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Cal Schenkel’s illustrations of Frank Zappa & the story that inspired ‘Calvin & His Hitch-Hikers’
09.15.2020
06:32 am
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Schenkel’s illustration of Zappa for the back cover of ‘The Frank Zappa Songbook.’
 

” If I were, to sum up, his meaning to music and art in this century, it’s as someone who opened new doors by experimenting with so many different things, expanded the envelope, and brought other types of music into Rock.”

—a 2010 quote from artist Cal Schenkel on how he thought Frank Zappa should be remembered.

Future long-time collaborators Cal Schenkel and Frank Zappa first met each other in 1966 when Schenkel was nineteen and hitchhiking around Los Angeles. In a “Dear Hustler, I never thought it would happen to me” moment, Schenkel was picked up by a jeep full of girls and dropped off at a studio where Zappa was recording his first record, Freak Out! by the Mothers of Invention. According to Schenkel, his interaction with Zappa in 1966 was unremarkable, and by 1967, the budding artist was back in his hometown of Philadelphia. As you’re perhaps aware, Zappa was an accomplished artist in his own right—something I’ve written about here on Dangerous Minds previously. He also created early artwork and collages for The Mothers of Invention shows and artwork for their first album. In the midst of a six-month stint at the Garrick Theater in New York in 1967, the Mothers played two shows Tuesday through Friday and three shows on Saturday and Sunday. At some point, Frank decided it was time for him to turn over artwork duties to someone other than himself, and this is where Schenkel’s girlfriend at the time, Sandy Hurvitz, comes in. Hurvitz (aka Essra Mohawk) was then performing with the Mothers. When she heard Frank was looking for someone to become his “art engineer,” she immediately got Zappa and Cal together to look at Cal’s work. Zappa was into what he saw, and soon Schenkel, a self-taught artist, would be doing everything from creating artwork for Zappa’s musical projects to photographing the band, even living with the Zappas for a time. The two would work closely together, and often the artistic output would be based entirely on concepts initialized by Cal, then approved by Frank. Here, Schenkel gives some more insight into how he helped bring Frank’s “identities” to life:

“They were Frank’s identities, and he was in control of them, and I was really just satisfying these various concepts. I didn’t create his identities for him in terms of explicit concepts. But in terms of visuals, we worked off of each other. So it was a true give and take, with the understanding that he had the final say. It was very informal and open. It was important to him to have a complete approach to the packaging of himself and his music because he saw himself as a complete artist, from music to visuals.”

To say Schenkel’s work for Zappa helped perpetuate the myth and madness of Frank Zappa would be an understatement. For their first collaboration, and as the only employee of the Zappa art department, Frank had Cal create some artwork used for the Garrick Theater residency. He was also deeply involved in the theatrics for the grueling show schedule, which for Schenkel included filtering lights through melting plastic. Here’s a little more from Frank on the visual effects Cal helped create for the shows:

“We had visual effects that would snuff anything that anyone is doing today, but we were doing it in a 300-seat theatre. We would do all kinds of weird things in there, but you can only do it in a situation where everyone can see it.”

 

A poster for Zappa’s six-month stint at the Garrick Theater.
 
In addition to being Zappa’s go-to-guy for art, Schenkel was also a source of inspiration for Zappa’s jam “For Calvin (And His Next Two Hitchhikers).” Here, my friends, is The True Story of Calvin & His Hitchhikers as told by Cal Schenkel in 1984:

“My 39 Pontiac was in the shop & so I had borrowed a car from Frank. It was this 1959 white Mark VIIII Jaguar that used to belong to Captain Beefheart that Janet (Zappa collaborator and actress Janet Neville-Ferguson Hof), was using at the time. When it worked. You know, the one they slashed the seats in (but I don’t remember that). I just left Frank’s house & I’m stopped at the corner of Mulholland and Laurel Canyon Blvd, waiting for a red light to change when I notice these two hitchhikers, a hippie couple standing there waiting for a ride. The next thing I know, they are getting in the back of the car. I guess they must have thought I offered them a ride (I didn’t tell them to come into my car or motion them or anything—I wasn’t even thinking of it), so I ask them where they are going & they didn’t say ANYTHING! I drive down Laurel Canyon Blvd past the Log Cabin (the famed Log Cabin in Laurel Canyon, Hollywood owned by Zappa), past Harry Houdini’s, past the country store & into Hollywood. I get to the bottom of the hill, I was going to turn right. I kind of asked them, “look I’m turning right, do you want to get out here?” They didn’t say anything. They were just blank. I figured they were on acid or something. I just couldn’t communicate with them. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just continued on to my destination. When I get there, I said, ‘OK, this is where I’m going. Good-bye!’ They just stayed in the car & didn’t get out. So I parked the car, got out, and went up to my studio and started to work. I was working on the album cover for Uncle Meat. This is in my studio that was a dentist’s office over a hotdog joint on Melrose. Every once in a while, I’d look out of the window to see if they were gone, but they were still sitting in the back seat of the car. An hour or two later, I looked out the window, and I noticed they were gone. I thought, ‘finally!’ Then shortly afterwards, I saw that they were back! They went to the supermarket for a loaf of bread and lunchmeat and started making sandwiches in the back of the car. They were eating their lunch! Then they left.”

Another fun fact about the Jaguar Cal was rolling around in: Zappa gifted the nifty automobile to Janet Neville-Ferguson Hof for her birthday. Janet would complain it was always in the “shop,” and the last time she drove it (directly from being repaired at a garage), it blew smoke for three miles and then starting shooting flames through a hole in the floor where the stick shift had once been. Janet and her gal-pal Lucy (Miss Lucy of the GTOs), put out the fire with a coat before pulling over in front of the Whiskey A Go Go, where the jaguar completely burst into flames. It was later taken by someone Janet noted to be a “friend” of Motorhead Sherwood to “fix,” never to be seen again. A few of Schenkel’s lesser-known illustrations of Frank and some comic panels drawn by Cal featuring Zappa follow.
 

Here are images of eight original drawings of Frank Zappa by his longtime art director, Cal Schenkel, unused but intended for the ‘Uncle Meat’ album cover. Sold at an auction, the sketches were found by a former Warner Bros. art director, who, in 1976 while going through “job tickets” (envelopes containing everything to do with an album’s artwork), found them in one of the Zappa tickets for ‘Uncle Meat.’ The images were never used.
 

 

 

An illustration of Zappa by Schenkel for ‘The Frank Zappa Songbook’.
 

 
Much more Cal Schenkel, after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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09.15.2020
06:32 am
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The f*cked up Fumetti of Tanino Liberatore and his friendship with Frank Zappa


The cover of Frank Zappa’s 1983 album, ‘The Man From Utopia’ featuring the artwork of Tanino Liberatore.
 
Tanino Liberatore, (born Gaetano Liberatore) may be best known to music fans for his association with Frank Zappa. The two became friendly after Liberatore created a cyborg version of Frank for the futuristic cover of Zappa’s album, The Man From Utopia (1983). Liberatore named his illustration of Zappa, Frank Xerox—a hat-tip to his fiendish Frankenstein comic character RanXerox, a revered reprobate and the subject of a long series of Italian comic strips, comics and graphic novels dating back to 1978 created by Liberatore and Stefano Tamburini. Here’s Liberatore from a 2012 interview on meeting Zappa in Italy while he was in town doing shows in Naples and Rome in 1982:

“I was at the Naples and Rome concerts where nothing special happened. After the Naples concert, we went dining together to discuss the cover. In the beginning, it should have been a six pages comic strip, but the project was later reduced. Since I don’t like covers with a lot of details or messages, and I prefer a strong drawing to leave a powerful impact, I proposed to draw the front cover according to my approach, leaving to him any decision concerning the back cover. Frank accepted. So in the back, I drew the promoters who worry only about sniffing cocaine, The Pope, the gal who let Zappa know about RanXerox.”

The “gal” Liberatore is referring to was a journalist for the Italian magazine Frigidaire, early publishers and supporters of RanXerox. Her illustrated image even appears in the apocalyptic crowd scene on the back cover of The Man From Utopia, where she is depicted topless, thrusting a copy of Frigidaire above her head. The journalist, only identified by her first name Valentina, played a crucial role in Zappa’s awareness of Libertore, who went into detail about his first encounter with Zappa leading to the infamous album cover:

“And he just saw RanXerox, at least that’s what they told me, he threw out the girl and took what was his Italian handyman, who was from Rome, Bassoli (Italian rock journalist Massimo Bassoli, the editor of Tutti Frutti magazine and friend of Zappa’s), and he told to track me down because he wanted to talk to me because he liked the characters. Then Bassoli found us, it was me and Stefano (Tamburini ), at the Excelsior in via Veneto, we went to his room, where there was his bodyguard, a huge black man, and a few people. And he came out: ‘Hey, Liberatore! After Michelangelo, you are the greatest Italian artist!’ And he believed it, he didn’t say it to piss me, on the contrary. And this was the first impact. Frank Zappa was one of my myths, also because the myths that I had were more musicians than designers, apart from Michelangelo and Caravaggio. Finding myself there in the presence of his holiness, even if records had come out at the time that I didn’t like so much.”

 

A photo of Tanino Liberatore (left), Stefano Tamburini (right), watching Frank Zappa (center) flip through the copy of Frigidaire featuring RanXerox. Image source.
 
As usual, Zappa was far ahead of the cool curve, and it would be about five years before Ranx flipped the lids of adult-oriented comic fans in the U.S. when he showed up in the July 1983 edition of Heavy Metal. As a nearly life-long comic/graphic novel fan, I first became aware of Liberatore and Ranx by way of Spanish comic MAXX, when Ranx appeared on the cover of the January 1986 issue. Initially, Liberatore’s artistic interest was firmly rooted in architecture before he decided to take up illustration for print advertising in 1975. He would meet Tamburini a few years later, and “RanXerox,” the first iteration of RanXerox, would violently spring to life.

Sadly, Tamburini, a hugely respected graphic artist in his own right, would pass away entirely too young, just months before his 31st birthday in 1986. Liberatore would abandon RanXerox and comics for years until he revived his mechanical antihero in the 90s as a character in books by Jean-Luc Fromental and Alain Chabat. His work has also been featured in Hustler, Métal Hurlant, and thankfully, several books, including La Donne (2012), and the soon-to-be-released Ranx: The Complete Collection due in June of 2020, containing his vicious, unsettling, and (at times) confusing illustrations. After the initial shock of seeing Liberatore’s work for the first time 34 years ago (at Newbury Comics in Harvard Square), the impact of his wild style has not diminished. And, if you are not familiar with his work, it will likely have the same effect on your eyeballs as well. That said, with a few exceptions, many of the images in this post are NSFW.
 
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The back cover of ‘The Man From Utopia.’
 

A sketch by Liberatore for the back cover of ‘The Man From Utopia.’ More can be seen here.
 

A sketch of Zappa by Liberatore.
 

Another sketch of Zappa by Liberatore.
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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05.26.2020
04:23 pm
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Wowie Zowie: The early beatnik-style artwork of Frank Zappa
04.26.2020
05:17 pm
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A very happy looking Frank Zappa, age fifteen, posing next to his winning illustration for the California Division of Forestry in 1955.
 

“The most important thing in art is the frame. For painting, literally, for other arts, figuratively—because, without this humble appliance, you can know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. You have to but a “box” around it because otherwise, what is that shit on the wall?”

—Frank Zappa quoted in The Real Frank Zappa Book (page 140).

Before he illustrated the winning entry for an annual poster contest held by the California Division of Forestry, the then fourteen-year-old Frank Zappa, a 9th grader at Grossmont High School in San Diego, had spent some good portion of his youth drawing. The story behind Zappa becoming interested in drawing is about as Frank Zappa as you might imagine. Here’s more from Frank on that:

“I had some basic interests in art, and since I was a kid, I was able to draw things. So I saw a piece of music, and I drew a piece of music. I had no idea what it would sound like or what was going on in it, but I knew what an eighth note looked like – I didn’t know it was an eighth note. I started drawing music and that was it.”

Zappa kept a sketch scrapbook as a teenager and also enjoyed entertaining his younger sister Candy by creating illustrations for her. Three years after winning the poster contest, Zappa would win another state-wide art contest for his abstract painting “Family Room,” this time sponsored by the California Federation of Women, and the Hallmark Greeting Card company. In the press clip announcing Zappa’s win (featured in the book Cosmic Debris: The Collected History and Improvisations of Frank Zappa), he was described as a “highly versatile” young person who had no plans to “confine” his artistic interests to painting. It was also noted that the young Zappa was writing a book. When asked if either art or literature were in the cards for his future, his answer was “music.” Zappa was now seventeen and already playing in a band called the Blackouts and was fully engaged in music lessons and musical composition. Before his graduation from high school, Frank was given the opportunity to conduct the Antelope Valley Junior College orchestra, who performed two of Zappa’s original compositions, “Sleeping In A Jar,” and “A Pound For A Brown On A Bus” (noted in the book, Frank Zappa FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About the Father of Invention).

Getting back to Zappa’s art, the majority of images in this post are of work Zappa created from the mid-‘50s to the mid-60s. If you’re a fan of Zappa, you’re likely aware he created early collage-style showbills for Mothers of Invention gigs. The very cool artwork of a young Frank Vincent Zappa follows.
 

A sketch from Zappa’s high school scrapbook.
 

An illustration by Zappa for his kid sister Candy, “A Day at the Beach.” This image was published in her 2011 book, ‘My Brother Was a Mother: Take 2.’
 
Much more of Frank Zappa’s youthful artwork, after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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04.26.2020
05:17 pm
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A long, rambling blog post about the fantastic Frank Zappa vinyl releases
02.04.2020
06:40 am
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Over the course of the past year I stopped buying recently produced vinyl, or at least most of it. A lot of vinyl these days is sourced from digital files. Some records are made right from CDs. Who would want that? Unless there is a promise of “mastered from the original analog tapes in an all analog environment” then you can count me out. Digital anything anywhere in the mastering chain defeats the purpose of records in 2020.  Analog—or even more pointedly, avoiding any sort of digital contamination—is the entire point.

For a long time—decades—I thought digital was superior to vinyl. For several years I worked in a high end video post production house and there is a massive difference between analog video and digital video. So obvious as not to require any further discussion. The same seemed to be true of digital music, plus CDs had no crackles, pops or dust. I didn’t have a good stereo in the first place, so naturally CDs sounded better on my modest system. I sold off 98% of my home-invading record collection in the late 90s. Eventually I got into audiophile formats like SACDs, high resolution 24-bit files from HDTracks and 5.1 surround mixes on DVD and Blu-ray.

Cut to twenty years later and after I was gifted with a ridiculously beautiful turntable in 2016 (thank you kindly Alex Rosson!) I morphed very quickly from Digital Dan to Analog Andy. I immediately set about re-purchasing the creme of my former collection and more. Much, much more. (The night of the day that the turntable unexpectedly arrived on our porch, I spent so much money on Discogs that I realized I was going to be in big trouble when my wife—then sleeping beside me—got wind of it the next day, so I decided to spend twice as much to make my inevitable punishment worth it.)

Finally having a really good turntable totally changed my listening habits and I gained a great deal of sophistication as a listener that—unbeknownst to me, of course—I’d been sorely lacking. First, I find that I listen to vinyl for far, far longer than I ever listen to digital music. I will put on album after album after album late into the night. I seldom do that with CDs or streaming. I also listen to analog music a lot louder than I listen to digital music. In retrospect, I think that I’m fairly susceptible to “listener fatigue” with CDs. Albums sound better to my ears. CDs and streaming often have severely squashed range so they sound passable everywhere—in earbuds, in cars, on cheap desktop speakers, etc.—whereas vinyl mastering employs the antithesis of this approach and is often far more dynamic (except for the vinyl mastered from aggressively compressed CDs!) and “musical” sounding.

There’s just something inherently “better” about analog audio. Our ears seem to like it more, probably because it’s reproducing music as soundwaves, not snatches of zeros and ones. So this is why, as I was saying above, I stopped buying almost all newly minted vinyl. I got burned too many times on dead quiet—but lifeless—200 gram supposedly audiophile pressings that were sourced from digital files. HOWEVER when it’s done properly—the mindblowing all-analog mastered Jimi Hendrix reissues come readily to mind—then I’m all over it. Releases like that are few and far between, but easy to spot: When a label goes to the trouble and expense of AAA mastering, they will tell you all about it on a front cover sticker. I think it should be mandatory when possible. Which brings me to my intended topic, the recent-ish slate of Frank Zappa vinyl from the Zappa Family Trust via UMe. 
 

 
Oh man, you wanna talk about good-sounding vinyl? These reissues—of albums that in some cases have been unavailable on vinyl for the past 40+ years—are every bit as good as the Hendrix wax (a high standard indeed). Zappa has a well-deserved reputation as a studio wizard and these releases were mastered at Bernie Grundman’s. I knew they were gonna sound good. I just didn’t know they were gonna sound this good. They might even sound better than the original releases. I felt like I was listening to something much closer to the master tapes than the CD versions I’ve known for so long. Pressed at Pallas in Germany, they are pitch black quiet. The jackets are top quality.

I had no idea until recently that these albums were done with this level of quality control. I assumed—incorrectly—that they were sourced from the 2012 Zappa CD remasters and paid no mind until I was sent a review copy of Orchestral Favorites. It was a real knockout sonically and I soon picked up Weasels Ripped My Flesh and Absolutely Free at the record store. The next day I returned and bought Chunga’s Revenge and Burnt Weeny Sandwich

Here’s my guide to the Zappa vinyl wot I have heard so far, more or less in the order that I first played them in:

With the advent of compact discs, Frank Zappa set about mastering his catalog digitally in the 1980s. Despite the fact that his hearing was no doubt pretty shot from years of touring, and the liberal amounts of digital reverb he added, the 80s Zappa CDs actually didn’t sound too terrible. For the most part. The master tapes for We’re Only In It For The Money and Cruising with Ruben & The Jets had sustained irreparable damage so Zappa enlisted drummer Chad Wackerman and bassist Arthur Barrow to help him recreate the damaged tracks. This didn’t sound right to anyone who grew up with these albums. Nobody liked it. And again with the digital reverb all over everything. 

When the newly remastered Zappa Family Trust versions came out on CD in 2012 they righted several wrongs in the catalog. From the world-renowned audio engineering talent they hired, to the packaging, the 2012 CDs were uniformly excellent and they tended to sound much better than Frank’s own versions (some were his versions). The ZFT vinyl is done to a similarly high standard and everything—save for Freak Out!, WOIIFTM, CWR&TJ, and Uncle Meat—is sourced from the original two-track analog master tapes. 

Setting those four aside for a moment, Absolutely Free is the earliest analog-sourced album and it sounds fantastic for something that was probably recorded in a four-track studio. There is a third side of extra cuts including both sides of the “Big Leg Emma”/“Why Dontcha Do Me Right?” single and some zany Mothers of Invention radio spots. The fourth side has no music but has been laser-etched with Frank’s face. The libretto that originally came with the album has been faithfully reproduced. I’m not sure this is an album a Zappa neophyte should start with—the satirical themes are more than a bit dated—but I’ve always loved this one and I’m glad I own it even if it’s not exactly something I would pull out and play that often. It sounds GOOD, though. Crazy good, I thought. 
 

 
Next up was the album that many would recommend to someone new to Zappa, 1969’s Hot Rats. One of the first albums to feature A LOT of multitrack overdubs, Hot Rats in this late 2019 pink vinyl incarnation is nothing short of magnificent in the audiophile department. It’s a wow from start to finish and something begging to be played on a good hifi. But here’s where I will point out a distinction between this album and other Frank Zappa records: Hot Rats was recorded entirely in the studio. Burnt Weeny Sandwich and Weasels Ripped My Flesh, like Uncle Meat before them, are comprised of a mix of state-of-the-art studio tracks and live recordings. As everyone knows, Zappa was a studio wizard, but how much control could he realistically have had over his live stuff considering he was onstage himself? Even if he was relying on skilled audio technicians—and he was—live recordings have a certain sound about them. I won’t say it’s jarring when a carefully produced studio number is followed by a live track—and with Zappa this might happen in a single song as he would frequently edit things that way—but the studio created material just sparkles pressed in the grooves of such high quality black plastic. “Dwarf Nebula Processional March & Dwarf Nebula,” for instance, knocked my socks off after listening to the CD version for so many years. “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama” has never sounded better.

Chunga’s Revenge is what I picked up next and it’s also a mixture of live and studio. I’ve never felt like this was a particularly strong album, but it ends with “Sharleena,” which is one of my all time favorite Zappa songs—and holy fuck does it sound great here—so I had to have this one. Your mileage may vary on Chunga’s Revenge, but for me it was worth buying for just that one song.

And now I want to backtrack a minute because the next analog Zappa that I heard was a near mint copy of Uncle Meat that I bought from a Russian Discogs dealer. The master tape for that album is no more, so the current ZFT vinyl is sourced from a digital transfer made in the 1980s. As Uncle Meat is easily my favorite Zappa album, the ZFT analog wax I’d heard thus far had convinced me (because it was so good) that I needed to hear the original pressing. It took forever to get here, but the wait was worth it. The studio material on Uncle Meat sounds positively mind-blowing. If you’re used to hearing the CD version läthered with digital reverb, it’s like it was wiped down with Windex. I played Uncle Meat to death when I was a kid and this is the way I remember it sounding. Like all Zappa recordings, the drums sound amazing. My entire body was grinning with pleasure on a molecular level as I played it and I resolved to track down archival copies of Freak Out!, We’re Only In It For the Money and Cruising with Ruben & the Jets. [I should note here that I have not heard the ZFT/UMe release of Uncle Meat. I’ve read several reviews that say it sounds fantastic and the golden ears of Michael Fremer rate the new version as superior to the 1969 LP, but I had to have an original.]

As luck would have it, I came across a pristine copy of Cruising with Ruben & The Jets just a few days later at a local record store for a fraction of what I’d have been willing to pay for it on Discogs. This album—which many people consider a lesser Zappa album, IT’S NOT—sounded as good as Uncle Meat. In fact being fully a studio creation, it sounded even better. I obsessed over how brilliantly layered the voices were. The Mothers’ mutant doo wop was positively holographic as heard in the original pressing. I re-doubled my resolve to grab an original Freak Out! and WOIIFTM, but there was still plenty of classic analog-sourced Zappa vinyl reissues that I had not heard. Fab Jason Reynolds at UMe filled in some of the gaps with a box o’ records that included the mono Lumpy Gravy PrimordialFiner MomentsOne Size Fits All, and Apostrophe.
 

 
Lumpy Gravy Primordial, mastered at 45rpm, is not a long album, but it’s an interesting orchestral piece—essential for any Zappa freak to own—and it sounds fantastic. What you get here is the early, withdrawn version of Lumpy Gravy before the surreal conversations were added. Finer Moments is a two record set of studio and live odds-n-sods and there is the same disparity in sound quality as on some of the earlier collections. It’s actually something Zappa himself prepared for release but never did. Finer Moments has got some very good stuff on it—some released elsewhere—but it’s a set more for completists than casual fans or curious new listeners. 

Which brings me to the two final analog Zappa albums that I played during my several day Zappa vinyl listening marathon. By the mid-70s the sound quality on Zappa’s albums took a great leap forward as studio equipment caught up to what he wanted to do with it and he had more money to put into the creation of his music. Both Apostrophe and One Size Fits All represent still-to-this-day next-level audiophile recording and mixing techniques and the ZFT wax capture all of those albums’ cartoony underground comix nuances. Regardless of what one thinks about lyrics describing the necessity of not eating yellow snow or being blinded (temporarily) by the husky wee wee (I mean the doggie wee wee)—and I’m not going to stick up for it—the astonishing virtuosity and dexterity of the band (the so-called “Roxy group” and the final cast of musicians to be called the Mothers of Invention) is something unique to behold. Has there ever been another band this tightly rehearsed in all of the rock era?

In summation, I haven’t heard all of the ZFT vinyl yet, but I’m sure that will happen in short order. And I’ll still be looking for original pressings of Freak Out! and WOIIFTM. Does it sound like I’m recommending all of it? I suppose it does. This is top quality, best-in-class heritage rock vinyl done up to the highest degree. If that kind of thing is important to you, do look into the Zappa vinyl. You won’t be sorry.
 

“King Kong” with the original Mothers of Invention on the BBC’s ‘Colour Me Pop’ TV show in 1968.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.04.2020
06:40 am
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‘The Hot Rats Sessions’ offers an window into how Frank Zappa used a recording studio
12.18.2019
05:40 pm
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After he disbanded the original incarnation of the Mothers of Invention in 1969, Frank Zappa immediately started working on his second solo album, Hot Rats. He was backed in the studio by former Mother Ian Underwood as his main creative partner, along with electric violin pioneer Don “Sugarcane” Harris, his old chum from high school Captain Beefheart, Jean-Luc Ponty, several session musicians known as top LA jazz players, as well as a teenaged Shuggie Otis and an uncredited Lowell George. 

The album was recorded at TTG Studios in Hollywood near the intersection of Sunset and Highland, a short drive from Zappa’s Laurel Canyon home. Zappa had recorded at TTG before, Freak Out! was done there, and the studio had a reputation for high quality sound. One of the studio’s owners, Tom Hidley, had worked on developing the first car stereo (for “Madman” Muntz) and had built the then state-of-the-art MGM/Verve studio in New York from the ground up. In 1968, Hidley devised a 16 track analog tape recorder—4 tracks or 8 tracks was the norm at the time—and deployed it at TTG.

Hidley’s “homemade” technical innovations offered Zappa fully twice the amount of recording tracks as had been available to him the last time he’d been in the studio and he took full advantage of TTG ‘s custom-built gear and advanced recording equipment to create an album unlike any that had been heard before. To illustrate just how big of a leap this was, for the first time Zappa was able to create a stereo drum sound. Instead of just one single (mono) track for drums, now he could record on four, one for the snare, one for the bass drum and two on either side for the rest of the kit and cymbals.This had never really been done before, and the extra tracks offered the engineer heretofore unfeasible levels of control in the mix down. Zappa’s methods were widely copied and became the standard studio protocol as 16 track recorders became more the norm. Zappa used other tracks for multiple overdubs by Ian Underwood of horns and keyboards. With just a few players, he could achieve the sound and rich musical textures of a large ensemble. Ian Underwood alone plays the parts of approximately eight to ten musicians. Simultaneously. Even the year before, that would have been utterly impossible.
 

An outtake of GTO Miss Christine from the ‘Hot Rats’ photo session by Andee Nathanson
 
Zappa also used a lot of tape manipulation and sonic processing, recording certain instruments double fast and then slowing them down to shift the sound into something more exotic. This is how the weirder aspects of the album’s unique sound came to be. Subtle and not so subtle electronic touches were integrated with woodwind instruments and grand piano. Zappa played a socket wrench on “Willie the Pimp” in case you have ever wondered what THAT sound was. He even close-miked a plastic comb for “It Must Be a Camel.”

What emerged from these session is a jazz-rock masterpiece. Zappa’s wild guitar improvisions roar across Hot Rats, adding a fiendishly greasy element to the overall sound. Hot Rats is jazz AND it is rock, unlike most music termed “fusion.” Jazz musicians could rock, sure, but could rock musicians jazz? Most could not, but Frank Zappa ultimately composed Frank Zappa music, and existed in his own self-created musical universe. His flavor of jazz-rock was uniquely his own. Listening to Hot Rats today, it’s interesting to wonder how it must’ve sounded to even the most adventurous music fans of 1969!

And now, 50 years later… there is even more Hot Rats. On December 20th, just a day shy of what would have been Frank Zappa’s 79th birthday, Zappa Records and UMe will release a mammoth six-disc boxed set of The Hot Rats Sessions. This collection collects every composition recorded during the July and August 1969 dates at TTG, and includes much material that would be utilized by Zappa elsewhere later. It’s a forensic look into how this classic was made and the fullest picture we have yet of Zappa working in the studio.

The Hot Rats Sessions will be available in a six CD boxed set and digitally, including as an Apple Digital Master. The completed basic tracks were mixed from the original multitrack analog master tapes by Craig Parker Adams and then mastered by Bob Ludwig earlier this year. The original album, pressed on hot pink vinyl by Pallas, is also available.
 

“Dame Margret’s Son To Be A Bride” (1969 Quick Mix)
 

 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.18.2019
05:40 pm
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Have a very Zappa Halloween
10.30.2019
08:31 pm
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Although the comparison might seem to be a strange one at first glance, Duke Ellington and Frank Zappa had an awful lot in common. Obviously both men were composers. Arrangers. Great instrumentalists. And bandleaders.  Another perhaps less obvious talent shared by Ellington and Zappa is that both were fairly shrewd businessmen and promoters. They had to be if they wanted to be able to hear the music they were hearing in their heads played in the real world. Both were right brain-left brain types, a rare trait among artistic people.

But what I find the two uniquely have in common—once all of the above is taken into account, of course—is that both men were incredibly adept at not only finding the right musicians to play their music, but actually composing music which in a real sense played the musicians themselves. Took advantage of all they had to offer, in other words. An obvious example of this in Duke Ellington’s vast repertoire—although there are many—would be his “Concerto for Cootie” written for his longtime trumpet player Cootie Williams to take a featured solo. 

Frank Zappa did something similar. For instance, it’s unimaginable to attempt to mentally subtract what xylophonist‎ Ruth Underwood added to his demanding mid-period music. Or trombonist Bruce Fowler. Have a listen to Sleep Dirt‘s (or Läther‘s if you prefer) “Regyptian Strut.” Fowler is playing all of the brass instruments. Listen to how incredibly slinky sounding his trombone lines are. Thrill to Underwood’s precision mallet work. 
 

 
You see what I mean? Dig how Bruce Fowler’s brass becomes one with the rhythm section. And who else has ever played the xylophone like that? I mean Frank himself is barely present on the track (he’s credited for “percussion”). How is this instrumental clearly recognizable as a Zappa composition despite Frank’s own trademark guitar (and his voice) not being anywhere near it you might ask? Well, it’s due to the particular personalities of the players involved, especially, in this case, Underwood and Fowler’s contributions. What they do is ridiculously distinctive—-it could only be them—and the sounds they make are very closely associated with Frank Zappa’s music. Almost the way actors are connected with certain roles. Think of Zappa as a director then, who would cast his band members, their individual talents simultaneously showcased in, and subsumed by, his vision.
 

 
Another example of Ruth Underwood’s incredible dexterity during “Don’t you ever wash that thing?”:
 

 
Which brings me to the mid-70s version of the Mothers of Invention in which Ruth Underwood and Bruce Fowler performed. After a tour with John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, Zappa decided he needed to add a second drummer to his band. He hired Chester Thompson a young jazz and R&B drummer to play alongside Ralph Humphrey as well as adding Napoleon Murphy Brock’s sax and smooth vocals to the mix of keyboardist George Duke, Tom Fowler on bass, as well as Ruth Underwood and Bruce Fowler. This lineup is—more or less—featured on the albums Overnite Sensation, Apostrophe, One Size Fits All, Studio Tan, Sleep Dirt and You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore 2. For many Zappa fans, this is their favorite incarnation of the Mothers of Invention and their favorite era of Frank’s career. It’s easy to see why! Frank himself must’ve been proud of this group, too, as this is the band featured on Roxy & Elsewhere, and filmed for posterity (and later released as Roxy The Movie).

If you’re a Zappa fan who cannot get enough of his mid-70s Mothers, the latest release from the Zappa Family Trust and the Universal Music Enterprises, Halloween ‘73 is for you. The source material is two incendiary sets that were performed at Chicago’s Auditorium Theater on, no surprise here, October 31st, 1973. There’s a fourth CD of band rehearsals prior to the Chicago shows that shed additional light on the band’s abilities. At the risk of stating the obvious, this is the Roxy & Elsewhere band just a few weeks prior to the recording of that classic album. Obviously they were TIGHT but not quite as tight as they would be in a few weeks time. You can hear the band’s momentum building towards the Los Angeles concerts.

Taken from the original four-track tapes (of which only three tracks were actually used) tapped at the soundboard, Halloween ‘73 sounds exceptionally good. The four CD set comes with a full color book with essays by Ralph Murphy and Ruth Underwood and is packaged in a Halloween costume type box with the clear cellophane window displaying a “Frankenzappa” plastic mask and a pair of green rubber monster gloves (Look, I don’t pretend to know why. Maybe you’ll use it in an unanticipated Halloween costume pinch one day?) The elaborate packaging aside, the music on these four discs is primo 70s Zappa, an embarrassment of riches. As if the Chicago Halloween sets weren’t enough and you get the band rehearsals, too? Zappaologists will be stunned by this stuff.

I’ve got to hand it to the Zappa Family Trust, they are truly keeping their father’s music alive. It’s really commendable. With the quality being so very high with practically everything they’ve put out in recent years, I am all for them hurling as much product on the marketplace as it is ready to absorb. More please. When Gail Zappa was still living I think her strict fealty to her husband’s art would have prevented a lot of this stuff coming out. There’s a new excitement around Frank Zappa’s music that can only be ascribed to the hefty crop of ZFT releases we’ve seen of late and  Alex Winter’s much awaited Frank doc is going to fan the flames of that even more.
 

 
Listen below as Frank introduces the band and tries to embarass Ruth Underwood as the band hits the stage for the first of their two shows in Chicago on Halloween night, 1973.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.30.2019
08:31 pm
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What Frank Zappa recorded during his first studio session, 1961
07.31.2019
06:20 am
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FZ 1967
 
A few months back, we told you about Frank Zappa’s earliest known recording, “Lost in a Whirlpool.” That song, captured circa 1958/59, was put to tape using amateur equipment. A couple of years later, FZ stepped into a proper recording studio for his very first session. In January 1961, he recorded two compositions, and both would subsequently be re-worked into songs by his group, the Mothers of Invention. But decades would pass before the original, historic recordings saw the light of day.

In late 1960, Zappa started working at Pal Recording Studio in Cucamonga, California. The facility was owned and operated by Paul Buff.

“[FZ] just came in one day in 1960, when he was around 20, as a person who wanted to record some jazz,” Buff remembered. “He had some musicians, and wanted to rent a studio. Probably for the first year or so I was associated with him was doing a combination of recording jazz, producing some jazz records, and was also writing some symphonic material for a local orchestra that was supposed to record some of it. He was very jazz-oriented . . . He played clubs, and played all the jazz standards . . . He did a lot of original compositions, and he’d play things like ‘Satin Doll’ for a few dollars and a few beers.” (from the liner notes for The Lost Episodes)

 
Mellotones
Joe Perrino & The Mellotones; Frank Zappa, far left. FZ played weekend gigs with the lounge band in the early ‘60s.

During the initial session at Pal, Frank recorded an original jazz composition entitled “Never on Sunday.” FZ played guitar and was joined by five additional musicians on the track, which was arranged in the bossa nova style.
 

 
Does that melody sound familiar? If you’re a Zappa fan, it surely does.

Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Bart Bealmear
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07.31.2019
06:20 am
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‘Lost in a Whirlpool’: The earliest known recording of both Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart
05.02.2019
08:46 am
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Zappa and Beefheart
 
In the mid 1950s, after Frank Zappa moved from San Diego to Lancaster, California, he and Captain Beefheart (a/k/a Don Van Vliet; born Don Vliet) met while attending the same high school. The two found they had a similar taste in music, and quickly bonded over a shared love of blues, doo-wop, and R&B records. After graduation, Frank enrolled in Antelope Valley Junior College, which Don also attended for a semester. In either late 1958 or early 1959, they recorded material at the school using a portable reel-to-reel machine. One of the songs was called “Lost in a Whirlpool,” which was written by Zappa (music) and Vliet (lyrics).

During a 1989 interview, FZ talked about the tune and the Antelope recording.

“Lost in a Whirlpool” was taped on one of those tape recorders that you have in a school in the audio/visual department. We went into this room, this empty room at the junior college in Lancaster, after school, and got this tape recorded, and just turned it on. The guitars are me and my brother (Bobby Zappa) and the vocal is Don Vliet.

The story of “Lost in a Whirlpool” goes back even farther. When I was in high school in San Diego in ‘55, there was a guy who grew up to be a sports writer named Larry Littlefield. He, and another guy named Jeff Harris, and I used to hang out, and we used to make up stories, little skits and stuff, you know, dumb little teenage things. One of the plots that we cooked up was about a person who was skindiving—San Diego’s a surfer kind of an area—skindiving in the San Diego sewer system [laughter], and talking about encountering brown, blind fish. [laughter] It was kind of like the Cousteau expedition of its era. [laughter] So, when I moved to Lancaster from San Diego, I had discussed this scenario with Vliet, and that’s where the lyrics come from. It’s like a musical manifestation of this other skindiving scenario.

Frank added that the recording is “the earliest tape that I have a copy of, from when I first started taping stuff.”

“Lost in a Whirlpool” sat in the Zappa vault for decades, but eventually saw release on the posthumously issued compilation, The Lost Episodes (1996).

Another perspective on “Lost in a Whirlpool,” from the liner notes of The Lost Episodes:

This spectacular item, according to FZ, probably marks the recorded blues-singing debut of the teenaged, yet-to-be-christened Captain Beefheart, Don Van Vliet. It was taped in an empty classroom at Antelope Valley Jr. College in Lancaster, California, with FZ on lead guitar (an instrument with which he had been acquainted for only about six months), and Frank’s former guitar teacher, brother Bobby, on rhythm guitar. (Bobby, FZ noted, later abandoned music and entered the Marines “in order to not be anything like his brother.”) It was recorded on an old Webcor reel-to-reel that, FZ fondly remembered, “just happened to be sitting there waiting to be plundered—maroon, with the green blinking eye.” The tale of a lover spurned in rather surreal fashion, “Whirlpool’s” lyrics were improvised by Vliet, who begins with an arresting parody of a (female?) blues singer. After a few lines, the essential vocal personality of incipient Beefheart becomes apparent. Listeners with an ear for metaphor and a penchant for “interpreting” lyrics might be advised not to burrow too deeply here. The whirlpool in question is one that is commonly found, and regularly employed, in modern households. Said Vliet: “Frank and I had a good time. We were just fooling around.”

 

 
An additional song, parodying the Bridey Murphy tale, was captured on the same day as “Lost in a Whirlpool,” but remains unreleased.

Frank and Don continued to collaborate, periodically, through the mid ‘70s. Their most famous team-up was for Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica (1969), which Zappa produced. The seminal double album was recently reissued by Third Man Records.
 
1975
‘Bongo Fury’ photo shoot, 1975.

8mm footage of Don Vliet, shot by Frank Zappa around the time “Lost in a Whirlpool” was recorded, was incorporated into FZ’s video for “G-Spot Tornado” from Jazz From Hell (1986).
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Metal Man Has Won His Wings’: Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa’s early ‘60s R&B band, the Soots
Captain Beefheart loses his shit during tumultuous 1975 gig opening for Frank Zappa

Posted by Bart Bealmear
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05.02.2019
08:46 am
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Of Coneheads, Plaster Casters and turds in jars: Frank Zappa’s wild interview with Cheri magazine
04.02.2019
08:21 am
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A photo from Cheri magazine of Frank Zappa and adult film star Cherry Bomb (sadly, no relation) from the March 1979 issue.
 

“Here comes CHERI! A star-spangled, Yankee-doodling dingdong of a magazine! A motherfucker of a book! Bid farewell to commercialized cunt-mongering. We’re free-swinging, free-thinking family, larynx for the morals revolution, an arsenal for all liberationist movements. We’re out to shatter all the old sexual formulas.”

—Cheri Magazine’s Peter Wolff announcing the arrival of the first issue of Cheri magazine in 1976.

In addition to an interview and photo spread with the great Annie Sprinkle (who was also a contributor to the magazine at the time), the first issue of Cheri magazine also included a $1,000 “Blow Job Contest.” All contestants were required to submit a 150-word essay on “the superlative cock-sucking abilities” of a woman you knew like your wife, girlfriend, secretary, friend, sister(!), or roommate to the magazine for review. All essays went to Cheri’s “jury” comprised of two adult film stars, Gloria Leonard (the future publisher of High Society magazine), Kim Pope and, of course, Wolff. Over time the magazine would do its best to bring riveting features to its “readers” such as Sprinkle’s consumer guide to selecting the best massage parlor, and an in-depth article on the art of fisting written by Screw magazine contributor Bob Amsel, who was also the president of The New York Mattachine Society—a pioneering gay rights group. Cheri would also feature music-adjacent articles such as an interview and pictorial with Elda Stiletto (of the band The Stilettos, which included Debbie Harry and Chris Stein), and contributions from adult star Cherry Bomb about hanging out with Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.

In 1979, Cherry Bomb scored an interview with Frank Zappa. Zappa was in town for a series of shows at the Palladium, including the famous one on Halloween which Cherry attended.

The interview was conducted at Zappa’s room at the historic St. Regis Hotel. Here’s Cherry on her first impressions of a man she had a “near reverence” for:

“And there he was (Zappa), crouched and glowering on the couch. I’ll tell ya, I was just stunned. Forget your Mick Jaggers and your Robert Plants—this guy is gorgeous up close! Frank Zappa radiates an animal magnetism, a bumpy allure his photos have never approached, and I’ll play Suzy Creamcheese to his Uncle Meat any day.”

With her photographer Eileen along for the ride, Cherry fearfully started her line of questioning for Zappa, and it’s full of all kinds of interesting tidbits that Zappa might not have discussed had Cheri not been an adult magazine. Issues from 1979 haven’t been digitized yet, but a Frank Zappa site dedicated to collecting and cataloging articles and written material about Frank, afka.net, published the entire article. Without further adieu, here’s Uncle Frank and Cherry Bomb (again, sadly not me), chatting about SNL characters the Coneheads, Cynthia “Plaster Caster” Albritton, and the time a fan gifted him with an actual turd in a jar.

Cherry Bomb: I saw you on Saturday Night Live, and you were just FABULOUS! How did you get on the program—I mean, are you good friends with the cast?

Zappa: First off—I have no friends. (LONG PAUSE)

Cherry Bomb: You wrote that song about the Coneheads.

Zappa: Yeah. The Conehead is a way of life. I think Americans are beginning to realize it means something important. Unfortunately, TV hasn’t taken the big step to capitalize on it. They should have a Conehead series on NBC—a situation comedy every week. That would be great! Only the Coneheads, though.

Cherry Bomb: Do things ever get too wild in scenes like this?

Zappa: Well, you know, I was knocked off that stage in London in 1971—I spent a year in a wheelchair. Prior to that, I’d never carried a bodyguard with me, but now I always do. He’s in the next room right now—so don’t you girls try any funny stuff!

Cherry Bomb: I never realized rock could be so ... hazardous. I guess a lot of your fans really like to get physical.

Frank: Oh yeah. They wanna touch—remember the Plaster Casters? We were opening for Cream at the International Amphitheater in Chicago. I was friends with Eric Clapton from before, and we were talking in the dressing room, and he said, “This chick’s been trying to get in touch with me. You won’t believe what she does. You’ve gotta come back to the hotel and meet her.” After the show, right, there she was, sitting in the lobby, carrying a big briefcase with the insignia “Plaster Casters of Chicago” on the side. Eric gave her the nod—I think her name was Cynthia—and she got into the elevator with us, with her friend. The friend had a paper bag full of statuettes of dicks they’d made. They were after Eric’s wienie, but he wasn’t going for it, so they figured maybe Frank would. I wasn’t interested, either, but I did spend two hours talking to them about their project. Yeah, actually it started off as a school project assignment, making casts of whatever they wanted with the stuff dentists use—alginate. One girl was supposed to give you a blowjob to get your weenie standing up, while the other mixed the chemicals. So, every time a new group came to Chicago, they’d make history.

Cherry Bomb: Do you think your type of show might have encouraged them? I mean, one critic called you “pornographically delightful.” Did you ever set out to, um, gross out your audience?

Zappa: No! I’ve never done anything like that! That’s the fantasy of some drug-crazed hippie’s imagination. It has nothing to do with my music or the real world. But my fans do some weird things, I’ll admit. There was this girl from Chicago, Laurel, who won a contest. And I was the first prize—I mean, she could come backstage and meet me. And she gave me a present—a Mason jar with one of her turds in it, rolled up into the shape of a cannonball. I didn’t know what to do. I just said, “Thank you,” and put it down on the dressing- room table. That was when I had the Mothers with Flo and Eddie, and Jim Pons was playing bass. I’d planned to just leave it in the dressing room—but no, Jim got curious to see if it was real. Was it or was it not a piece of poop? He carried it around for a while and finally took one whiff—and yecchh! It was real.

Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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04.02.2019
08:21 am
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‘I thought I was dead’: Frank Zappa’s brush with death after being pushed off stage by a jealous fan


 

“I did it because my girlfriend said she loved Frank.”

—Trevor Howell on why he pushed Frank Zappa off the stage during a show at the Rainbow Theater in London in 1971

Ah, jealousy. The ugly sometimes side-effect of falling in love. Recently we told the story here on Dangerous Minds about the time Axl Rose threatened to kill David Bowie because he thought Ziggy was trying to make time with his girlfriend, Erin Everly. This horrifying incident is far worse, though, and involves Frank Zappa plummeting approximately fifteen feet off the stage at the Rainbow Theater in London.

Zappa and The Mothers of Invention had just survived a massive fire at the Montreux Casino in Switzerland the week prior. After Zappa and the group returned onstage for their encore, 24-year-old Trevor Howell shot out from the backstage area and assailed Zappa causing him to fall from the stage where he landed on the concrete floor of the orchestra pit. As if this wasn’t bad enough, as he lay unconscious in the pit, a monitor fell on top of him. In his book Zappa: Visual Documentary biographer Barry Miles recalled the scene inside the Rainbow after Frank fell:

“A chaotic scene ensued outside The Rainbow where the audience for the second concert were joined in the street by the audience from the first show. Wild rumors that Frank had been killed flashed through the massive crowd, and for upwards of at least an hour no one knew what was happening.”

 

The frantic scene following Zappa’s unscheduled landing in the orchestra pit.
 
But wait! It gets WORSE. After coming to, Zappa was taken away by ambulance to the Royal Northern Hospital in Holloway. There he was treated for the following conditions: an acute concussion/head trauma, a fractured leg, a broken rib and a series of fractures and other injuries to his neck, legs and back, as well as suffering from temporary paralysis of one of his arms. The fall even managed to crush Zappa’s larynx, which dropped Frank’s voice a third of an octave lower, making it more throaty and gruff. So what about the man who attacked Zappa, nearly costing him his life? In the book The Real Frank Zappa (written by Zappa and Peter Occhiogrosso), the revered musician wrote about two possible scenarios as to why Trevor Howell, who by various accounts had dropped a bunch of acid that night, came for him while he wasn’t looking:

“He (Howell) gave two stories to the press. One of them was that I had been “making eyes at his girlfriend.” That wasn’t true since the orchestra pit was not only fifteen feet deep but was also twice as wide and the spotlight was in my face. I can’t even see the audience in those situations—it’s like looking into a black hole. I never even saw the guy coming at me. Then he told another newspaper that he was pissed off because he felt we hadn’t given him “value for the money.” Choose your favorite story. After he punched me, he tried to escape into the audience, but a couple of guys in the road crew caught him and took him backstage to hold for the police. While I was recuperating at the Harley Street Clinic, Howell was released on bail, so I had a twenty-four-hour bodyguard outside my room because we didn’t know how insane he was.”

When he appeared in court to answer the charges on March 8th, 1972, Howell was sentenced to twelve months in jail after he admitted to “maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm on Mr. Zappa”. Initially, Howell stated he attacked Zappa because his “girlfriend said she loved Frank” (who doesn’t?), but when the judge presiding over the case queried Howell as to why he had assaulted Zappa he said he thought that “Mr. Zappa was not giving value for the money” adding that Zappa and The Mothers of Invention were treating the audience like “dirt” (noted in the book Electric Don Quixote: The Definitive Story Of Frank Zappa). Zappa would end up spending almost a year rolling around in a wheelchair following the incident and his body never completely healed, specifically his fractured leg which, once deemed healed, was shorter than his other leg. Frank would later write a song about his wonky leg “Dancin’ Fool” including the lyric “Ì don’t know much about dancin’, that’s why I got this song. One of my legs is shorter than the other and both my feet’s too long.” Proof that you really can’t keep a good man down.

A few images of Frank Zappa in his trusty wheelchair follow, along with a clip of “Dancin’ Fool” from 1978…
 

READ ON
Posted by Cherrybomb
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02.25.2019
08:18 am
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Frank Zappa’s nude harem: Racy photos of The Runaways, ABBA & more from Swedish mag ‘POSTER’
01.07.2019
08:54 am
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The Runaways in Swedish magazine POSTER.
 
If you were a kid during the late 70s and early 80s, I’m gonna hedge a hefty bet you probably owned a few too many posters which covered your bedroom walls. As it pertains to the youthful pastime of murdering your parent’s wallpaper, POSTER magazine founder Hans Hatwig was once quoted saying his magazine “papered the walls of a whole generation.” Hatwig actually took many of the photos himself during the magazine’s six-year run in Sweden, and Hatwig seemed to have no difficulty convincing acts from The Runaways, to KISS, Frank Zappa, and Alice Cooper to strike a pose for POSTER.

Hatwig’s affable nature led him to develop friendships with some of the musical luminaries he photographed. According to his bio, he hooked up with Angus Young early on while the band was in Stockholm in July of 1976. Hatwig and Young headed out to the Red Light District where he photographed Angus “pretending” to purchase condoms from a Durex dispenser, with other shots taken in front of the local sex shops and adult movie theaters. In all, Hatwig took about 40 images of Angus “on the loose” in Stockholm, and they are all fantastically candid, while remaining certifiably rock and fucking roll.

Earlier in 1976, Hatwig would photograph the ethereal Agnetha Fältskog of ABBA with a giant red and white lollipop clad in a barely-there white satin top and matching knee-high boots while surrounded by a gang of look-alike baby dolls. The instantly infamous images still burn retinas (in the best possible way) to this day. Just like the shot of Frank Zappa (though it appears not to be one of Hatwig’s photographs) wearing an animal print banana hammock taken in 1976 along with eight women—six of them topless—in a studio made to look like an exotic jungle scene. You can never unsee this image of Zappa and his nipply friends—life is beautiful that way sometimes.

Posters from POSTER and vintage issues of the magazine often fetch over a hundred bucks online. Thankfully, in 2008, authors Fabian H. Bernstone & Mathias Brink published the book POSTER: Nordens största poptidning 1974-1980—a 256 volume of images from POSTER, some of which never made it off of the cutting room floor. Images from POSTER follow, some are NSFW.
 

A shot of ABBA rocking matching tinfoil outfits from POSTER magazine.
 

 

Agnetha Fältskog of ABBA and her lookalike doll army. Photo by Hans Hatwig.
 

AC/DC.
 

Alice Cooper.
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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01.07.2019
08:54 am
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Easy riders: The Runaways, Marc Bolan, Frank Zappa & many more rock stars on motorcycles
05.30.2018
10:10 am
Topics:
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The Runaways and their bad motorscooters.
 
It has been a while since I’ve put together a mega-post full of images of rock stars engaged in activities such as hanging out at the beach, playing records, or roller skating. This time around I’ve managed to cull photos of rock royalty with their motorcycles—or just posing along with a sweet Harley Davidson or classic Triumph. Much like a motorcycle, the idols in this post are synonymous with badassery—just like weathered battle jackets, dirty leather, and doing 60mph on a tight curve.

In January of this year I wrote a post about the time Judas Priest vocalist/motorcycle enthusiast Rob Halford challenged Queen’s Freddy Mercury to a “motorcycle race” after he saw Freddy glamming it up with a bike in the video for “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” Halford was miffed at Mercury for using the bike as a prop and wanted him to prove he was man enough to ride one. If there is one thing I believe we can all agree on, it is the following: Rob Halford and Freddie Mercury are both quantifiable badasses, and they both look great in leather chaps. I’ve posted photos of other musical luminaries you’d expect to appear in this post such as Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, members of Led Zeppelin, life-long biker Sly Stone, and Marc Bolan because, in general, Marc Bolan loves riding on top of things. And just so you know there are a plethora of photos featuring cool girls getting their bad-motor-scooting on such as Françoise Hardy, The Runaways (pictured at the top of this post), Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, and the great Doro Pesch of Warlock. Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines!
 

1975.
 

KISS, mid-70s.
 

Sid Vicious.
 
More motorcycle madness, after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Cherrybomb
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05.30.2018
10:10 am
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Frank Zappa, serial killers and the all-girl dance troupe L.A. Knockers


Members of the dance troupe/cabaret L.A. Knockers getting ready to take the stage at the Playboy Club in Los Angeles in the late 1970s.
 
I’ve learned many things here writing for Dangerous Minds—one that there is always more to a picture than meets the eye. Which is why I took it upon myself to find out more about mid-70s all-girl dance troupe/cabaret act, L.A. Knockers. Their act was a fan favorite in the Los Angeles club scene where you could find the girls performing at The Starwood, The Troubadour, The Comedy Store, The Matrix Theater, and the Playboy Club. The shows curated exclusively for the Playboy Club included a strange sounding sexed-up comedic version of a 1978 medley by The Village People, “The Women” featuring members of the Knockers dressed as John Travolta (in Saturday Night Fever mode), Dracula, Superman, King Kong and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. And that was just for starters.

The members of L.A. Knockers would grow through the dozen or so years they were together and they performed all over the country to packed houses, but most often in Las Vegas and Reno. Knockers’ principal choreographer Jennifer Stace would bring the dance-magic to the group as did choreographer, Marilyn Corwin. Corwin worked her disco moves with The Village People, for the movie, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984) and with Frank Zappa during some of his live performances. The Knockers caught the eye of Zappa, who, according to an article published in 1981 in Italian magazine L’Espresso, wanted to take the Knockers on tour with him, a claim that perhaps at first sounded like it had no legs, but it much like the Knockers, actually did. On New Year’s Eve in 1976, Zappa played a show at the Forum in Los Angeles which included members of the L.A. Knockers dressed like babies in diapers and white afro wigs. Hey, even Frank Zappa thought they were cool as fuck, which, without question, they were.

Any story worth reading must include a twist, and this is where the part about the Hillside Stranglers, the horrific serial killers and cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, comes in. Twenty-one-year-old Lissa Kastin, an original member of L.A. Knockers would become Bianchi and Buono’s third victim. In 1985’s The Hillside Stranglers by Darcy O’Brien, the author notes that Kastin was not “an attractive enough victim” for the degenerate cousins who were put off by her “health nut looks” and “unshaved legs.” In some true crime circles, Kastin would be referred to as “the ugly girl” among the Hillside Stranglers’ female body count thanks to a photo used by the newspapers—an image that looked almost nothing like the young, rising star.

Below are some incredible photos taken by Elisa Leonelli which lovingly chronicle the L.A. Knockers’ decade-plus career in showbiz as well as a compilation video of the troupe performing live which you simply must see. Some of the images which follow are slightly NSFW.
 

Original members of L.A. Knockers, Jennifer Stace (left), Lissa Kastin (RIP, center) and Yana Nirvana (right).
 

1978.
 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Cherrybomb
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05.01.2018
09:37 am
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‘King Kong’: Watch a 10-year-old blind pianist play Frank Zappa’s concert showstopper
04.25.2018
12:10 pm
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In the clip below you can watch a 10-year-old blind Swedish pianist by the name of Mats Öberg play the shit out of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s sixties concert centerpiece “King Kong.” Not only is the interview (which is translated) charming, the performance is solid.

Mats, who is blind since birth, is backed by his drum-playing pal, then 13-year-old Morgan Ågren and apparently Morgan’s dad on bass. Morgan and Mats joined forces that year in a project called Zappsteetoot and they are still playing and recording together to this day as the Mats/Morgan Band. Morgan Ågren also plays with the reunited 70s Swedish progressive rock band Kaipa.

Mats and Morgan were invited by Frank Zappa himself to do a guest performance at his Stockholm performance in 1988. From Morgan’s website:

In 1988 when Frank came to Stockholm with the Broadway the Hard Way- tour, me and Mats got to meet and play with Zappa on his gig in Stockholm, as guests ! Mat’s uncle (jazz pianist Berndt Egerbladh) had contacted Frank’s tour leader and informed him about us, that we were in this band called Zappsteetoot, that Mats had listened to Franks music since he was 8 years old, and that he knew all of his music. So when Frank got to hear about us, he said he wanted to meet us. Me and Mats sneaked in to Frank’s soundcheck and afterward Frank’s tour leader came out and told us Frank was waiting for us backstage.

We walked to Frank’s room, and there he was - our teenage idol and major influence ! We shook hands and sat down on a couch. Frank started to ask us how we were doing, which of his material we knew etc. Me and Mats ended up playing on our knees and singing. Frank said: “do you know this…have you played that…” After a while he said: ” well I’m amazed that two young guys from a little town called Umeå, knows so much about my music.” Then turning to Mats he said: “You have listened to my music so much, - you should know what I look like.” Frank took Mats hand and laid it on his forehead, and Mats began to feel how Frank looked! And Frank said: “Don’t forget the famous nose!” Frank was so incredibly nice to us and we had a wonderful time. We also gave him a tape with our own music, including one Zappa piece, “T’Mershi Duween,” which surprised Frank cause it wasn’t released at the time, but we knew it from a bootleg. Frank didn’t listen to the tape; there wasn’t even a tape recorder there, but he said: “Maybe we should do something…” We didn’t have a clue what he was thinking. He scratched his head and said : “Would you like to come up and play “T’Mershi Duween” as guests? We gonna do “Big Swifty” tonight, and in the middle section of the song there is this open part were everything can happen! So if you walk behind the stage when you hear the “Big Swifty” theme, I’ll introduce you after a while, okay?”

The thing was that it was only 30 min before the show, and the audience was already inside the hall, so no time to try the keyboards or the drums. What sound will be on the keyboard? What kind of sticks does Chad use? Questions natural for us to ask ourselves before going up on stage with Frank Zappa facing a crowd of 10.000 people.

To me, most part of Franks show was hard to enjoy - I had other things on my mind. We were soon suppose to go up and play, and I couldn’t even remember the fucking song that well either, so I had to think about how it really went. We had only played it once before, a year earlier - the version we gave to Frank on tape.

Showtime!

When the “Big Swifty” theme came we left our seats, and walked backstage. After convincing one of the guards that we were about to go up and play with Frank, my next problem was I desperately needed to go to the toilet. I had lost the ability to feel needs like that- I had other things to think about. Another 5 min passed and I really had to go. I started to feel pain, I got totally confused; what would happen if Frank introduces us for 10 000 people, and I’m at the toilet unable to even hear him ? No thanks. I even asked a guy from the crew if I could make it. As if he would know! But now I just had to do it, I was in such pain I probably wouldn’t even play properly. I told Mats: “I gotta go, you wait here.” Mats were sitting on a case just behind the stage. I ran backstage rooms and found a toilet. Finished my business and just as I opened the door from the backstage rooms, I could hear Frank introducing us. I ran like a maniac, grabbed Mats arm and we went up on stage. Lucky us I was fast!

A huge round of applauds welcomed us. We were at home, and a lot of people knew about us. The applauds just got even louder as I walked Mats over to Bobby Martin’s keyboards. Bobby said: “Here’s a Yamaha DX-9, and here is the Yamaha electric grand - good luck! ” The band kept a reggae beat going during our entrance, which was good; if it had just been silence it would have felt strange, but now we could sort of start our jam from the groove already going. I led Mats behind the keyboards and adjusted the mikestand a little, then I walked to the drum set. A guy from the crew came from nowhere and put a new pair of drumsticks in my hands. Luckily they were the same model I used to play at the time. When Chad saw me coming he stood up, but kept the beat on the hi-hat.

I sat down and continued where Chad left off, but me and Mats soon started to loosen in up to something else. We had to do our thing, so we just jammed for a couple minutes, like we always use to. The drums felt okay, the keyboards too, I think. I felt high up there, it was just totally amazing. I don’t like using standard phrases like “a religious feeling” but this was something else, it really was. I was in heaven. Much because of the fact I could see Frank standing in front of the drumset with a BIG smile holding his conductor stick. He really liked what we were doing, and that gave us a big kick. We missed a little during the “T´Mershi Duween” theme, but we had probably never played as good before as we did then. Scott played along a little and so did Ed and Mike. After we finished, I left the drum seat, and ran to get Mats away from the keyboards, cause the “Big Swifty” theme had just started again, and Bobby Martin was about to play again, but Mats were sitting in his way. Mats, who is blind, was waiting for me to pick him up! I got Mats and passed Frank as we were leaving the stage. Frank stopped conducting just for a second to applaud us, and the audience followed with even more volume than before. We walked of the stage and got back to our seats to see the rest of the show.

At the end of the show, Frank introduced the band like he always use to, with a chord in the background, saying: “Ike Willis, Scott Thunes etc. AND…Mats Öberg & Morgan Ågren, thanks for coming to the show, hope you liked it. Good night! ” We were sitting in the audience listening to Frank Zappa - introducing us!! When they came back for an encore, Frank grabbed the microphone and said: “Those guys were great!” So guess if we were excited!

After the encores we met in Frank’s room backstage again. He said we have to do this again sometime and we exchanged addresses. Frank told us that he was looking for a new drummer and keyboard player, and then he just kind of stared at us without really saying anything more. I think he wanted to tease us a little bit too, because he was obviously talking about me and Mats. Frank even wrote down some notes on a piece of paper which showed his way of notating drums, he gave it to me and told me to get used to it. Then it was time to go home; go home and wait for the phone to ring…

Although I wasn’t aware of them at the time, I actually saw Mats and Morgan performing as part of the famous “Zappa’s Universe” concert that was held in New York at the old Studio 54 (then doing business as the Ritz) in 1991. It was just before this concert began that Frank Zappa’s children Dweezil and Moon Unit announced that their father was dying of terminal cancer and would not be performing that evening. (In the cab to that show I can also vividly recall hearing on the radio that Magic Johnson had announced that he’d contracted HIV.)

Morgan, who posted the video to YouTube himself had this to say about the clip:

“I sent a copy of this VHS to Frank Zappa just a few months before he passed away (since we play Franks piece “King Kong” on this video). Called Gail Zappa later on to express my condolences, and just before we hang up Gail says “by the way, Frank watched the video that you sent, and he really loved it”. That was great to hear cause I wasn’t sure the VHS even reached his house. ❤️”

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.25.2018
12:10 pm
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‘Run Home, Slow’: The obscure (and weird) low-budget western scored by Frank Zappa
03.09.2018
08:01 am
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The cheapo ‘60s western Run Home, Slow has largely been forgotten—I mean, have you ever heard of it? If you have, it’s surely because you know that a pre-fame Frank Zappa wrote the film’s score. But did you know Frank would re-tool some of the cues for his Mothers of Invention and solo work? As for the soundtrack, it would be decades before any of the recordings would be included on a Zappa release, and still much of it can only be heard via the film, which hasn’t been easy to see.

Zappa’s involvement with the movie came about thanks to Don Cerveris, Frank’s former high school English teacher and good friend. In 1959, Cerveris, who had quit teaching to be a screenwriter, wrote the screenplay for Run Home, Slow, and got the young FZ a job scoring the picture. The production experienced many delays. Around 1964, Frank was finally able to record his chamber music for the film, conducting a small ensemble and playing guitar. FZ was eventually compensated for his work—well, partially, at least. He used what money he did receive to buy a new guitar, and took over the lease at a local recording studio where he had been employed the past few years, renaming it “Studio Z.”
 
Studio Z
Yep, that’s Frank, sans his trademark ‘stache.

Run Home, Slow was released in 1965. The film concerns the Hagens, a strange family out to avenge their father’s murder. The powerful Judd Hagen was hanged by locals, who viewed him as a vicious man who thought he was God. They also thought he was crazy, a trait he seems to have passed on to his children. Academy Award winner Mercedes McCambridge was cast in the lead role of Nell Hagen, the gruff and manipulative matriarch of the Hagen family (DM readers might remember her as the villain in another western, Johnny Guitar). Though McCambridge is the most recognizable face here, her best-known role is for one in which she wasn’t even seen—she’s the iconic voice of the demon in The Exorcist.

Run Home, Slow is not a well-made film by any stretch, but the kooky characters and their bizarre relationships keeps things entertaining. That’s all icing on the cake, though, as we’re not really here for the story.
 
Still
The clan of weirdos in ‘Run Home, Slow’ (Mercedes McCambridge is on the far right).

The first Run Home, Slow soundtrack recording to be released came in 1985, when the main title theme was included on Mystery Disc, which, at the time, could only be had by way of the Old Masters boxed set.
 
Much more after the jump…

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Posted by Bart Bealmear
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03.09.2018
08:01 am
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