It was listening to the Dr. Demento radio show at some point in the 1970s—probably 1976—where I first heard three artists I would come to love for the rest of my life. In one radio show, which I taped, the good doctor played Noel Coward’s “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” “Hunting Tigers Out in Indiah” by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and “Let’s Make the Water Turn Black” from Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Thinking back on it, I had damned good taste in music for a 10-year-old kid, I really did, even if it now seems rather obvious what it was about those three songs that appealed to me so much at that age. After all, I was listening to Dr. Demento at the time, of course…
As luck would have it, later that very week I was able to pick up a copy of Uncle Meat for just $1.99 in the cut-out bin of the local branch of the long defunct mid-western chain, National Record Mart. The 1968 double album—the prolific Frank Zappa’s second two-record set in less than three years—is the first one that I bought and still to this day my favorite Mothers of Invention album overall. I think it’s the very best introduction to the music of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. At least it was mine and with the excuse of the new expanded Meat Light three CD box set (not really getting the “Meat Light” title or the crappy cover art—why not get the great Cal Schenkel to do it?—but whatever) from the Zappa Family Trust’s Project/Object “documentary” series, I’m more than happy to extol its virtues for our readers. You know those lists of 1001 records you absolutely must hear before you die? I’d rank Uncle Meat in the top 100. Maybe top 50. No, definitely top 50.
I’m not going to lie to you, and tell you that I completely understood what I was listening to, but since when would “understanding” music mean much anyway or stand in the way of the enjoyment of a work of art? Besides, I was a child. I just knew that I loved it and that it took me somewhere that I’d never been to before. It was a revelation to me that such music even existed. Furthermore, that some freak had gotten major corporate money behind his artistic vision, that was another eye-opening thing for me to grok, and an inspiration for my own career…
Uncle Meat documents the original Mothers at the telepathic height of their musical powers. Recorded over five months in late 1967, early 1968, the album’s aural collage of short, sharp shocks of avant garde musical interludes, doo-wop, free jazz, spoken word bits, cartoony music and far-out concert recordings were the fullest expression at that point of the young composer’s genius. Over the course of its four sides, a first time listener (like I was) could get lost in the album moving from initial confusion to musical mental orgasms in the space of about an hour. It goes from being strange and seemingly impenetrable, then suddenly it sort of dawns on you “Holy shit, this is music unlike anything I’ve ever heard before” and you realize how amazing, exotic, complex and how unexpectedly beautiful Frank Zappa’s music truly is.
The Mothers of Invention, at the time of the recording were Don Preston on keyboards, “Motorhead” Sherwood (tambourine, noises, bad sax playing), Roy Estrada on bass and vocals, Art Tripp and Jimmy Carl Black on drums, Ian Underwood on clarinet and Bunk Gardner on soprano sax. (Ruth Underwood, who plays vibes on Uncle Meat, made a tremendous contribution to the album’s sound. Additionally drummer Billy Mundi, who’d already left the group to join Rhinoceros is heard on some pieces).
This painting, a recreation of the ‘Uncle Meat’ album cover by the original artist Cal Schenkel, is for sale at Cal’s website for a great price.
First up, the titanic overture, “Uncle Meat: Main Title Theme.” Ruth Underwood, then known as Ruth Komanoff, on vibes, kills it, here:
“Dog Breath in the Year of the Plague” is one of my top top top favorite Zappa numbers. Doo-wop, teenage Los Angeles pachuco car culture, more than a hint of Stravinsky, a “good witch of the East” sounding opera singer (Nelcy Walker), munchkin voices (Roy Estrada, Zappa and Ray Collins), and a “ship of love, ready to attack.” This is one of the best early(ish) uses of serious studio multi-tracking. Zappa wasn’t just a genius composer and shit-hot guitarist, he could wield a recording studio like it was an instrument and worked in the most advanced rooms, such as the one in New York where the majority of Uncle Meat was recorded, Apostolic Studios, the first place in the country to allow a 12-track recording.
Ray Collins’ smooth vocal is classic, is it not? And count the layers of sound there, right after the line “My ship of love is ready to attack.” There are FORTY tracks going on at once. Uncle Meat sounds fucking amazing on a good stereo system. Hell, it probably sounds great on crappy computer speakers, too.
Ask yourself how you would have reacted to what Zappa was doing in the late 60s if you were say, Paul McCartney or Brian Wilson? The greatest composers in rock had to up their game when he showed up. THIS was the most advanced, difficult to play, aurally layered music of the day. There was no one else operating in his very specific artistic territory, no one—truly Frank Zappa is an entire musical genre unto himself, like jazz, the Beatles, reggae or dub step—and Uncle Meat is a practically overwhelming statement of a mature—yet young in age—musical genius.
“The Uncle Meat Variations” (listen to this paying close attention to its utter brilliance all the way through, won’t you?):
The next track I want to call to your attention is “Electric Aunt Jemima.” A paean, not only to pancakes, as you might assume, but to Zappa’s own guitar amp:
Another avant garde doo-wop number, “The Air”:
On the album, “The Air” is followed by the equally astonishing “Cruising For Burgers”:
It’s worth mentioning how much of an influence Zappa was on Krautrockers Faust. It’s fairly obvious where drummer Werner “Zappi” Diermaier got his nickname, but I can’t listen to Faust (especially the heavily montaged The Faust Tapes) and not hear some stoned German hippies trying to make a Frank Zappa record (nothing against Faust, I love and revere them). The Faust Tapes and Uncle Meat have a lot in common, if you like one, I can’t see how you wouldn’t like the other.
And here is the pièce de résistance, an explosive live 1968 workout of the Mother’s sprawling, squawking concert centerpiece,“King Kong” powered by the tightly parallel dual percussion attack of Jimmy Carl Black and the classically trained Artie Tripp (a.k.a. “Ed Marimba” as Captain Beefheart dubbed him when he joined The Magic Band). This, for me, is the piece that sums up why the original Mothers of Invention were one of the all-time greatest rock and roll acts of the 1960s. It might be my favorite clip on all of YouTube. This is as advanced and as far-fucking-out as anyone ever got during the decade. And have you ever heard a tighter, better rehearsed rock band? Please!
Admittedly, yes, the music of Frank Zappa can be considered an acquired taste, but I truly pity someone who doesn’t acquire it pronto after watching the below clip of the Mothers on the BBC TV program Colour Me Pop. The first time I saw this, I was so happy that it existed, that I wanted to cry. At the two-minute mark prepare to have your mind blown.
And last, but certainly not least, here’s the insane, brilliant, nearly X-rated animated music video for “Sleeping in A Jar.” This seems like it might have been made for some sort of demo for Madison Avenue (it’s not dissimilar from the Clio Award-winning Luden’s Cough Drops commercial Zappa scored in 1967) but it’s kind of smutty for that purpose with that not-so-subtle blowjob on the 7-Up bottle and the subsequent carbonated cum shot. What other purpose would this have served? Difficult to say!
Interestingly this racy animation aired on Swedish television in 1971 on a show called Spotlight. They say the Swedes are a liberated people sexually speaking and if this passed muster for TV back in 1971, well, that’s saying quite a lot. This couldn’t be shown on American network television today nearly half a century later.