Frank-n-Me, or Underground Freak Out Music

I've long since re-name this blog Boomer Rock. But when I first created it, I had intended to write about Frank Zappa and nothing but Frank Zappa. Surely, you've noticed my list of the top 25 artists of the record, on which Frank Zappa sits proudly at #1. Well, I'm finally getting around to my original purpose, which is not only to write about Frank. It is also to digitize my Zappa vinyl collection, at least that part of it that I haven't already duplicated on CD.

Here without further ado or fanfare are the FZ vinyl records that I have in my collection and have never upgraded to CD, if you'll pardon the expression "upgrade." I should simply say modernize, but what the hell. They are:

Mothermania (1968)

Uncle Meat (1969)

Burnt Weenie Sandwich (1969)

200 Motels (1971)

Just Another Band from L.A. (1972)

Waka/Jawaka•Hot Rats (1972)

Roxy and Elsewhere (1974)

Bongo Fury (1975)

Zoot Allures (1976)

Tinsel Town Rebellion (1981)

Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar (1981)

Ship Arriving Too Late to Save A Drowning Witch (1982)

The Man from Utopia (1983)

Them or Us (1984)

Jazz from Hell (1986)

In truth, these aren't my favorite FZ recordings. My faves have been "modernized" and, frankly (pardoning the expression), I'm surprised at how much of Zappa's catalog has been "modernized" to CD. So, these are records I haven't listened to for anywhere from 15 to 30 years, and I'm looking forward to it. I expect to discover some "new" (for me) Zappa chestnuts in the process.

But while I'm here, let me tell you about my earliest introduction to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. My friends and bandmates Ron and Charlie loaned me We're Only In It for the Money. This would have been my senior year in high school. My friend Claude had just asked me to join his band, The Situation. Claude played rhythm guitar and sang. Dave played bass. Ron was the drummer, and Charlie was lead guitar. Claude and Dave were school friends from Faribault, while Ron and Charlie lived some 25 miles away in New Prague. Actually, I'd be pretty sure it was Ron who loaned me the record. He had one friend in particular who cultivated the wild man/misfit image, though it's also true that there were some folks in that crowd who were genuinely wild and misfitted to polite society.

So, anyway, here is this record and, first of all, on the cover you've got the band in drag. This is the famous Sgt. Pepper's parody with various and sundry famous faces pasted, collage-like, into the chaotic mob scene. But nobody noticed that, there was just this scuzzy looking group of ugly guys in the front row in disgusting drag.

And, then, on the inside--I mean, listening to the music and reading along with the lyrics--it just got more and more inflammatory...more and more imperative not to let your parents hear what you were listening to. "Ever wonder why your daughter looked so sad? It's such a drag to have to love a plastic mom and dad." "Shut your fucking mouth about the length of my hair/How could you survive if you were alive, shitty little person." "Concentration Moon/Over the camp in the valley...American way, threatened by us/drag a few creeps away in a bus."

Holy shit. And, today, 41 years later, all a person can come up with to say in the face of We're Only In It for the Money, all's I can come up with is still just, Holy shit. And, to think, he used to be such a nice boy.

My re-introduction to Frank and the Mothers came a year or a year-and-a-half later, when Terry brought this LP over to the house where I lived with a bunch of guys. That was the year when six of us enrolled in school full-time--for probably about 15 credits each, on average--and by the end of the first semester we had collectively completed the requirements for maybe six of them. Six credits out of a possible 90. You could say we partied pretty hard.

Anyway, Mothermania is a greatest hits type record put together by Verve Records after Frank had left the label. Frank hated the label and he hated this record. But, seriously, it's a great, great collection. The producers did Frank a favor by just focusing in on the songs and getting rid of all of the usual flotsam and jetsam with which Frank surrounded them. Sure, the songs are just part of Frank's oeuvre, but they're an important part and here they really shone. In this new and different setting, Frank's music seemed just a little less mind-blowing, but it seemed a lot funnier. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in my life.

After that, I was hooked, and I started buying Frank's records, mostly used. So a lot of them are pretty beat to shit. I hope they play okay.

And, just for the record, Underground Freak Out Music is a vamp that the Mothers played in Miami in 1969 and which is memorialized on You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 5.