The crux of the biscuit is that Frank Zappa had the unmitigated audacity to try and jive us with the funky sleeze of this deadly wah-wah wee-wee. Most of 'Apostrophe (')' was recorded during the same period as his gold record 'Over-Nite Sensation' with some tracks going back as far as 1969. The various sessions took place at Electric Lady Studios, in New York; and at Bolic, Inglewood, and Paramount Studios in Hollywood and featured producer Frank Zappa rubbing it on vocals, guitar, bass, and bouzouki; Tony Duran on rhythm guitar; Tom Fowler and Erroneous (Alex Dmochowski) on bass guitar; Aynsley Dunbar, Ralph Humphrey, and Johnny Guerin on drums; Ruth Underwood on percussion; Sal Marquez on trumpet; Ian Underwood on saxophone; Bruce Fowler on trombone; Don "Sugarcane" Harris and Jean-Luc Ponty on violin; George Duke on keyboards and backing vocals; Napoleon Murphy Brock on saxophone and backing vocals; Lynn, Debbie, Robert "Frog" Camarena,and Ruben Ladron de Guevara on vocals and backing vocals; and Ray Collins, Sue Glover, and engineer Kerry McNabb on backing vocals. There is some disagreement over the nature of the bass guitar contributions of Jack Bruce on "Apostrophe'", which also featured Jim Gordon on drums (he also sat in on "Excentrifugal Forz").
'Apostrophe (')' became Zappa's highest charting album, peaking at number ten. Zappa talks shop about his conceptual continuity: "In the studio most of the stuff is played through a Pignose. I've done all kinds of things with a Pignose; I've taken it and put it in a "live" chamber and taken an (ElectroVoice) RE-20 and stuck it right in front of the Pignose, and that will get one kind of sound. It's actually the sound of an amp, but you can hear that it's in a room, and the room is resonant, so it's a realistic sound ... Another thing I've done with the Pignose is just put it out in the middle of a dead studio, put two mikes on it, and mike it in stereo. It gets a good sound. Put one mike behind the other so there's a slight spread to it. I've also put the Pignose in an echo chamber and miked it, but not too close, because the echo chamber is real resonant. Since the amplifier isn't real loud, if you put the mike a foot away from the amp, you're going to get a sound that really approaches what you hear in a hockey rink. Anybody who's working in a studio and wants to try this, just tell the engineer to disconnect the speaker cables in the echo chamber and put a plug (phone jack) on the end of the echo send, and plug the echo send into your Pignose. Then you can sit in the control room, plug your guitar directly into the board, send it to the echo chamber on the echo send, and hear yourself coming back - and it sounds like you're in a hockey rink. You can even make it feed back by long distance. I've been using a Pignose for about the last three or four years. I think I started using it the most on Apostrophe, but there is some on Over-Nite Sensation, too ... [The title track] was just a jam thing that happened because [bassist Jack Bruce] was a friend of (drummer) Jim Gordon. I found it very difficult to play with him; he's too busy. He doesn't really want to play the bass in terms of root functions; I think he has other things on his mind. But that's the way jam sessions go. On that solo on "Apostrophe" I'm using an SG with a Barcus-Berry on the bridge, and that's being sent to one of the channels, then the other side is coming out of a Pignose. And there's an attack differential between how fast the Barcus-Berry speaks and how fast the Pignose speaks. So you've got a sharp attack on one side and then the rest of the note following it on the other. And on "Stink-Foot" there's an interesting sound where I'm using an acoustic guitar with a magnetic pickup on it and a Barcus-Berry on the bridge. The Barcus-Berry is going into one channel, and the maguetic pickup is going to a Mu-tron and the other channel, so you have a sharp attack and an enveloped attack. It gives a lot of space."
"Ain't this boogie a mess?!"
http://www.zappa.com/
"Don't Eat the Yellow Snow"
became Zappa's first chart single, reaching a strictly commercial peak of eighty-six.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5__cMKfO46A
I Dreamed I was an Eskimo
(Bop-bop ta-da-da bop-bop Ba-da-da)
Frozen wind began to blow
(Bop-bop ta-da-da bop-bop Ba-da-da)
And my momma cried
(ooh, ooh, ooh)
And my momma cried
(Nanook-a no no, Nanook-a no no)
Don't be a naughty Eskimo
(Bop-bop ta-da-da bop-bop Ba-da-da)
Watch out where the Huskies go
And don't you eat the yellow snow
Watch out where the Huskies go
And don't you eat the yellow snow
Right about that time people
A fur trapper, who was strictly from commercial
(strictly commercial)
Had the unmitigated audacity to jump up from behind my ig-a-loo
(peak-a-boo, woo-woo-woo)
And he started in a-whippin' on my favorite seal
With a lead filled snow shoe
That got me just about as evil as an Eskimo boy can be
So I bent down, and I reached down, and I scooped down
And I gathered up a generous smitten of the deadly
(yellow snow)
The deadly yellow snow from right there where the huskies go
Whereupon I preceded to take that mitten full of the deadly yellow snow crystals and rub it all into his beady little eyes
With a vigorous circular motion, hitherto unknown to the people in this area
But destined to take the place with the mudshark in your mythology
Here it goes now, the circular motion
Rub it
And then in a fit of anger I
I pounced, and I pounced again
Great Goog-a-ly moog-a-ly
Well, he was very upset, as you can understand
And rightly so because the deadly
Yellow snow crystals had deprived him of his sight
And he stood up and he looked around and he said
Where
No, no
I can't see
What
I can't
He took a dog doo snow cone and
stuffed it in my right eye
He took a dog doo snow cone and
stuffed it in my other eye
And the husky wee-wee I mean the
doggy wee-wee has blinded me
And I can't see - temporarily
'Apostrophe (')'
full album
1. "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" 2:07
2. "Nanook Rubs It" 4:38
3. "St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast" 1:50
4. "Father O'Blivion" 2:18
5. "Cosmik Debris" 4:14
6. "Excentrifugal Forz" 1:33
7. "Apostrophe'" (Frank Zappa, Jim Gordon and Jack Bruce) 5:50
8. "Uncle Remus" (Frank Zappa and George Duke) 2:44
9. "Stink-Foot" 6:33
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