| Album notes by Dweezil Zappa - July 24, 2004
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| It all started with a box, a familiar name, a little dust and a drawing. What started? you ask. A project. What project? This one, with others to follow. You see, in the Vault here at UMRK we have begun the process of transmogrification. What does that mean to me? you ask. And what about the dusty drawing name and the box or whatever the hell you were just talking about before you transmogrified yourself? I’m glad you asked. Here’s the deal…
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| Some people are wise and some people are otherwise. My Father, Frank Zappa, was certainly both. He was a composer who arranged tones textures and rhythms in a way that was certainly unique as we all know, but he was also uniquely inspired by sound itself. This audio protein wafer that you are now clutching contains scientific proof that nuggets do exist.
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| Now for the box… it was a small box. It was dusty. It had a name on it. It said “Dweezil”. It also had a date (1970) and a drawing. It was a curious discovery. Imagine if your name was Dweezil and you found a box with your name on it with a date mere months after you were born and a drawing on it. You would be pretty interested to discover the contents of this box, wouldn’t you? Well by sheer coincidence my name is Dweezil and I sure as hell was dying to open the box.
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| With the help of Vaultmeister Joe Travers we opened the box. Inside was a tape. We carefully placed the tape on the tape machine and asked it to play. When it didn’t, we forced it to by pressing play on the machine. It became obvious that there was something different about what we were hearing. It was 3 dimensional… No, it was 4 dimensional! That’s when we decided to study the picture on the box.
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| It was a panning map for Quaudio. This recording was as close to an audio photograph of an event as you could ever get. It captured the very essence of a song (“Chunga’s revenge”) in it’s infancy and allowed the listener to truly feel as though they were sitting in the middle of Frank Zappa’s basement studio while he was experimenting with air molecules on transverse planes.
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| I for one was fucking excited. I asked Joe if he thought there was more stuff like the stuff we just heard. He replied: “Oh yeah, sweetnitz”.
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| I took this as a good sign. Joe excavated a small area of the Vault for a few hours and unearthed many tapes containing many hours of multichannel audio mixes. There were no more drawings: by now they had morphed into initials… LCRS (Left Center Right and Surround for the uninitiated). These tapes were more advanced. They were almost walking upright. They were born in the mid 70’s. (By the way, “Dweezil” was on the original aforementioned box because Frank apparently toyed with the idea of having a band called Dweezil. Nice piece of trivia, huh). What we now had were the ingredients for this most mysteriously enjoyable listening experience.
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| To make a long story short, this disc is an audio documentary of Frank Zappa’s multichannel recordings and mixes from 1970 to 1978. I did not sequence it chronologically. Instead, I chose to create an interludicrous journey that we could all experience together. There are a few modern elements that I have added to make tidy segues like the one where I superimposed an old quote of Frank discussing the record business over a never heard until now alternate arrangement of “Easter hay”. But otherwise, what you hear is what Frank was thinking about more than 30 years ago. It’s clear he was way ahead of the curve.
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| Now that we’re in the year 2004 and multichannel audio is just starting to be recognized as a legitimate format, it is such a shame that he is not here to continue his pioneering efforts in person and amaze us all with his multichannel air sculptures ▲. I believe he is still the Revenant in Residence here at the UMRK and I look forward to working on many more multichannel projects with him in the future.
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| There are many more boxes in the Vault all with their own special dust particles and a lot more music to be discovered and enjoyed by all of us. By the way, I just have to say… “Rollo” is fucking bitchen!
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| I hope you enjoy this record as much as I do.
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| Album notes by Gail Zappa & Joe Travers
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| About this Program - First things first. Vaultmeisterment. So you know that Joe is ever on the lookout for whatever possibilities may exist. Sometimes, as in this case, you might have to wait for the earth to turn several thousand times before the possible is real. Once UMRK was sufficiently enabled (courtesy of a multitude of technical overrides and upgrades and AMD) and repurposed (5.1 and et ceterae) Joe could begin the arduous task of transferring original analog tapes into the digital domain. This begins (and horribly sometime ends) with baking - something we did not originally anticipate here at the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen. Once the tape has acquired a certain limited life expectancy you can then play, and transfer - as Joe did - into the Euphonix R-1 recorder at 96k 24 bit resolution. From here, Dweezil selected the materials and transferred them into Nuendo. In Nuendo Dweezil sequenced and edited (and in some instances, mixed additional materials for inclusion) FZ’s original multichannel mixes. In this way Dweezil created the “program” now known as “QuAUDIOPHILIAc”.
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| So that’s the basics. The whole story may never be written. We know a few things. We know she said her stereo was four-way ▶. We know FZ wandered through the doorway ▶ of all manner and devices associated with all highly ambient domains ▶. We know that when FZ created these quad recordings and mixes (Icrs - possibly for film, quad - possibly for quadraphonic release), some as early as 1970, that he had been recording for at least 10 years. He had been composing longer. And we know he had discovered Varèse. We know he had ears. And he had ideas. And now, we know you can do one thing that he did: Give yourself up, you’re completely surrounded ▶ - by Music.
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| This is dedicated to FZ & Audiophiliacs Everywhere.
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| Music is the Best!
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| [FZ] Once upon a time, a record company had A&R people in it who would take a chance, make a decision, use their gut reaction, sign a group, and see what they could do with it. OK? That was, whoa, a long time ago. It’s not that way anymore. All decisions about who get signed and what happens to the record are made by these drooling little midrange accountants. And everything is based on the numbers game in there. And the taste of the accountants is what is ruling the… the mass media. It’s all just the dollars and cents of… exchange. And if you wanna make music that you believe in, the chances of doing it on a major label basis are nil, because they’re all so frightened. Everybody’s there trying to protect their job. And it’s easy… It’s easier to look like uh… a wise executive by saying no to something if it’s just the most minutely uh… fringe-oid in terms of content.
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| “No!”
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| The horrible part of it is the artists who are feeding this ecological chain stop making songs they believe in and start making product that they know will be airable. And they change the style of what they’re doing to fit within the narrow framework that is the contemporary accepted norm for suitable, radio-sounding music. And anything that comes outside of that norm doesn’t go on the air, you don’t hear about it, you don’t know about it. Right now there’s probably hundreds of artists in the United States making great sounds and great music. You’ll never hear it. You’ll never find out about it. You’ll never find out about it. You’ll never find out about it.
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| Many well-dressed people in several locations are kissing quite a bit
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| Yea-ah!
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| Later in the evening, leaves will fall, tears will flow, wind will blow, some rain, some snow
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| A fireplace, maybe, a kiss or two, and down they’ll go
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| But that’s the way it goes sometimes
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| That’s the way
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| You just might find yerself in the clutches of some wild love
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| Mama stroked his dinger, daddy got a stinky finger in those days of long ago
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| Yeah-ah!
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| Later in the evening, she’d complain, they’d refrain, he’d go home an’ hone his bone
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| A tragic case, maybe, but also true, I’m sure you know
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| But that’s the way it goes sometimes
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| That’s the way
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| You just might find yourself in the clutches of some wild love
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| Now’days you get dressed up an’ later you get messed up but still you’re pretty hip
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| Yeah-ah!
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| Later in the evening, you’ll explain, she’ll remain, you’re real modern, she’s the same
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| A frantic pace, maybe, but who’s to say where it will go
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| [Instrumental]
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 Photo by John Williams.jpg "(Front) Photo by John Williams")
Songs list
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Title origin
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