Weasels Ripped My Flesh

Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention - Weasels Ripped My Flesh

Weasels Ripped My Flesh
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CD Details

Artist: Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention
Brand: ZAPPA,FRANK
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 1995-05-02
Music Label: Zappa Records
Product features:
  • Frank Zappa
  • Mothers of Invention
Soundtracks:
  1. Didja Get Any Onya?
  2. Directly From My Heart To You
  3. Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Sexually Aroused Gas Mask
  4. Toads Of The Short Forest
  5. Get A Little
  6. The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue
  7. Dwarf Nebula Processional March & Dwart Nebula
  8. My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama
  9. Oh No
  10. The Orange County Lumber Truck
  11. Weasels Ripped My Flesh

Music reviews of Weasels Ripped My Flesh

Music Review: The Experimental Side of the Late Mothers Lineup
Rating: 4 Stars

This is the second of two compilations Zappa made (per his contract) of the last lineup of the early Mothers of Invention, the companion being the much more polished Burnt Weeny Sandwich album. This album, contrasting its heavily composed and easily digestible forerunner, highlights the band's experimental live jazz performances. At the time of its release, this band had long been dissolved. A few musicians worthy of mention are Sugarcane Harris and Ian Underwood, the two hang-ons from this period that played on the Hot Rats album, and Lowell George. Lowell was one of FZ greatest discoveries, but his time with Zappa was short lived. He formed Little Feat in 1970 and went on to grab a nice piece of 70s rock history for himself before his untimely death at the end of the decade.

The opener, DIDJA GET ANY ONYA?, sets the tone for the whole album. A raucous, spontaneous experimental piece that contains some fantastic nasal sax playing (Underwood's special talent), and some vocal adlibbing by Lowell. It slips, with some humor, into a cover of DIRECTLY FROM MY HEART TO YOU, which features a great solo by Sugarcane, who also contributes the vocals. PRELUDE TO THE AFTERNOON... is a mockup of Debussy's Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune, though it doesn't quote it at any moment. The intent seems to mutate the idea into perverse improvised theatre, the type of which is recreated by FZ and Roy Estrada on-stage on the Baby Snakes film.

TOADS OF THE SHORT FOREST is a split piece, with a beautiful composed portion recorded in studio, and a heavy live portion that features several members of the band playing in different signatures, per Zappa's obsession with "rhythmical textures" in this period. GET A LITTLE is a short, wah solo set to a simple lounge beat. Not an inspired solo on Zappa's part, although the tempo and FZ's playing are pretty suggestive, especially when one considers the title.

The ERIC DOLPHY MEMORIAL BARBECUE is one of my favorite Zappa tunes of all time. I don't know where the reviewer who makes vague accusations of plaigarism got the idea that anything in it is borrowed. I've been an Eric Dolphy fan longer than I've been a Zappa fan, and, frankly, I've never seen a tremendous amount of similarities between them. I've always assumed the title refers to the extended phrases that cover several registers, something I'd asssociate with Dolphy. Certainly, I've never heared this kind of use of polyrhythms on a Dolphy record. The cramped spacial quality of Zappa's pieces are in perfect contrast to a lot of Dolphy's work, which took on an almost Eastern or minimalist approach in his later work. I'd like to know what *exactly* the accuser believes to have been ripped off from Dolphy. The title was a little ironic, if anything. But, moving on, the next number, DWARF NEBULA PROCESSIONAL MARCH & DWARF NEBULA is a studio track, the first a composed little romp reminiscient of the first part of Toads. The rest is tape noises, sped, looped, distorted, you name it.

In case you were worried that there wasn't any easily accessible material on this album, three polished studio tracks follow. MY GUITAR WANTS TO KILL YOUR MAMA, a great mock hard rock number that had a pretty funkish counterpart (see YCDToSA5, the only studio track in the series). OH NO was featured in part on the Lumpy Gravy album, and is here in its full version with the vocals -- one of Zappa's great reoccuring melodies. It leads into the fantastic ORANGE COUNTY LUMBER TRUCK, another reocurring Zappa theme (a great version of it featured on the Roxy album). The closer, in case the rest of the album confused you, clears everything up. Its two minutes of grating distortion noise. Theatre of cruelty, I suppose.

This isn't the place to start with for new fans, who will doubtless be a little put off by the overload of experimental weirdness crammed into this one. But this album is incredible fun, and seasoned FZ listeners will really enjoy exploring this little experimental gem.

[ As for the shot at Zappa's politics, made by the same reviewer who made the strange and unexplained charges of plaigarism, it shouldn't matter at all, save that the dogmatic left (and I speak as a Social Democrat myself) always feels it necessary to conduct these kind of intellectual purity witch hunts in the sphere of art. Its a nauseating desire to subdue all art to its narrow idea of dialectal progress. Zappa wasn't an intellectual -- so what, a lot of artists aren't, and its simply not necessary for the production of meaningful art. Anyone who has read a poem by Rilke, a play by Strindberg, or enjoyed a piece by Mussorgsky knows this. Zappa is simply the most potent expression of cynicism and rebellion against middle-class values of his time. His finding profoundity in the grotesque, his disregard for aesthetics and theories, and his formalistic chameolonism which mocks more than pays tribute, all point to a rebirth of Dadaism in the youth rebellion of his times. Nothing so well expresses the meaning, the raison d'etre, of rock music. And, following logically, this makes Zappa considerably anti-political, and, if anything, an extremist secular libertarian. ]

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Description of Weasels Ripped My Flesh

IMPORTED FROM JAPAN BY RYKODISC

This collector?s dream set completes our 20-disc series of limited edition Frank Zappa Japanese imports. Packaged in deluxe mini-album jacket sleeves, these 10 classic albums are packaged to re-create the original vinyl packaging in miniaturized form!

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