co-defendant. The 2012 live album Celebration Day attributes the song to “Page; inspired by Jake Holmes”, although the writer’s credit with ASCAP remains unchanged.

Here is “Dazed And Confused” by Jake Holmes from his 1967 album, The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes. The Yardbirds saw Jake perform this and Jimmy Page bought the album at Bleeker Bob’s the next day.
 

*Actually the origin of the violin bow can be seen here in this YouTube video of The Creation playing their excellent “Making Time” in 1966. (The bow comes out at 1:40)


“Hammer Of The Gods” repeatedly states Led Zeppelin’s affinity for the California sound (“Going To California”), especially San Francisco’s Spirit. Here is a brief instrumental by Randy California, from Spirit (1967)entitled “Taurus”. It’s quite lovely and the central theme is the basis for “Stairway To Heaven”.
 


Bert Jansch


“Black Mountain Side” from Led Zeppelin’s debut, and credited to Jimmy Page is really Bert Jansch’s arrangement of the traditional “Black Waterside” with a new title. Bert Jansch (11/03/43-10/05/11) was also influenced by Davy Graham, and like Martin Carthy, not adverse to giving credit. Here is “Black Waterside” from his 1966 album Jack Orion.
 
Led Zeppelin has been sued by and settled with bluesmen for several songs, “Whole Lotta Love”, for instance. I didn’t include them as the blues are slippery, the originals they copied were themselves built on other tunes. That’s blues. I didn’t mention that “Communication Breakdown” is a re-write of Eddie Cochran’s “Nervous Breakdown” because it isn’t as obvious. Most music is built out of other tunes. But you either render it unrecognizable, thus making it yours, or you give credit where credit is due.

One more thing about Mr. Page’s character: He fucked underage girls.


Here are a couple Yardbirds tracks Jimmy would rather you didn’t hear:
“Knowing That I’m losing You” later turned up as “Tangerine” with Keith Relf’s uncredited lyrics intact.
 
The “original” “White Summer” from Little Games (1968)
 
“Usually my riffs are pretty damn original. [laughs] What can I say?”
Thanks to Willard for turning me onto “Taurus”. While the post was taking shape I ran across Will Shade’s fine article:
“THE THIEVING MAGPIES:
Jimmy Page’s Dubious Recording Legacy
Part 2
where I found a lot of information/inspiration.
She Moved Through The Fair
Dazed & Confused
Taurus
Black Waterside
Knowing That I’m Losing You
White Summer

Little Bit Of Magic

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"Little Bit Of Magic" Not found here.

Rosco Gordon’s “Little Bit Of Magic” is the #2 song I’ve been searching my cassette archives for. This originally came from a Swedish “best of” I bought in 1984. Most of the songs were from the fifties and early 60′s, the usual tunes including “Booted”, and “No More Doggin”, but at the end, something unusual, “Little Bit Of Magic”. Apparently a 1969 single put out on Bab-Roc, Rosco’s own label, this is the only “modern” soul music I’ve ever heard from him. No proto-ska “Rosco’s Rhythm”, but a heavy funk-soul workout.
I’ve never seen it again, and on YouTube someone has posted an earlier version of the song.
I used to think it would have been a perfect vehicle from Bryan Ferry, had he recorded it in the ’70′s when he was relevant.
Anyway enjoy the tune, it smokes. I wonder what was on the “B” side?

Here’s a link to Youtube uploaded by DJ Soulmarcosa. You can at least see the artifact.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkpHSA_lUOY

Little Bit Of Magic

Modern Lovers

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The right wrong album

Besides “Some Bright Stars For Queens College”, one of the songs I most wanted to find in my cassette archives was “Roadrunner (Once)”*. I’m not sure when exactly during my sophomore year at SDSU I finally found a Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers album, I’d been reading Robert Hilburn’s ravings in the LA Times and been on the lookout for awhile, but of course I bought the wrong one.
The right one was the John Cale produced debut, The Modern Lovers(1976), which sounds like the Stooges and the Velvet Underground in a blender, sort of, is a certified protopunk classic, and contains some of his best known songs, including “Pablo Picasso”.
The one I bought was the second one, Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers(1976), which featured “Rockin Shopping Center”, “Abominable Snowman in the Market”, “Hey There Little Insect”, “Hi Dear” etc, which sounded nothing like the The Velvets or Stooges, and to my Beatles- Zeppelin-Floyd trained ears, bore little resemblance to Rock N Roll. Remember, I didn’t know what to make of Syd Barrett either.
My first instinct was to hate it, and since I lived in a dorm, peer pressure was strong. With my neighbors blasting Boston and Aerosmith, I felt really embarrassed playing it.
About the same time I noticed the Eno lyric on “Third Uncle”- “We saw the Lovers, The Modern Lovers and they looked very good they looked as if they could”, or something like that.
My freshman year was spent at Cal State Fullerton, where during lunch hour, bands would often play outdoors in the “quad” in front of “the Commons”.
I came to realize later that The Modern Lovers were one of them. They were pretty goofy, yet somehow charming, and I remembered them playing “Roadrunner”.
Like an idiot I got rid of almost all my records in 1990, including a half dozen Jonathan Richman albums.
I bought a Rhino “Best Of” cd as a replacement, but of course it was missing a lot of the best songs. Not included was the Beserkely Chartbuster’s version of “Roadrunner”, which is vastly superior to that on the debut, or “Rockin Shoppin Center”.
I had a really hard time tracking them down. Jonathan’s music goes in and out of print, and gets repackaged in different configurations. The version I was looking for is sometimes called “Roadrunner (once)”, and other times, “Roadrunner (twice)”.
I went so far as to order something on Amazon, but it never arrived.
I spent more time than I like to admit tracking these tunes down.
As great as the debut is, the “uncool” tracks found here are little closer to my heart.
Still, if you’ve never heard it, “Pablo Picasso” is a classic.
My favorite line:
“Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole, not like you”
Interesting that the original band included Jerry Harrison and David Robinson, who went on to play in The Talking Heads, and the Cars, respectively.

For more info, here’s wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Modern_Lovers

Roadrunner (twice?)
Rockin Shoppin Center
The New Teller

from The Modern Lovers

Pablo Picasso

*I never found “Roadrunner”, but a cassette did turn up “Rockin Shoppin Center”, however the mp3 I found, and posted here, sounded slightly better than the dub I made.

Out For Dinner

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Front Cover

Lately I’ve been collecting a lot of “out” music. Out of print, and just plain “out there”. I like to listen when I cook, I find that music organizes my mind so I can focus on what I’m doing. I made this compilation for that sole purpose, and dinner specifically, hence Out For Dinner, preferably with a nice glass of beer to help mange your thirst and sense of well being. One consideration is that while doing this I’m not wearing earbuds, which I hate, but filling the whole house with whatever I’m listening to, so I try not alienate my wife and 11 year old daughter with music is too confrontational. When I’m cooking, I tend to gravitate toward contemplative.
Anyway I have a nice selection of tunes for you.

 

This post is a followup to Some Bright Stars For Queens College, as it needed company on the cd it inspired.

Check out the comments.

Back

Burnt Garlic or “kulinary gangsta”?

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Celebrity Cracker Advocate

I became aware of his existence last superbowl season and he bugs the shit out of me. He was a talking display hawking his “recipes” and “brand” image for some cracker company. In all the wrong ways a cross between Wolfman Jack and Billy Idol. That look was maybe edgy and shit in 1977, or 1991, but now he looks like a Saturday morning cartoon character.  Like if there was a “Stinky” on Scoobee Doo.
To be more specific, this fu*ktard has co-opted every post WWII element of so-called hipster cool and blender-ed them  into a grotesque caricature, so repellent that it really calls into question whether any hip affectations were ever cool. The answer is probably not. It’s like a Les Paul with a flame job and dice for knobs. And little skulls for dots. In a crushed purple velvet tuck and roll faux alligator case. Something that would mostly attract those with more interest in image than substance. Or some CEO who didn’t play, but wanted a guitar like Slash, only even cooler.

 

I’m sorry I couldn’t let it go.  I had to say something.

Some Bright Stars For Queens College

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The culprit

Two weeks before I built it, I said for the benefit of everyone else in the room as they unpacked their effects pedalboards, that I’d never use one. I thought of myself as some sort of guitar purist. I was into my guitar, it’s pickups, and a cord plugged straight into a tube amp. At the same time I was playing bass in another band and in order to have more colors in my pallette, I’d started to bring the analog delay and tremelo pedals, and of course all the wall warts, patch cords, and irritating set-up that go with them.  It flew in the face of my of my plan to keep things as simple as possible.  Also we moved from one rehearsal room into another and in the process, I found, in a milk crate full of unloved pedals, a Electro Harmonix Micro Synthesizer.

That night I was playing synthetic beats and thought it would be interesting to hear them squashed through it (true).  It was these and other convergences that inspired me to build my pedal board which I no longer know how I lived without.  I run everything through it.  It’s great, it fits in a hard shell case.  I pull it out, plug it in, and I’m ready to go, tuner on and everything.  The hard shell case had been in my basement storing a discarded cassette machine, next to an old suitcase filled with tapes I’d often thought of getting rid of as I had no plans of going back to them, except occasionally to archive something I couldn’t find anywhere else.  A few of my posts feature these digitized recordings.

So the cassette machine, naked, went back down to the basement and my painting studio, where I have a pretty awesome stereo.  I had been listening to NPR or my mp3 player.  I got the bright idea of hooking up the tape machine.  I opened the suitcase which held almost 300 tapes, some dating back to the late ’70′s, and others as recent as 2001.

It turned out to be a great idea, the cassettes sound good , and a reminder that the mp3′s we all listen to are not better, necessarily, just convenient.  In fact an mp3 ripped from an audio cd is a rough equivalent to a song a taped off an lp.  I became reacquainted with my mixtapes from the mid to late ’80′s.  The most exciting discoveries being found in the space at the end where the 45 minute side was longer than the vinyl album and the dead space filled with the random odd thing.  I have about 3,000 cd’s representing most of the music I need to have at my fingertips.  I’d long ago foolishly discarded almost all my lp’s, and most of it has been replaced digitally, but there were a few long lost gems I began to realize I might find in the cassettes.  The lp’s have been gone for decades but here were copies pickled back in the day, all the wondrous surface noise which had sent me over to cd’s in the first place now a charming reminder of  how music used to sound.

The scene of the crime

I became obsessed with one recording in particular.  Out of all the music I’d ever heard, there was one astonishing bit of recorded music I’d never been able to replace on cd.  I knew it would turn up somewhere, unless it was something I’d taped over, which unfortunately  happened pretty often.  At least a quarter of them had been sacrificed for car tapes from cd’s I still have.  The lp in question was David Bedford’s Nurse’s Song With Elephants from 1972.

David Bedford had been involved with the british art rock scene in the late ’60′s and ’70′s as a string arranger for the likes of Roy Harper, and Kevin Ayers.  He orchestrated and conducted Mike Oldfield’s The Orchestral Tubular Bells album (1975).

(wiki)

The first album to consist entirely of David Bedford compositions was Nurses Song With Elephants, recorded at the Marquee Studios, and released in 1972 on John Peel’s Dandelion label. On this album, Bedford mixed classical ensemble with poems and voices. “Some Bright Stars for Queen’s College” uses twenty-seven plastic pipe twirlers, John Peel himself being among the pipe twirler players. There are five tracks on the album: “It’s Easier Than It Looks”, “Nurses Song With Elephants”, “Some Bright Stars for Queen’s College”, “Trona” (1967), and “Sad and Lonely Faces”.  Bass guitar on the title song is played by Mike Oldfield and the final track features a poem by Kenneth Patchen that is sung by Kevin Ayers.

The Album

After about a month of searching, I’d already found Sad And Lonely Faces, so I knew I was on the trail and success was possible.  I found a cassette simply labelled “ex Albums ll”, which I sussed was made of choice cuts just before selling the records to buy my first cd’s back in 1991.   I’m a painter and all this time I’m listening, I’m painting pictures, sometimes not paying real close attention, but this time I was standing there, waiting to see what came next.  About 3/4 of the way through, and after Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s amazing Space Guitar, and Magic Sam’s 21 Days in Jail, there it was, I’d found my holy grail.

I’m not sure why I picked this out of everything to obsess over, except that it’s one of the most oddly compelling pieces I’ve ever heard.  There is a lot of air moving from acoustic sources, always a powerful experience.  All those girls voices make my hair stand on end in a good way.  Anyway I was very happy to hear it again, and wanted to share it this holiday season.  Enjoy!!!!!

Some Bright Stars For Queens College

I Don’t Know My Jazz From A Hole In The Ground

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Been tripping on a lot of newish fusion. Seems King Crimson and 70′s prog rock are as big an influence on these guys as The Mahavishnu Orchestra or Jazz in general. I avoided the obvious and tried to stick with newish guitar oriented stuff. In other words, No Jeff Beck, or Al Dimeola. In general I’m pretty traditional in my limited appreciation of Jazz. Monk is probably my favorite, followed by the other “M” guys, Miles, and Mingus.
Most of the music is from the aughts, with a couple exceptions. While assembling this I started to think it needed some James Blood Ulmer, who was at the end of the first wave of fusion, but was a little too forward thinking and didn’t really fit in at the time. The blistering “Black Rock” (1982) somehow manages to sound like Captain Beefheart and James Brown at the same time. Jef Lee Johnson’s Jungle (1993) was included to keep Blood company as the only other vocal. T.J. Kirk (1995) was a band featuring Charlie Hunter on 8 string guitar, who derived their name from the fact that they play the music of Thelonious Monk, James Brown, and Roland Kirk. Marc Ribot made the cut with this tune from Rootless Cosmopolitans (1990).


I wrote this post awhile ago but just got around to putting it up. I listened to the comp a bunch of times and couldn’t decide whether to add some newer stuff I’ve “acquired”. Today I was notified of some spam comments so when I deleted them I decided, “Fuck it, I’m just going to post the sucker.”

Link in Comments. Enjoy!

Sanford and Son

Frankly Brilliant

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I painted this seven feet high

I didn’t “get” Frank Zappa for a long time. My friend Slow Uncle, did, and tried to interest me. I eventually bought We’re Only In It For The Money, largely for the hilarious send up of Sgt Pepper’s album cover, but I didn’t think the songs were very good. I mentioned a couple posts back being exposed to “The Mudshark” from Live at Fillmore East, June 1971, and my parents disapproval, but I wasn’t really ready for it. I liked the toilet humor and everything, but I hated jazz and the music was over my head.

Still cracks me up

When I moved into my dorm room at San Diego State in the fall of 1976, we were encouraged to paint our rooms or if we felt like it, murals outside our rooms. Sounds crazy, but this was the ’70′s. Even though I wasn’t a fan of his music I always admired his irreverence, that’s why I painted his likeness from We’re Only In It For The Money next to the door outside my room. I don’t have a picture of it, but to the right is what I copied, including Frank’s wondering, “Is This Phase One Of Lumpy Gravy?”

I was no longer living in the dorm in the Spring of 1978 when he played the amphitheatre on campus where I witnessed a phenomenal performance. After the last song the audience stood and began clapping and yelling for what seemed to be 30 minutes or more.
Eventually Frank came onstage and said, “You people are crazy. We can hear you all the way in the dressing room”, at which the band came back out and proceeded to play another hour and a half.  Interesting detail:  There was a guy in Frank’s band I never heard of  that played guitar and did a dead-on Dylan impersonation.  His name was Adrian Belew.   A month or three later I went to see David Bowie at the San Diego Sports Arena and there he was again! I thought he was great until he started singing on King Crimson records.

A couple months ago, Q, drummer in Foglizard, where I am a member of the rhythm section, said he planned to spend the summer listening to Frank, and did I own anything he could borrow?  I had Fillmore East June 1971, and Ahead Of Their Time.  I did some research and managed to acquire 17 FZ releases for personal review.
I tend to prefer the work of the original Mothers of Invention. Maybe because they were a band he joined and took over. After he fired them in 1969, he hired ever more amazing musicians, but with a diminishing amount of soul.

In around 1991, I bought a cd copy of Cruisin With Ruben And The Jets, an album I remembered as being a fun parody/tribute to old R&B and Doo Wop. There was something terribly wrong with it, which turned out to be that Frank had rerecorded the original drum and bass parts for reasons only understood by him. I got rid of it right away. Turns out He also ruined We’re Only In It For The Money in a similar fashion. Fan’s outcry against this was so strong he eventually restored We’re Only In It For The Money, but not before referring to them as “fetishists”. He never got around to Ruben before his death, so I found an original vinyl rip of the lp. It’s a mystery why he thought those bass and drum tracks needed replacement. It’s kind of like Paul McCartney replacing John Lennon with Mark Knopfler.
If you buy the Zappa Family Trust’s Lumpy Money, you’ll be treated to the horrible remix of WOIIFTM as a “Bone us” disc.

"A last ditch effort by the Mothers to get their crummy music on the radio"

I encourage you to read the whole Zappa/Mothers story on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa

If you don’t have the time or inclination here is an interesting tidbit:

During his childhood Zappa was often sick, suffering from asthma, earaches and sinus problems. A doctor treated the latter by inserting a pellet of radium into each of Zappa’s nostrils; little was known at the time about the potential dangers of being subjected to even small amounts of therapeutic radiation. Nasal imagery and references appear both in his music and lyrics, as well as in the collage album covers created by his long-time visual collaborator, Cal Schenkel.

Long Out Of Print

Anyway I’ve compiled a fun disc worth of music by the original Mothers. There are some songs from Mothermania, a long out of print “best of” compiled by Frank in 1968, containing substantially different mixes from the original albums. Also are some cuts from Cruisin With Ruben And The Jets, which is kind of the spiritual center of my comp which I call Motherama. All these tracks come from rips of the original vinyl releases. The rest are from Freak Out, Absolutely Free, Uncle Meat, Burnt Weeny Sandwich, and Weasels Ripped My Flesh.

I also included a passage from Playground Psychotics (1992) which has Jeff Simmons quitting the group a few days before shooting 200 Motels. He was replaced by Ringo Starr’s chauffer at the last minute. This is followed by two tunes from Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up, an out of print 1970 album by Jeff Simmons produced by Frank under the pseudonym of Lamar Bruister. “Lucille” and “Wonderful Wino” are about the only songs in Frank’s catalog that credit a co-writer. Frank plays guitar and Ian Underwood is featured. Both tunes turn up later in Frank’s discography in less interesting versions.

For your immediate listening pleasure I’ve included a rare “live” version of “Plastic People”. I read that before real music was written for it they played it over “Louie, Louie”. This must be that.

I think this stuff has aged really well.  Frank’s social commentary was/is right on the money.

I am now a fan.

Plastic People

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