 Design by Joseph Carter.jpg "(Front) Design by Joseph Carter")
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Live at Kerrisdale Arena, Vancouver, Canada - August 25, 1968
Linked material:
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| Album notes by Gail Zappa
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| We are pleased here at UMRK and Vaulternative Records to announce a new series of audio entertainments. Among these are the more primitive audio documentary attempts to capture the essence of what was highly and improbably and even impossibly out there on the road in some of the worst audio terrain imaginable. Other less exciting and seriously mundane circumstances beyond control also contributed to these less than stellar audio nuggets but those were challenges of a different kind. In “You Can’t Do That on Stage Anymore”, our inspiration for this series, FZ wrote in the Volume 1 Notes:
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“Prior to purchasing the UMRK mobile studio, all ‘first class’ live recordings had to be done using rented equipment. This meant that high quality live recordings could only be obtained in major cities where professional gear was available (London or New York).
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The unfortunate aspect of this tradition is that if anybody in the band became ill on the recording day, the results of that handicapped performance wound up on tape… and, conversely, the fantastic performances in the small towns and villages survive only on 2-track or 4-track ‘guerilla recordings’!”
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| This is one of those “guerilla recordings”. And it is out there. Certainly in the minds and hearts of some of the earliest and/or most rabid fans. When I first heard this recording - and every time since, ♫ “Octandre” breaks my heart. It is in a very particular way, the first and last music of FZ’s life. Although EV never heard FZ’s performance I am sure he would have found it astonishing. And this tape reminded me that FZ played this - when and wherever possible - introducing it to his audiences everywhere - and sometimes making contact of the 5th kind. I wish that each and everyone of you will seek it out and hear it for yourself - on other recordings by the Composer though I am sure even today no one out there will ever hear this a many times as FZ did. It is not just that Varèse’s music “struck a chord in his heart” from first encounter - it was never alien to Frank in any way - it was always his Observatory at the top of the mountain on his map of the Universe.
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| [FZ] … and then we’ll proceed to make an earnest attempt to rock out for you, here at the local electric ice box.
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| It would be a couple of minutes, just relax.
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| [Instrumental]
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| I know you guys really like hootenannies because it’s primitive. Come on, let’s hear it now.
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| Really swell. Here’s another one!
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| You got that?
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| No, the other one.
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| Let’s get it together so we can have a really boss choral effect. Here we go.
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| You want to try that other one? Here’s the signal for the other one.
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| Boy, are your reflexes slow! What are you guys smoking?
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| [Instrumental]
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| [FZ] Help, I’m a rock
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| Help, I’m a rock
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| Help, I’m a rock
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| Help, I’m a rock
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| Oh, it’s a drag being a rock
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| I wish I was anything but a rock
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| I’d even like to be a policeman
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| HELP, I’M A COP!
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| HELP, I’M A COP!
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| HELP, I’M A COP!
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| HELP, I’M A COP!
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| You know, as a matter of fact it’s a drag being a cop
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| I think I’d rather be the mayor
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| And offer the hippies ten dollars to cut their hair
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| Ten dollars to any hippie who’ll cut his hair right here on stage tonight. Do we have any desperate hippies who wanna take it off?
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| Well, that’s good. You just keep growing your hair till it gets down to your buns. Just don’t try to get a job with IBM or one of the state agencies with long hair because they just don’t go for it. It’s unsanitary, it’s unclean, it means that you probably have leftist tendencies. It means that you’re probably a whole bunch of things that the establishment doesn’t want you to be. It means that you’re a potential danger to every old person in your country. Boy, you better watch out if you have long hair.
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| Help, I’m a hair
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| Help, I’m a hair
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| Help, I’m a hair
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| Help, I’m a hair
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| Help, I’m a…
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| [Instrumental]
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| [FZ] Mister America, walk on by
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| Your schools that do not teach
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| Mister America, walk on by
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| The minds that won’t be reached
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| Mister America, try to hide
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| The emptiness that’s you inside
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| When once you find that the way you lied
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| And all those corny tricks you tried
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| Will not forestall the rising tide
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| Of hungry freaks, daddy
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| They won’t go for no more
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| Great midwestern hardware store
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| Philosophy that turns away
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| From those who aren’t afraid to say
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| What’s on their minds
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| (The left-behinds OF THE GREAT SOCIETY)
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| Waah!
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| [Instrumental]
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| Hungry freaks, daddy
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| [Instrumental]
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| Mister America, walk on by
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| Your supermarket dream
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| Mister America, walk on by
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| The liquor store supreme
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| Mister America, try to hide
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| The product of your savage pride
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| The useful minds that it denied
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| The day you shrugged and stepped aside
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| You saw their clothes and then you cried:
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| “Those hungry freaks!”, daddy
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| They won’t go for no more
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| Great midwestern hardware store
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| Philosophy that turns away
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| From those who aren’t afraid to say
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| What’s on their minds
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| (The left-behinds of the Great Society)
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| Thank you very much
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| [FZ] We’d like to perform for you now a tune known to the civilized world as “The Orange County lumber truck”, which in reality is nothing more than a cheesy bandstand medley of instrumental themes from some of our recent smash flop recordings.
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| Some of the material presented instrumentally for the first time in Vancouver, B.C., will be heard: “Let’s make the water turn black”, “Harry, you’re a beast”, some other stuff you won’t recognize, some of the music from “Lumpy Gravy”, and then some more stuff you won’t recognize. And then we’ll stop, and you’ll clap, and I’ll talk, and we’ll play, and it’ll go on over again for about another hour and a half or something like that.
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| (You got it?)
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| [Instrumental]
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| Work out, baby
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| [Bunk Gardner] I’d like to tell you about the first time I went down to take some piano lessons from the lady on the corner, her name was… Elmira Snodgrass. That was really her name.
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| I was seven years old and my mother took me down, introduced me. She got her little book of Stars out, you know, you get a BLUE STAR if you play your lesson with no mistakes. And she… oh, she was really into it.
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| So the first week I went down there uh… it really didn’t mean so much to me but I thought her name was so funny that I had to keep commenting on it.
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| And uh… she said: “Johnny, you’re gonna have to straighten up a little there if we’re gonna get along”. So uh… I think I got a Red Elephant that week. I didn’t do too well.
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| So uh… I straightened up next week and uh… I forget what the tune was, but I tore it up. No mistakes at all. But uh… my posture was very poor. I had very poor posture so uh… that week I got uh… I think it was a Blue Horse. And uh… she said I was doing much better.
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| Nice! So by the time the third week I had started to practice by then, I was getting serious and I…
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| [Roy Estrada] Buns
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| [Bunk Gardner] I went back for my… my lesson and she said: “I hope you get a Blue Star this weekend, Johnny”. So I played my lesson and uh… I got my Blue Star and uh… she said: “You’ll have to do better than that when […]”
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| [Roy Estrada] I always wondered what made you sleepy. I thought it was buns. […] I don’t know. Hamburgers, cheese. Buns. I think it’s probably the buns. I thought it was the cheese at one time, I don’t know. Weasely cheese. Could have been the pickles or something… buns. It had to be the buns.
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| [Bunk Gardner] She said […]. So I started bringing in four books.
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| [Jim Sherwood] So I said […]
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| [Roy Estrada] Buns! Round buns, long buns. I don’t know, hot dog buns, or something. It must have been […]. No, it had to be the buns, I guess. I don’t know. It could be the mustard. But then again…
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| [Bunk Gardner] And she said: “John, I don’t think there’s any more that I can teach you”. So I started taking lessons from her son, whose name was Freddie Snodgrass. […] he’s a pretty good piano player, by the way. […]
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| [Roy Estrada] Buns! That’s all I can see. BUNS! BUNS! […]
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| [Bunk Gardner] I’d like to play jazz. You couldn’t get very seriously. I told her I wanted to play jazz. So she said: “Take that jazz and stick it under a rock!” So I had to forget about jazz. […] So I jumped into the classics.
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| My first tune was uh… Beethoven’s…
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| [Bunk Gardner] My first tune was uh… Beethoven’s…
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| [Roy Estrada] […] All right […]
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| [FZ] Well, I’m about to get sick from watchin’ my TV
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| Been checkin’ out the buns until my eyeballs fail to see
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| I mean to say that every day is just another rotten mess
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| And when it’s gonna change, my friend, is anybody’s guess
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| So I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’, hopin’ for the best
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| Even think I’ll go to prayin’ every time I hear ‘em sayin’
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| That there’s no way to delay that trouble comin’ every day
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| No way to delay that trouble comin’ every day
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| You know we got to sit around at home and watch this thing begin
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| But I bet there won’t be many live to see it really end
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| ‘Cause the fire in the street ain’t like the fire in the heart
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| And in the eyes of all these people, don’t you know that this could start
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| On any street in any town in any state if any clown
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| Decides that now’s the time to fight for some ideal he thinks is right
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| And if a million more agree there ain’t no Great Society
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| As it applies to you and me and our country isn’t free
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| And the law refuses to see, if all that you can ever be
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| Is just a lousy janitor unless your uncle owns a store
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| You know that five in every four just won’t amount to nothin’ more
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| Gonna watch the rats go across the floor and make up songs about being poor
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| Blow your harmonica, son!
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| [Instrumental]
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| Thank you very much
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| [FZ] OK. We’re gonna do another brief re-tuning. I’ve got some very old strings on this guitar and it’s beginning to sound really cruddy to me. Then we’re going to play for you a piece of music that will be on an album in November, called “No commercial potential” ▶.
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| And, the name of this piece of music is “Shortly”, a little suite for electric combo, in several movements.
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| You may count the movements if you wish. Do not clap between movements.
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| [Instrumental]
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| [FZ] “Oh, in the sky”
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| [Roy Estrada] Oh, in the sky
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| Oh, in the sky
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| Oh, in the sky
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| Oh, in the sky
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| Oh, in the sky
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| Oh, in the sky
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| In the sky
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| In the sky
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| Oh, in the sky
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| Oh, in the sky
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| Ah ah ah
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| Oh, in the sky
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| Oh, in the sky
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| Oh, in the sky
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| Hey hey hey
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| Woh, night owl
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| Woh, night owl
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| Woh, night owl
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| Woh, night owl
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| Woh, night owl
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| Woh, night owl
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| Woh, night owl
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| Yeah yeah
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| Oh oh oh oh oh!
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| Oh, in the sky
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| Ah ah ah
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| Ah ah ah
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| [FZ] Good night! And thank you very much.
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| [Audience] More! More! More! More! More!
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| [FZ] OK, OK
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| [FZ] We’ll play you our special number. This is the number we always play whe— when people ask us to play more. Because we know that after we play this they couldn’t possibly ever want to hear us again.
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| Four years ago in Canada, I think it was in Toronto, there was a thing that happened with the symphony orchestra where there was an American composer named Edgard Varèse, who was quite a spiffy composer. The Americans didn’t give a shit about him, you know, ‘cause he was writing stuff that was too weird for their ears.
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| But it just so happened he was about 80 years old, and when composers get that old certain segments of the musical population begin to get a conscience about the fact that they never played this man’s music, you know? And he was really writing some heavy stuff but nobody wanted to hear it.
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| So Canada decided: “Well, we’re a very cultural nation. We will have a performance of this man’s music”. So they had this Varèse concert. And they bring Mr. Varèse up, you know, doddering old man, here he is, been writing for a long time. And hardly ever gets to hear any of his music and Canada was gonna do him a favor and they’re gonna play some of his tunes for him.
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| So they played this one piece that he wrote called ♫ “Déserts”, which is a… composition for orchestra, with interpolations of electronic tape, you know, pre-recorded sounds.
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| And some of the great Canadian musicians were there, playing in the orchestra. And they hated the music, and they played it really bad. And when the tape sections came in, the musicians on stage sat there and laughed all the way through it. And then the audience started laughing.
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| And at the end of the performance Varèse stood up and applauded for the orchestra.
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| We’re going to play a piece of music that was written by Edgard Varèse, and we’re going to ruin it for you.
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| But you’ll be able to identify with it anyway.
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| It consists of the first ten bars or so of a woodwind piece that he wrote called ♫ “Octandre”.
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| [Instrumental]
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| [FZ] Good night
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| [Audience] More! More! More!
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| [Announcer] The Mothers of Invention!
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| [Audience] More! More! More! More! More! More! More! More!
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| [FZ] Hold it. Can we play another one? Is it gonna… Will that make a mess?
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| [Guy in the audience] Suzy Creamcheese! ▶
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| [FZ] I must say this is a rather unprecedented response for the bullshit that we do, so sit down. We’ll do some more if you like it.
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| [FZ] We’d like to play for you “The legend of King Kong”.
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| Story about a large, electric gorilla marooned… marooned on an island somewhere in the middle of the ocean, leading a happy, banana-fed existence, until one day some very shrewd Americans discover that he’s happening on a cosmic giant gorilla level on the island, and they figure that - seeing as how they’re smart, and shrewd, and American businessmen, you know, unequaled in the world of creative finance, you know how they are - they’re gonna get themselves together on a boat and go to the place where the gorilla is and they’re gonna snatch him right up. So they do, they go out there and they catch the gorilla, who is obviously not very thrilled about it, and they knock him out, stick him on the boat, bring him back to the United States, make a lot of money off of him, then they kill him.
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| The gong, symbolic of all that is jungly and smells of gorilla.
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| Lewd, pulsating jungle rhythms! ▶
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| Hot sweaty thrills among bizarre flora and fauna.
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| [Instrumental]
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| [FZ] We’d like to thank you very much for coming down here tonight. Surprised to see that you appear to like what we do. That’s nice. It’s been wonderful working for you.
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| Good night!
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| [Announcer] The Mothers of Invention, thank you
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Songs list
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Title origin
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Listen original song on YouTube
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