IN THE LATE ‘80S AND EARLY ‘90S, WHEN ZAPPA’S BACK CATALOGUE WAS out of print, second-hand copies of The Mothers of Invention albums soared to the £50 mark. Now that Rykodisc has made the whole oeuvre available in conscientously repackaged CDs – often with extra tracks and additional artwork – the prices of the original vinyl has stabilized, and in some cases fallen.
Vinyl 7” singles by Zappa are highly prized. Novelty singles cut with Paul Buff and Ray Collins at PAL Studios (later Studio Z) on the Original Sound label are now as rare as the proverbial hen’s teeth, likewise ‘How Could I Be Such A Fool?’, ‘Who Are The Brain Police?’ and ‘Big Leg Emma’ b/w ‘Why Don’t You Do Me Right?’ on Verve. Throughout Zappa’s career, a single was usually issued to go with an album, but on the rare occasions singles were played on the radio, the audience’s response was to buy the album rather than the single. The popularity of Sheik Yerbouti in continental Europe spawned some hits, so that ‘Bobby Brown’ and ‘Stick It Out’ may be obtained as singles in Scandinavia and Germany. Because it was issued as a single with an urgent ‘message’ (and a great pic-sleeve by Cal Schenkel), ‘I Don’t Wanna Get Drafted’ is worth obtaining. ‘Valley Girl’ was a bona fide hit, so copies of this have some meaning beyond completist fetishism.
Some collectors go for 12” vinyl singles. Ones to look out for: ‘Dancin’ Fool’, with a fine portrait à la Sheik Yerbouti, with a tarbooshed Zappa smoking a Winston through a cigarette holder, and some extra beats (is that a hoover huffing and puffing like Donna Summer?) edited in to make the song ‘disco length’; True Glove, with Zappa fisting an oven glove, contained a backwards version of ‘No Not Now’ called ‘Won Ton On’ with Johnny ‘Guitar’Watson’s verbal ejectamenta (rather than Harry & Rhonda’s, as on Thing-Fish); Zappa’s interview picture-disc from Talking Pictures; ‘Valley Girl’ with a touching father/daughter photo on the cover; and finally ‘Stairway To Heaven’/ ‘Bolero’ from 1991, with its satirical, anti-transcendent cover photo of iron fire-escapes leadingnowhere (a visual complement to the opening of Broadway The Hard Way, the album of Zappa originals played by the same band on the 1988 tour:”Elvis has just left the building”/ “To climb up that heavenly stair”).
In 1969, Zappa and Herbie Cohen founded two labels, Straight and Bizarre. Some fascinating albums resulted. Trout Mask Replica [Warner/Reprise 2027] by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band is acknowledged as a classic (shortly before his untimely death in 2004, John Peel named it as his favourite rock record of all time).There’s been a lot of anti-Zappa (and anti-Beefheart) moaning issuing from members of the original Mothers (and the Magic Band), but no-one seems able to explain why Zappa should have produced the Captain’s masterpiece. Perhaps because, unlike other producers, he saw that Van Vliet’s music was unique, recorded it clearly and let it speak for itself. Zappa did not try and bend it towards soul or pop formats. Anyway, no self-respecting Zappaphile should persist without a copy. Luckily it’s out on CD (with a transcription of the words in the booklet, a luxury denied original purchasers, although fans dispute many details). An Evening With Wild Man Fischer(1969) was a double album ‘documenting’ a certified lunatic who sold songs for a dime on the streets of Hollywood: by turns funny, insightful and scary. A CD version of Permanent Damage (1970) by The GTO’s appeared briefly, but is now almost as rare as the vinyl: this collection of songs and statements by a gang of L.A. groupies (with contributions by Lowell George, Don Preston, Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck) is a favourite among Zappa cognoscenti (punk principles notwithstanding, cartoonist Savage Pencil admits he cannot hear it without weeping tiny sick tears of nostalgia). If you see the vinyl of Permanent Damage, make sure the deluxe booklet of photos and lyrics is included.
Released at the same time was bassist Jeff Simmons’ collaboration with guitarist Craig Tarwater, Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up (1969). Zappa ‘salvaged’ the album, donating the title song and producing this fine collection of power chord-driven, jazzy psychedelia. Other releases on Straight (with less active involvement on the part of Zappa, but certainly interest) include spoken word by Lord Buckley (A Most Immaculately Hip Aristocrat) and Lenny Bruce (The Berkeley Concert); medieval folk-rock by Judy Henske and Jerry Yester (Farewell Aldebaran); shock rock by Alice Cooper (Easy Action); modal folk extensions by Tim Buckley (Blue Afternoon); and Dylanesque musings by Tim Dawe (Penrod). All these acts could be heard, along with ‘Holiday In Berlin’ and ‘Willie The Pimp’ by the Mothers, on Zappéd, a budget sampler LP issued by Warner Brothers.
When Zappa and Herbie Cohen formed DiscReet Records, they issued albums by Ted Nugent & The Amboy Dukes (Call Of The Wild; Tooth, Fang And Claw) and Kathy Dalton (Boogie Bands And One Night Stands). These were hardly special; even the presence of Little Feat alumni on the latter failed to make it anything extraordinary. Other production dates by Zappa included Grand Funk Railroad’s Good Singin’ Good Playin’ for EMI in 1976, to which Zappa contributed a guitar solo (something he regretted, as reviewers tended to use his solo to damn the playing on the rest of the record, and he liked Grand Funk a great deal), and violinist L. Shankar’s Touch Me There for Zappa Records. Zappa and Ike Willis guested on the latter for Zappa’s ‘Dead Girls Of London’, singing jointly under the alias Stucco Homes. Zappa performed under another alias – Obdewl’l X – on two tracks of George Duke’s Feel for MPS in 1974. Still harder to find is the CD by Prazsky Vyber named Adieu CA [AP 0001-2311], with Zappa playing guitar at Michael Kocáb’s concert to celebrate the evacuation of Russian troops from Prague on 24 June, 1991 (Zappa only plays on one number,’Blaznivy Reggae’, and was mortified, because he hadn’t touched the guitar in years).
Perhaps the most sublimely insane guest appearance by Zappa is his version of John’s Cage’s ‘silent’ composition ‘4’33”‘, contributed to A Chance Operation: The John Cage Tribute [Koch 3-7238] curated for Koch International Classics by Gary Davis in 1993, with booklet essays by David Revill and Richard Kostelanetz. Strangely enough, the track is great: you can actually hear Frank ‘keep silent’!
Zappa has been bootlegged throughout his career, a practice he detested. In July 1991, Zappa licensed Rhino Records to ‘bootleg his bootleggers’, and release a boxed set of reproductions of his eight most famous illegal albums. Sound was slightly tweezed, but was derived from whatever the bootleggers had issued, often of fairly dubious quality (Zappa did not burrow into his archive and find his mixing-desk masters for these items; indeed, the whole project was handled by Rhino).The first Beat The Boots set was issued on both vinyl and CD: As An Am Zappa (31 Oct ‘81), The Ark: Mothers Of Invention (Jul ‘68), Freaks & Motherfu*%!!@# (11 May ‘70), Unmitigated Audacity (12 May ‘74), Anyway The Wind Blows (24 Feb ‘79), ‘Tis The Season To Be Jelly (30 Sep ‘67), Saarbrucken 1979 (3 Sep ‘78) and Piquantique (21 Aug ‘73). The box included a cartoon representation of the Over-Nite Sensation Mothers in concert: the band were portrayed on the inside lid, with a ‘pop-up’ audience including Rhino Records’ logo-rhino gleefully snipping the mic lead of a naughty bootlegger.
Fans bought these “burnished turds” (as Zappa called them), so a second box was issued in 1992: Disconnected Synapses (70), Tengo Na Minchia Tanta (Jun ‘71), Electric Aunt Jemima (‘68), At The Circus (78/70), Swiss Cheese/Fire! (12 Apr ‘71), Our Man In Nirvana (8 Nov ‘68), Conceptual Continuity (19 Nov ‘77). Box two came with a ‘Beat The Boots’ beret and enamel badge, plus a lavish booklet assembled by Cal Schenkel. This wasn’t quite the one he’d designed for The Collected History And Improvisations Of The Mothers Of Invention (a sneak preview of this was issued illicitly in the mid-’70s by Babylon Books in Manchester, England, and it included Edgard Varèse’s 1957 letter to Frank – the one now framed and hanging in his basement listening room – and a letter of rejection from Milt Rogers at Dot Records, the one about Zappa’s music lacking “commercial potential”), but still includes much fascinating material. Some record shops broke up the sets, so these ‘bootleg bootlegs’ may be found separately. In the fanzine Society Pages, Zappa recommended pursuit of extra listening material by swapping live tapes (as long as no money changes hands, this is not illegal). Now fans can build up vast collections of high-quality live recordings for free by downloading off the Internet.
Once Zappa had regained his master tapes from PolyGram and Warner Brothers, he reissued them in sets called The Old Masters. The containers were of silver cardboard, and each sported a different still-life by Donald Roller Wilson. Inside were reproductions of the original albums, with gatefold sleeves and identical graphics (except that original record-label trademarks were replaced with the Barking Pumpkin logo). The Old Masters Box One was issued on 19 April, 1985 and contained seven vinyl disks: Freak Out! (a double), Absolutely Free, Lumpy Gravy, We’re Only In It For The Money, Cruising With Ruben And The Jets and a Mystery Disc with such marvels as Captain Beefheart singing ‘Metal Man Has Won His Wings’ at Studio Z in Cucamonga, an earlyattempt at rock opera called ‘I Was A Teenage Malt Shop’, an acoustic-guitar ‘Bossa Nova Pervertamento’, the sped-up ‘Speed-Freak Boogie’ (which Mike Keneally insists is not ‘sped-up’, but a slowed-down recording played back at normal speed – welcome to the hardcore twiglet zone…) and an extract from The Uncle Frankie Show where Zappa showed radio listeners how to play the backing to “oh, a total of 15,000 rock’n’roll songs” (‘Run Home Slow Theme’ and ‘Charva’ were later included on Lost Episodes; ‘Why Don’t You Do Me Right?’ and ‘Big Leg Emma’ on the Rykodisc issue of Absolutely Free).
The Old Masters Box Two was released on 25 November, 1986 and included Uncle Meat (a double), Hot Rats, Burnt Weeny Sandwich, Weasels Ripped My Flesh, Chunga’s Revenge, Fillmore East – June 1971 and Just Another Band From L.A.. The booklet from Uncle Meat came housed in a black card sleeve sporting yet another spooky still-life by Donald Roller Wilson, plus a reprint of Zappa’s Conceptual Continuity Manifesto from Circular, ‘a weekly news device from Warner/Reprise’, 20 September 1971.There was also another Mystery Disc with 22 minutes of The Mothers Of Invention at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1968, a studio recording of the anti-CIA ‘Agency Man’, and other scraps, including the original story of ‘Willie The Pimp’. ‘Wedding Dress Song’/ ‘Handsome Cabin Boy’ later appeared on Lost Episodes.
The Old Masters Box Three appeared on 30 December, 1987 and comprised: Hot Rats, Waka/Jawaka, The Grand Wazoo, Over-Nite Sensation, Apostrophe (‘), Roxy And Elsewhere (a double), One Size Fits All, Bongo Fury and Zoot Allures. There was no Mystery Disc in Box Three: perhaps Zappa was already thinking that it would require the CD format to issue all the material he had hoarded on tape. In September 1998, Rykodisc issued the Mystery Discs on a single CD (see Chapter 11), though for reasons of space ‘Big Leg Emma’ and ‘Why Don’t You Do Me Right?’ were omitted.
Zappa fans are famously demented, so it’s safe to say that anything with ‘Zappa’ on it is wanted somewhere by someone (even Zappo’s calendars-aus-Köln). Now he’s dead, the idea of ‘official’ Zappa product becomes increasingly tenuous (despite the brave efforts by The Zappa Family Trust detailed in the previous chapter). The universe of Zappa cover bands, tributes and Zappa-related releases has expanded with inexorable momentum. In 2004, the Zappanale in Bad Doberan, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern celebrated its sixteenth year, with a weekend of music and theatrical events, and an audience of over two thousand. If you get a chance to see the Grandmothers, Ensemble Modern, Muffin Men, Project/Object, Nasal Retentive Orchestra, The Wrong Object… seize it, their gigs tell you things about Zappa’s music you can’t guess from the records, however great. Perhaps the most striking tribute CD so far appeared in 2004: Zappostrophe by Marc Guillermont from Nice, France, who writes and arranges all his own work, but successfully captures the atmosphere of Zappa’s records – down to the sound of hecklers during rock-arena guitar-solos ‹www.virtualist.net›. Meanwhile, the double act of Eugene Chadbourne and Jimmy Carl Black (The Jack & Jim Show) has provided the most consistently creative and spontaneous interpretation of the Zappa/Beefheart legacy.
Rykodisc has kept interest in Zappa alive by issuing various collations of their own devise. Strictly Commercial was a brave attempt to select representative tracks that probably pleased no-one except its compilers; Strictly Genteel was a classical introduction that compiled Zappa’s orchestral music. Kill Ugly Radio, The Return Of The Son Of Kill Ugly Radio and Ditties And Beer were brave attempts to interest radio programmers in songs that were bound to land them in trouble. I’ve seen Frank Zappa: Clean American Version, a promotion-only CD, on offer at an inflated price, but it’s hard to see who’s buying, as all the material is available elsewhere.
Apostrophe(‘) and One Size Fits All exist as ‘Au20’audiophile releases on 24k gold CDs, while this very volume will doubtless be republished by Omnibus in the year 2013 as a memorial Phaze III edition on rose-scented wrist-array chiffon, bound in pink-dyed, angora poodle-skin with goldleaf-tooling (provided enough hardcores show an interest…)