| Album notes
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| DISC ONE
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| (a) “Lumpy Gravy” (Primordial) - FZ’s Original Orchestral Edit for Capitol Records, Produced by Nick Venet
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| Original tracking sessions at Capitol Studios
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| Mono Version, 4-Track Master Tape Sequence
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| Source: ¼” Analog - Master Tape T-2719 dated 19 May 1967
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| (b) “We’re Only in It for the Money” - 1968 Original Mono Mix, Produced by Frank Zappa
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| This is NOT a fold-down mix from stereo to Mono. This is a separate discreet mono mix created by FZ with Dick Kunc in 1968.
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| Source: ¼” Analog Master
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| DISC TWO
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| (a) “Lumpy Gravy” - 1984 UMRK Remix
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| Although this version was never released, FZ did include a track entitled “Lumpy gravy (Excerpt)” in a promotional disc for “The Old Masters, Box One”. All 3:01 of it is here. This promo disc was serviced to radio station program directors. Lucky them.
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| Source: 1630 Digital Master
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| (b) “We’re Only in It for the Money” - 1984 UMRK Remix, originally released on CD, 1986
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| Source: 3324 Digital Master
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| DISC THREE
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| All FZ recordings were transferred from original 2-Track analog tapes except tracks 4 through 6 & 13
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| Album notes by Gail Zappa
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| Through my kitchen window Jupiter twinkles merrily away in the evening’s midheavens (of Betsy) where I too travel through time and space. My destination? Any nearest 1967 docking port within reach of an appointment or several with destiny. Jupiter, on the other hand, is doubtless having his way with other Sagittarians in the Elsewheres but in 1967/1968 that Great Bringer of Jollity was midwhelp into the career of a certain natal attraction who would in turn bring his own jollity, mirth and sacred irreverence to Music, thereby establishing influences of and as his own. Neither does the story end or begin here but if you’ve just recently joined us, say within the last couple or three decades, it might be very difficult to imagine WHAT LIFE WAS LIKE THEN, How It Was. Or What It Was. That’s the thing about WHEN. One thing that was different was Frank Zappa, at age 27. And he had a job to do. And a future to do it in.
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| Apart from the near disastrous Zeronian Migration of 1968, I have things to say about that WHEN and that future. But now, when Joe and I are sitting together kludgeing / sequencing / conjoining items that FZ created, it’s very easy to connect them - and reconnect them ad infinitum.
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| To some this appears to be similar to FZ-authored masters. The reasons for this rest largely in several facts: 1. Most or all of these “working” bits & pieces were prepared & even mixed by FZ for his own purposes, 2. They are all part of not only his original project/object ▶ but also his one composition, 3. They’re all his idea(s) - a sort of sketch of the result he was / is / will be going for. We are looking at these after the fact of the original Masters. And in the here and now we have no idea what he would have / could have / might have done. We are merely on an archeological expedition to preserve the remnants of his imagination and civilization. We marvel at the mastery of the science & technology & philosophy of that culture. Our mission is not to emulate Frank Zappa but to present to you a Room with a View that parallels FZ’s own in certain respects. For those of you who indulge us this is your personal window into the Sequin Mines.
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| In the context of preservation, the archiving requirements for these projects vary and in this case we were grateful to discover (and retrieve) the original “Gravy” 4-Track masters, long disappeared, lurking all these eons ▶ in storage at Capitol Records. We are for the next eternity, grateful. Joe has attempted to transfer, document & preserve as many of the materials dating from the original sessions as could be identified - including all Multi-Track Masters & mixdown tapes now known to exist. These were transferred at UMRK at 96K 24B resolution & documented - along with the original 8-Track “Money” session masters recorded at Mayfair Studios in 1967. And he also mixed (at UMRK) the various otherly and otherwise heretofore-untouched-by-anyone-except-FZ bits & pieces of session materials as necessary - and as required by our selection - for your audio enlightenment.
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| Regarding the term “Audio Restoration”: because John Polito is really good at correcting hissy masters and removing pops and clicks, we give him the raw transfers when necessary. Not everyone is equipped to deal with other debris, broth, breath ▶, in the years of the plague ▶. Lucky for us John is a yes we can man.
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| And now presenting: what is not widely known is that there would never have been a “We’re Only in It for the Money” were it not for “Lumpy Gravy” being delayed from release by the struggling warlords in the industry fight between Verve and Capitol Records for Supremacy over (in the case of the former and ironically in the case of the latter, on behalf of) the Artist. Here I must also mention the Beatles. And “Lumpy Gravy” would not have emerged (as my personal all time favorite album), at once defining Frank Zappa and his approach on entering Earth’s atmosphere. They are cut from the same cloth - imagined audio cloth - not to be confused with the invisible and imaginary cloth from which the Emperor’s clothes are yet being fashioned.
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| Side by side he built them.
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| So just like Billy and Ethel we’re intent now on a trip to New York circa 1967/1968 wherein according to at least one of the original recording companies (✄ “it knows if you’ve been sleeping, it knows if you’re awake”) on the original aethernet, Akashic Records, it is duly noted that FZ was intent on Producing His Own Records. And Composing and Conducting his own Music. Solo. (The Nerve. Already Raw and Steeled). And if you cannot consult the oracle there is a wealth of evidence available in FZ’s own statements, and hand, published in ancient media, as to his intent and practical application thereof. Delve. Then listen again to these two Works.
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| Throughout most of the spring and summer of 1967, Frank and his Mothers were in actual residency at the Garrick Theater in Greenwich Village. He had all those nights knit together in tight little stitches of time even as he was working on several album projects - and preparing for his first foray on European soil. Most of this is all a matter of record(s!) but what may not be immediate and obvious in his method is his plan, at once improvised at will and implemented, while diligently checking the results, to raise the bar for the musical IQ of the audience. Not only to educate the ears that would listen but also to bring those who could hear directly to the Real Deal. That was his idea of a good time ▶: entertainment whose value is engaging in and not distracting from Reality. A kind of laughing an itch - instead of scratching one and then having to medicate it.
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| And he was about to be a Dad. And speaking of things that begin with “D” - daughter, documents, draft cards, decrees, disease, death, decisions - all these starred our present with a giant asterisk each, and as is so often the case, reconfirmed our approximation of outrageous fortune. His first passport required a birth certificate. I sent away for it and was as surprised as he to discover his actual given name. That meant a change in the cover art for “Lumpy Gravy” - Francis Vincent Zappa Jr was corrected to Frank Vincent Zappa.
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| His 4-F classification years before was both good news and bad - good because it spared him from Vietnam, bad because it was a byproduct of a serious stomach ulcer. Again good because he would not submit to a blood test and we needed his blood type to get married. We satisfied City Hall’s requirements with the information from the draft registration, his final divorce decree and a letter from our obstetrician signifying a clean Bill of Health for us both. OK, so we are newlyweds. (Everyone has fantasies about what that will be like - except me - because there was nothing ordinary for us in those times).
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| Here’s a brief snapshot of my third day on the job: I went to the studio to meet Frank - and here the tricks of time and memory all meld together - in my mind I see myself in L.A. and somehow in our own studio. But that is not possible since it did not even exist until 1980. It was most likely Mayfair because I recall Gary Kellgren’s presence - and the door to the studio, over by where Lou Reed had just stabbed the cantaloupe for the Velvet Underground sessions, with a similar aspect to the door at UMRK.
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| As I crossed the threshold Frank stood immediately, and dancing toward me, began tossing streamers of ¼ inch recording tape, all jumbled and tumbling and darkening the air all around me - I was suddenly the only thing not in motion in the otherwise ultimate anti-tickertape parade. I think he was singing a singularly different version of “Happy birthday”. I was frightened in a way that I imagine the First People were when they sensed but could not “see” the ships of Columbus sailing toward them. I knew I was not “seeing” what he was telling me through this impossible improvisation. The fingernails of my sensibilities scraped at the incorruptible slate of the incomprehensible. Then he said: “Your father is dead”. And in his voice I heard the gentle closing of a doorway to my childhood. The next day he left for London. Two weeks later Moon arrived. About three months later she said her first recognizable word: “Werp”. It is the same sound the tape made playing at high speeds with the edits Frank was making at home on his tape deck. Putting these albums together, slice by slice.
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| Album notes by David Fricke
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| LUMPY MONEY
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| This is how many people who were there, or wish they were, remember 1967: flowers, love and the San Francisco utopia, Haight-Ashbury; peaceful protest, transcendental meditation and the gentle, expansive power of LSD; Timothy Leary, the Be-Ins and the Beatles’ magnum-pop fantasia, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.
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| That all happened. So did this: heroin, STP and teen-age runaways; napalm in Vietnam and nightsticks back home, at student demonstrations and draft-card burnings; tanks, fires and mass arrests during the riots that devastated black neighborhoods in Detroit and Newark, New Jersey; the swearing-in of Ronald Reagan as governor of California, the start of Richard Nixon’s fateful march to the White House and the making of the only truly honest rock records of the new weird order, “Lumpy Gravy” and “We’re Only in It for the Money”.
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| Four decades later, they remain two of the most important and prophetic albums Frank Zappa ever made, extraordinary in their depth and daring, unflinching in their journalism and judgment. And they are here, in this collection, as they always belonged - together. In composition, performance and narrative provocation, “Lumpy Gravy” and “We’re Only in It for the Money” are a single, intricately connected documentary about hypocrisy, paranoia and endangered liberty in a violently polarized America. The records are not identical. “Lumpy Gravy” was Zappa’s first, official solo project, a full-length orchestral composition without words (at first). “We’re Only in It for the Money” was his third album with his Los Angeles band of caustic, improvising electric-R&B brigands, the Mothers of Invention. It too is a suite - of extremes. Comedy and lethal satire; crisp guitar-a-go-go and thick doo-wop grease; elegant melodies and malicious tape-edit assault: they are all present and entangled, directed for record like living theater.
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| Here’s some irony: the albums were not released until 1968, and even then not in their intended and originally finished forms, thanks to bumbling legal interference and business-suite cowardice at Zappa’s record company, MGM. But “Gravy” and “Money” are absolutely 1967 music: initiated, executed, revised, packaged and repackaged at the very moment America and the world were drunk on “Pepper”, the first Doors album, Jefferson Airplane’s “Surrealistic Pillow”, Cream’s “Disraeli Gears” and “Are You Experienced” by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. By the start of the year, Zappa and the Mothers had already made two historic albums of confrontation rock about a nation kidding itself, “Freak Out!” and the not-yet-out “Absolutely Free”.
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| It was not enough. Here, Zappa, then 26 - with his Mothers, strings, brass, all of the sorcery he could wring from the technology of the day and sporting appearances on “Money” by Hendrix and Cream guitarist Eric Clapton - cuts through the euphoria without mercy. To Zappa, true change and political revolution were serious business and hard work. Flowers were no match for mounted police. Long hair and bell-bottoms were just another uniform. And a blown mind is good for nothing. In short, hippies were stupid, and nobody else had the nuts to say it.
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| “Hippies were pretty stupid” Zappa still insisted, laughing, a decade later, when we talked in 1978. “They really were. But see, things that are related to youth processes - the people involved in the processes and the people who write about the processes, who intend to perpetuate the processes - are very sensitive to criticism. They always take themselves too seriously. So anybody who impugns the process, whether it’s a peace march or love beads or whatever it is - that person is the enemy and must be dealt with severely. So we came under a lot of criticism, because we dared to suggest that perhaps what was going on was really stupid”.
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| “But that’s part of our message” Zappa said firmly, as if it still had not sunk in. “The emperor does not, nor has he ever, nor will he in the future, wear any clothes”. And that royalty included the Beatles, masterfully parodied by Zappa, photographer Jerry Schatzberg and designer Cal Schenkel in “Money”’s artwork.
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| Here’s more irony: Zappa’s 1967 actually started in 1966, over Thanksgiving weekend, when he and the Mothers made their New York City debut at the Balloon Farm on St. Mark’s Place in the East Village. “We came to New York partly because everybody has to come to New York” Zappa told me in that ‘78 interview “and partly because the police made it so difficult for anybody with long hair to perform in Los Angeles”. The LAPD’s nightly harassment and arrests of young people on Sunset Strip “successfully shut down that whole scene. There was no place to work”.
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| But the Mothers were so well received at the Balloon Farm they decided to switch coasts. “We thought: ‘Something’s happening here’” Zappa recalled “So we moved to New York”. The Mothers opened at the Garrick Theater in Greenwich Village on Easter weekend of ‘67 and played there most nights, through the spring and summer. By day, Zappa was usually in the studio with some Mothers or at the tape machine in his Greenwich Village apartment (You can hear him at work there, cutting and splicing, on Disc Three, talking to his wife Gail as their new baby daughter Moon yelps her approval in the background ▲).
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| In effect, Zappa spent 1967 in exile - and it shows. The swooping strings, plaintive woodwinds and convulsive percussion on “Gravy” are routinely interrupted by what now sounds like Patriot Act-surveillance tapes - conspiratorial whispers recorded by Zappa under the lid of a grand piano, by hanging a mike and the whisperer’s heads inside. “Money” is entirely about displacement and betrayal: the piggish elitism in “Bow tie daddy”; the mocking jangle of “Flower punk”, a portrait of the dork as a desperate wannabe; the shocking (for the Mothers) tenderness of “Lonely little girl”. “Concentration moon” - part Martian-country waltz, part bubblegum garage - was a direct reference to the L.A.-police state that sent the Mothers to New York:
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“American way, threatened by us
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Drag a few freaks away in a bus” ▲
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| That the song also predicted the bloodied skulls at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the killing of four students by the National Guard at Kent State University in 1970 (“Cop kill a creep, pow pow pow”) proved escape was not an option.
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| But before he left for New York, Zappa had to make “Gravy”.
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| In the mid- and late Sixties, percussionist Emil Richards was one of the busiest musicians in Los Angeles - a first-call sideman averaging twenty recording dates a week for artists such as Nat King Cole, the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, the Everly Brothers and Elvis Presley. “We treated all of them with tongue in cheek” Richards says now, laughing “as if we had it and they didn’t. They weren’t doing their own records - we were doing them all”. So when Richards arrived at the Capitol Records studios, in the label’s stack-o’-platters offices at Hollywood and Vine, for a job on the night of March 14, 1967, he expected more of the same. That was until Zappa - leading the first, full-orchestra session for “Lumpy Gravy” - handed out the scores: dense, complex clusters of notes in dizzying, dynamic time signatures.
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| “I didn’t know a thing about Frank - we had just heard something about him as a rock & roll guitar player with a band” admits Richards, who had also played in jazz groups with George Shearing and Charles Mingus. Richards’ close friend, top session guitarist Tommy Tedesco “was making fun of Frank: ‘This guy doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing’”.
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| The bassoonist and bass clarinetist hired for the night flatly refused to perform the parts assigned to them, declaring them impossible to play. Richards vividly remembers Zappa’s response: “Frank, with a real genteel manner and smile, said: ‘If I play your part, will you at least try it?’. Frank then played the bassoon part, transposing it right there, on guitar. He played the bass clarinet part too. He freaked the shit out of them. Those guys immediately picked up their instruments and started shedding the parts. So did the rest of us”. Later that night, Richards adds: “Tommy put his arm around Frank. They became fast friends” - as did Zappa and Richards. The latter would later appear on Zappa’s “Studio Tan”, “Orchestral Favorites” and “Läther” albums.
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| There are, in fact, two “Lumpy Gravy”’s: the one you know, released in the spring of 1968, and the one Zappa was making that night at Capitol. In late 1966, Capitol Records producer Nick Venet, aware of Zappa’s ambitions and experience in orchestral composition, commissioned him to write and conduct a full-length work for the label. “My contract (with MGM) did not preclude me from doing that” Zappa said in ‘78 “I wasn’t signed as a conductor”. He wrote the piece in eleven days and recorded it over four (according to union contract information): one with just a rhythm section, three with the large ensemble. Zappa was mixing the tapes in New York when MGM squawked hard. The legal fight, MGM’s sleazy victory and Zappa’s decision to add the talking in late ‘67 meant almost no one heard the original Capitol master.
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| That pure “Gravy” is officially released here for the first time - side by side with Zappa’s 1984 re-mix of the second version - and the comparison is a revelation. At the sessions, Richards says: “We could tell that Frank was listening to Varèse” referring to Zappa’s 20th-century-music hero, the French-born composer Edgard Varèse “But you could also hear Frank’s melodies”. “Oh no”, a later Mothers song and one of Zappa’s most elegant creations, appears repeatedly, in a variety of settings: with swooping strings and Richards’ rattling marimba in the segment “Sink trap”; as mooing brass in “Hunchy punchy”; in “Foamy soaky”, reprised after a full-rockin’ blast of another future-Mothers standard, “King Kong”.
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| The colors and rhythm action come fast and furious - like the U-turn in “Gum joy” from voluptuous guitar and starlight celeste to malevolent horns and death-army snare - but with a deliberate, precise tension and often graceful touch. In “Local butcher”, the percussion erupts like a city of woodpeckers, then evaporates in a stilled air of reverberating gong and string-section Om - all in two-and-a-half minutes.
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| “Frank could have been a top film composer, a big guy in Hollywood” Richards says. But Zappa had other plans, and you can hear it in the Capitol “Gravy”’s two-fisted finale: the orchestra’s dive from “Let’s eat out” into atonal convulsions and high-school-mixer snazz in “Teen-age grand finale”. Zappa’s first and most devoted fans were kids - the ones who never got on the football team and couldn’t make it as hippies but had to rock - and he gave it to them here, in writing and performances as compact and exciting as a Top 40 single. In old bar band lingo, Zappa knew how to hit it and quit it.
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| It was now time for New York.
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| The Beatles released “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” on June 1, 1967, a day later in the U.S. Its impact was immediate and seismic. I’ve talked to musicians who still clearly recall walking down streets in London and San Francisco, on those days, listening to each track in sequence as they passed the open windows of houses and apartments where the album was literally on every radio and turntable. For a moment, possibly the last, the entire world was glued to a single pop-music album, one that changed the business, packaging and creation of that music overnight.
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| Zappa reacted with the same attention and speed. “There was an album he was working on before ‘Sgt. Pepper’ hit, separate from ‘Lumpy Gravy’” claims Cal Schenkel, an art-school refugee from Philadelphia - he dropped out after his freshman year - who moved to New York and started working on album art for Zappa in mid ‘67 (His first two jobs: “Money” and “Gravy”). “I can’t remember much about the material for that album - some of it was an extension of the stage shows. But when ‘Sgt. Pepper’ came out, there was this switch: ‘Let’s do something with this’. Whatever I was doing for that album, which was very preliminary, suddenly became a parody of ‘Sgt. Pepper’”.
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| Talking to writer Kurt Loder about “Pepper” and “Money” two decades later, Zappa admitted the music on the former was “OK”. He objected to “the whole aroma of what the Beatles were… I got the impression from what was going on at the time that they were only in it for the money - and that was a pretty unpopular view to hold”. In a way, Zappa made the Beatles straw dogs for his deeper objections to the new rock aristocracy and the corporatization of youth culture and the fact that most psychedelic-rock bands simply couldn’t rock. When he first went to San Francisco with the Mothers, Zappa told Jerry Hopkins in a famous 1968 Rolling Stone interview ▲: “I was expecting wonders and miracles and what I heard was a bunch of white blues bands that didn’t sound as funky as my little band in high school”.
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| “Money” is, in fact, breathtakingly concise music: twenty compact tracks, rigorously arranged and zooming by without pause (the original vinyl had one continuous groove, without track breaks, on either side). One of the most remarkable technical and dramatic features of the album is Zappa’s use of variable tape speeds: accelerating rhythms, instruments and voices in different, jarring combinations (the Lilliputian-doo-wop chorus in “What’s the ugliest part of your body?”, the Chipmunks-at-the-Fillmore effect in “Flower punk”). But “Money” is also a record of super-tight real-time performance, and Zappa achieved that by slimming the sprawling Mothers down, in most songs, to a small, very overdubbed combo: himself on guitars and vocals, bassist-singer Roy Estrada, drummer Billy Mundi and a new recruit, keyboard and reed player Ian Underwood. (Jimmy Carl Black, Don Preston, Bunk Gardner and Motorhead Sherwood all perform on the record in some capacity. Singer Ray Collins, who had briefly left the band, did not).
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| Underwood was a recent graduate of the University of California in Berkeley, with a master’s degree in composition, when he saw the Mothers at the Garrick that summer. “I had no idea who they were, and there were about ten people in the audience” he says now. But what he saw and heard - “Varèse, Stravinsky, and the long jazz tunes, the pop numbers and satires, the jumps from complete randomness to organized sound” - inspired Underwood to go up to Zappa after the show. “I said I’d like to play with him”. Zappa told him to be at Mayfair Studios, where “Money” was in progress, the next day.
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| “When he got there” Underwood says “there was nobody else there. There was something he had recorded that he wanted me to put keyboard parts on. There is a piano introduction” - he hums the opening of “Let’s make the water turn black” - “that was one of the first things I did. It wasn’t written down. Frank said: ‘What would you do on this?’. I did something - and there it is”. Underwood says, the Mothers were not an autocracy but “a collage. Frank would pick and choose what he liked. They were all things being done by the individual members, and Frank would pull them together - his way”.
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| He didn’t always get it. According to an interview he gave Britain’s Melody Maker after the album was released, Zappa had spent four thousand dollars on the look of “Money” when MGM freaked at his savaging of “Pepper”: the lettering in abused fruits and vegetables; the bizarre gallery of faces, including Nancy Sinatra, a Renaissance pope, classmates from Zappa’s high-school yearbook and Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
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| And the Mothers not in marching-band satin but thrift store frocks (inspired by a famous 1966 Schatzberg photo of the Rolling Stones in drag).
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| “Our sleeve was a direct negative of theirs” Zappa told the MM. The Beatles “had blue skies… we had a thunderstorm”. And a real, live Hendrix, in town during the shoot and a friend of Zappa’s, stood where the Beatles had a wax Muhammad Ali.
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| To Zappa’s fury, that gatefold was turned inside out, with the inner spread of the Mothers in close-up on the front and back. I have found no reports from that time suggesting Capitol or the Beatles initiated formal legal action against the artwork. Zappa called Paul McCartney about the design; McCartney told him it was an issue for business managers. Schenkel says everything was at the printers when he got the word that everything had to be switched around: “The original was a stronger image. As it is, it only shows half the band”.
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| I had a different impression when I first saw it in 1968, in a Philadelphia record store: seven guys in drag, none of them pretty, staring hard, daring you to laugh. “Suddenly, the Beatles look much too pretty, and not a little bit plastic” Barrett Hansen, the future Dr. Demento, wrote in a rave review of “Money” in Rolling Stone. Then he quoted Zappa, a couple of lines from “Harry, you’re a beast”:
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“I’m gonna tell you the way it is
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And I’m not gonna be kind or easy”
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| I never saw, or heard, 1967 the same way again.
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| “The establishment could put all the creeps and long hairs in ovens, you know” Zappa went on “but that’s kind of messy, so they just make things difficult. They say: ‘Keep those fuckers in line’. That’s how far things have gone in this country”.
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| They would go a lot further, in ways that he predicted in the words and music here but would not live to see: the Patriot Act, watch lists, Guantanamo Bay, secret extraditions, unlimited detention of civilians and trial by military tribunal. He wrote at the end of the “Money” credits, in unavoidable capital letters:
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“THIS WHOLE MONSTROSITY WAS CONCEIVED & EXECUTED BY FRANK ZAPPA AS A RESULT OF SOME UNPLEASANT PREMONITIONS, AUGUST THROUGH OCTOBER 1967”
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| Zappa, who died in December 1993, could not have predicted the wanton destruction and murder of the 9/11 attacks. But when his family moved from Baltimore, Maryland to southern California in 1950, they lived in an area that only a few years earlier, during World War II, had been a hive of concentration camps for Japanese-Americans. As both a composer and citizen, Zappa never underestimated America’s capacity for fear or the ruling majority’s desperate readiness to sacrifice democracy for security. He also believed that the only thing worse than betrayal of the Bill of Rights was taking it lying down. One of my all-time-favorite Zappa song titles comes from his 1981 album, “You Are What You Is”: “The meek shall inherit nothing”.
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| It was a subject that absorbed him to the end. Released in 1995, “Civilization Phaze III” was one of the last albums Zappa wrote and fully completed before his death. It is a two-hour extravaganza of Zappa performing solo, on a digital synthesizer, augmented by the real-time strings of the Ensemble Modern - an “opera pantomime” (his description) about, as I said in a review at the time, “the pathetic mess we call Western society as observed by a freaky band of malcontents that lives inside a giant piano”. The album was, in setting, adventure and argument, a direct descendant of both “Money” and “Gravy”, a combined third “phaze” down to the creepy chatter laced through the music, drawn from the same stash of under-the-piano-lid tapes Zappa used in 1967 on “Gravy”.
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| But what struck me most about “Civilization” when I first heard it - in the fall of 1993, two months before Zappa’s passing, in the studio in his L.A. home where he made most of it - was the warmth and delicacy the Armageddon, that same elegance and affection that has always stopped me in my tracks on “Gravy” and “Money”. “Hey, Frank was half-Sicilian” Emil Richards says now “That’s the romantic in him”.
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| It was something else too: Zappa’s faith that everything he had to say, that he needed to say, was possible in music. “It’s all one album” Zappa said of his records to Hopkins ▲ “I could take a razor blade and cut them apart and put it together again in a different order… it still would make one piece of music you can listen to”. I put it another way, in my “Civilization” review: every record he made, I claimed, was “Frank Zappa’s way of saying: ‘Yeah, everything is fucked, but all is not lost’”.
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| This is how he said it in 1967.
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| History written by FZ for the aborted instrumental version of “Lumpy Gravy” - 1967
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| LUMPY GRAVY? Really…
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| It has been raining all night. A black car is driving through the damp woods. The wind is blowing and it is chilly outside. We can hear the rain. We cannot hear the car.
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| There are two people in the car. One of them is dead. He is 19 years old. We can see what is left of his eyes. It is as if some strange, soft instrument had struck them, causing the eyelids to become translucent and gray and swollen. We can barely see the pupils beneath.
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| His name is Bernie and he used to work on a farm.
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| It is very late. The silent black car finds its way through a maze of hastily planned streets in a tract of new homes. The Cinderella Gingerbread Wonderland Estates are all empty. The little plywood curlicues on the eaves of each dream castle are splitting and peeling. The stingily spaced nails that hold them on are bleeding rust. The windows are mostly broken. The tract is held together by chicken wire and cheesy strands of cotton string and screaming neon pennants… in every direction from one to another and up and down and sideways; little plastic triangles on those marvelous never-rot cables, from house to house, providing God knows how much necessary structural support.
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| The silent black car stops at a turquoise house on the corner of Wanda Parkway and Thornhaven Court. The driver gets out and walks slowly to the door of the turquoise house. It is still raining. He opens the buckled plywood door and turns on the living room light. We can see from outside that the turquoise house is furnished. The driver beckons from the doorway. Bernie gets out of the silent black car and walks up the path to the door, carefully avoiding the muddy spots between each uniquely wonderful, hand-cast, circular concrete stepping-stone. We hear some frogs and the rain.
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| By the light of a lamp shaped like a covered wagon with a bucking bronco painted on the shade, we see the grim face of the driver clearly for the first time. He looks like everyone’s personal image of their father when he gets mad. He speaks: “Bernie… why’d you run away, son?”
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| Bernie doesn’t look at him. He shuffles his feet a bit and looks around the room at the furniture… through his translucent bulges. He seems to find things just as they were before… the Naugahyde vibrator chair, the three color reproduction of the Grand Canyon in the embossed maple frame over the brown sectional with metallic threads that used to get caught on the buckles of his jacket, the Walnut step-end tables with the old magazines and doilies and the Kleenex box, with the matching mahogany low-boy coffee table with contrasting doilies and book matches from all over in a little brass silent butler. He gets up and goes into the kitchen, silently thinking to himself (and hating to admit it) that it felt good to sit in the old green platform rocker again, but he knew he needed a Coke.
|
| “You want me to really louse you up, kid? What I did to your eyes wasn’t enough for you? You got any idea what that thing could do to your mouth if I used it on you? Why’d you run away, son?”
|
| Bernie nervously gulps his Coca-Cola. It foams within him as he turns to answer: “I dunno, dad… I just dunno. Why’d you have to go and use that thing on my eyes? They hurt sort of… and I feel weird all over”. Another hearty snort of his beverage and Bernie continues: “How’d you find me?”
|
| “Don’t ask me questions! I’m askin’ the questions! Tell me why you’d run off like that! Wasn’t this a good enough home for you? Everything in here: brand new… we never had brand new stuff before we moved in here! I work my butt off at that place for the government and get enough money to buy all new stuff… new house, new furniture, portable record player… everything like we never had before… and you go work on a farm!”
|
| “I had to, Pop. I missed things the way they used to be when we lived in the country. I missed the animals and everything. I wish you’d never have taken that job in the Alabama plant… then they never would have transferred you here… and I never would of had to run off and get caught… and never have got my eyes hurt. Did Mom buy any baloney this week?”
|
| “It’s in there somewhere. You know what I did to your Mom?”
|
| Bernie bites through the tough plastic baloney wrapper with an expertise known only to people who love baloney and hate to get a knife out to cut it open. Years have taught him just where to bite it. We hear the plastic rip and the teeny-weeny “poof” of the vacuum breaking. Bernie takes three slices and rolls them up. While chewing, he says: “Whatdja do to her? Her eyes like me?”
|
| “She wanted me to quit and move back, I got her in the eyes and in the mouth… two weeks ago. She won’t do shopping any more so Sharva’s got to do it”.
|
| “Sharva buy this? How come she got this brand?”
|
| “She might’ve been worried about you and Mama. It’s hard on a kid seein’ her Mama’s eyes and mouth like that. I give her a little more for her allowance now. She bought a basket for her bike so she won’t have to carry everything from the supermarket. She makes it in three trips now”.
|
| Bernie takes three more slices of baloney and rolls them up, only this time he gets the mustard out and dips them in while he eats them. “Boy, I sure feel funny. I don’t know whether I’m getting sick or I been sick or what. What’s her mouth look like?”
|
| “That’s a hell of a thing to ask about! What you think it looks like? It’s all puffed up… and grayish-like… and you can sort of see her teeth all the way up to the roots… and both of her eyes are like yours… and she’s already made the transition. We get along a lot better now, so don’t you go smartin’ off about her! Your transition’s due shortly too. I’ll teach you your discipline and manners and respect for your elders”.
|
| [Eric Clapton] Uh… uh… uh uh… uh… uh… D’you… Are you… Are you hung up?
|
| Are you hung up?
|
| [Girl] Outasite!
|
| [Eric Clapton] Outasite. Yeah, listen uh… d’you… are you… are you hung up?
|
| [Girl] Ha ha! What does that mean?
|
| [Eric Clapton] Are you strung up, are you? Are you hung up?
|
| [Girl] I don’t… I don’t… I can’t understand… Outasite!
|
| [Eric Clapton] Outasite. Yeah, listen uh… d’you… are you… are you hung up?
|
|
|
| [Gary Kellgren] One of these days I am going to erase all the tape in the world. In the world… world. Tomorrow I may do it. All the Frank Zappa masters… nothing… blank… empty… space. That’s what they are now… blank… empty… space. Oh, I know he’s sitting in there, in the control room now, listening to everything I say, but I really don’t care.
|
| Hello, Frank Zappa!
|
|
|
| [Jimmy Carl Black] Hi, boys and girls, I’m Jimmy Carl Black, I’m the Indian of the group
|
| What’s there to live for?
|
| Who needs the Peace Corps?
|
| Think I’ll just drop out
|
| I’ll go to Frisco, buy a wig & sleep on Owsley’s floor
|
|
|
| Walked past the wig store
|
| Danced at the Fillmore
|
| I’m completely stoned
|
| I’m hippy & I’m trippy, I’m a gypsy on my own
|
| I’ll stay a week & get the crabs & take a bus back home
|
| I’m really just a phony but forgive me ‘cause I’m stoned
|
|
|
| Every town must have a place where phony hippies meet
|
| Psychedelic dungeons popping up on every street
|
| GO TO SAN FRANCISCO!
|
|
|
| How I love ya, how I love ya, how I love ya, how I love ya, Frisco!
|
| How I love ya, how I love ya, how I love ya, how I love ya, oh, my hair is getting good in the back! ▶
|
|
|
| Every town must have a place where phony hippies meet
|
| Psychedelic dungeons popping up on every street
|
| GO TO SAN FRANCISCO!
|
|
|
| Hotcha!
|
|
|
| First I’ll buy some beads
|
| And then perhaps a leather band to go around my head
|
| Some feathers and bells
|
| And a book of Indian lore
|
| I will ask the Chamber Of Commerce how to get to Haight Street and smoke an awful lot of dope
|
| I will wander around barefoot
|
| I will have a psychedelic gleam in my eye at all times
|
| I will love everyone
|
| I will love the police as they kick the shit out of me on the street
|
| I will sleep
|
| I w—… I will go to a house, that’s… that’s what I will do, I will go to a house
|
| Where there’s a rock & roll band ‘cause the groups all live together
|
| And I will join a rock & roll band, I will be their road manager
|
| And I will stay there with them and I will get the crabs but I won’t care
|
| Concentration moon, over the camp in the valley
|
| Concentration moon, wish I was back in the alley
|
| With all of my friends still running free
|
| Hair growing out every hole in me
|
|
|
| American way, how did it start?
|
| Thousands of creeps killed in the park
|
| American way, try and explain
|
| Scab of a nation driven insane
|
|
|
| Don’t cry
|
| Gotta go, bye-bye
|
| Suddenly die, die
|
| Cop, kill a creep!
|
| Pow pow pow
|
|
|
| [Gary Kellgren] Tomorrow I get to do another Frank Zappa creation, and the day after that… and the day after that…
|
| [Jimmy Carl Black] Hi, boys and girls, I’m Jimmy Carl Black and I’m the Indian of the group
|
|
|
| Concentration moon, over the camp in the valley
|
| Concentration moon, wish I was back in the alley
|
| With all of my friends still running free
|
| Hair growing out every hole in me
|
|
|
| American way, threatened by us
|
| Drag a few creeps away in a bus ▶
|
| American way, prisoner lock
|
| Smash every creep in the face with a rock
|
|
|
| Don’t cry
|
| Gotta go, bye-bye
|
| Suddenly die, die
|
| Cop, kill a creep!
|
| Pow pow pow
|
| Mama! Mama!
|
| Someone said they made some noise
|
| The cops have shot some girls & boys
|
| You’ll sit home & drink all night
|
| They looked too weird, it served them right
|
|
|
| Mama! Mama!
|
| Someone said they made some noise
|
| The cops have shot some girls & boys
|
| You’ll sit home & drink all night
|
| They looked too weird, it served them right
|
|
|
| Ever take a minute just to show a real emotion
|
| In between the moisture cream & velvet facial lotion?
|
| Ever tell your kids you’re glad that they can think?
|
| Ever say you loved ‘em? Ever let ‘em watch you drink?
|
| Ever wonder why your daughter looked so sad?
|
| It’s such a drag to have to love a plastic mom & dad!
|
|
|
| Mama! Mama!
|
| Your child was killed in the park today
|
| Shot by the cops as she quietly lay
|
| By the side of the creeps she knew…
|
| They killed her too
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] Well, operator? Hold for a minute, please.
|
|
|
| [FZ] Hello?
|
| [Operator] Yes, sir
|
| [FZ] Uh… Can you call 678-9866?
|
| [Operator] Same area code?
|
| [FZ] Yes
|
| [Operator] Right
|
|
|
| [FZ] Is that Vicki?
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] Yeah. He’s gonna bump you off yet, he’s got a gun, you know, heh heh heh. If he didn’t get ya in Laurel Canyon, he won’t get you here.
|
|
|
| [Vicki Kellgren] Hello?
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] Vicki?
|
| [Vicki Kellgren] Yeah
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] What’s happening?
|
| [Vicki Kellgren] Listen, your father has called me up this…
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] Now look, just don’t panic but just tell me
|
| [Vicki Kellgren] I’m not panicking!
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] OK
|
| [Vicki Kellgren] I think my phone’s tapped too
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] Well, don’t worry, that’s quite alright
|
| [Vicki Kellgren] Alright, your father called me up this afternoon
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] Just a sec…
|
| I’m gonna tell you the way it is
|
| And I’m not gonna be kind or easy
|
| Your whole attitude stinks, I say
|
| And the life you lead is completely empty
|
|
|
| You paint your head
|
| Your mind is dead
|
| You don’t even know what I just said
|
|
|
| THAT’S YOU, AMERICAN WOMANHOOD!
|
|
|
| You’re phony on top
|
| You’re phony underneath
|
| You lay in bed & grit your teeth
|
|
|
| Madge ▶, I want your body
|
| HARRY, GET BACK!
|
| Madge, it’s not merely physical
|
| HARRY, YOU’RE A BEAST!
|
|
|
| Don’t come in me, in me
|
| Don’t come in me, in me
|
| Don’t come in me, in me
|
| Don’t come in me, in me
|
|
|
| Madge, I… Madge, I couldn’t help it
|
| I… doggone it!
|
| What’s the ugliest part of your body?
|
| What’s the ugliest part of your body?
|
| Some say your nose
|
| Some say your toes
|
| But I think it’s your mind
|
| Your mind
|
| I think it’s your mind
|
|
|
| ALL YOUR CHILDREN ARE POOR UNFORTUNATE VICTIMS OF SYSTEMS BEYOND THEIR CONTROL
|
| A PLAGUE UPON YOUR IGNORANCE & THE GRAY DESPAIR OF YOUR UGLY LIFE
|
|
|
| Where did Annie go when she went to town?
|
| Who are all those creeps that she brings around?
|
|
|
| ALL YOUR CHILDREN ARE POOR UNFORTUNATE VICTIMS OF LIES YOU BELIEVE
|
| A PLAGUE UPON YOUR IGNORANCE THAT KEEPS THE YOUNG FROM THE TRUTH THEY DESERVE
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] I don’t do publicity balling for you anymore
|
|
|
| [FZ] The first word in this song is “discorporate”. It means to leave your body.
|
|
|
| Discorporate & come with me
|
| Shifting, drifting, cloudless, starless
|
| Velvet valleys and a sapphire sea
|
| Wah wah
|
|
|
| Unbind your mind, there is no time
|
| To lick your stamps and paste them in
|
| Discorporate and we will begin
|
| Wah wah
|
| Flower Power sucks
|
|
|
| Diamonds on velvets on goldens on vixen
|
| On comet & Cupid on Donner & Blitzen
|
| On up & away & afar & a go-go
|
| Escape from the weight of your corporate logo!
|
|
|
| Unbind your mind, there is no time
|
| Boin-n-n-n-n-n-g
|
| To lick your stamps and paste them in
|
| Discorporate and we’ll begin
|
|
|
| Freedom, freedom, kindly loving
|
| You’ll be absolutely free
|
| Only if you want to be
|
|
|
| Dreaming on cushions of velvet & satin
|
| To music by magic, by people that happen
|
| To enter the world of a strange purple jello
|
| The dreams as they live them are all ✄ mellow yellow
|
|
|
| Unbind your mind, there is no time
|
| Boin-n-n-n-n-n-g
|
| To lick your stamps and paste them in
|
| Discorporate and we’ll begin
|
|
|
| Freedom, freedom, kindly loving
|
| You’ll be absolutely free
|
| Only if you want to be
|
|
|
| You’ll be absolutely free
|
| Only if you want to be
|
| ✄ Hey, punk, where you goin’ with that flower in your hand?
|
| Hey, punk, where you goin’ with that flower in your hand?
|
| Well, I’m goin’ up to Frisco to join a psychedelic band
|
| I’m goin’ up to Frisco to join a psychedelic band
|
|
|
| Hey, punk, where you goin’ with that button on your shirt?
|
| Hey, punk, where you goin’ with that button on your shirt?
|
| I’m goin’ to the love-in to sit & play my bongos in the dirt
|
| Yes, I’m goin’ to the love-in to sit & play my bongos in the dirt
|
|
|
| Hey, punk, where you goin’ with that hair on your head?
|
| Hey, punk, where you goin’ with that hair on your head?
|
| I’m goin’ to the dance to get some action, then I’m goin’ home to bed
|
| I’m goin’ to the dance to get some action, then I’m goin’ home to bed
|
|
|
| Hey, punk, where you goin’ with those beads around your neck?
|
| Hey, punk, where you goin’ with those beads around your neck?
|
| I’m goin’ to the shrink so he can help me be a nervous wreck
|
|
|
| Hey, punk!
|
| Punky!
|
| Hey, punk!
|
| Punk!
|
| Hey, punk!
|
| Hey, punk!
|
| Hey, punk!
|
| Hey, punk!
|
| Punky!
|
| Hey, punk!
|
| Hey hey!
|
| Hey, punk!
|
| Go man, go… go man, go
|
| Just a little bit softer
|
| Golly, do I ever have a lot of soul!
|
| Punk, ✄ I think I love you!
|
| Come on, Roy
|
| Questi dominga?
|
|
|
| Let me see that nose, it didn’t…
|
| Orale!
|
| I wanna know for sure!
|
| Leave my nose alone, please…
|
| What are you trying to do?
|
| He’s gonna stand over there
|
| Bigashi nunga!
|
| But this is Cheetah
|
| Buirote
|
| Chita!
|
|
|
| [FZ, on the left] It’s one of the most exciting things that’s ever happened to me. You know, every time I think about how lucky I am to be in the rock & roll industry, it’s SO exciting. You know, when I first got into the rock & roll business I could barely even play the changes to this song on my… on my guitar. But now I’m very proficient at it, I can play the guitar, I can strum it rhythmically, I can sing along with my guitar as I strum. I can strum, sing, dance, I can make merry fun all over the stage. And you know, it’s so wonderful to… it’s wonderful to feel that I’m doing something for the kids, because I know that the kids and their music are where it’s at. The youth of America today is so wonderful, and I’m proud to be a part of this gigantic mass deception. I hope she sees me twirling, yes, I hope she sees me dancing and twirling, I will say: “Hello, dolly!” Is the song over?
|
|
|
| [FZ, on the right] Boy, this is really exciting, making a rock & roll record. I can’t even wait until our record comes out and the teenagers start to buy it. We’ll all be rich and famous! When my royalty check comes I think I’m going to buy a Mustang. No, I think I’ll… I think I’ll get a Corvette. No, I think I’ll get a Harley-Davidson. No, I don’t think I’ll buy any of those cars. I think what I will do is I will buy a boat. No, that wouldn’t be good either. I think uh… I’ll go into real estate. I think I would like to… I think I would like to buy La Cienega Boulevard. No, that wouldn’t do any good. Gee, I wonder if they can see me up here, twirling my tambourine and dancing. Maybe after the show one of the girls who sees me up here, singing and twirling my tambourine and dancing, will like me. And she will come over to me and I will walk… I will walk up to her and I will smile at her and I will impress her and I will say: “Hello, baby, what’s a girl like you doin’ in a place like this? I’m from a rock & roll band, I think we should…” Is the song over?
|
|
|
| [Center mumbling] Ay ay!
|
| Mingia!
|
| There she is!
|
| Ay!
|
| Buirote
|
| When do we get paid for this?
|
| Ay ay!
|
| Papa huevos
|
| Huevos?
|
| Rock, bop, rock & roll
|
| Rock, bop
|
| One more time!
|
| Un—
|
| Stop sloppy rock & roll!
|
| Bop bop bop!
|
| YEAH! WHEEE!
|
| Now believe me when I tell you that my song is really true
|
| I want everyone to listen and believe
|
| It’s about some little people from a long time ago
|
| And all the things the neighbors didn’t know
|
|
|
| Early in the morning daddy Dinky went to work
|
| Selling lamps & chairs to San Ber’dino squares
|
| And I still remember mama with her apron & her pad
|
| Feeding all the boys at Ed’s Cafe
|
|
|
| Whizzing & pasting & pooting through the day
|
| (Ronnie helping Kenny helping burn his poots away)
|
| And all the while on a shelf in the shed
|
| Kenny’s little creatures on display
|
|
|
| Ronnie saves his numies on a window in his room
|
| (A marvel to be seen: dysentery green)
|
| While Kenny and his buddies had a game out in the back
|
| Let’s make the water turn black
|
|
|
| We see them after school in a world of their own
|
| (To some it might seem creepy what they do)
|
| The neighbors on the right sat & watched them every night
|
| (I bet you’d do the same if they was you)
|
|
|
| Whizzing & pasting & pooting through the day
|
| (Ronnie helping Kenny helping burn his poots away)
|
| And all the while on a shelf in the shed
|
| Kenny’s little creatures on display
|
|
|
| Ronnie’s in the Army now & Kenny’s taking pills
|
| Oh, how they yearn to see a bomber burn
|
| Color flashing, thunder crashing, dynamite machine
|
| Wait till the fire turns green
|
| Wait till the fire turns green
|
| Wait till the fire turns green
|
|
|
| [Dick Kunc] This would be a little bit of vocal teen-age heaven, right here on Earth!
|
| [Ronnie Williams, backwards] Dodn-do-do-dodn-dodn-dodn-dada
|
| The idiot bastard son:
|
| The father’s a Nazi in Congress today
|
| The mother’s a hooker somewhere in L.A.
|
|
|
| The idiot bastard son:
|
| Abandoned to perish in back of a car
|
| Kenny will stash him away in a jar ▶
|
| The idiot boy!
|
|
|
| [Jim Sherwood] I never won it because I was too small to start with
|
| [?] How, look out!
|
| [Jim Sherwood] I used to drink some bad stuff, wine, all kinds of wine! I would mix seven different varieties.
|
| [Bunk Gardner] Had the hots for […]
|
| [Jimmy Carl Black] Wah wah wah
|
| [Bunk Gardner?] Over by the […]
|
| [Jim Sherwood] Thunderbird wine. I don’t know but I chugged a fifth of White Port once and passed out one day (heh heh) and I drank a quart of beer just before that, and we were out riding around in the desert.
|
| [Bunk Gardner] Anyway…
|
|
|
| Try and imagine the window all covered in green ▶
|
| All the time he would spend
|
| At the church he’d attend
|
| Warming his pew
|
|
|
| Kenny will feed him & Ronnie will watch
|
| The child will thrive & grow
|
| And enter the world
|
| Of liars & cheaters & people like you
|
| Who smile & think you know
|
| What this is about
|
|
|
| You think you know everything, maybe so
|
| The song we sing, do you know?
|
| We’re listening
|
| The idiot boy!
|
|
|
| Try and imagine the window all covered in green ▶
|
| All the time he would spend
|
| All the colors he’d blend
|
| Where are they now?
|
|
|
| [Gary Kellgren] Right now I have two hit records on the charts, but it has not made me any money. It has only brought me fame and glory, and a lot of work. Which I do really not care to tell.
|
| You’re a lonely little girl
|
| But your Mommy & your Daddy don’t care
|
| You’re a lonely little girl
|
|
|
| The things they say just hurt your heart
|
| It’s too late now for them to start
|
| To understand the way you feel
|
| The world for them is too unreal
|
| So you’re lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely little girl
|
|
|
ALL YOUR CHILDREN ARE POOR UNFORTUNATE VICTIMS OF SYSTEMS BEYOND THEIR CONTROL ▲
|
|
|
Where did Annie go when she went to town?
|
Who are all those creeps that she brings around?
|
|
|
A PLAGUE UPON YOUR IGNORANCE & THE GRAY DESPAIR OF YOUR UGLY LIFE
|
ALL YOUR CHILDREN ARE POOR UNFORTUNATE VICTIMS OF LIES
|
| There will come a time when everybody who is lonely will be free to sing & dance & love
|
| There will come a time when every evil that we know will be an evil that we can rise above
|
| Who cares if hair is long or short or sprayed or partly grayed? We know that hair ain’t where it’s at
|
| There will come a time when you won’t even be ashamed if you are fat
|
| WAH WAH WAH WAH
|
|
|
| La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
|
| A-a-ah!
|
|
|
| Diddle-diddle-dee
|
| Diddle-diddle-dee
|
| Diddle-diddle-dee
|
| Diddle-diddle-dee
|
| Diddle-diddle-dee
|
| Diddle-diddle-dee
|
| Diddle-diddle-dee
|
|
|
| WAH WAH WAH WAH
|
|
|
| There will come a time when everybody who is lonely will be free to sing & dance & love
|
| Dance and love
|
| There will come a time when every evil that we know will be an evil that we can rise above
|
| Rise above
|
| Who cares if you’re so poor you can’t afford to buy a pair of mod a go-go stretch-elastic pants?
|
| There will come a time when you can even take your clothes off when you dance
|
| What’s the ugliest part of your body?
|
| Darling, when I…
|
| What’s the ugliest part of your body?
|
| Darling, when I look in your eyes…
|
| Some say your nose
|
| Some say your toes
|
| My dearest, my darling, my… darling, darling
|
| But I think it’s your mind
|
| My darling
|
| I think it’s your mind
|
| The ugliest part of you, darling
|
| I think it’s your mind
|
| Your mind is ugly
|
| I think it’s your mind
|
| Your mind
|
| I think it’s your mind
|
| I think it’s your mind
|
| I think your mind is the ugliest part of your body
|
| Your body, your body, your body, your body
|
| I think your mind is the ugliest part of your body
|
| Your mind it’s ugly
|
| I think your mind is the ugliest part of your body
|
| Would you please leave my nose alone! ▶
|
| Your body, your body
|
| Let go of my nose, my nose, thank you!
|
| Your body, your body
|
| Do it again! Do it again!
|
|
|
| We are the other people
|
| We are the other people
|
| We are the other people
|
| You’re the other people too
|
| Found a way to get to you
|
|
|
| Do you think that I’m crazy? Out of my mind?
|
| Do you think that I creep in the night and sleep in a phone booth?
|
|
|
| Lemme take a minute & tell you my plan
|
| Lemme take a minute & tell who I am
|
| If it doesn’t show, think you better know I’m another person
|
|
|
| Do you think that my pants are too tight?
|
| Do you think that I’m creepy?
|
|
|
| Lemme take a minute & tell you my plan
|
| Lemme take a minute & tell who I am
|
| If it doesn’t show, think you better know I’m another person
|
|
|
| We are the other people
|
| We are the other people
|
| We are the other people
|
| You’re the other people too
|
| Found a way to get to you
|
|
|
| We are the other people
|
| We are the other people
|
| We are the other people
|
| You’re the other people too
|
| Found a way to get to you
|
|
|
| Do you think that I love you, stupid & blind?
|
| Do you think that I dream through the night of holding you near me?
|
|
|
| [Instrumental]
|
|
|
| Lemme take a minute & tell you my plan
|
| Lemme take a minute & tell who I am
|
| If it doesn’t show, think you better know I’m another person
|
| [Spider Barbour] The way I see it, Barry, this should be a very dynamite show!
|
|
|
| Doo-wah-de-NUM
|
| Doo-wah-de-NUM
|
| Doo-wah
|
| Doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah-d’num
|
| Doo-wah-de-NUM
|
| Doo-wah-diddy-wah
|
| Diddy-waddy-waddy-waddy-waddy-NUM
|
|
|
| Doo-wah-de-NUM
|
| Doo-wah-de-NUM
|
| Doo-wah
|
| Doo-wah doo-wah doo-WAH-DEE
|
| Doo-wah-de-NUM
|
| Doo-wah-diddy-wah
|
| Diddy-waddy-waddy-waddy-waddy-NUM
|
|
|
| Doo-wah-dee-num
|
| Waddy-num
|
| Doo-wah-doo-wah-doo-wah-dee-num
|
| Nummy-num
|
| […]
|
| Waddy-one waddy-num
|
|
|
| [Ike Willis & Ray White] Yo’ mammy nun ▶
|
| Yo’ mammy nun
|
| Yo’ mammy, mammy, mammy, mammy
|
| Yo’ mammy nun
|
| Yo’ mam-mammy nun
|
| Who’s yo’ mammy, who’s yo’ mammy, mammy nun?
|
|
|
| Holy mack’l! ▶
|
| Holy mack’l!
|
| Holy mack’l!
|
| Holy mack’l!
|
|
|
| Ol’ Brown Moses ▶
|
| Way down in Egypt-land
|
| Pick that cotton
|
| Eat that watermelon
|
|
|
| [Instrumental]
|
|
|
| [Spider Barbour] Bit of nostalgia for the old folks!
|
|
|
| [Gilly Townley] I’m advocating dark clothes
|
| [Becky Wentworth] If I’m not alone… How long have I been asleep?
|
| [Gilly Townley] As long as I have
|
| [Maxine] Did you ever live in a drum?
|
| [Becky Wentworth] No
|
| [Maxine] Well, then you aren’t me
|
| [Gilly Townley] I only dreamt I lived in a drum. Ever since it got dark. Dreaming is hard.
|
| [Susan Kelly] Yea, but with nothing over your head?
|
| [Gilly Townley] No, just light, over my head. And underneath too.
|
| [Susan Kelly] I don’t think I could take it without anything over my head
|
| [Maxine] Mm-mmh, me neither
|
| [Becky Wentworth] Well, why don’t you go out and see what’s out there?
|
| [Gilly Townley] Well, I don’t know if that’s what’s out there
|
| [Maxine] Now that’s a thought
|
| [Gilly Townley] Yes…
|
| [Maxine] If you’d like…
|
| [Gilly Townley] But STILL you can say darker and darker. I don’t know what the outside of this thing looks like at all.
|
| [Spider Barbour?] I do. It’s dark and murky.
|
| [John Kilgore] How do you get your… your water so dark?
|
| [Spider Barbour?] ‘Cause I’m paranoid. I’m very paranoid. And the water in my washing machine turns dark out of sympathy.
|
| [John Kilgore] Out of sympathy?
|
| [?] Yes
|
| [John Kilgore] Uh… Where can I get that?
|
| [Spider Barbour?] At your local drugstore
|
| [John Kilgore] How much?
|
|
|
| [?] It’s from Kansas
|
|
|
| [Instrumental]
|
|
|
| [Jim Sherwood] Bored out, 90 over. With three Stromberg 97s.
|
|
|
| [Instrumental]
|
|
|
| [Jim Sherwood] Almost Chinese, huh?
|
| [?] Yeah!
|
| [Jim Sherwood] Good bread, because I was making uh… $2.71 an hour ▲
|
|
|
| [Jim Sherwood] I keep switching girls all the time, because if I’m able to find a girl with really a groovy car that ain’t build up, man, I’ll go steady with her for a while until I’d build up her car and blow out the engine!
|
|
|
| [Instrumental]
|
|
|
| [Jim Sherwood] I worked in a… cheesy newspaper company for a while but that was terrible, I wasn’t making enough money to build anything.
|
LOUIE LOUIE
|
| [Jim Sherwood] And then I worked in a PRINTING COMPANY and… a COUPLA GAS STATIONS. Oh, at the GAS STATION where I was working, my brother just got married, and uh… he bought a new car and his wife was having a kid and all this miserable stuff, and he needed a job so I gave him a job at the GAS STATION of which I was FIRED because, you know, he was gonna work there. And he had his car on the rack and he was lubing and changing tires and everything all the time. And so they GOT FIRED because he was GOOFING OFF, man, and he just… kept taking parts and working on his car day and night.
|
| And so he lost that job and he went to work in another GAS STATION. He took that one, you know, so he could feed the kids and that. And I went to work in an aircraft company, and uh… I was building THESE PLANES. I worked on the XB-70, I was the last welder on there.
|
| Yeah, but it was pretty good BREAD, because I was making uh… $2.71 AN HOUR. I was making a hundred and a quarter A WEEK, and uh… yeah, it was good enough money to be WORKING ON, so I got an OLDSMOBILE, a groovy Olds. But I was going with this CHICK AT THAT TIME. By the time I got the Olds running DECENTLY, she went out and tore up the engine, and the trans, and a… her and a girlfriend they get in there and booze it up and tear up the seats. Just ripped the seats completely out. So uh… I got a ‘56 Olds, which was this one chick’s I was going with, and uh… we used to drive out all over the place and finally she got rid of that, and uh… I got another pickup.
|
|
|
| [Instrumental]
|
|
|
| Oh man, I don’t know if I can go through this again!
|
|
|
| [Instrumental]
|
| [Ronnie Williams] BUH-BAH-BAHDN
|
| [Spider Barbour] Oh!
|
| [John Kilgore] There it went again
|
| [Spider Barbour] It’s a little pig with wings
|
| [Pig with wings] EE
|
| [Gross Man] I hear you’ve been having trouble with PIGS AND PONIES!
|
|
|
| [Cal Schenkel, on the left] To… just the opposite… going around to the other direction
|
|
|
| [Cal Schenkel, on the right] How ‘bout us? Don’t we get any?
|
| [Gail Zappa] We don’t get any…
|
| [Cal Schenkel] That’s very distraughtening
|
| [Gail Zappa] We don’t get any because we’re otherwise
|
|
|
| [Spider Barbour] Everything in the universe is… is… is made of one element, which is a note, a single note. Atoms are really vibrations, you know, which are extensions of the BIG NOTE, everything’s one note. Everything, even the ponies. The note, however, is the ultimate power, but see, the pigs don’t know that, the ponies don’t know that. Right?
|
| [Monica Boscia] You mean just we know that?
|
| [Spider Barbour] Right!
|
|
|
| [Instrumental]
|
|
|
| [Spider Barbour] “Merry-go-round! Merry-go-round! Do-do-do-do do-do-do do-do-do”
|
|
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Grrr. Arf arf arf ar-ar-ar-ar-ar. Teeth out there, and ready to attack ‘em. I had to fight back and hit ‘em, like, you know, hit ‘em and hit ‘em and hit ‘em, and… kick ‘em and kick ‘em and…
|
| [Roy Estrada] Did they get on top of you?
|
| [Louis Cuneo] No, I fought so back, hard back, and, it was…
|
| [Roy Estrada] Hard back?
|
| [Louis Cuneo] White!
|
| [Roy Estrada] White?
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Yeah, white ugliness
|
| [Roy Estrada] Did it have teeth?
|
| [Louis Cuneo] And it was two… it was two boogey-men that were on the side and, we were already blocked the entrance, so I had to… I had to kick, I had to fight to f-four or five boogey-men in front of me
|
| [Roy Estrada] Then but maybe he can turn into… I wonder if he could maybe be […] PFFT!
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Yes, extremely vicious
|
| [Roy Estrada] I don’t know, those po— I heard those ponies are really vicious!
|
| [Louis Cuneo] I know but… I know they’re vicious, but they…
|
| [Roy Estrada] Their claws!
|
| [Louis Cuneo] He d-d—… He doesn’t have to be able to do it
|
| [Roy Estrada] They get on top of you, and they just tear you apart
|
| [Louis Cuneo] I know
|
| [Roy Estrada] Tee—
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Scars over here, see, scars right here. Yeah.
|
| [Roy Estrada] Teeth to limb! Teeth to limb! I mean, toe to ta— man, I hope they don’t get him.
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Ponies! I-i-If-If… If… is…
|
| [Roy Estrada] Was it white? Are you sure it wasn’t w-white, I mean uh… black, or…
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Well, I think they’re white, but I was too scared to notice their physical…
|
| [Roy Estrada] Gold or something?
|
| [Louis Cuneo] I was too… I was too scared to no— n-no— uh-no— uh-notice their physical, a— appearance, ‘cause they… they… they were attackin’ me!
|
| [Roy Estrada] They were?
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Yeah, they were… they were attackin’ me!
|
| [Roy Estrada] What were they doin’ to you?
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Well, they were… they were like… they were… comin’ and surroundin’ me an’ everything else, and they were attackin’ me and I had to fight back, fight, fight and fight back and pick up sticks
|
| [Roy Estrada] Pick-up sticks?
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Yes, pick-up sticks, you know?
|
| [Roy Estrada] I used to play that game, pick-up sticks
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Me too, did you ever play that game?
|
| [Roy Estrada] Yeah!
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Yes! That’s funny! HA HA HA!
|
| [Roy Estrada] Anyway, come back to the horse… back to the horse? To the pony.
|
| [Louis Cuneo] HA HA HA HA! Now…
|
| [Roy Estrada] Anyway
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Yes, pony, or…
|
| [Roy Estrada] President
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Or Pope, I dunno, uh, I dunno
|
| [Roy Estrada] I don’t know
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Something down there is dangerous
|
| [Roy Estrada] Could be a cigar or somethin’
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Yeah…
|
| [Roy Estrada] A cigar?
|
| [Louis Cuneo] A cigar? Naw, you’re insane, come on!
|
| [Roy Estrada] Nohhh, no. I remember when I was a… No, I don’t remember. Those were the days!
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Boy, you must spend all your life down here!
|
| [Roy Estrada] That was before the days of those horses
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Yes, before the days of the… all the… ow-uh… ponies or boogey-men or somethin’, what’s out there
|
| [Roy Estrada] But then there was a… What was it then? No pimples?
|
| [Louis Cuneo] No, I never did
|
| [Roy Estrada] Sure!
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Positively
|
| [Roy Estrada] You had to have ‘em
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Naw, naw
|
| [Roy Estrada] You’ve got one right in your nose right now!
|
| [Louis Cuneo] HA HA HA HA! Scrtch-ch-ch! Scratchin’ them.
|
| [Roy Estrada] Boy, I’m gettin’ tired, man. We should go…
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Oh yes
|
| [Roy Estrada] We should go to sleep
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Oh yeah
|
| [Roy Estrada] I just hope he comes back
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Yes, listen!
|
| [Roy Estrada] I think I’ll pray ▶ for him
|
| [Louis Cuneo] I think I’ll join you
|
| [Roy Estrada] You do yours and I’ll do mine
|
| [Louis Cuneo] OK, HA HA HA HA!
|
| [Roy Estrada] And we’ll hope for the best ▶, HEH HEH HEH!
|
| [Louis Cuneo] HA HA HA HA HA, I’ll pray for […] Motorhead
|
| [Roy Estrada] Now I lay me down to sleep
|
|
|
| [Roy Estrada] Amen
|
| [Louis Cuneo] Amen
|
|
|
| [Instrumental]
|
|
|
| [Ronnie Williams] Oh yeah! That’s just fine! Come on boys! Just one more time!
|
|
|
| [Spider Barbour] I think I can explain about… about how the pigs’ music works
|
| [Monica Boscia] Well, this should be interesting
|
| [Spider Barbour] Remember that they make music with a very DENSE LIGHT
|
| [John Kilgore] Yeah
|
| [Monica Boscia] OK
|
| [Spider Barbour] And remember about the smoke standing still and how they… they really get uptight when you try to move the smoke, right?
|
| [Monica Boscia] Right
|
| [John Kilgore] Yeah?
|
| [Spider Barbour] I think the music in that DENSE LIGHT is probably what makes the smoke stand still.
|
| Any sort of motion has this effect on… on the ponies’ manes. You know, the thing on their neck.
|
| [John Kilgore] Hmm
|
| [Spider Barbour] As soon as the pony’s mane starts to get good in the back any sort of motion, especially of smoke or gas, begins to make the ends split.
|
| [Monica Boscia] Well, don’t the splitting ends change the density of the ponies’ music so it affects the density of the pigs’ music, which makes the smoke move which upsets the pigs?
|
| [Spider Barbour] No, it isn’t like that
|
| [John Kilgore] How does it work?
|
| [Spider Barbour] Well, what it does is when it strikes any sort of energy field or solid object or even something as ephemeral as smoke, the first thing it does is begins to inactivate the molecular motion so that it slows down and finally stops. That’s why the smoke stops. And also have you ever noticed how the… the smoke clouds shrink up?
|
| When it does that? That’s because…
|
| [John Kilgore] Oh yeah
|
| [Spider Barbour] That’s because the molecules come closer together.
|
| It gets much, much smaller, and it goes… the cold light makes it get so small, that…
|
| [Monica Boscia] I suppose…
|
| [Spider Barbour] It becomes very, very dense and brittle. This is really brittle smoke.
|
| [John Kilgore] And that’s why the pigs don’t want you to touch it
|
| [Spider Barbour] See, when the smoke gets that brittle what happens when you try to move it is it disintegrates
|
| [John Kilgore] And the pigs get uptight ‘cause you know they… they… they worship that smoke. They salute it every day.
|
| [Monica Boscia] You know we’ve got something here
|
| [John Kilgore] And… And… And… And…
|
| That’s the basis of all their nationalism. Like if they can’t salute the smoke every morning when they get up!
|
| [Spider Barbour] Yeah, it’s a vicious circle. You got it!
|
|
|
| [Instrumental]
|
|
|
| [Gross Man] Pony!
|
|
|
| [Instrumental]
|
|
|
| [Instrumental]
|
|
|
| [Jim Sherwood] Drums are too noisy, an’ you’ve got no corners to hide in!
|
|
|
| [John Kilgore] So when she’s beating him over the nose with a tire iron, and then we both jump away and disappear, and the pig will turn around and there’ll be this pony!
|
|
|
| [Spider Barbour] Oh no, man!
|
| [Monica Boscia] Oh!
|
| [Spider Barbour & Monica Boscia] KANGAROOS!
|
| [Monica Boscia] And then they eat it when they get home
|
| [John Kilgore] If it’s still alive
|
|
|
| [Instrumental]
|
|
|
| [Spider Barbour] Envelops the bath tub
|
|
|
| [Instrumental]
|
|
|
| [Cal Schenkel] ‘Cause round things are… are boring
|
|
|
| [Instrumental]
|
| [Eric Clapton] Uh… uh… uh uh… uh… uh… D’you… Are you… Are you hung up?
|
| Are you hung up?
|
| [Girl] Outasite!
|
| [Eric Clapton] Outasite. Yeah, listen uh… d’you… are you… are you hung up?
|
| [Girl] Ha ha! What does that mean?
|
| [Eric Clapton] Are you strung up, are you? Are you hung up?
|
| [Girl] I don’t… I don’t… I can’t understand… Outasite!
|
| [Eric Clapton] Outasite. Yeah, listen uh… d’you… are you… are you hung up?
|
|
|
| [Gary Kellgren] One of these days I am going to erase all the tape in the world. In the world… world. Tomorrow I may do it. All the Frank Zappa masters… nothing… blank… empty… space. That’s what they are now… blank… empty… space. Oh, I know he’s sitting in there, in the control room now, listening to everything I say, but I really don’t care.
|
| Hello, Frank Zappa!
|
|
|
| [Jimmy Carl Black] Hi, boys and girls, I’m Jimmy Carl Black, I’m the Indian of the group
|
| What’s there to live for?
|
| Who needs the Peace Corps?
|
| Think I’ll just drop out
|
| I’ll go to Frisco, buy a wig & sleep on Owsley’s floor
|
|
|
| Walked past the wig store
|
| Danced at the Fillmore
|
| I’m completely stoned
|
| I’m hippy & I’m trippy, I’m a gypsy on my own
|
| I’ll stay a week & get the crabs & take a bus back home
|
| I’m really just a phony but forgive me ‘cause I’m stoned
|
|
|
| Every town must have a place where phony hippies meet
|
| Psychedelic dungeons popping up on every street
|
| GO TO SAN FRANCISCO!
|
|
|
| How I love ya, how I love ya, how I love ya, how I love ya, Frisco!
|
| How I love ya, how I love ya, how I love ya, how I love ya, oh, my hair is getting good in the back! ▶
|
|
|
| Every town must have a place where phony hippies meet
|
| Psychedelic dungeons popping up on every street
|
| GO TO SAN FRANCISCO!
|
|
|
| Hotcha!
|
|
|
| First I’ll buy some beads
|
| And then perhaps a leather band to go around my head
|
| Some feathers and bells
|
| And a book of Indian lore
|
| I will ask the Chamber Of Commerce how to get to Haight Street and smoke an awful lot of dope
|
| I will wander around barefoot
|
| I will have a psychedelic gleam in my eye at all times
|
| I will love everyone
|
| I will love the police as they kick the shit out of me on the street
|
| I will sleep
|
| I w—… I will go to a house, that’s… that’s what I will do, I will go to a house
|
| Where there’s a rock & roll band ‘cause the groups all live together
|
| And I will join a rock & roll band, I will be their road manager
|
| And I will stay there with them and I will get the crabs but I won’t care
|
| Because…
|
| Concentration moon, over the camp in the valley
|
| Concentration moon, wish I was back in the alley
|
| With all of my friends still running free
|
| Hair growing out every hole in me
|
|
|
| American way, how did it start?
|
| Thousands of creeps killed in the park
|
| American way, try and explain
|
| Scab of a nation driven insane
|
|
|
| Don’t cry
|
| Gotta go, bye-bye
|
| Suddenly die, die
|
| Cop, kill a creep!
|
| Pow pow pow
|
|
|
| [Gary Kellgren] Tomorrow I get to do another Frank Zappa creation, and the day after that… and the day after that…
|
| Also at the same time I get to work with the Velvet Underground which is as shitty a group as Frank Zappa’s group.
|
| [Jimmy Carl Black] Hi, boys and girls, I’m Jimmy Carl Black and I’m the Indian of the group
|
|
|
| Concentration moon, over the camp in the valley
|
| Concentration moon, wish I was back in the alley
|
| With all of my friends still running free
|
| Hair growing out every hole in me
|
|
|
| American way, threatened by us
|
| Drag a few creeps away in a bus ▶
|
| American way, prisoner lock
|
| Smash every creep in the face with a rock
|
|
|
| Don’t cry
|
| Gotta go, bye-bye
|
| Suddenly die, die
|
| Cop, kill a creep!
|
| Pow pow pow
|
| Mama! Mama!
|
| Someone said they made some noise
|
| The cops have shot some girls & boys
|
| You’ll sit home & drink all night
|
| They looked too weird, it served them right
|
|
|
| Mama! Mama!
|
| Someone said they made some noise
|
| The cops have shot some girls & boys
|
| You’ll sit home & drink all night
|
| They looked too weird, it served them right
|
|
|
| Ever take a minute just to show a real emotion
|
| In between the moisture cream & velvet facial lotion?
|
| Ever tell your kids you’re glad that they can think?
|
| Ever say you loved ‘em? Ever let ‘em watch you drink?
|
| Ever wonder why your daughter looked so sad?
|
| It’s such a drag to have to love a plastic mom & dad!
|
|
|
| Mama! Mama!
|
| Your child was killed in the park today
|
| Shot by the cops as she quietly lay
|
| By the side of the creeps she knew…
|
| They killed her too
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] Well, operator? Hold for a minute, please.
|
|
|
| [FZ] Hello?
|
| [Operator] Yes, sir
|
| [FZ] Uh… Can you call 678-9866?
|
| [Operator] Same area code?
|
| [FZ] Yes
|
| [Operator] Right
|
|
|
| [FZ] Is that Vicki?
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] Yeah. He’s gonna bump you off yet, he’s got a gun, you know, heh heh heh. If he didn’t get ya in Laurel Canyon, he won’t get you here.
|
|
|
| [Vicki Kellgren] Hello?
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] Vicki?
|
| [Vicki Kellgren] Yeah
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] What’s happening?
|
| [Vicki Kellgren] Listen, your father has called me up this…
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] Now look, just don’t panic but just tell me
|
| [Vicki Kellgren] I’m not panicking!
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] OK
|
| [Vicki Kellgren] I think my phone’s tapped too
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] Well, don’t worry, that’s quite alright
|
| [Vicki Kellgren] Alright, your father called me up this afternoon
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] Just a sec…
|
| I’m gonna tell you the way it is
|
| And I’m not gonna be kind or easy
|
| Your whole attitude stinks, I say
|
| And the life you lead is completely empty
|
|
|
| You paint your head
|
| Your mind is dead
|
| You don’t even know what I just said
|
|
|
| THAT’S YOU, AMERICAN WOMANHOOD!
|
|
|
| You’re phony on top
|
| You’re phony underneath
|
| You lay in bed & grit your teeth
|
|
|
| Madge ▶, I want your body
|
| HARRY, GET BACK!
|
| Madge, it’s not merely physical
|
| HARRY, YOU’RE A BEAST!
|
|
|
| Don’t come in me, in me
|
| Don’t come in me, in me
|
| Don’t come in me, in me
|
| Don’t come in me, in me
|
|
|
| Madge, I… Madge, I couldn’t help it
|
| I… doggone it!
|
| What’s the ugliest part of your body?
|
| What’s the ugliest part of your body?
|
| Some say your nose
|
| Some say your toes
|
| But I think it’s your mind
|
| Your mind
|
| I think it’s your mind
|
|
|
| ALL YOUR CHILDREN ARE POOR UNFORTUNATE VICTIMS OF SYSTEMS BEYOND THEIR CONTROL
|
| A PLAGUE UPON YOUR IGNORANCE & THE GRAY DESPAIR OF YOUR UGLY LIFE
|
|
|
| Where did Annie go when she went to town?
|
| Who are all those creeps that she brings around?
|
|
|
| ALL YOUR CHILDREN ARE POOR UNFORTUNATE VICTIMS OF LIES YOU BELIEVE
|
| A PLAGUE UPON YOUR IGNORANCE THAT KEEPS THE YOUNG FROM THE TRUTH THEY DESERVE
|
| [Pamela Zarubica] I don’t do publicity balling for you anymore
|
|
|
| [FZ] The first word in this song is “discorporate”. It means to leave your body.
|
|
|
| Discorporate & come with me
|
| Shifting, drifting, cloudless, starless
|
| Velvet valleys and a sapphire sea
|
| Wah wah
|
|
|
| Unbind your mind, there is no time
|
| To lick your stamps and paste them in
|
| Discorporate and we will begin
|
| Wah wah
|
| Flower Power sucks
|
|
|
| Diamonds on velvets on goldens on vixen
|
| On comet & Cupid on Donner & Blitzen
|
| On up & away & afar & a go-go
|
| Escape from the weight of your corporate logo!
|
|
|
| Unbind your mind, there is no time
|
| Boin-n-n-n-n-n-g
|
| To lick your stamps and paste them in
|
| Discorporate and we’ll begin
|
|
|
| Freedom, freedom, kindly loving
|
| You’ll be absolutely free
|
| Only if you want to be
|
|
|
| Dreaming on cushions of velvet & satin
|
| To music by magic, by people that happen
|
| To enter the world of a strange purple jello
|
| The dreams as they live them are all ✄ mellow yellow
|
|
|
| Unbind your mind, there is no time
|
| Boin-n-n-n-n-n-g
|
| To lick your stamps and paste them in
|
| Discorporate and we’ll begin
|
|
|
| Freedom, freedom, kindly loving
|
| You’ll be absolutely free
|
| Only if you want to be
|
|
|
| You’ll be absolutely free
|
| Only if you want to be
|
| ✄ Hey, punk, where you goin’ with that flower in your hand?
|
| Hey, punk, where you goin’ with that flower in your hand?
|
| Well, I’m goin’ up to Frisco to join a psychedelic band
|
| I’m goin’ up to Frisco to join a psychedelic band
|
|
|
| Hey, punk, where you goin’ with that button on your shirt?
|
| Hey, punk, where you goin’ with that button on your shirt?
|
| I’m goin’ to the love-in to sit & play my bongos in the dirt
|
| Yes, I’m goin’ to the love-in to sit & play my bongos in the dirt
|
|
|
| Hey, punk, where you goin’ with that hair on your head?
|
| Hey, punk, where you goin’ with that hair on your head?
|
| I’m goin’ to the dance to get some action, then I’m goin’ home to bed
|
| I’m goin’ to the dance to get some action, then I’m goin’ home to bed
|
|
|
| Hey, punk, where you goin’ with those beads around your neck?
|
| Hey, punk, where you goin’ with those beads around your neck?
|
| I’m goin’ to the shrink so he can help me be a nervous wreck
|
|
|
| Hey, punk!
|
| Punky!
|
| Hey, punk!
|
| Punk!
|
| Hey, punk!
|
| Hey, punk!
|
| Hey, punk!
|
| Hey, punk!
|
| Punky!
|
| Hey, punk!
|
| Hey hey!
|
| Hey, punk!
|
| Go man, go… go man, go
|
| Just a little bit softer
|
| Golly, do I ever have a lot of soul!
|
| Punk, ✄ I think I love you!
|
| Come on, Roy
|
| Questi dominga?
|
|
|
| Let me see that nose, it didn’t…
|
| Orale!
|
| I wanna know for sure!
|
| Leave my nose alone, please…
|
| What are you trying to do?
|
| He’s gonna stand over there
|
| Bigashi nunga!
|
| But this is Cheetah
|
| Buirote
|
| Chita!
|
|
|
| [FZ, on the left] It’s one of the most exciting things that’s ever happened to me. You know, every time I think about how lucky I am to be in the rock & roll industry, it’s SO exciting. You know, when I first got into the rock & roll business I could barely even play the changes to this song on my… on my guitar. But now I’m very proficient at it, I can play the guitar, I can strum it rhythmically, I can sing along with my guitar as I strum. I can strum, sing, dance, I can make merry fun all over the stage. And you know, it’s so wonderful to… it’s wonderful to feel that I’m doing something for the kids, because I know that the kids and their music are where it’s at. The youth of America today is so wonderful, and I’m proud to be a part of this gigantic mass deception. I hope she sees me twirling, yes, I hope she sees me dancing and twirling, I will say: “Hello, dolly!” Is the song over?
|
|
|
| [FZ, on the right] Boy, this is really exciting, making a rock & roll record. I can’t even wait until our record comes out and the teenagers start to buy it. We’ll all be rich and famous! When my royalty check comes I think I’m going to buy a Mustang. No, I think I’ll… I think I’ll get a Corvette. No, I think I’ll get a Harley-Davidson. No, I don’t think I’ll buy any of those cars. I think what I will do is I will buy a boat. No, that wouldn’t be good either. I think uh… I’ll go into real estate. I think I would like to… I think I would like to buy La Cienega Boulevard. No, that wouldn’t do any good. Gee, I wonder if they can see me up here, twirling my tambourine and dancing. Maybe after the show one of the girls who sees me up here, singing and twirling my tambourine and dancing, will like me. And she will come over to me and I will walk… I will walk up to her and I will smile at her and I will impress her and I will say: “Hello, baby, what’s a girl like you doin’ in a place like this? I’m from a rock & roll band, I think we should…” Is the song over?
|
|
|
| [Center mumbling] Ay ay!
|
| Mingia!
|
| There she is!
|
| Ay!
|
| Buirote
|
| When do we get paid for this?
|
| Ay ay!
|
| Papa huevos
|
| Huevos?
|
| Rock, bop, rock & roll
|
| Rock, bop
|
| One more time!
|
| Un—
|
| Stop sloppy rock & roll!
|
| Bop bop bop!
|
| YEAH! WHEEE!
|
| Now believe me when I tell you that my song is really true
|
| I want everyone to listen and believe
|
| It’s about some little people from a long time ago
|
| And all the things the neighbors didn’t know
|
|
|
| Early in the morning daddy Dinky went to work
|
| Selling lamps & chairs to San Ber’dino squares
|
| And I still remember mama with her apron & her pad
|
| Feeding all the boys at Ed’s Cafe
|
|
|
| Whizzing & pasting & pooting through the day
|
| (Ronnie helping Kenny helping burn his poots away)
|
| And all the while on a shelf in the shed
|
| Kenny’s little creatures on display
|
|
|
| Ronnie saves his numies on a window in his room
|
| (A marvel to be seen: dysentery green)
|
| While Kenny and his buddies had a game out in the back
|
| Let’s make the water turn black
|
|
|
| We see them after school in a world of their own
|
| (To some it might seem creepy what they do)
|
| The neighbors on the right sat & watched them every night
|
| (I bet you’d do the same if they was you)
|
|
|
| Whizzing & pasting & pooting through the day
|
| (Ronnie helping Kenny helping burn his poots away)
|
| And all the while on a shelf in the shed
|
| Kenny’s little creatures on display
|
|
|
| Ronnie’s in the Army now & Kenny’s taking pills
|
| Oh, how they yearn to see a bomber burn
|
| Color flashing, thunder crashing, dynamite machine
|
| Wait till the fire turns green
|
| Wait till the fire turns green
|
| Wait till the fire turns green
|
|
|
| [Dick Kunc] This would be a little bit of vocal teen-age heaven, right here on Earth!
|
| [Ronnie Williams, backwards] Dodn-do-do-dodn-dodn-dodn-dada
|
| The idiot bastard son:
|
| The father’s a Nazi in Congress today
|
| The mother’s a hooker somewhere in L.A.
|
|
|
| The idiot bastard son:
|
| Abandoned to perish in back of a car
|
| Kenny will stash him away in a jar ▶
|
| The idiot boy!
|
|
|
| [Jim Sherwood] I never won it because I was too small to start with
|
| [?] How, look out!
|
| [Jim Sherwood] I used to drink some bad stuff, wine, all kinds of wine! I would mix seven different varieties.
|
| [Bunk Gardner] Had the hots for […]
|
| [Jimmy Carl Black] Wah wah wah
|
| [Bunk Gardner?] Over by the […]
|
| [Jim Sherwood] Thunderbird wine. I don’t know but I chugged a fifth of White Port once and passed out one day (heh heh) and I drank a quart of beer just before that, and we were out riding around in the desert.
|
| [Bunk Gardner] Anyway…
|
|
|
| Try and imagine the window all covered in green ▶
|
| All the time he would spend
|
| At the church he’d attend
|
| Warming his pew
|
|
|
| Kenny will feed him & Ronnie will watch
|
| The child will thrive & grow
|
| And enter the world
|
| Of liars & cheaters & people like you
|
| Who smile & think you know
|
| What this is about
|
|
|
| You think you know everything, maybe so
|
| The song we sing, do you know?
|
| We’re listening
|
| The idiot boy!
|
|
|
| Try and imagine the window all covered in green
|
| All the time he would spend
|
| All the colors he’d blend
|
| Where are they now?
|
|
|
| [Gary Kellgren] Right now I have two hit records on the charts, but it has not made me any money. It has only brought me fame and glory, and a lot of work. Which I do really not care to tell.
|
| You’re a lonely little girl
|
| But your Mommy & your Daddy don’t care
|
| You’re a lonely little girl
|
|
|
| The things they say just hurt your heart
|
| It’s too late now for them to start
|
| To understand the way you feel
|
| The world for them is too unreal
|
| So you’re lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely little girl
|
|
|
ALL YOUR CHILDREN ARE POOR UNFORTUNATE VICTIMS OF SYSTEMS BEYOND THEIR CONTROL ▲
|
|
|
Where did Annie go when she went to town?
|
Who are all those creeps that she brings around?
|
|
|
A PLAGUE UPON YOUR IGNORANCE & THE GRAY DESPAIR OF YOUR UGLY LIFE
|
ALL YOUR CHILDREN ARE POOR UNFORTUNATE VICTIMS OF LIES
|
| There will come a time when everybody who is lonely will be free to sing & dance & love
|
| There will come a time when every evil that we know will be an evil that we can rise above
|
| Who cares if hair is long or short or sprayed or partly grayed? We know that hair ain’t where it’s at
|
| There will come a time when you won’t even be ashamed if you are fat
|
| WAH WAH WAH WAH
|
|
|
| La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
|
| A-a-ah!
|
| La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
|
| Weh uh
|
|
|
| Diddle-diddle-dee
|
| Diddle-diddle-dee
|
| Diddle-diddle-dee
|
| Diddle-diddle-dee
|
| Diddle-diddle-dee
|
| Diddle-diddle-dee
|
| Diddle-diddle-dee
|
| Diddle-diddle-dee
|
|
|
| La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
|
| WAH WAH WAH WAH
|
|
|
| There will come a time when everybody who is lonely will be free to sing & dance & love
|
| Dance and love
|
| There will come a time when every evil that we know will be an evil that we can rise above
|
| Rise above
|
| Who cares if you’re so poor you can’t afford to buy a pair of mod a go-go stretch-elastic pants?
|
| There will come a time when you can even take your clothes off when you dance
|
| What’s the ugliest part of your body?
|
| Darling, when I…
|
| What’s the ugliest part of your body?
|
| Darling, when I look in your eyes…
|
| Some say your nose
|
| Some say your toes
|
| My dearest, my darling, my… darling, darling
|
| But I think it’s your mind
|
| My darling
|
| I think it’s your mind
|
| The ugliest part of you, darling
|
| I think it’s your mind
|
| Your mind is ugly
|
| I think it’s your mind
|
| Your mind
|
| I think it’s your mind
|
| I think it’s your mind
|
| I think your mind is the ugliest part of your body
|
| Your body, your body, your body, your body
|
| I think your mind is the ugliest part of your body
|
| Your mind it’s ugly
|
| I think your mind is the ugliest part of your body
|
| Would you please leave my nose alone! ▶
|
| Your body, your body
|
| Let go of my nose, my nose, thank you!
|
| Your body, your body
|
| Do it again! Do it again!
|
|
|
| We are the other people
|
| We are the other people
|
| We are the other people
|
| You’re the other people too
|
| Found a way to get to you
|
|
|
| Do you think that I’m crazy? Out of my mind?
|
| Do you think that I creep in the night and sleep in a phone booth?
|
|
|
| Lemme take a minute & tell you my plan
|
| Lemme take a minute & tell who I am
|
| If it doesn’t show, think you better know I’m another person
|
|
|
| Do you think that my pants are too tight?
|
| Do you think that I’m creepy?
|
|
|
| Better look around before you say you don’t care
|
| Shut your fuckin’ mouth about the length of my hair
|
| How would you survive if you were alive, shitty little person?
|
|
|
| We are the other people
|
| We are the other people
|
| We are the other people
|
| You’re the other people too
|
| Found a way to get to you
|
|
|
| We are the other people
|
| We are the other people
|
| We are the other people
|
| You’re the other people too
|
| Found a way to get to you
|
|
|
| Do you think that I love you, stupid & blind?
|
| Do you think that I dream through the night of holding you near me?
|
|
|
| [Instrumental]
|
|
|
| Lemme take a minute & tell you my plan
|
| Lemme take a minute & tell who I am
|
| If it doesn’t show, think you better know I’m another person
|
|
|
| [Willy] I think that’s… probably one of the rarest Mothers albums too, you see…
|
| [FZ] Hard to get, you mean?
|
| [Willy] Yes, and you hardly ever see it, I just have…
|
| [FZ] Yeah, I think the rarest one is probably “Lumpy Gravy”
|
| [Other interviewer] I’ve… I’ve had that on order for four weeks and they sent in a copy of… of “We’re Only in It for the Money” because it says on the back of it: “Is this phase one of Lumpy Gravy?” And it won’t come in. It’s not around.
|
| [FZ] No, that’s a very rare album. That’s my favorite album, actually.
|
| [Other interviewer] How long did it take to put that all together?
|
| [FZ] “Lumpy Gravy” or…?
|
| [Other interviewer] “Lumpy Gravy”, yeah
|
| [FZ] “Lumpy Gravy” was recorded in uh… mm… say, February or March of ‘67, and wasn’t released until thirteen months later. The orchestral stuff was recorded in February-March, and then the rest of the spoken material was added, say, between October and… December ‘67, after we got back from Europe from our first tour.
|
|
|
| [Sandy Hurvitz] Well, somebody called me anyway and I… here I am
|
| [Spider Barbour?] I don’t wanna no fucking chick swinging…
|
| [Sandy Hurvitz] Here… Somebody called me and here I am and I’m gonna clean your piano, whether you like it or not, because it’s my job
|
| [John Kilgore?] She’s… She’s finished, she’s… We can’t
|
| [?] We’re gonna put her away
|
| [Sandy Hurvitz] Nobody… You’re not… Nobody’s putting me away
|
| [?] We gotta put her in the […]
|
| [Sandy Hurvitz] You’re not gonna put me away
|
| [John Kilgore?] How are we gonna do it?
|
| [Sandy Hurvitz] You can’t put me away. No one’s gonna put me away.
|
| [John Kilgore?] We gotta put her away… How are we gonna do it?
|
| [Sandy Hurvitz] Why do you think you are going to put me away? Well, you can’t.
|
| [John Kilgore?] What are we gonna do? Where are we gonna put her? Where are we gonna put the body?
|
| [Sandy Hurvitz] But… I’m always wrecked, you know. I’m really gonna be more wrecked, because of this motorcycle accident and… ‘cause you know what they do to you, and every— everyone will know that I’m really ruined, and I won’t be able to appear anywhere, you know.
|
| [?] Barry. Because…
|
| [?] Who’s Barry?
|
| [?] Barry!
|
| [?] Why should I be prejudiced against accordions?
|
| [John Kilgore] I’m gonna call the N, double A, AA
|
| [?] Who are they?
|
| [John Kilgore] The National Association for the Advancement of Accordions
|
|
|
| [David Silver] On the… On the “We’re…” On the “We’re Only in It for the Money” album you take a lot of swipes at the hippies, you know, you really…
|
| [FZ] Mm-hmm
|
| [David Silver] Showed… a disdain for their behavior. Uh… Wha— What was wrong, what was or what is wrong with the hippies, basically, do you think?
|
| [FZ] Well, I think that the… main thing that I objected to at the time was everybody was uh… so ready to accept Haight-Ashbury and the whole San Francisco hippy scene as the what’s happening of the universe and Flower Power and all the rest of that stuff which I did not think was really what was happening or what should happen, and I didn’t think that the people who were involved in it believed it, and uh… if they did believe it they were still hurtin’, because it’s… it was puny and it was, you know…
|
| [David Silver] Wha— what came through, Frank, was that, you know, you almost coined the term or if you didn’t coin the term “plastic people”, and you know…
|
| [FZ] “Plastic people” dates from before the “We’re Only in It for the Money” album
|
| [David Silver] Yeah. OK. Uh… You… The hippies seemed… Your attitude on that album seemed to be that the hippies were just as plastic, as one dimensional. That they were following, they were hurtin’ and they weren’t…
|
| [FZ] Think the hippies are probably just a hairier version of their parents in most of those cases because the minds that were lurking behind all that hair and beads and the rest of the San Francisco scene weren’t truly liberated at all. You know, they were really uh… they were just like Shriners.
|
| [David Silver] Yeah
|
| [FZ] You know, it was the same sort of thing happening. But they couldn’t see it, you know, because they felt: “Well, we look different than those other people, so I guess we are different”.
|
| [David Silver] Yeah
|
|
|
| [FZ] Hey, kids, let’s have a hootenanny!
|
| [Mothers] YEAH!
|
| [FZ] We’ll have a cheerleading too!
|
| [Mothers] YEAH!
|
| [?] A cheerlea—
|
| [FZ] Whoops! Woopsy daisy. OK. Alright, I’ll be the cheerleader!
|
|
|
| [Mothers] Nifty, spiffy, boss and tough
|
| Sure of that and got enough
|
|
|
| [FZ] You gotta go “Got ‘nough”, you say “Sure of that” and you say “Got ‘nough”
|
|
|
| [Mothers] Nifty, spiffy, boss and tough
|
| Sure of that
|
| Got ‘nough
|
|
|
| [FZ] One more time! One, two, one, two. Can you say “Sure of that” with him?
|
|
|
| One, two, one, two
|
|
|
| [Mothers] Nifty, spiffy, boss and tough
|
| Sure of that
|
| Got ‘nough?
|
|
|
| [FZ] OK. “We’ve got the team that’s on the beam”, here we go. One, two.
|
|
|
| [Mothers] We’ve got the team that’s on the beam
|
|
|
| [FZ] Tee-dee tee-dee tee-dee
|
|
|
| [Mothers] We’ve got the team that’s on the beam
|
| And really hep to the jive
|
|
|
| [FZ] Tee-tee tee-tee tee-tee tee
|
|
|
| [Mothers] We’ve got the team that’s on the beam
|
| And really hep to the jive
|
| Come on, pukers
|
| Skin ‘em alive!
|
| [FZ] Yum yum, eat ‘em up!
|
|
|
| [FZ] How about “Eat ‘em alive” instead of “Skin ‘em alive”? Alright, ready? Faster.
|
| One, two, one, two
|
|
|
| [Mothers] We’ve got the team that’s on the beam
|
| And really hep to the jive
|
| Come on, pukers
|
| Eat ‘em alive!
|
|
|
| [FZ] Really pronounced good. One, two, one, two.
|
|
|
| [Mothers] We’ve got the team that’s on the beam
|
| And really hep to the jive
|
| Come on, pukers
|
| Eat ‘em alive!
|
|
|
| [FZ] You know, how about, a big “YEAAAAH”, clapping, you know, like they do at the football game? Do we have a little whistle or something we can blow? It’s one of the best hootenannies I’ve been to. Now: “Lean to the left, lean to the right, stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight”, OK? Really little voice: “Lean to the left”, OK?
|
|
|
| [Mothers] Lean to the left
|
| Lean to the right
|
| Stand up, sit down
|
| Fight, fight, fight
|
|
|
| [FZ] YEAAAAH, team! Whether we get those guys on the football field we’ll tear ‘em up.
|
|
|
| You’re a lonely little girl
|
| But your Mommy & your Daddy don’t care
|
| You’re a lonely little girl
|
|
|
| The things they say just hurt your heart
|
| It’s too late now for them to start
|
| To understand the way you feel
|
| The world for them is too unreal
|
| So you’re lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely little girl
|
|
|
| There will come a time when everybody who is lonely will be free to sing & dance & love
|
| There will come a time when every evil that we know will be an evil that we can rise above
|
| Who cares if hair is long or short or sprayed or partly grayed? We know that hair ain’t where it’s at
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| There will come a time when you won’t even be ashamed if you are fat
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| WAH WAH WAH WAH
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| La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
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| A-a-ah!
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| Diddle-diddle-dee
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| Diddle-diddle-dee
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| Diddle-diddle-dee
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| Diddle-diddle-dee
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| Diddle-diddle-dee
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| Diddle-diddle-dee
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| Diddle-diddle-dee
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| WAH WAH WAH WAH
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| There will come a time when everybody who is lonely will be free to sing & dance & love
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| Dance and love
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| There will come a time when every evil that we know will be an evil that we can rise above
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| Rise above
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| Who cares if you’re so poor you can’t afford to buy a pair of mod a go-go stretch-elastic pants?
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| There will come a time when you can even take your clothes off when you dance
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 Design by Michael Mesker.jpg "(Front) Design by Michael Mesker")
Songs list
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Title origin
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