Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention — Whisky-A-Go-Go 1968 (Zappa Records/UMe)
Photo by George Rodriguez
In late July 1968, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention brought a three-ring circus to Los Angeles’s Whisky-A-Go-Go nightclub. They had some history at the club. They had played there early in their careers, but by this point they were an established act: they’d toured Europe, released four records and Zappa was in the process of starting his own record label. This July evening was a showcase not just for the Mothers, then, but also for acts he’d signed: The GTOs, a group of singers who doubled as groupies, street musician Wild Man Fisher and Alice Cooper. The show was recorded for possible release.
That album never materialized in Zappa’s lifetime, but some 56 years later this evening’s events are here on Whisky-A-Go-Go 1968. It’s not the full night, just the Mothers sets, boiling down a five-hour show to just under three.
As far as live Zappa albums go, Whisky-A-Go-Go 1968 is a mixed bag. There's moments where Zappa guitar shows him growing into a compelling soloist and there’s few songs here that never made it onto a previous Zappa record. But when compared to something like The Ark or Ahead of Their Time, this never quite gels: there's a sense of hesitation or maybe the band wasn’t having a good night. It’s interesting and occasionally really good, but it’s not as exciting as you might hope.
The first half of the set wavers between free-form jams and the Mothers goofing on 1950s doo wop: “Oh In the Sky,” “Memories of El Monte,” “My Boyfriend’s Back.” Zappa did have a genuine admiration for this kind of music, but between Roy Estrada’s strangled falsetto and Zappa’s deadpan delivery on these, it’s hard not to read these as the Mothers goofing around. It’s definitely more for hardcore fans. The improvisations are fine, too, with the little flourishes that pop up on Mothers records: stomping rhythms, vocal shouts, harsh bursts of sounds.
Some moments you had to be there for. “Della’s Preamble” incorporates audience participation that doesn’t come through on record. During moments of jamming you can hear shouts and yells and Zappa calling people up on the stage to dance. There’s even a bit where he’s presented with a pair of wings.
As the first set winds down, the band starts to stretch out on instrumentals and flex their muscles. “King Kong” has some wild blowing from the band’s brass section and lets both Zappa and Preston stretch out for solos before the band deftly segues into Edgard Varese’s “Octandre” and more improvisations.
The second set is more focused on the Mothers instrumental side: two takes of “The Duke” (actually an early version of “Little House I Used To Live In,” not the similarly named “Duke of Prunes'') that have Zappa taking completely different guitar solos, then the band moves into “Khaki Sack.” It’s a loose R&B groove with lots of room for solos, showing the band’s chops extended to far more than just goofy rock pastiches. Then the band moves into a lengthy performance of “The Whip,” where Zappa’s guitar playing takes on a nice psychedelic tinge, before the band moves on into some extended jamming for “Whisky Chouflee.” Finally, the disc ends with a nice treat: the first live performance of “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It,” from 1967’s Absolutely Free. It’s a little rough and the way it jumps around exposes some of this group’s limitations on stage, but the band pulls it together when they go back to the theme on “Brown Shoes Shuffle.”
In some ways, it’s best to compare this to 1974’s Roxy and Elsewhere, another live record that was recorded basically like an on-stage recording session. There, Zappa played several shows with the same set list with the intent of editing the best bits together for a live record; it’s similar to the approach Zappa refers to on here occasionally. But that project never materialized in his lifetime. One small excerpt came out on Uncle Meat, another on You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore Vol. 5. Was he unhappy with this session? It’s impossible to say at this point. But this set documents a pretty significant occasion for the band, both as a homecoming and as a nice audio document of this group. Indeed, there’s not much live material from this early in Zappa’s career, let alone in this high quality sound.
Hardcore Zappa fans should consider Whisky-A-Go-Go 1968 an instant buy, but more casual ones may find the first half a little bulky. Those who enjoy the live bits of albums like Burnt Weeny Sandwich or Weasels Ripped My Flesh will find a lot to dig into here.
Coming on the heels of (and enabled by the profits from) the commercial success of “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” and the Apostrophe(’) LP (not to mention two years of almost non-stop touring with fluctuating Mothers lineups), Frank Zappa’s third foray into getting some of his works performed by orchestra (following Lumpy Gravy and the soundtrack to 200 Motels) was recorded at UCLA’s Royce Hall in 1975 with 37+ pieces (including 23 brass and woodwind players, amplified string quartet, three keyboards, harp, electric bass, drums and four percussionists.) Unfortunately, the resulting Orchestral Favorites LP ended up being (along with Studio Tan and Sleep Dirt) one of three albums released without Zappa’s approval following his split with Warner Bros.
This 3-CD 40th anniversary edition of Orchestral Favorites rights one of the big wrongs of the LP version by actually being treated with some respect and care in terms of audio quality; Warner Bros. cut the original without a master tone reel so the EQ is just all wrong compared to what was intended. While there’s another CD version Zappa made with much different EQ and reversed stereo image, this edition returns to the analog master as it should have sounded, and this is an audible improvement over the LP and arguably better than Zappa’s CD version, as well.
The 37+ piece Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra also did two concert performances during the three days it took to record the album. The second performance was recorded and appears on discs 2 & 3. The program includes Bogus Pomp, Revised Music For Low-Budget Symphony Orchestra, Pedro’s Dowry, Rollo, Black Napkins, Dog Breath Variations / Uncle Meat, Naval Aviation in Art?, about 50 bars of music from Lumpy Gravy known as “Sink Trap” followed by several minutes of conducted improvisation, Duke of Prunes, a few sections of The Adventures of Greggery Peccary (including The Steno Pool, Greggery Invents the Calendar and The New Brown Clouds) and, of course, Strictly Genteel. The bonus cut found on disc one is this recording of “Strictly Genteel” with lots of keyboard overdubs by Tommy Mars from 1978, which is kind of fun / interesting.
Frank Zappa, Absolutely Free 50th Anniversary Edition
The second disc is merely alright--some radio ads, the mono single mixes of the two non-album tracks (very cool), and a remix rarity on side A; an etching on side B. But the all-analog sound on the original album makes this soooo worth owning. I heard things I’ve never heard before in my over a decade of loving this album. Joe Travers and Bernie Grundman do good work. And it has the infamous Libretto, the history of which you can read on the first page.
The Roxy Performances is many an old Zappa nerd’s wet dream come true. The 7-CD box contains all four shows at the Roxy (two shows each on December 9 & 10, 1973, which came to be the basis for the classic Roxy & Elsewhere and, of course, Roxy - The Movie) in their completeness and entirety, and that ain’t even all. The bonus material on discs 6 and 7 includes excerpts from a rehearsal recorded at the Roxy, a bunch of stuff from a partially filmed Bolic Sound studio session two days after the Roxy shows, and 65 minutes of an invitation-only sound check / recording / film shoot sort-of-concert at the Roxy on December 8 (which was actually the source for a good chunk of side one of Roxy & Elsewhere.) Like the recent Halloween ‘77 set, these are all brand new, totally un-fucked-with mixes that just let you hear everything the way it sounded going to tape with no overdubs, and features hour after hour of thrilling performances by an amazing group of musicians in superb sound quality. I can’t say enough about how excellent and satisfying this whole set is (including the great packaging, and excellent liner notes about the whole history of the Roxy tapes and the obstacles involved in making a movie out of the film footage) and how awesome it is to finally hear these shows in their entirety.
Halloween is over, but I still have two more shows from Halloween 77 to listen to, so this morning I listened to the October 30th show, the longest one of the run which clocks in at 3hr 7+min. This one also varies from the identical running order of the previous four sets, and includes surprises, bits of puzzling weirdness and a bunch more stuff that was in Baby Snakes. The show opens with “Stink Foot”, “The Poodle Lecture” and “Dirty Love” (rather than seguing from the folk-rock “Flakes” concert intro right into “Peaches en Regalia”) and includes the second-ever performance of “I Have Been in You”, the first-ever performance of “Dancin’ Fool”, and the first and only performance of “Jewish Princess” (the famous version from Sheik Yerbouti was made with tracks from this recording and a whole bunch of overdubs, and it was never played live again.) The real lull in the show is another one-time-only event where Zappa has a crew member perform a couple magic tracks while an Austrian keyboardist and a former Mothers bassist narrate in their own unique tongues. Stuff from this show that happens in Baby Snakes include “The Poodle Lecture”, most of “City of Tiny Lites”, the keyboard solo in “Pound For A Brown” (and a little bit of bass/drum interplay), about half of Bozzio’s crazy drum solo, most of “Muffin Man” (from FZ’s solo to the end of the track) and all of “King Kong” and “Disco Boy.” Personal highlights again include “Pound For A Brown”, the drum solo, “Läther”, the 25-minute “Wild Love” (great solos in this one), “Titties ‘n Beer” and this run’s longest version of “Punky’s Whips”.
Closing out the Halloween 77 run, this morning I listened to the just over 3-hour show from Halloween night. First I wanna say, if anyone was curious, that sound quality is top notch from first note to last on all six of these complete concert recordings, and that for my taste the new mixes by Craig Parker Adams are overall better than Zappa’s own stereo mixes in the Baby Snakes film soundtrack (to say nothing of the awful sounding mix on the terribly brief Baby Snakes LP/CD.) And second, I wanted to add that if you’re one of those weird people who really likes to listen to Zappa just play guitar (sort of in, say, the way Deadheads might like to listen to Jerry just plaaaay, maaaan), there’s an awful lot in these shows that should make you happy. One of the giddy pleasures for me of digesting six consecutive concerts (in high-res stereo, no less) is in not just listening to what he decides to play in a given tune on a given night, but also ear-geeking out on the variety of tones and sound textures he gets out of whatever equipment he was using at this time, as I’m a huge fan of his guitar tones / sounds in general as well as his playing.
As far as songs / performances, the highlights of 10/31/77 for me are “City of Tiny Lites”, the 13+ minute “Pound For A Brown” and some of the weirdness that follows, the always-awesome “Conehead”, “Flakes” (Belew-as-Dylan ad libs a couple lines that made me laugh), “Envelopes” (where Tommy Mars does weird scat singing instead of the song’s regular stupid lyrics) and the drum solo, “Läther”, the 30-minute ( ! ) “Wild Love”, and “Punky’s Whips.” Now, as far as stuff from this show that happens in whole or in part in Baby Snakes, there’s a lot of it, and I wouldn’t be doing due service as a fucking Zappa nerd without pointing it out to you, so here goes: some of the guitar solo in “Tiny Lites”, some of the bass solo in “Pound”, half of the weird improv here titled “The Demise of the Imported Rubber Goods Mask”, all of “Bobby Brown” and the very beginning of “Conehead”, “Titties ‘n Beer” plus audience participation (both longer here), “The Black Page #2”, the ending section of “Punky’s Whips” and the entire encore sequence of “Dinah-Moe”, “Camarillo”, “Muffin Man” (though the solo and ending in the movie are from the 30th), “San Ber’dino” and this run’s only version of “Black Napkins” (also longer here.) Plus, I’m pretty sure “Jones Crusher” on Sheik Yerbouti is the one from this show, with overdubs. You’re welcome.
I listened to the first two shows from Halloween 77 yesterday morning / afternoon (and also at work today on Spotify.) The early and late shows from 10/28 have identical set lists (25 tracks / 23 songs + intro and encore break) and run a little short of 2 1/2 hours. Given the identical sets, the highlights for me are, naturally, the songs that contain guitar solos and / or where any sort of improvisations are happening (including where FZ and other people say amusing things that differentiate one performance from another.) For these two shows, that means stuff like the bass and keyboard solos in “Pound For A Brown”, Terry Bozzio’s drum + Syndrum solos after “Envelopes”, the guitar solos in “The Torture Never Stops”, and two regular pieces from this tour getting their first official release --the original guitar-solo-vehicle version of “Conehead,” (not the tune from You Are What You Is, though they share a motif, kind of), and the very extended performances of “Wild Love”. These two versions last 24-26 minutes and feature more keyboard and percussion solos, *AND* long guitar solos from both FZ and Adrian Belew. (FZ’s edit of his solo from the early show was released as “Bowling on Charen,” and I’m psyched that the complete performance is contained here.) Another of the featured performances in all of these shows is “Punky’s Whips”, one of my favorite songs that this band played (so I’m totally cool with having several more versions of it.) The two from 10/28 are pretty thrilling and include typically smokin’ guitar solos. Elsewhere, the biker/devil improv section of “Titties ‘n Beer” from the early show features a caustic bit where FZ is not shy about what he’d like to see happen to the people at Warner Bros. Records (it’s not as funny and maybe slightly more childish-sounding when he repeats many of the same points in the late show version but, you know, he was really really mad about all that stuff with Warner Bros.) Also too, I love this arrangement of “The Black Page #2″ and this band’s finally-officially-released performances of the erstwhile title cut from Läther (which also doubles as a sort of awesome extended intro to “Wild Love”.) I’m not sure when I’ll get around to sitting down for the remaining four shows from this run, but jiminy jillickers I’m looking forward to all of them.
Over the weekend, I listened (more than once) to two more shows from Halloween 77. You guessed it, the early and late shows from 10/29. Both sets have the same running order as the two 10/28 shows, so no setlist surprises here, “just” more versions of the same tunes with different solos and different FZ monologues and interjections. It’s interesting (and in some ways puzzling, but we won’t get into it) to hear Zappa introduce “Bobby Brown Goes Down” multiple times with a story explaining his inspiration for writing the song. Of course, the many instrumental highlights are the same as in previous shows -- the improvisations in “Pound For A Brown”, Terry Bozzio’s drum ‘n Syndrum solos, and FZ’s guitar workouts in “Torture”, “City of Tiny Lites” and especially “Conehead” and “Wild Love” (the two versions from 10/29 last - how fun! - 23 and 27.5 minutes respectively.) These were also the first two of four shows of this Halloween run that were filmed, and the early show is the first place where we hear stuff that showed up in Baby Snakes (in this case, most but not all of “Jones Crusher” and “Broken Hearts Are For Assholes”, and a good portion of “Punky’s Whips.”) I don’t *think* any of the late show is in the movie, but it does contain another great performance of, uh, everything.
