Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Zappa, Frank
Label: Rykodisc Records
Release: 1969
Rating: 5/5
“Uncle Meat” is the peak of Frank’s satirical avant-garde experiments with the first incarnation of his backing band The Mothers Of Invention, which he disbanded only a few months after this album came out. Most of the material on the album was created for the long-postponed film of the same name, made under the baton of Frank and his The Mothers Of Invention, which came out later than originally planned because of money troubles. The “Uncle Meat” film wasn’t officially released, and straight to video at that, until 1987. As you’d expect from Mr. Francesco, whose weird imagination and bizarre humor knew no bounds, it’s a pretty bizarre piece of footage, starring members of The Mothers Of Invention and their acquaintances. Since I haven’t gotten around to watching the film yet, I can’t report much more about what’s in it.
“Uncle Meat” is also a sort of quasi-conceptual album (like the vast majority of Frank’s albums), though its concept has nothing to do with the film of the same name, since it tells the story of Uncle “Meat”, a mad scientist who wants to rule the universe together with his Mexican slave Bimbo, through an army of mutants he builds in his laboratory. The bizarre story is about the moment Uncle Meat and Bimbo decide to take personal revenge after being fired from a government military base for guided-missile launches. After stealing most of the handy equipment lying around the launch site, plus a few mystical recipes from old books, they set off on their vengeful rampage. Disguised as groupies, they end up in some bar, where they draw attention and lure most of the patrons back to their laboratory. There Uncle Meat injects them with a special serum and, through a special device, implants them with something that lets him impose his will on them, under the pretense that “their spiritual horizons will be expanded”. After creating an obedient army of mutants, Uncle Meat drinks a special potion that’s supposed to make him immortal. The mutant army then sets off on a triumphant march through the city, spreading panic among its inhabitants, and a giant tentacled monster shows up on the scene too. Meanwhile Uncle Meat uses special sound effects to hypnotize people so they start behaving in the weirdest way and dancing strange, lewd dances. The story then (as expected) drifts into extremely bizarre, totally absurd waters, describing how the mad scientist experiments on plants that, thanks to his use of certain sounds, start growing out of control. Uncle Meat also shows up as a side character in the concept for the album “The Grand Wazoo” (1973).
On “Uncle Meat” Frank once again played around with elements of musique concrete, jazz fusion, orchestral music and experimental rock. He also threw in bits of film dialogue, although it’s mostly an instrumental album. In places Frank had already visibly started turning toward jazz and classical music, which was the next step in his musical career after “Uncle Meat” came out. When it comes to absurd motifs, bizarre sounds, social satire, parodies of rock ‘n’ roll and doo-wop, and spoken dialogue (mostly from the film footage), “Uncle Meat” is without a doubt one of Frank’s most avant-garde albums ever. It’s certainly not among his most accessible records, but it’s definitely one of those that reward the listener the most. The sections that sound like a whole orchestra is playing on them were recorded using the then-revolutionary technique of sequential overdubbing. Where it sounds like trumpets are playing, it’s actually clarinets that were played and deliberately sped up through a special sound effect. Other special sound effects were played through electric organs. In terms of special sound effects and different recording techniques, the album was pretty revolutionary for its time. The closing composition “King Kong”, for example, was played and recorded in six different ways. Besides the standard lineup of The Mothers Of Invetinon (that is, besides Frank on guitar, vocals and percussion, there’s singer Ray Collins, drummer Jimmy Carl Black, bassist Roy Estrada, keyboardist Don Preston, drummer Billy Mundi, saxophonist Bunk Gardner and singer/humorist Motorhead Sherwood) there’s also keyboardist/saxophonist Ian Underwood, who soon became Frank’s main favorite and kept him around for his future musical projects for a long time. In a monologue in the form of a personal introduction, the legendary British drummer Aynsley Dunbar, a future member of Frank’s band, also makes a quick first appearance, though he doesn’t contribute any instrumental services here yet.
Most of the lyrics and spoken dialogue are social satire of the typical everyday life of spoiled Californian teenagers who want to become famous and important (members of some fictional trendy rock band, groupies, and so on). Accordingly there’s plenty of typical Zappa-style bizarre toilet humor, while the political satire is only a sample this time, among it a brilliant parody of the American anthem. Mostly it’s also burlesque dialogue between band members, which will rarely be funny to anyone after more than two listens, though for some people it will instantly set off uncontrollable salvos of laughter. Of course, from track to track the voice of Suzy Creamcheese chimes in again and ties it all together, Frank’s favorite fictional character, who represents the failed and pathetic Mormon groupie and singer. This is her last “guest appearance” on any of Frank’s studio albums. In between, Frank and his band as usual deliberately play the part of incomprehensible weirdos and outcasts from the fringe of American society. The original release was only a single LP, while the CD edition expanded it with more than 35 minutes of footage from the film and the off-the-wall track “Tengo Na Minchia Tanta” (which means “I have a big dick” in Italian), recorded in a completely different period. Some Frank devotees see this change as almost sacrilege against the original release, while the only thing that bugs me is the overlong stretch of film dialogue, which is funny only until you’ve heard it more than three times, and then it slowly starts to grate.
The album opens with “Uncle Meat”, its basic instrumental theme, an excellent jazzy improvisation on Frank’s vibraphone and drums, followed by a psychedelic motif on guitar. After the rustling of a special effect, the voice of Suzy Creamcheese (“The Voice Of Cheese”) chimes in, this time played by Pamela Zarubica (quite likely one of Frank’s groupies). Suzy greets “teenage America and complains that she didn’t end up becoming famous, didn’t even make it as a groupie, and that she blew it in the end when she went to Europe too, so she came back to her mom instead”. In between, through a special effect, “burping” and “growling” can be heard as the fitting arguments backing up the whining Suzy. “Nine Types Of Industrial Polution” is a longer avant-garde instrumental with plenty of jazz elements. It features extensive bluesy improvisations by Frank on guitar and a sea of different percussion creating a totally dissonant rhythm. It’s the first piece on the album made with the overdubbing technique, and also one of the first in Frank’s output where, among other things, he presents himself as an excellent guitarist. The short instrumental “Zolar Czakl” is a perfect avant-garde freakout that would also fit very well as music for some psychedelic cartoon. “Dog Breath, In The Year Of The Plague” (here Frank, in his typical comic way, aims at the year 1348, when the first major outbreak of plague hit Europe, and at the smell coming off the infected) is one of the most off-the-wall experiments on the whole album (and there’s no shortage of those), since its middle section contains a whopping 40 (!) tracks, crammed in with the previously mentioned overdubbing technique. “Dog Breath” is a veritable avant-garde goulash of surf rock, jazz, classical and psychedelia, alternating between the vibe of sunny Hawaiian beaches and psychedelic horror. The vocal melody is especially grotesque, since at one point, when it’s pushed through a special effect, it sounds like the melodramatic yelping of a chihuahua. The psychedelic-jazzy ending on the woodwinds is finger-licking good.
“The Legend Of The Golden Arches” continues the comic psychedelic-jazz orchestral motifs with excellent playing on woodwinds and vibraphone and a rhythm line that would fit some cartoon with that nutty Daffy Duck from Looney Tunes, if it didn’t later turn almost into some Balkan “gypsy dance” melody. After the “snoring” and laughter comes a totally unexpected twist and the composition drifts into fully psychedelic spheres, where piano and woodwinds play the lead. At the end the Mormon floozy Suzy Creamcheese chimes in once more, complaining about the sound system during a Mothers concert. Next comes a live version of “Louie Louie” (originally by Richard Berry), one of Frank’s favorite parodies of some rock ‘n’ roll classic, which he kept playing at his shows for years. This version, with its goofy saxophone improvisation, was recorded live at London’s Royal Albert Hall. On “The Dog Breath Vibrations”, which is more than obviously an instrumental parody of the Beach Boys and their “The Good Vibrations”, the main humorous surf-rock motif from “Dog Breath, In The Year Of Plague” returns in an altered, much jazzier version (with more emphasis on guitar and keyboards). “Sleeping in a Jar” is a sort of burlesque lullaby with a psychedelic melody and deliberately grimacing vocals. On “Our Bizarre Relationship” Suzy tells of her groupie experiences, waking up in the morning next to women she doesn’t know, and goes on about the IQ percentage of one of her employers, which is supposedly at peanut level. “The Uncle Meat Variations”, as its title says, contains various variations on the main title theme. They’re mostly absurd but masterful jazz and symphonic improvisations that wonderfully conjure up the conceptual atmosphere of the aforementioned mad scientist in the middle of his bizarre experiments. Besides excellent orchestral motifs led by off-the-wall percussion, there are also some extremely bizarre vocals, and the whole thing wraps up with a bluesy solo on guitar and Hammond organ.
“Electric Aunt Jemima” is one of the most grotesque humoresques, featuring “mouse” vocals manipulated through an effect and a surf-rock accompaniment. It would fit great in some grotesque cartoon comedy. “Prelude To King King” is a sort of warm-up for “King Kong”, the central instrumental piece of the album. It’s an excellent jazz fusion instrumental with great, cheekily witty woodwind arrangements and “shamanic” percussion. “God Bless America” is a deliciously juicy parody of the American anthem, recorded during a gig at the club Whisky A Go Go. While Underwood plays a totally out-of-tune melody on sax over circus-like drum hits, Frank bellows the main lines of the aforementioned anthem in a grotesque way. On “A Pound For a Brown On the Bus” a burlesque psychedelic melody on woodwinds, drums and guitar appears once more, similar to the one from “Dog Breath”, which would fit some off-the-wall cartoon starring a rabbit or a duck. On “Ian Underwood Whips It Out”, recorded during a gig in Copenhagen, the then-new member, multi-instrumentalist Ian Underwood, gets introduced, who soon after his audition became Frank’s main favorite. In between you can also hear an enthusiastic “wowie-zowie” from Suzy Creamcheese, since next to the other caricatures from Frank’s band, Ian was a real “hunk”. After this short introduction of how Ian became a member of Frank’s band comes an excellent jazz improvisation with some proper solo masturbation by Ian on sax. The psychedelic “Mr. Green Genes” is one of the most successful burlesques on the album, with orchestral arrangements, a funeral-procession rhythm, vibraphone, a witty vocal melody and a pompous ending.
“We Can Shoot You” is a perfect avant-garde piece of lunacy with absurd percussion sounds, crazy sax improvisation and the use of a kazoo. “If We’d All Been Living In California” features a dialogue between members of The Mothers Of Invetion, in which they complain about money troubles and about literally starving. “The Air” is another fairly successful doo-wop parody with burlesque-sentimental vocals. Obviously, after the album “Cruising With Ruben And The Jets” (1968), Frank hadn’t had enough of making fun of the music of his youth, which he played with his first bands. The excellent jazz rock fusion instrumental “Project X” is without a doubt one of the best pieces on the album. Among its main strengths are a subtle guitar melody (quite unusual for Frank) and wacky improvisations on percussion, vibraphone and woodwinds. After a time change it morphs into a theme from a psychedelic cartoon. Frank couldn’t resist this strange love for absurd psychedelic-cartoon motifs for years to come. “Cruising Fo The Burgers” is another psychedelic burlesque with wacky vocal melodies and a satire of typical American teenage everyday life. The ending brings an extremely cheeky “cowboy” motif.
On the second CD the album continues with an almost 40-minute (!) chunk of tape from the “Uncle Meat” film. It’s worth listening to, and laughing at, three times at most, and then it’s not that fun anymore. It’s mostly pretty absurd bumbling from members of The Mothers Of Invention, some of their friends and groupies, with all sorts of grotesque sounds in between, like film tape being wound, an electric razor buzzing, lip smacking and so on. In between you hear all kinds of nonsense, from drummer Jimmy Carl Black whining with a deliberate Spanish accent and a few words of Spanish, to imitations of chickens and “farting” sounds, hamburger gorging, showering, a vibrator, and a heap of more or less juicy jokes about chickens, presidents and monsters. One of the most bizarre moments comes when the actress starts confessing her sexual fantasies about toilets and monsters, while the sounds of her sexual activity can be heard in the background. The peak of the burlesque comes when this oddball woman (a groupie?), who, by the way, is obviously very greedy for hamburgers, says a few pretty bizarre things about the aforementioned legendary British drummer Aynsley Dunbar, the future member of Frank’s band. He answers the provocation in a typically British, sarcastic way. At the end you can also hear an extremely absurd monologue with an Italian accent. In short, a perfect film collage of extreme bizarreness, and I’d rather not even imagine how bizarre the film itself must be. Then again, it would be completely off to expect anything else from Frank and his “hungry freaks” crew. After this theater of the absurd, which even needed a double release, there’s finally some room for music again.
Next comes the aforementioned avant-garde hard rocker “Tengo Na Minchia Tanta” (which means “I have a big dick” in Italian), recorded in a completely different period, which is more than obvious from the heavily distorted guitar and the sound of the keyboards. It features deliberately absurd whining vocals in Italian with plenty of lewd words. Then comes another shorter excerpt from the film, which thankfully runs less than four minutes this time and again features the whining of that spoiled airhead and a few other women who end up having orgasms (this was by no means the last of Frank’s “excesses” of this kind). Next to Frank, some Borat is truly just a schoolboy when it comes to bizarreness. For the grand finale, there are six different versions of the excellent jazz rock fusion instrumental “King Kong”, certainly the best-known piece on the album, which a few years later was covered by, among others, the lesser-known British art rockers Babe Ruth. The most interesting thing is how nicely each of them flows into the next. The first version was recorded in the studio by The Mothers Of Invention, the second was interpreted in his own way by Dom De Wild, in the third Motorhead Sherwood took a more active part with his antics, in the fourth saxophonist Bunk Gardner got more room for his solos, the fifth uses unusual effects and sounds, while the sixth was recorded live at a pop festival in Miami. On it, Ian Underwood shines in the lead role on his saxophone. All six parts complement each other wonderfully, and in my opinion as a whole they’re the peak of the entire album, while also giving a very good glimpse of the jazz direction Frank would take on some of his next albums.
In my opinion, “Uncle Meat” is Frank’s avant-garde rock creative peak with the original lineup of The Mothers Of Invention, with whom he released two more posthumous albums the following year. When it came out, the album was surely at least as innovative as it was absurd and provocative. For those Frank fans who, out of his vast legacy, value the absurd-satirical-psychedelic output of his early avant-garde period most, “Uncle Meat” is surely the favorite treat. The only thing that sometimes bugs me is that I’m not always in the mood to sit through that almost 40-minute film dialogue in the second part, whose only interesting aspect is a historical audio glimpse into the artist’s extremely unusual social life. Of course, that problem is solved very quickly by pressing the skip button, which I use less and less (unless I’m really not in the mood), since I’ve gotten used to this absurd film collage as an integral part of a complete whole. Regardless, “Uncle Meat” is practically a perfect synthesis of the absurd primitivism of musique concrete and compositional genius that transcends the borders of popular rock music and orchestral music from classical to jazz, and one of the key albums for the development of all the more avant-garde currents within progressive rock. In that respect it certainly ranks among his best works ever. “Uncle Meat” is yet another completely unique, one-of-a-kind work of art, impossible to pin down to any genre without all sorts of compromises, and of a kind that only one and only musician was capable of making, Frank Vincent Zappa, who in the year this album came out also answered to the name Uncle Meat.
Lineup
Frank Zappa – vocals, guitar, keyboards, percussion
Don Preston – keyboards, bass guitar, electric piano
Jimmy Carl Black – drums, percussion, voices
Ray Collins – vocals
Roy Estrada – bass guitar, vocals
Bunk Gardner – clarinet, flute, bass clarinet, piccolo, saxophone, woodwinds
Ruth Komanofff – percussion, marimba
Billy Mundi – drums, vocals
Ian Underwood – organ, clarinet, flute, piano, harp, saxophone, woodwinds, electric piano
Euclid James “Motorehad” Sherwood – tenor saxophone, tambourine, vocals
Art Tripp – drums, percussion, bells, marimba, xylophone, timpani, vibraphone
Nelly Walker – soprano vocals
Pamela Zarubica – voice of Suzy Creamcheese
Production
Frank Zappa
Track list
CD 1: 57:21
1. Main Title Theme (1:56)
2. The Voice of Cheese (0:26)
3. Nine Types of Industrial Pollution (6:00)
4. Zolar Czakl (0:54)
5. Dog Breath, in the Year of the Plague (3:59)
6. The Legend of the Golden Arches (3:28)
7. Louie Louie (At the Royal Albert Hall) (2:19)
8. The Dog Breath Variations (1:48)
9. Sleeping in a Jar (0:50)
10. Our Bizarre Relationship (1:05)
11. The Uncle Meat Variations (4:46)
12. Electric Aunt Jemima (1:46)
13. Prelude to King Kong (3:38)
14. God Bless America (1:10)
15. A Pound for a Brown on the Bus (1:29)
16. Ian Underwood Whips It Out (5:05)
17. Mr. Green Genes (3:14)
18. We Can Shoot You (2:03)
19. If We’d All Been Living in California… (1:14)
20. The Air (2:57)
21. Project X (4:48)
22. Cruisin’ for Burgers (2:18)
CD 2: 63:05
1. Uncle Meat Film Excerpt, Pt. 1 (37:34)
2. Tengo Na Minchia Tanta (3:46)
3. Uncle Meat Film Excerpt, Pt. 2 (3:50)
4. King Kong Itself [Played by the Mothers] (0:49)
5. King Kong II [Interpreted by Tom Dewild] (1:21)
6. King Kong III [Motorhead Explains It] (1:44)
7. King Kong IV [Gardner Varieties] (6:17)
8. King Kong V (0:34)
9. King Kong VI [Live at Miami Pop Festival] (7:24)
Running time: 120:26
