Joe's Menage
Released posthumously by the Zappa Family Trust, this shortish (50 minute) album documents a college gig with Zappa's Fall 1975 touring band. Basically the personnel is the same as on FZ:OZ, with the addition of Norma Bell on alto saxophone and vocals. The music is typical mid-1970s Zappa, and emphasizes Zappa's more straight-ahead, frat-boy pleasing selections that feature comedic lyrics. There's lots of improvisation, though of the rock/R&B orientation, rather than the rhythmically complex vehicles that Zappa used in the early 70s for musicians of the caliber of Ruth Underwood and Jean-Luc Ponty.
The longest, and most interesting, track is Chunga's Revenge, which Zappa typically programmed toward the end of the concert as a launching pad for solo improvisations. After an ensemble intro, we hear Norma Bell sing, then play an R&B-influenced solo on alto saxophone fed through an Echoplex (or similar) device. Her presence on this track provides the album with its novelty value: this is her first recorded presence in the official Zappa canon. Not too many female vocalists stayed with Zappa long, and I can't say I blame them, given his frequently misogynist lyrics. Though in Bell's case, she was allegedly asked to leave in December 1975 when her drug use got her on Zappa's bad side (he was notoriously opposed to band members taking illegal drugs while on tour, notwithstanding his own addictions to nicotine and caffeine), which would explain her absence from FZ:OZ. This is really the only track where you hear her in the foreground. Her singing and playing is capable, if not remarkable. And like lots of studio saxophonists, her solo emphasizes the sort of rapid tremolos in the middle register that sound impressive to listeners unfamiliar with left hand trill keys. But the contrast with the ubiquitous Zappa male vocal solists is welcome. Next up is Andre Lewis, introduced by Zappa as playing a melodica, but it's not the simple keyboarded mouth organ that you see in music stores, but an adapted monophonic synthesizer controller (kind of a precursor to MIDI wind controllers like the Yamaha WX7). Zappa comps Lewis with mixed fourth chords, then says "I will now play a rhythm guitar solo". Sure enough, the solo that follows is strummed and chordal, quite different from his usual single-line melodic solos. The improv ends with a Bozzio drum solo, which (as on the corresponding track from FZ:OZ) quickly leaves behind most traces of the original meter and tempo. An interesting detail is the way he largely drops the skin instruments at the end, culminating the solo with an emphasis on metal instruments (sounds like suspended cymbals and brake drums to me).
Zappa's bands always combined musicians from pretty eclectic backgrounds, and this lineup has three black musicians and a Latino. Only Zappa and Bozzio qualify as "white white". Zappa is to be congratulated for consistently defying the racial segregation that was the norm for pop groups until the 1980s.
I'm not sure how to rate this album. It's probably in the middle tier of the official Zappa releases, perhaps worth 3½ stars. It's more commercial sounding than the classic Mothers Of Invention albums, or Zappa's best bands of the early 1970s (e.g., You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore - Vol. 2), but it's not as commercial as, say, the 1988 tour group. I've enjoyed it through three listens, but only the most diehard Zappa fans (or Norma Bell fans) are likely to want to pay full price for it.
The longest, and most interesting, track is Chunga's Revenge, which Zappa typically programmed toward the end of the concert as a launching pad for solo improvisations. After an ensemble intro, we hear Norma Bell sing, then play an R&B-influenced solo on alto saxophone fed through an Echoplex (or similar) device. Her presence on this track provides the album with its novelty value: this is her first recorded presence in the official Zappa canon. Not too many female vocalists stayed with Zappa long, and I can't say I blame them, given his frequently misogynist lyrics. Though in Bell's case, she was allegedly asked to leave in December 1975 when her drug use got her on Zappa's bad side (he was notoriously opposed to band members taking illegal drugs while on tour, notwithstanding his own addictions to nicotine and caffeine), which would explain her absence from FZ:OZ. This is really the only track where you hear her in the foreground. Her singing and playing is capable, if not remarkable. And like lots of studio saxophonists, her solo emphasizes the sort of rapid tremolos in the middle register that sound impressive to listeners unfamiliar with left hand trill keys. But the contrast with the ubiquitous Zappa male vocal solists is welcome. Next up is Andre Lewis, introduced by Zappa as playing a melodica, but it's not the simple keyboarded mouth organ that you see in music stores, but an adapted monophonic synthesizer controller (kind of a precursor to MIDI wind controllers like the Yamaha WX7). Zappa comps Lewis with mixed fourth chords, then says "I will now play a rhythm guitar solo". Sure enough, the solo that follows is strummed and chordal, quite different from his usual single-line melodic solos. The improv ends with a Bozzio drum solo, which (as on the corresponding track from FZ:OZ) quickly leaves behind most traces of the original meter and tempo. An interesting detail is the way he largely drops the skin instruments at the end, culminating the solo with an emphasis on metal instruments (sounds like suspended cymbals and brake drums to me).
Zappa's bands always combined musicians from pretty eclectic backgrounds, and this lineup has three black musicians and a Latino. Only Zappa and Bozzio qualify as "white white". Zappa is to be congratulated for consistently defying the racial segregation that was the norm for pop groups until the 1980s.
I'm not sure how to rate this album. It's probably in the middle tier of the official Zappa releases, perhaps worth 3½ stars. It's more commercial sounding than the classic Mothers Of Invention albums, or Zappa's best bands of the early 1970s (e.g., You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore - Vol. 2), but it's not as commercial as, say, the 1988 tour group. I've enjoyed it through three listens, but only the most diehard Zappa fans (or Norma Bell fans) are likely to want to pay full price for it.
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