Frank Zappa - Fillmore East
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CD Details
Artist: Frank ZappaEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Explicit Lyrics, Live
CD Release Date: 2010-01-25
Music Label: Zappa Records
Soundtracks:
- Little House I used To Live In
- The Mud Shark
- What Kind Of Girl Do You Think We Are?
- Bwana Dik
- Latex Solar Beef
- Willie The Pimp (Part One)
- Do You Like My New Car?
- Happy Together
- Lonesome Electric Turkey
- Peaches En Regalia
- Tears Began To Fall
Music reviews of Fillmore East
Music Review: Life On The Road
Rating: 4 Stars
Actually, this is a very good performance from probably the most maligned phase of The Mothers, and particularly, Frank Zappa's, career. The 1970-71 tours and records, were actually, very funny, and full of a hidden virtuosity, hidden by the antics of Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan (Flo & Eddie). Their voices can be shrill, and grating to people with more middle-of-the-road tastes, but that's the irony and beauty of it all. Those voices once fronted a very popular "pop" group, The Turtles, and the sleeve notes from The Mother's "Freak Out," from 1966, had a quote from an A&R man, saying he could clean them up a little, and make them as big as The Turtles. So, when the original band broke up and a new, revamped line-up appeared and they were hired, it kind of showed them who knew what.
Right away, the sound quality becomes an obvious issue. It's got a low fidelity, like it was recorded on cheap equipment, and it probably was. It opens with a reworked "Little House I used To Live In," but the melody isn't recognizable until about halfway into it. No disrespect to this phase of the band, but the original release is far superior. This segues into "The Mud Shark." A simple vamp with Zappa telling a story of Don Preston's meeting with the members of another band, The Vanilla Fudge, and what was done with some mud sharks that were caught while fishing from a window in the Edgewater Inn.
"What Kind Of Girl Do You Think We Are?" begins the groupie motif of this record. Mark Volman is singing the part of a teenage groupie, and Howard Kaylan is doing the part of an out-of-town touring musician, and even though it is misogenistic and of questionable taste, it is a good blues song, and it tells of the relationship between groupie and "rock star." "Bwana Dik" and "Latex Solar Beef" are just weird and smutty. Juvenile, phallic, locker-room humor is the theme this performance takes on, but it is done with such conviction, you have to appreciate it, however tasteless. It is, however, life on the road, with groupies who will tolerate almost anything to get into a popular musician's pants. Keep this in mind.
There is a lot of controversy and speculation over the instrumental version of "Willie The Pimp" included here, as the original vinyl release fades the first half out at the end of Side One, for the listener to flip the record over and listen to the second half at the beginning of Side Two. Here, there is no second half, "Part One" fades out, per the original record, and a substantial part of a very good guitar solo is lost. Maybe a later release will include the whole piece. Let's hope. The CD has a moment of silence here, but the LP cuts from "Willie," right into "Do You Like My New Car?," also known as "The Groupie Routine." This takes the idea of "What Kind Of Girl..." to its extreme, Volman as the teenage groupie and Kaylan as the touring musician again, and it is one of the smuttiest things I've ever heard, apart from "Joe's Garage" and "Thingfish." But, to its credit, it's side-splittingly funny. Zappa got the writing credit, but anyone can see where the material came from; Flo & Eddie are two of the biggest cut-ups out there. It's crude, and downright crass, but, especially for its time, a laugh riot. Here, we get to see who the out-of-town rock star is, because when he promises to sing his hit "with a bullet," the mothers launch into a rendition of The Turtles' "Happy Together." Self-parody at its finest.
The Encore section is where they show you what they're made of. Original band member Don Preston joins the current band onstage for a blistering "Lonesome Electric Turkey," a workout on the moog synthesizer with the band just tearing it up in the background. They shape this into "Peaches En Regalia" from Zappa's "Hot Rats" record, and they play it well. The disc closes with "Tears Began To Fall," and there's a side of me that believes there is a slower, quieter version of this out there, somewhere. It's that kind of song, but the band has fun with it through the fade out.
Not the whole concert, but a pretty good taste of a very raunchy, very funny, and very good show. So many people have missed the boat, to not even be aware of those days.
Description of Fillmore East
Fillmore East by Frank ZappaThis product is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.
After disbanding the original Mothers of Invention following a short tour of Canada during the summer of 1969, Zappa hired musicians for his studio work before forming a new Mothers in August 1970. The new band was augmented by bassist Jim Pons and vocalists Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, all of whom Zappa recruited from the Turtles, that hit-making teen-sensation unit that had reached the top of the pop charts with such hits as "Happy Together" and "Elenore." Legend has it that Zappa had tried to enlist former Monkee Micky Dolenz on drums at the same time, but Dolenz declined the offer. The new lineup made several albums with Zappa, beginning with Chunga's Revenge (owing to legal problems, Volman and Kaylan were originally billed as "Phlorescent Leech and Eddie," which led to the duo's being called Flo & Eddie henceforth), but the Fillmore East recording remains its vanguard. Zappa was still obsessed with the ridiculous phenomenon of pop stars, and now he had two genuine articles in his band. Thus, in between live renditions of some of his soon-to-be instrumental classics, Zappa, Volman, and Kaylan delighted the Manhattan audience with rude and crude skits about pop stars and groupies. The whole shebang is then climaxed with Flo & Eddie doing a letter-perfect rendition of the Turtles' "Happy Together" before ironically concluding with Zappa's own "Tears Begin to Fall," the kind of pop ditty Zappa was poking fun at throughout this performance. Although it now all sounds rather tame in the era of rap and porn rock, it was attacked as crass at the time of its release. Nevertheless, this doesn't stop it from being frequently hilarious. Following the performance, the Mothers were joined onstage by John Lennon and Yoko Ono for a set that's captured on the live disc that eventually accompanied Lennon's Some Time in New York City. What a night! --Bill Holdship
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