| Album notes by Rip Rense
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| Frank Zappa personally compiled this collection of favorite studio rarities, alternate versions and unreleased cracks as one of his final projects. “The Lost Episodes” begins in 1958 during Zappa’s days in Lancaster, CA, and continues through the early 60s / Studio Z era, the Mothers of Invention’s mid-60s New York period, the late-60s Hot Rats line-ups, and finally into the early 70s with some of Zappa’s favorite ensembles (plus two chronological detours: the 1980 single “I don’t wanna get drafted” and a 1992 Synclavier composition Zappa used as a musical bed for Captain Beefheart’s late 60s reading of “The Grand Wazoo”).
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| The set pays tribute to many of the people who affected Zappa’s life, and offers both longtime fans and new listeners a delightful and entertaining behind-the-scenes perspective.
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| Zappa’s house on the Hollywood hills is a bit like the unfinished spectacular maze of Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. It seems to have endless rooms, corners, hideouts and closets. The exact number of plans is subject to speculations. There is nothing that can be exactly called “front door”, just different ways to get closer, the most used is a flickering spiral staircase leading to a suspended corridor, leading to an extremely sunny kitchen (the heart of the house). There are stairs leading to stairs, study inside studios, and an office with an underwater door as a door. Everything is hidden between conifers and giant bushes that can come from the Pleistocene. Lewis Carroll would be comfortable here.
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| Somewhere in the depths of this puzzle lies the “basement”, the rooms where Frank Zappa spent much of his adult life and most of his last years. It was the backbone, the niche where he worked obsessively, compulsively, night after night, before retiring to the top floor to sleep during the day (while all normal people “ran” as he was saying). Here in the untouched studio in advance of his time, baptized years ago as “Multi-Use Experimental Kitchen for Muffins” (a reference to Zappa’s songs, “Muffin man” ▲ and “A little green rosetta” ▲) and recently expanded to “Multi-Use Experimental Cooking for Muffin and Baby Milk Factory” (an addiction inspired to the “dairy industry” that actually produced biochemical weapons during the Gulf War).
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| (…)
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| “I just got very excited that I can do a Frank Zappa cover!” said Csupó. “I asked Frank if he had any specific idea for it, and he said ‘absolutely not - do what you like’. So I gave him three different designs, done on my Macintosh computer. The first one was the big face Zappa’s with the big moustache staring into the camera. The next one was kind of experimental half computer graphic - kind of a green half-negative of Frank playing guitar. And the third one was a very cartoony, claustrophobic drawing; there he is sort of lost in his basement where he piled up all his tapes. Kind of tearing his hair out”.
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| Csupó presented all three to Zappa one afternoon in 1993, when the composer was working quietly at his Synclavier, “tweezing” passages of “Civilization Phaze III”. FZ swiveled his chair sideways, smiled at the three pieces of art through rather professorial black-rimmed glasses, and instantly pointed at the very cartoony, claustrophobic, lost-in-the-basement version.
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| “That’s the one” he said.
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] Place: the best hypothesis comes from James “Motorhead” Sherwood, who had formed a group, “The Omens”, using the former Blackouts members. He has a faint memory of FZ recording this “in a garage in an alley, not in his home”. An authentic relic: a true dialogue of an incarnation of the first group formed by FZ, The Blackouts, initially he was the drummer.
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| (The first group in which he played, as a drummer, was a group of San Diego, The Ramblers. They threw him out because he played too much cymbals). This piece is an early testimony of the composer’s socio-anthropological habit, throughout his career, to record anecdotes told by friends and acquaintances, a feature well-known to all members of his various groups (theatrically portrayed in the movie “200 Motels” in which Ian Underwood tells the other Mothers of Invention: “He’s always listening. He’s always watching and listening to all the guys in the band. I’ve been in the band for years and I know” ▲ encouraging Martin Lickert to add: “Here from where it takes its material”).
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| Here the members of the Blackouts (so called because, as explained by Zappa in the “Frank Zappa’s True Book” written by FZ with Peter Occhiogrosso, Poseidon Press “some of the guys, having drank liquor illegally distilled by someone’s older brother, fainted”) briefly talk about their recent participation in a charity concert by the National Association for the Promotion of Color People with Earl Bostic and Louis Armstrong players at the Shrine Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles between 1958 and ‘59. (Strange but true: FZ appeared once in the same “Satchmo” concert).
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| Dressed in white coated white jeans and brown shirt shirts, their small rhythm & blues repertoire included ♫ “Directly from my heart to you” by Little Richard (recorded by the Mothers of Invention and published in 1970 in “The Weasels Ripped Me The Meat” ▲), ♫ “Bacon fat” by Andre Williams and ♫ “Behind the sun” of the Rocking Brothers. Frank says: “We were a dance group, we were perfect and the rate was good”. As a multi-racial group, the Blackouts have caused a lot of shaking in their home, largely Caucasian, in Lancaster (note the colorful accent of the California Desert). The Blackouts saying the words “The Velvetones are believed to be Lawrence Welk” sounds suspiciously like a young version of a certain composer. (Is this the beginning of all “conceptual continuity” recorded by FZ?)
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| So uh… I’d just like to tell you about a little incident at the Shrine Auditorium. Uh… Well, see, we made this scene down there, we walked in, and this… this place is BIG, y’know, real big, y’know? An’ everybody was gonna be there. Louis Armstrong and his boys were gonna be there (Titans) an’ the Titans and… (and the Velvetones) the Velvetones, and the Blackouts, so let me… let me tell you about this.
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| And the Vegas singing group, the Olives.
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| The Velvetones think they’re Lawrence Welk.
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] Also dating from 1958 or ‘59, 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”.
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| 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”.
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| [Instrumental]
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| [Don Van Vliet] Well, I’m lost in a whirlpool
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| Yeah, baby, my head is goin’ round
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| Well, ever since my baby flushed me
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| Oh, been goin’ round, yeah, ‘round and ‘round
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| Well, I’m lost in this whirlpool
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| I keep goin’ down and down
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| There’s a big brown fish
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| Lookin’ at me
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| He ain’t got no eyes
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| How could that motherfucker possibly see?
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| Ooh, baby, baby
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| I’m gonna be afraid it gonna touch me
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| Well, I’m lost in this whirlpool
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| Oh, I can’t even see
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| Baby, won’t you come help me?
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| Pour some Drano down
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| And get the plunger right after me
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| I’ll let you know a little secret, baby
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| I’m gettin’ tired of all this pee
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| Don’t go straying with Mother Goose
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| Ooh, my head’s in a noose
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] Ronnie’s distinctive vocal prowess, captured here in a living room in Ontario circa 1961-62, also later figured into the 1962 Zappa recording, “How’s your bird?” ▲ (credited to eventual MOI Ray Collins’ group, Baby Ray and The Ferns), a fragment following “Let’s make the water turn black” ▲ on “We’re Only in It for the Money”, and the chorus of “Lumpy Gravy” in 1967. Presented here in resplendent glory, Ronnie’s vocal perhaps suggests the essence of the young empiricists’ joie de vivre.
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| [FZ] What key do you wanna do it in?
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| [Ronnie Williams] Try maybe uh… D flat. Or do it in C, do it in C! Alright, do it, do it slop.
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| Do-do-dat-dat do-do
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| SNORK
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| Yeah, that’s pretty good
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| [Don Van Vliet] Ba-ba-ba-bump
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| Ba-ba-buh-bah-bahdn-bum-bum-bow
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| Bo-do-do-diddly-dow
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| Bung-bow-do-bom-bom
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| Bo-do-dung-dow-dodee-do-do-do-do-do
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| Dodn-do-do-dodn-dodn-dodn-dada
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| Doo-doo-da-da
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| Dadn-dadn-da-da
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| Da-dadl-da-da-da
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| Dadn-diddly-dadn-diddly-dung
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| De-dong-bong-bom-de-diddly dung dung
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| Ba-badn-boooo
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| Rum-pum-badn-rum-pum-bung-bung-bung
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] Here is Kenny’s remembrance of an experiment undertaken by Ronnie and pal Dwight Bement (later tenor sax player for Gary Puckett and The Union Gap), with guitar accompaniment by FZ. The experiment, which involved the pair smearing the bounty of their nasal passages on a single window over a period of seven months (perhaps to determine if dried mucous could block light?), later attained mythical proportion in the line “Ronnie saves his numies on a window in his room / (a marvel to be seen: dysentery green…)” from “Let’s make the water turn black”.
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| The enterprise arguably merited artistic consideration as well, at least in an abstract sense. The “canvas”, after all, ultimately acquired what FZ described as a “frosting”, with chance arrangements of darker, solid sinus matter, suggesting whatever one’s id might detect. To paraphrase Victor Cousin’s famous remark from his 1818 lecture at the Sorbonne (“L’art pour l’art” - “Art for art’s sake”), one might say of this undertaking, “La snot pour la snot”. Kenny finally admits to having possibly contributed to the project in some small way.
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| [Kenny Williams] A boy that… wh— while I was away in boarding school lived with Ronnie by the name of Dwight… Bement. Uh… Used to live there with Ronnie an’ they would uh… instead of blowing their nose on a handkerchief would uh… stick their finger up in their nose and uh… pull out all their boogers an’ smear ‘em on the window. Uh… I don’t know, I always thought it was crazy, an’ it didn’t look good, an’ after a while, I mean you couldn’t see out the window! He-hunh!
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| [FZ] Did you ever do that?
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| [Kenny Williams] Uh… I may have added one or two on there, yeah
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] Ronnie’s less apologetic, more blunt recounting of the same events (*). We learn that the work was ignobly destroyed with the aid of a putty knife, under orders from the Williams boys’ mother.
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| (*) After having no contact with Frank for many years, Ronnie reportedly showed up in the front row of a 1975 MOI concert in Pomona, California, yelling, “Do the song about the boogers”, and was subsequently invited on stage as a special guest.
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| [Ronnie Williams] We lived in a little room, man. It was… It was probably a fourth as big as… as your livin’ room, Frank. And uh… everytime we picked a booger we’d flip it on this one winduh, or wipe it there if we couldn’t flip it there, y’know. And uh… I guess Dwight stayed with me for about… ‘bout seven months, wasn’t it? Six months? And uh… every night we’d contribute, y’know, yeah, two or three or four boogers, y’know. And when he left uh… my mom knew what was goin’ on all the time but we thought we had her hoodwinked, heh-heh. She was smarter with… than we were. An’ she made us clean ‘em off, y’know? We used Ajax and… and we couldn’t get them things, we had to use a… had to use a putty knife, man, to get them damn things off the winduh. You couldn’t even see out the winduh for all them boogers, man. I’m not kiddin’ you. An’ there was big ones too, an’ there was little, and there was some goober ones that weren’t even hard, man, you’d just smear ‘em, young ones. It’s like fros— you… you’ve seen frosted glasses? That winduh was just like a frosted glass with spots all over it, y’know? And uh… it was… it was no good. Although, th— that… that was the good ol’ days, so.
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] This music, as FZ told Don Menn in the 1992 “Zappa!” tribute magazine (published by Keyboard and Guitar Player magazines) is part of the very first Zappa-led performance of the composer’s so-called “serious”, or orchestral music. It took place in 1963 at, of all pastoral places, lovely Mount St. Mary’s College, a private Catholic institution perched in the lush Santa Monica Mountains above West Los Angeles. Zappa spent $300 from his own pocket, organized a “college orchestra”, and “put on this little concert”. It was taped and broadcast by Los Angeles public radio station KPFK, but FZ did not hear the tape until 1991, after a fan in England mailed him a cassette. Although the concert was much longer than this fragment, this excerpt of what FZ described as “oddball, textured weirdo stuff” is still a minor treasure.
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| (…)
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| The program included a piece called “Opus 5”, aleatoric works that required some improvisation, a piece for orchestra and taped electronic music, with accompanying visuals in the form of FZ’s own experimental 8mm films (Motorhead Sherwood described one such film depicting the Los Angeles County Fair carnival, double exposed with passing telephone poles).
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| [Instrumental]
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| [FZ] The next piece that we’re going to play…
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| Maybe I should tell you what we were doing
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| The… The signals that we were giving, I’ll explain to you very simply: this means “free improvisation” and the finger signals told the performers which of the fragments they were to uh… play at any given moment. Anyway, the next piece that we’re going to play is in standard notation, and it’s actually pretty tame compared to the “Opus 5”. It’s called “The collage two” and it was written last Thursday.
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] This lasting and attractive melody was recorded with studio musicians engaged in 1961 in what was originally the Pal Records in Cucamonga; a place destined to acquire an undeniable reputation in the composer’s history. Directed by Paul Buff, “orchestra-man” and innovative in recording techniques (he boasted of having a five-track recorder made by himself ▶ when the standard was still mono), the studio became the first shelter for FZ to record. It is said that the young composer was introduced by guitarist Ronnie Williams (*).
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| This music is an example of the jazz period in which Buff says FZ was involved in the early 1960s. “One day in 1960, when I was about 20, he came to record jazz” Buff remembers. “He had musicians and wanted to rent a studio. Probably during the first year or nearly where we were a member, what he did was record jazz, produce jazz records, and even write symphonic material for a local orchestra that was thought to be recording (perhaps the 1960 soundtrack for ‘The Greatest Sinner in the World’, recorded with an orchestra put together for the occasion). He was very jazz-oriented… He played in the clubs and played all the jazz classics… He wrote a lot of original compositions, and for a few dollars and some beer he could play things like ♫ ‘Satin doll’” (probably referring to the horrible ten months in which weekends FZ played with the bar band called “Joe Perrino & The Mellotones”, a work that led him to temporarily abandon his guitar).
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| On August 1, 1964, FZ bought the Pal from his friend Buff (he paid the debts and rented it with the money earned by the music of another movie, “Run Home Slow”), and formally baptized it “Studio Z” (for more details, read chapters 3-4 of the “Frank Zappa’s True Book”).
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| Unfortunately, all Studio Z’s projects had to be abandoned in 1964, when a bona fide San Bernardino County Good Costume Officer instructed (a bit hungry) FZ to make a “funny tape” with women shouting and simulating orgasm on a music background. (The 30-minute tape, according to “Frank Zappa’s True Book”, contained “grunts, mugs and cigolines of the bed” but “no true sex”). FZ (“and his formidable redheaded mate”, as the local press wrote) was then arrested for “conspiracy for the production of pornographic material and suspicion of sexual perversion”.
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| He spent ten days - of a six-month suspended sentence - in the “Tank C” of San Bernardino County Prison (scholars will notice the transition to “Tank C” in FZ’s “San Bernardino” in the 1975 “One Size Fits All” album of the Mothers of Invention ▲). Afterwards, Studio Z was demolished (perhaps the real reason for the arrest, suspected Frank), along with all hand-painted scenery for the FZ film ever made, “Captain Beefheart Against The Grunt Soldiers” (**), and tapes of all kinds. In Cucamonga, in the early 1960s, the simple title of this work (***) would probably have been enough for Frank to be arrested.
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| (*) Williams has been involved in some of the first recordings; with Buff and FZ released for The Masters a single “Pause” with Buff’s label
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| (**) “He had transformed the entire study into his vision of a spacecraft cabin in a B-series science fiction film” Buff said, which we met at his home in Nashville, Tennessee.
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| “I remember him very excited about this, asking me the old electronic tools I had, collecting counters and painting them in phosphorescent orange, assembling a panel full of commands and painting it with various phosphorescent colors. The last time I was at Studio Z, to go to the bathroom you had to get out of the cabin of this ship and crawl into the underneath tunnels to get to the bathroom. This again points out that necessity is the mother of the invention. He was going to make a movie, and instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars on scenarios, he created them. And he created some scenarios that would probably have a greater visual impact than those achieved with a conventional budget”.
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| (***) In the album of 1968, “We’re Only in It for the Money”, this piece was resumed with lyrics targeting the hippie world ▲. In these notes, FZ listed the title of 1961 as “Take your clothes off when you dance”, but it is not known if the song had that name at the time of registration.
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] (…) Said Frank: “The way that was done was a proto five-track machine ▶ mixed to mono. But finally I had a stereo mix. It was my first attempt at stereo. The band was in the studio mixed down to one track, and Don was in the hallway with just the leakage coming through the door, perusing an X-Men comic book pinned on the wall, riffling through it as we did it. There are three or four more Beefheart masters from this period, including a Holin’ Wolf-like version of ♫ ‘Slippin’ and slidin’’, an instrumental called ‘I’m your nasty shadow’, and ‘Metal man has won his wings’ ▲”.
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| (…)
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| (Frank tried to interest Dot Records in “Slippin’ and slidin’”, the aforementioned version of “Take your clothes off when you dance”, and the first version of “Any way the wind blows” - see track 12 ▲ - all under the name, “The Soots”, published by FZ’s Aleatory Music - but Dot’s A&R man, Milt Rogers, wrote in a December 13, 1963 letter that “while the material does have merit, we do not feel strongly enough about its commercial potential…” ▶).
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| (…)
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| Upon hearing the track for the first time in 30 years, Vliet declared simply: “Jesus!”
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| (*) FZ listed the recording date as 1962 or ‘63, although Buff, who was not present for this session, suggests it was most likely 1963. Mortenson’s presence also suggests 1963, as he was involved in several other unreleased 1963 sessions. Finally, the Dot rejection letter is from 1963, and “Slippin’ and slidin’”, FZ said, was from the same period as “Tiger roach”.
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| [Don Van Vliet] This album is not available to the public
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| Even if it were, you wouldn’t wanna listen to it!
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| Iron Man!
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| That’s fine!
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| Tiger spine!
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| Work out!
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| Monza blocks!
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| Light switch!
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| Roaches’ smocks!
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| Ice cream!
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| What a dream!
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| Memories of
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| Flyin’ machines!
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| Green lantern!
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| Funny lizard!
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| Three-way!
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| Out’sight!
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| Buddy learns!
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| See spot run!
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| Work out!
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| Have some fun!
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| Yeah
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| Wilhelmina!
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| Mildew!
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| Billboard!
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| Night light!
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| Hammerhead!
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| Outta sight!
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| In Baghdad
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| Roaches fly!
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| Outta sight!
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| ‘Cross the grassy sky!
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| Anvils fly!
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| Mountains burp
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| Turpentine!
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| Tina werp
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| Lord gosh!
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| Oooh…
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| Rush eye
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| [Instrumental]
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| What’s that noise?
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| Looks like greeny!
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| Maybe it’s purple
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| Spot eye!
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| Hammer law!
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| Bend iron!
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| So fine!
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| Tiger roach!
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] The title’s symbolism, FZ confirmed to engineer Spencer Chrislu, is indelicate.
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| (…)
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| “This was” said FZ “possibly the first recording of a fuzz bass. We plugged a Sears electric bass into a phono pre-amp, then the pre-amp was plugged into the board. It was Paul Buff’s idea”.
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| [Ray Collins] It was September, the leaves were gold
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| That’s when our hearts knew that ✄ story untold
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| We were young lovers
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| Strolling near the fountain of love
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| Fountain of love
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| Fountain of love
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| Fountain of love
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| Do you remember? I held you so near
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| Our love’s glowing ember so precious and dear
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| We were young lovers
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| Strolling near the fountain of love
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| Fountain of love
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| Fountain of love
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| Fountain of love
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| We made a wish
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| And threw in a coin
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| And since that day
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| Our hearts have been joined
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| So all you, young lovers
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| Wherever you are
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| The fountain of love is not very far
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| We’ll go on dreaming of that golden day
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| And remember the fountain is not far away
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| We were young lovers
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| Strolling near the fountain of love
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| Fountain of love
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| Fountain of love
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| Fountain of love
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| Fountain of love
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| We’ll keep right on dreaming
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| Fountain of love
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| And remember that fountain
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| Fountain of love
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| The fountain of love, now now now
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| Fountain of love
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| [Ray Collins] Any way the wind blows, is-a fine with me
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| Any way the wind blows, it don’t matter to me
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| ‘Cause I’m thru with-a fussin’ and-a fightin’ with-a you
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| I went out and found a woman that is gonna be true
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| She makes me, oh, so happy, now I’m never ever blue
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| Any way the wind blows
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| Any way the wind blows
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| Any way the wind blows
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| Any way the wind blows
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| Any way the wind blows
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| Now that I am free from the troubles of the past
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| It took me much too long to see that our romance couldn’t last
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| Now I’m gonna go away and leave you standing at the door
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| I’ll tell you, pretty baby, I won’t be back no more
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| ‘Cause you don’t even know what love is for
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| Any way the wind blows
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| Any way the wind blows
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| Any way the wind blows
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| Any way the wind blows
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| Any way the wind blows
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| She is my heart and soul and she loves me tenderly
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| And now ✄ my story can be told, just how good she is to me
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| ‘Cause she treats me like she loves me and she never make me cry
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| I’m gonna stick with her till the day I die
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| She’s not like you, baby, she would never ever lie
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| Any way the wind blows
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| Any way the wind blows
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| Any way the wind blows
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| Any way the wind blows
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| Any way the wind blows
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| [Repeat]
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| [FZ] Charva, I loved you, I loved you through and through
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| I loved you since in grammar school when we were sniffing glue
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| I loved you purty baby, darling, I don’t know what in the world to do about it
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| Boppa-bah-boppa-choo-wah
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| Charva, my darling, the only love I had
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| I hope you will forgive me, dear, for punching out your dad
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| I loved you, I loved you, and I don’t know what in the world I’m gonna do about it
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| Ooohh-oh-oooh
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| Lahm-buh-buhm-buhm
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| I remember, remember the junior prom
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| And I remember the time I broke your father’s arm
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| And I remember, remember all the love we shared
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| Every place and everywhere
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| Oh Charva, Charva, I love you more and more
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| I swear it ain’t because your father owns a liquor store
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| Charva, my baby, I love you and I don’t know what to do about it
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| Oh-oh Charva
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| Ooooohh oh-oh Charva
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| Ooooohh, come back my little darling Charva
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| I love you so much, honey
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| Come back to me, Charva
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| Please Charva, please come back to me
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| I miss you so much
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| [Dick Kunc] I started out in Florida uh… producing a record at a studio, and I got friendly with the engineer, and got interested in engineering. Next thing I knew, I was listening to an album called “Freak Out!” by the Mothers of Invention. I became very interested in their concept of music, their concept of… of uh… society in general, and their concept of humor, which I thought was very good, and I enjoyed it, because they were saying a lotta… a lotta whole bunch of stuff that I wanted to say and I agreed with and thought was true.
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| Then one day I decided: “I’ll move to New York, because it’s, the air is clean, and the people are friendly, and everybody’s in love”. So I went to New York, and I got this job at this incredible twelve track studio. Well, I didn’t know from twelve track, I thought four track was really hot stuff. So I went in there and they said: “Here’s the board, learn it”. Here ya go: “Your first client’s coming in in five minutes”. Well, my first client was Frank Zappa.
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] “I love sea shanties. I thought they were really good melodies, so I arranged them for a rock & roll band. We used to play ‘em all the time. I used to really love to listen to sea shanties and folk music. When everyone else was listening to Cream, I was listening to A.L. Lloyd and Ewan MacColl. These were two old guys who used to record together, trying to replicate the original instrumentation of sea shanties. ‘Handsome cabin boy’ is a song about the bogus certification of sailors. A girl goes on board dressed as a boy, and gets pregnant. The lyrics are all about who done it”.
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| “I loaned the LP to Beefheart, and he probably still has it”.
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| (Countered Vliet, in a 1994 conversation: “He gave it to me!”)
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] The Apostolic studio was in a loft on 10th St. and Broadway in New York. The woman downstairs was an actress in commercials, and she was constantly calling the police because she was not getting enough sleep so she could be fresh for those commercials. All-Night John (one of the inside-the-piano voices on “Lumpy Gravy”, and “Civilization Phaze III”) is one of the voices.
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] Now, we don’t come up here because we feel like walkin’ four flights at three o’clock in the morning
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| [FZ] Yeah
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] We were up here last night. Now for us…
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| [FZ] Last night?
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] Yes
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| [FZ] I wasn’t here last night
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] For us to continually come up to this here place every night and not show no action other than to saying, yes, we corrected the condition…
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| [John Kilgore] Oh, sure, this is ridiculous
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] We look kinda bad. I mean, let’s be honest. Now, if you had to give me any kinda recommendation or… mark my words, you’d say: “Who the hell’s kiddin’ who? This guy’s a mistake”.
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| Every night, 3 to 4, 2 to 4, between those hours you guys are at 53 E 10 street, what are you doin’ there every night? You mean, you… you permit this condition to continue on without once giving a summons?
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| [Other cop] Alright, your lawyer said to knock it off!
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| Uh… We’re puttin’ ourselves over backwards with these people. Do you know what we’re doin’?
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] Do you know what we’re doin’?
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| [FZ] No, tell me. Please tell me.
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] Alright. Well, this is, if we’re up here once we’re up here twenty times. I know that little guy, like a… the guy in there like a long-lost brother. Now if we ever get called down, if this ever goes to a big explosion, and they say: “Officer, what did you do? Did you issue summonses?” They get, this is all in the rekkid book, how many times we’ve been up here. This is all rekkids.
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| [FZ] M-hmm
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] Now if these people wanna subpoena these rekkids, they can subpoena these rekkids. An’ they can find out how many times we’ve been. This is us on, wait! This is us alone! An’ they say: “Officer, what did you do? Warn ‘em? You mean to tell me you were up here about twenty times an’ you never issued a summons?”
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| [John Kilgore] There have been summonses
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] Well, WE never issued ‘em!
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| [Other cop] How many summonses have you gotten for noise?
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| [Dick Kunc] What, me personally or the studio?
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] The studio!
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| [Other cop] Studio
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| [Dick Kunc] I don’t know how many, but there’s a court case pending right now
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| [John Kilgore] We’ve gotten one
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] ONE! ONE! And how many times have I uh… hey, listen! As I say, if I’ve been up here once I’ve been up here twenty times already.
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| [FZ] Hey look, stop it, pack that stuff up, stop making NOISE, you guys!
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| [Dick Kunc] Yeah, well, I understand, he didn’t know…
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] Well, who’s in charge here at this time?
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| [John Kilgore] Here he is
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| [Dick Kunc] In charge?
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] In charge
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| [John Kilgore] He’s more or less in charge
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] Are you in charge?
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| [Dick Kunc] I don’t run the studio, I just…
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] Alright, listen, lemme tell you one thing…
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| [Dick Kunc] I’m in… I’m in charge
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] You’re in charge at this point
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| [Dick Kunc] Right
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] My name is Patrolman LaFamine
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| [FZ] Here, have a bun
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] Now, as of tonight…
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| [Dick Kunc] Right
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| [FZ] You want a bun?
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] If I come back here, and every night that I do come back here, I don’t care who says he’s in charge, I will issue a summons
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| [John Kilgore] I’m issuing you a bun
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] An’ anybody thinks it’s a great joke, you can all laugh in the court
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| [John Kilgore] Yeah, it isn’t
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| [Dick Kunc] But uh…
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] You guys ain’t got one hit record by now, my goodness
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| [Dick Kunc] We have to… We have a…
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| [John Kilgore] It takes a long time
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] You know what I mean. This is ridiculous!
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| [FZ] Are you sure you don’t want one of those breakfast rolls on your way down the stairs?
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| [Dick Kunc] Yeah
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] You better believe that I don’t want nuthin’
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| [Dick Kunc] Who gets… Who gets the summonses, is the… the organization?
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| [Patrolman LaFamine] Whoever it is in charge at the time.
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| He could say Joe Blow, I don’t care what kind of a name he gives me.
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| Then if the courts decide that they wanna know who he’s takin’ orders from, they’ll summons that person to court. That’s all there is to it.
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| [John Kilgore] Alright. Take care.
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| [Dick Kunc] Right
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| [John Kilgore] OK
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| [FZ] Nighty night!
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] (…) FZ: “This is the actual track for a Luden’s Cough Drop commercial that won a Clio award in 1967 for Best Music for a Commercial. A freak in an ad agency who was an animator, Ed Seeman, who came to the Garrick Shows, did the pictures and recruited me to do the music. I went along with it. The commercial shows a squiggly white thing that’s supposed to be the cough wriggling around. A box of Luden’s appears on the left side of the screen, like a monolith, and squashes it”.
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] (…) FZ: “I was writing about bar bands that I used to play in, where you’d wear a white coat and strum chords, sitting on bar stools. There’d be one twist number per night. It’s about the mentality of guys who do that kind of shit and love it. The stuff about kissing the sax player really happened”.
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| [Don Van Vliet] I’m a band leader
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| Not only can I drink a whole lot, but I play 23 different instruments too and I don’t even know how to read music. Self-taught, you know. Couldn’t tell it, though, to hear me play. When I play and sway in rhythm to the catchy little tunes that I know all the girls for five miles around get hot pants for me, hotcha!
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| Last night was pretty good for a Wednesday. We got ten requests for… we got ♫ “Bill Bailey” ▶ and we played them all and we got seven people came up for the Twist Contest. I gave away a box with two small bottles of champagne imported from Europe, and kissed the girl who won and shook hands with the guy she was with. He didn’t mind when I kissed her because I’m important.
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| We have a new routine. Been working on it for three weeks or more. I pretend I’m a queer and the sax player pretends he’s a queer too, and later on in the show - this’ll kill ya - we kiss each other so that it looks to the audience like we kiss each other on the mouth, heh.
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| When we go, into a fast number, GOD, the people love it! Wait till we get to Las Vegas!
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| Ha-hah-hah!
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] Said FZ: “That’s me, Don, Elliot Ingber, and Drumbo recorded downstairs in the basement in 1969 on a Scully 2-track with a couple of mikes. If somebody came over, you could just jack the mikes into the back of the machine. There were no boards, no way to monitor what you were recording, either”.
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| It was simply a jam, according to Vliet, who improvised the words and some of the music.
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| [Don Van Vliet] You may find me, baby
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| Yeah, in this street
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| With my slippery fists
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| Knock it like this an’…
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| Knock it like that
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| With my heart in a cage
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| Tucked up under my hat
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| Fluttering like a little black bird, yeah
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| Just seen his furs, pussycat
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| Got my umbrella up in front, yeah
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| Over my head
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| Ready to beat you, baby
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| If ya don’t let me in
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| ‘Cuz it’s raining
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| ‘Cuz it’s raining, baby outside
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| Well, I’m tired and cold and hungry
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| Been knocked like this an’…
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| Knocked like that
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| Don’t you see that bad backyard
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| Alley cat?
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| I want dis little pussy
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| Baby wants some o’ dis and…
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| Some o’ dat
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| Don’t treat me, baby, like your
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| Any old alley cat
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| Alley cat, alley cat
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| Alley cat
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| Don’t treat me, baby, like your
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| Any old alley cat
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] Who is the Grand Wazoo? “Anybody in any one of those lodge organizations with a stupid hat on” said Frank, adding “actually, the guy with the biggest, dumbest hat is the Grand Wazoo”.
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| [Don Van Vliet] You may think my hat is funny, but I don’t
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| I’m the Grand Wazoo
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| Keeper of the mystic scrolls
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| And rolled-up parchment from the lodge
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| And I’m a veteran
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| Every day on coffee break at the hardware store, I tell Fred
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| What to expect because we play pranks during the… initiation
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|
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| I’m the Grand Wazoo
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| I’m the Grand Wazoo
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| I’m the Grand Wazoo
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| I’m the Grand Wazoo, at the hardware store
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| Fuck you if you don’t like my hat
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] “He made a hearing to enter the band, passing it, when he came home and suffered a tear and broke his arm. I said: ‘Rick, you will not come on tour’. He ran a 45. He had a tape where in 60 seconds he imitated 100 cartoon voices. I thought he had a real talent. He wanted to work by making his voice in cartoons, but he never did. He’s dead. A tough guy from New Jersey”.
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| [Ricky Lancelotti] L.A. in the summer of ‘69
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| I went downtown and bought me some wine
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| I wasted my head on a bottle of juice
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| And now the grape won’t cut me loose
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| Well, I’m a wino man
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| Well, don’t you know I am?
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| Great God almighty, don’t you know I’m a wino man?
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|
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| 36, 24, hips about 30
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| Seen a fine lady and I started talkin’ dirty
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| She looked at me and then she raised her thumb
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| And said: “Jam down the road, you funky-ass bum”
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| Well, I’m a wino man
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| Well, don’t you know I am?
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| Great God almighty, don’t you know that I’m a wino man?
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|
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| I went to the country
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| And while I was gone
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| I lost control of my body functions
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| On a roller-headed lady’s front lawn
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| I’m so ashamed, but I’m a wino man
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| And I can’t help myself
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|
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| I’ve been drinkin’ all night till my eyes got red
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| Stumbled on the gutter and busted my head
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| Bugs in my zoot suit, have me scratchin’ like a dog
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| Can’t stand no water, and I stink like a hog
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| Give me a five-dollar bill
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| And an overcoat too
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| Give me a five-dollar bill
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| And an overcoat too
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| Five-dollar bill and an overcoat too
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| Five-dollar bill and a Florsheim shoe
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] A stalwart little polymetric piece composed in the late ‘60s, with acrobatic percussion passages (…). Possibly named because of the martial arts-like moves required to play it, is a fine illustration of FZ’s lifelong penchant for percussion, and rhythm-driven compositions.
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] (…) Bruce Fowler remembered the work’s early moments: “(…) The first version we had was kind of simple - I think Frank added more to it later. I remember playing it in a recording studio that was in an old church in Glendale (Whitney). Frank said: ‘Let’s try this’. We just played into the night until it got looser and looser. We were really rollin’ until everybody just got too tired to play”.
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] “At the time Warner Bros. made it impossible for me to record anywhere, I had a 4-track and decided to record in my basement. That’s me wasting time with a very primitive rhythm box, a Rhythm Ace, fed into a flanger. The music was done on a synthesizer called Synkey. It was all played live, with no overdubs”.
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] (…) This is the original 1972 recording, done at the same facility with the same band as “RDNZL”.
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] (…) FZ: “This is named after a gang in East L.A. We used to see ‘Lil’ Clanton’ sprayed on the walls there in the ‘50s and ‘60s. It’s a blues jam left off of ‘Hot Rats’ in ‘69, featuring Sugarcane Harris. To me, he was a legend. While making the ‘Hot Rats’ LP, I thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I could find that guy and put him on the album?’”.
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| [Notes by Rip Rense] Tommy Mars: “(…) Frank repeated it unceasingly, as he was used to do when he found a sentence he liked. He felt as though the group was giving birth. It was a situation in which we did not know if the baby would come or not. One day we stopped for dinner during the tests and Ike Willis began to talk about the fact that he had heard news about the possibility of reintroducing the compulsory draft. This has set in motion Frank who started talking about politics. And when it came to politics, it was better to agree. He made us a whole history lesson in the various countries during the Second World War… I was surprised. And then, half an hour later, he said: ‘It’s all. The lesson today is over. And the next day came out with this song, ‘I don’t wanna get drafted’. The baby was born”.
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| (…)
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| [Jimmy Carl Black] Hello! Anybody home?
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| Special delivery…
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| OH NO!
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| Registered mail
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| You’re gonna hafta sign fer this, buddy
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| OH NO!
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| C’mon, I know you’re in there
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| OH NO!
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| [FZ] I don’t wanna get drafted, I don’t wanna go
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| I don’t wanna get drafted
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| I don’t wanna get drafted, I don’t wanna go
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| I don’t wanna get drafted
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| NO-OH-WOH-OH-WOH
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|
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| Roller skates an’ disco, is a lot of fun
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| I’m too young an’ stupid to operate a gun
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|
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| I DON’T WANNA GET DRAFTED
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| I DON’T WANNA GET DRAFTED
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| I DON’T WANNA GET DRAFTED
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| I DON’T WANNA GET DRAFTED
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|
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| My-y-y sister don’t wanna get drafted, she don’t wanna go
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| My sister don’t wanna get drafted
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|
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| My-y-y sister don’t wanna get drafted, she don’t wanna go
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| My sister don’t wanna get drafted
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| WOH-OH-WOH-OH-WOH
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|
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| Wars are really ugly, they’re dirty and they’re cold
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| I don’t want nobody to shoot her in the fox hole, fox hole
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|
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| [Instrumental]
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|
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| I DON’T WANNA GET DRAFTED
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| I DON’T WANNA GET DRAFTED
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| I DON’T WANNA GET DRAFTED
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| I DON’T WANNA GET DRAFTED
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| [Dale Bozzio] Wars are really ugly, they’re dirty and they’re cold
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| I don’t want nobody to shoot me in the FOX HOLE, FOX HOLE
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|
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| Aiieeeeeeeee… shot in the fox hole
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| (Shot in the fox hole, shot in the fox hole, shot in the fox hole, shot in the fox hole)
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| [Repeat]
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| [Don Harris] I would be so delighted!
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| Ma ma-ma-ma
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| Cryin’
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| Mmm-mmh
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|
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| I’m cryin’, I’m cryin’
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| Cryin’ for Sharleena, don’t you know?
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| I called up all my baby’s friends an’ ask’n ‘um where she done went
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| But nobody ‘round here seems to know where my Sharleena’s been
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| Where my Sharleena’s been
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|
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| Cryin’, I’m cryin’
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| Cryin’ for Sharleena, can’t you see?
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| I called up all my baby’s friends an’ ask’n ‘um where she done went
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| But nobody ‘round here seems to know where my Sharleena’s been
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| Where my Sharleena’s been
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|
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| Ten long years I been lov’n her
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| Ten long years and I thought deep down in my heart she was mine
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| Ten long years I been lov’n her
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| Ten long years I would call her my baby and now I’m always cryin’
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|
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| [Instrumental]
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|
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| Well, I would be so delighted (ma ma-ma-ma-ma), I would be so delighted (ma-ma)
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| If they would just send her on home to me
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|
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| Well, I would be so delighted (mm-mm-mmh), I would be so delighted (yeah yeah)
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| If they would just send her on home to me
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| Send my baby home to me!
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| Aaah
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| Send my baby home to me!
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| Ooh
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| Send my baby home to me!
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| Yeah
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| Send my baby home to me!
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| Yeah
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| Send my baby home to me!
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| Yeah
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| Send my baby home to me!
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| Ooh
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| Send my baby home to me!
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 Art by Gabor Csupo.jpg "(Front) Art by Gabor Csupo")
.jpg "(CD inlay)")
Songs list
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Title origin
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Listen original song on YouTube
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