one size fits all

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention carved up the hill and crammed a real good deal-o into this progressive po-jama pogen.  Following the winning streak of The Grand Wazoo,  Over-Nite Sensation ,  Apostrophe ('),  and the live 'Roxy & Elsewhere';  'One Size Fits All' maintains much of the lineup that played on 'Roxy & Elsewhere':    Frank Zappa on guitar, lead and backing vocals;    George Duke on keyboards, lead and backing vocals, and synthesizer;    Napoleon Murphy Brock on flute, lead and backing vocals, and tenor saxophone;   Ruth Underwood on marimba, vibraphone, and percussion;   Chester Thompson on drums, sound effects, and voices;   Tom Fowler and James "Bird Legs" Youman on bass guitar;    Johnny "Guitar" Watson on vocals;    and   Captain Beefheart (aka 'Bloodshot Rollin' Red') on harmonica.   

Zappa would admit:    "I'm not always the one who controls who is in or out of the Mothers. People come and go as they please in the band. So it follows that when somebody leaves you have to replace them; and then sometimes you don't have to replace them...The amount of rehearsals that it takes is greatly increased by the constant transition of the group's members. I like to have things pretty snappy when I go out on stage, and that requires all the band members, new or old, to be well rehearsed...Conflict always arises because different musicians who play different instruments have a different outlook on life from one another... Because of the different natures of instruments, take the trumpet and guitar for instance, there are two instruments that do two completely different things, and so, produce different attitudes in how their players see the music. 'You are what you play!'' It is a fallacy that all musicians have the same psychological make-up. Take a person who plays a bass – who really wants to play a bass? Who wants to play the bottom notes of a song? Just think about what kind of people become bass players, and what psychological things they have to put up with – they hardly ever get to play a solo, and most of the time, in rock'n'roll, they are playing the most boring things that you can imagine. Well, that kind of consciousness is different than someone who plays an instrument that plays the melody of a song and has a lot of solos – it just is not the same head."

Zappa produced the sessions at Record Plant Studios and Paramount Studios in Los Angeles;  and  at Caribou Ranch in Nederland, Colorado.   He had a great appreciation for the Steinway at Caribou:  "It's one of the best pianos in the world; and it used to be used for all the classical recordings. To me, that's what a piano is supposed to sound like.  But I wouldn't go there just for the piano.  It has other advantages: You buy the studio for twenty-four hours a day and you go in whenever you want, you know. You just live at the place, stay there for a while and you get your work done."


 'One Size Fits All' charted at number twenty-six in the US and five in Norway.  Zappa described the record as containing "some story-type songs, but it's pretty much rock-and-roll oriented.  You could actually dance to this record ...  I think everything I've written can be danced to. It can't be danced to by people who don't have a certain amount of creative ability and it's an excellent way to weed people out. If you can dance to one of our songs I think you have some creative ability and don't want to dance in a regimented manner. The beat's just as good on our records as on anybody else's records. It so happens that there's more of them in funny places ... It should have been more successful both commercially and critically. Most of the bad reviews – on this album and others – don't deal with the music but just talk about me. And most rock critics can't write anyway. Of course, every time I do an album, I think it's wonderful. That's how crazy I am – I thought they were all hits."

http://www.zappa.com/

"Inca Roads"



"San Ber'dino"  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXBbttFIVEY







 'One Size Fits All' 
full album:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC8D634F0E5158379

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUxJQlOKj38





All songs written by Frank Zappa.

Side one
00:00 "Inca Roads"   8:45
08:45 "Can't Afford No Shoes"   2:38
11:24 "Sofa No. 1"   2:39
14:04 "Po-Jama People"   7:39
Side two
21:43 "Florentine Pogen"   5:27
27:10 "Evelyn, a Modified Dog"   1:04
28:15 "San Ber'dino"   5:57
34:12 "Andy"   6:04
40:16 "Sofa No. 2"   2:42

roxy & elsewhere

Zappa and the Mothers dummied up some be-bop bondage and  twisted tango for this intricate inspired improvization.  The double-live album captures the band at the height of its powers with most of the material recorded at The Roxy Theatre in Hollywood, California during three nights in December of 1973 with three songs recorded at the Edinboro State College, Edinboro, Pennsylvania and the  Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, Illinois in May of 1974.  'Roxy & Elsewhere' features Frank Zappa on guitar, vocals, and production;   Napoleon Murphy Brock on flute, tenor saxophone, and vocals;   George Duke on synthesizer, keyboards, and vocals;  Bruce Fowler on trombone and dancing;  Tom Fowler on bass guitar;  Walt Fowler on trumpet and bass trumpet;   Ralph Humphrey and Chester Thompson on drums;  Don Preston on synthesizer;  Jeff Simmons on rhythm guitar and vocals;  and Ruth Underwood on percussion;  with Robert "Frog" Camarena, Debbie, Lynn, and Ruben Ladron de Guevara on backing vocals.   

 'Roxy & Elsewhere'  went to number twenty-seven on the US pop album chart.  






http://www.zappa.com/







movie trailer








'Roxy & Elsewhere' 
full album:



Side one
1. "Penguin in Bondage"   6:48
2. "Pygmy Twylyte"   2:13
3. "Dummy Up" (Brock, Simmons, and Zappa) 6:02
Side two
4. "Village of the Sun"   4:17
5. "Echidna's Arf (Of You)"   3:52
6. "Don't You Ever Wash That Thing?"   9:40
Side three
7. "Cheepnis"   6:33
8. "Son of Orange County"   5:53
9. "More Trouble Every Day"   6:00
Side four
10. "Be-Bop Tango (Of the Old Jazzmen's Church)"   16:41









http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BynKe8BjIxk&list=RDlnDqHppWS_Q&index=5



01:48 Cosmik Debris
09:49 Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue
10:53 Kung Fu
11:54 Penguin In Bondage
16:02 RDNZL
20:26 Montana
29:01 Dupree's Paradise
53:44 Join The March And Eat My Starch
54:22 Farther Oblivion

we're only in it for the money

Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention let their freak flag fly, poured on the lumpy gravy, and challenged the preconceptions of both mainstream society and the hippie counter-culture movement with a circus of searing satire in the orchestral experimentation, tape manipulation, and sound collage that feed this chrome plated megaphone of destiny.   After the critical and artistic triumphs of 'Freak Out!' and 'Absolutely Free', the band had relocated from California to New York City where they began a six month residency at the Garrick Theater.  They began working on 'We're Only in It for the Money' at Apostolic Studios taking a break for a European tour.  Zappa was the producer, although Tom Wilson was given an executive producer credit.  The sessions featured Frank Zappa on guitar, piano, and lead vocals; Jimmy Carl Black on trumpet, drums, and vocals, and as Indian of the group; Roy Estrada on electric bass and vocals;     Bunk Gardner on all woodwinds; Billy Mundi on drums and vocals; Don Preston on keyboards; Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood on baritone saxophone, soprano saxophone, and road manager; Suzy Creamcheese as telephone voice; Ian Underwood on piano and woodwinds; Pamela Zarubica on vocals; Eric Clapton did the male speaking part in "Are You Hung Up?" and "Nasal Retentive Calliope Music."; Gary Kellgren was "the one doing all the creepy whispering" (i.e., interstitial spoken segments); Spider Barbour on vocals; Dick Kunc on "cheerful interruptions" vocal; Vicki Kellgren on additional telephone vocals; Sid Sharp was conductor (under Frank Zappa's supervision) of the "Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra and Chorus" on "Absolutely Free", "Mother People" and "The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny".  The album also includes recordings done at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles.  

Zappa considered at the time:    "There are scores and certain parts of the music are very firmly fixed. Some of the supposedly spontaneous sound events, like coordinated noises, are operated on cue on the bandstand by means of finger signals like numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on. The band is trained so that when they see the signals on a given beat they’ll play these noises which we’ve rehearsed and they can be assembled in any order. And in between the noises, we have free improvisation. When we do a show I’ll figure out what the audience wants or needs, and I’ll put it together from the parts we’ve already rehearsed and we do like a happening when we play."

'We're Only in It for the Money' made it to number thirty on the US album chart with no chart singles.  The album cover was intended as a parody of the Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'; but the executives chickened out and made the inside gatefold photo the cover shot.  The album makes a mockery of the right and left wing political movements and the consumerist culture as a whole.  Zappa described "freaking out":   "It's a process whereby an individual casts off outmoded; and restricting standards of thinking, dress and social etiquette in order to express creatively his relationship to his immediate environment and the social structure as a whole...We were carefully hatched in the best tradition of American business, programmed to do a specific job and we have been quite successful thus far. We are aiming for the consumer group, people who have certain hang-ups that can be expressed and worked out in song. It doesn't matter if our music makes sense. If people want a pile of rubbish, we're going to give just that to them!...Society, and I use that label loosely, can't be healthy without art. America stifles art. Little is created unless it serves a commercialistic need, i.e., jingles for a Pepsi-Cola announcement. Ours is a materialistic, mechanistic age. It's confused, topsy-turvy and erratic. If current art seems to possess similar qualities, that's to be taken for granted. Art at its best always is projecting what is happening at the time it is made ...  We don't endorse any drugs or artificial means that would do anything to change the consciousness of a single individual...Psychedelic is a very handy word, a convenient label. It's not something we apply to ourselves – but an impression fostered by a group of greedy business willing to equate non-conformity with some LSD jargon and manner. The two don't, in themselves, go together. They can or they may not. In our case, it's the latter...I do not believe we have a society.  What we have is a colony of animals. I don't believe there are any human beings around. We merely fantasize that we have reached the human level of achievement. The Bomb, war, prejudice are, however, only products of sub-humans.  I am trying to use the weapons of a disoriented and unhappy society against itself. The Mothers of Invention are designed to come in the back door and kill you while you're sleeping.  One of our main, short-range objectives is to do away with the top-40 broadcasting format because it is basically wrong, unethical and unmusical. Sure, we're satirists, and we are out to satirize everything. Most of the guys in this band feel that we're going to do something to help."









http://www.zappa.com/

'We're Only in It for the Money'full album:





All tracks written by Frank Zappa.

Side one
1. "Are You Hung Up?" 1:23
2. "Who Needs the Peace Corps?" 2:34
3. "Concentration Moon" 2:22
4. "Mom & Dad" 2:16
5. "Bow Tie Daddy" 1:21
6. "Harry, You're a Beast" 1:22
7. "What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body?" 1:03
8. "Absolutely Free" 3:24
9. "Flower Punk" 3:03
10. "Hot Poop" 0:26
Side two
1. "Nasal Retentive Calliope Music" 2:03
2. "Let's Make the Water Turn Black" 2:01
3. "The Idiot Bastard Son" 3:18
4. "Lonely Little Girl" ("It's His Voice on the Radio") 1:09
5. "Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance" 1:35
6. "What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body? (Reprise)" 0:57
7. "Mother People" 2:32
8. "The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny" 6:25    







'Lumpy Gravy' part one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apTPXPBMBXk


'Lumpy Gravy' part two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYPjefGzeCg

absolutely free

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention raised the stakes of their eclectic freak rock while they raised eyebrows and ire with the post-modern pastiche and sophomoric social satire of this series of underground oratorios. The band of Jimmy Carl Black on drums and vocals; Ray Collins on vocals and tambourine; Don Ellis on trumpet; Roy Estrada on bass and vocals; John Rotella on percussion; Pamela Zarubica on vocals; had expanded with the addition of saxophone player Bunk Gardner on woodwinds; Don Preston on keyboards; guitarist Jim Fielder on guitar and piano; and Billy Mundi on drums for the sessions at the Sunset-Highland Studios of TTG with Zappa co-producing with Tom Wilson. 

 Zappa recalled: "When it came time for us to do our second album, 'Absolutely Free', MGM proclaimed that we couldn't spend more than eleven thousand dollars on it. The recording schedules were ridiculous, making it impossible to perfect anything on the album. It was typical of the kind of bullshit we had to put up with until I got my own studio. Gail and I moved to New York in 1967 to play in the Garrick Theater on Bleecker Street. The first place we stayed, before we could find an apartment, was the Hotel Van Rensselaer on Eleventh Street. We were living on a small room on one of the upper floors. I was working on the album cover illustration for 'Absolutely Free' at a desk by the window. I remember the place being so dirty I couldn't keep the soot off the artwork."

Melding diverse genres such as acid rock, avante-garde, Broadway, doo-wop, experimental, garage rock, jazz, orchestral, psychedelic, R&B, and vaudeville; 'Absolutely Free' also references classical works by Stravinsky ('The Firebird', 'Petrouchka', 'The Rite of Spring', and 'A Soldier's Tale') and Holst ('Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity') as well as 'Louie, Louie' and Bob Dylan. The album is composed of two side-length suites of interconnected songs that lambaste both the establishment and the counter-culture movement. Zappa explained: "This is a new type of lyric that I'm getting into. These are also social-political things. This is straight bizarre lyric, based on-I made research tapes of behavior of some seventeen-year-old kids in Ontario, California, and this is based on those tapes... 'Call Any Vegetable', for example, was written two weeks after we finished 'Freak Out!', when we were in Hawaii, and it took a year to learn how to play it. 'Son of Suzy Creameheese' took a year to learn how to play. Can you tell why? The time, the time-it's fantastic. It's four bars of 4/ 4, one bar 8/8, one bar of 9/8- O K? And then it goes 8/8, 9/8, 8/8, 9/8, 8/8, 9/8, then it goes 8/8, 4/8, 5/8, 6/8, and back into 4/4 again. To get it together now, we just toss it off and it becomes a flop."



'Absolutely Free' went to number forty-one on the US album chart without any singles. Zappa saw it as a victory over the suits: "That's where I have one basic human drive on my side that they can't defeat-greed. You see, they're so greedy, and the powers that be are not necessarily the government, but you're talking about big industry and the military and all, and that's greed-motivated activity. Industry wants to make money and I'm getting into a phase now where I'm being used by industry to move products. A lot of the industries now are aware of the fact that they're in a vicious cycle: in order to sell their goods to the youth market, which accounts for the major market of most of American products, that same market that buys most of the records, you have a weird situation where in effect record companies especially are helping to disseminate the information which will cause the kids to wake up and move and eventually destroy what they stand for, and they can't help it."

http://zappa.com/

'Absolutely Free'
full album:

Absolutely Free (1st In A Series Of Underground Oratorios)

1. Plastic People 0:00

2. The Duke Of Prunes 3:42

3. Amnesia Vivace 5:55

4. The Duke Regains His Chops 6:56

5. Call Any Vegetable 8:49

6. Invocation & Ritual Dance Of The Young Pumpkin 11:05

7. Soft-Sell Conclusion 18:05

Bonus Tracks:

8. Big Leg Emma 19:45

9. Why Don'tcha Do Me Right? 22:17

The M.O.I. American Pageant (2nd In A Series Of Underground Oratorios)

10. America Drinks 24:54

11. Status Back Baby 26:47

12. Uncle Bernie's Farm 29:41

13. Son Of Suzy Creamcheese 31:52

14. Brown Shoes Don't Make It 33:26

15. America Drinks And Goes Home 40:56

FRANK ZAPPA & THE ORIGINAL MOTHERS OF INVENTION 1967 from ED SEEMAN on Vimeo.

freak out!

The world got its first taste of the ultimate freak with this hysterically diverse and artsy proto-punk concept album. Who could imagine that these Mothers could've gotten a record contract? Frank Zappa took over R&B cover band the Soul Giants and headed for Los Angeles, where they got a record contract with jazz label Verve. Caught between the squares and the hippies, 'Freak Out!' regurgitates the doo-wop teen-romance pop of the day and transforms it into a subversive satire that at the same time shows genuine affection for the form. Throughout this ambitious double-album you will find garage rock, white blues, melodic pop, extended rock operettas, and moments that approach jazz fusion. The album lost money but eventually became a cult classic. It sold better in Europe and influenced The Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'.



"If you were to graphically analyze the different types of directions of all the songs in the 'Freak Out!' album, there's a little something in there for everybody. At least one piece of material is slanted for every type of social orientation within our consumer group, which happens to be six to eighty. Because we got people that like what we do, from kids six years old screaming on us to play "Wowie Zowie." Like I meet executives doing this and that, and they say, 'My kid's got the record, and 'Wowie Zowies their favorite song.'"

http://www.zappa.com/

The guitar riff that starts the album apes the Rolling Stones' 'Satisfaction'. 'Hungry Freaks, Daddy' "was written for Carl Orestes Franzoni. He is freaky down to his toe nails. Some day he will live next door to you and your lawn will die. Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the senior prom and go to the library and educate yourself, if you've got any guts. Some of you like pep rallys and plastic robots who tell you what to read. Forget I mentioned it. This song has no message. Rise for the flag salute."

"Mister America

Walk on by

Your schools that do not teach

Mister America

Walk on by

The minds that won't be reached

Mister America

Try to hide

The emptiness that's you inside

When once you find that the way you lied

And all the corny tricks you tried

Will not forestall the rising tide of

Hungry freaks, Daddy . . ."

Zappa says that when producer Tom Wilson first heard 'Who Are The Brain Police?' in the studio, he was very surprised: "I could see through the window that he was scrambling toward the phone to call his boss—probably saying: 'Well, uh, not exactly a "white blues band," but...sort of.'"

"What will you do if the people you knew

Were the plastic that melted,

And the chromium too?

WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE?"

'Wowie Zowie' "is carefully designed to suck the 12 year old listener into our camp. I like the piano and xylophone accompaniment in the second chorus. It is cheerful. It is harmless. Wooly Bully. Little Richard says he likes it."

"Wowie Zowie, baby

Love me do

Wowie Zowie

And I'll love you too

Wowie Zowie, baby

I'll be true

I don't even care

If your dad's the heat"

'Trouble Every Day' "is how I feel about racial unrest in general and the Watts situation in particular. It was written during the Watts riot as it developed. I shopped it briefly around Hollywood and no one would touch it...everybody worries so much about not getting any airplay. My, my. " Producer Tom Wilson had only heard the band perform this song at a club. Thinking that they were part of the growing "white blues" trend, he signed them right away.

"Well, I seen the fires burnin'

And the local people turnin'

On the merchants and the shops

Who used to sell their brooms and mops

And every other household item

Watched the mob just turn and bite 'em

And they say it served 'em right

Because a few of them are white,

And it's the same across the nation

Black and white discrimination

Yellin' "You can't understand me!"

'N all that other jazz they hand me

In the papers and TV and

All that mass stupidity

That seems to grow more every day

Each time you hear some nitwit say

He wants to go and do you in

Because the color of your skin

Just don't appeal to him

(No matter if it's black or white)

Because he's out for blood tonight"

'Freak Out!' 
full album:




1. Hungry Freaks, Daddy
2. I Ain't Got No Heart
3. Who Are the Brain Police?
4. Go Cry on Somebody Else's Shoulder
5. Motherly Love
6. How Could I Be Such a Fool
7. Wowie Zowie
8. You Didn't Try to Call Me
9. Any Way the Wind Blows
10. I'm Not Satisfied
11. You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here
12. Trouble Every Day
13. Help, I'm a Rock (Suite in Three Movements)
*I. Okay to Tap Dance
*II. In Memoriam, Edgard Varèse
*III. It Can't Happen Here 
14. The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet (Unfinished Ballet in Two Tableaux)
*I. Ritual Dance of the Child-Killer
*II. Nullis Pretii (No Commercial Potential)