Can it really be true that Rolling Stone publisher/magnate Jann S. Wenner has personally conducted a decades-long campaign to bar The Monkees from induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

Far-from-dummy Monkee Peter Tork certainly thinks so.

"He doesn't care what the rules are and just operates how he sees fit," Tork told the New York Post in 2007. "It is an abuse of power. I don't know whether The Monkees belong in the Hall of Fame, but it's pretty clear that we're not in there because of a personal whim."

Now sure, the Monkees (along with the Beach Boys, Byrds, even Beatles, most every Motown act, etc. etc. etc.) certainly didn't play every single note on every single record they ever made. Nevertheless, in 1967 Jann and his fledgling zine were riding extremely high on the Monkee-bashing bandwagon, using the television rockstars as the best/worst examples of all that was unhip, uncool, and truth be told un-San Francisco in the world.

Fair enough. I remember it also took Rolling Stone over a decade to figure out the Ramones too.

Regarding that great big late-Sixties Monkees-used-session-musicians brew-ha-ha though, as Peter most rightfully points out "Jann seems to have taken it harder than everyone else. And now, forty years later, everybody says, 'What's the big deal? Everybody else does it.' Nobody cares now except him. He feels his moral judgment in 1967 and 1968 is supposed to serve in 2007."

Of course, looking at the big picture, such Fame Hall squirmishes mean little if anything over here in what remains of the real world. But let me just remind Mr. Wenner and countless other Monkee doubters out there – and yes, there's probably just as many in 2011 as there were in 2007, to say nothing of 1967:

Forget about who really played all those flamenco breaks on "Valleri." If you were born anywhere between the years 1955 and 1960, and consequently were just a tad too young to teethe your ears upon Pet Sounds or Revolver, like me you tuned into your local NBC-TV affiliate on the evening of September 12, 1966, sat transfixed for the next thirty minutes, and then told yourself "Hey! So THAT'S what a rock and roll band really lives, looks, sounds and acts like!" Eating communal Rice Krispies at the break of noon, practicing in front of the patio window every day instead of going to school or work, yet always making sure to keep too busy singing to put anybody (under the age of twenty-five) down.

This was vital, and in my case at least life-changing information which just couldn't be gleaned from spotting the occasional three-minute Dave Clark Five or Turtles performance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

But even more importantly – and, as it turns out, much more slyly and cleverly – what Peter alongside his pals Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and Mike "Wool Hat" Nesmith really did during their fifty-eight half-hours on NBC was, for the very first time, bring the counter-culture boldly into the North American entertainment mainstream.

Really.

You must understand that prior to 1966, long-haired kids were only seen on television getting into no good whatsoever down some dark, garbage-strewn alley …that is until Sergeant Joe Friday rounded them up while giving a stern lecture on morality into the nearest camera.

Suddenly though, here were four seemingly happy-go-lucky kids with hair over their ears and guitars over their shoulders, without any apparent "adult supervision" such as parents or bosses in sight, living for all intents and purposes the same kind of wholesome apple-pie life as those over in Mayberry or My Three Sons. Indeed, at the end of each broadcast day Davy always got the girl, the villains always got what they deserved, and the small-screen sun inevitably set to the accompaniment of yet another ultra-groovy new Nilsson or Boyce and Hart-penned tune (…which reminds me: long before "Penny Lane" or even D.A. Pennebaker, The Monkees damn well invented MTV too) (please, try not to hold it against them).

But for all their seemingly homespun zaniness, each week the Prefab Four were in actual fact getting up to the kind of (mis)adventures even A Hard Day's Night wouldn't, or couldn't show.

Don't just take my words for it though. Even Timothy Leary, unlike his supposed contemporaries way over at Rolling Stone, immediately saw between the cathode lines. And I quote (from Dr. Leary's own The Politics of Ecstasy): "The Monkees' television show. Oh, you thought that it was silly teenage entertainment? Don't be fooled. While it lasted, it was a classic Sufi put on. An early-Christian electronic satire. A mystic magic show. A jolly Buddha laugh at hypocrisy.

"At early evening kiddie-time on Monday the Monkees would rush through a parody drama, burlesquing the very shows that glue Mom and Dad to the set during prime time. Spoofing the movies and the violence and the down-heavy-conflict-emotion themes that fascinate the middle-aged. And woven into the fast-moving psychedelic stream of action were the prophetic, holy, challenging words. Micky was rapping quickly, dropping literary names, making scholarly references: then the sudden psychedelic switch of the reality channel. He looked straight at the camera, right into your living room, and up-levelled the comedy by saying: 'Pretty good talking for a long-haired weirdo, huh, Mr. and Mrs. America?' And then ZAP, flash. Back to the innocuous comedy."

And here I was as a wee tyke thinking I was just watching a live-action Rocky & Bullwinkle with amplifiers every week!

And now, many thanks to our heroes at Eagle Rock Entertainment, you need no longer roam the nether regions of your satellite dish or settle for dicey VHS-generation YouTube uploads to hear and see what all the fuss was truly about. For once again, the entire series of Monkeeshows, along with their even-seeing-isn't-quite-believing 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee television spectacular – plus a slew of Kellogg's cereal commercials just to put everything in their proper hysterical perspective – have all been lovingly packaged anew into two (count 'em!) deluxe DVD box sets.

Once again we can watch Mike trading places – and prosthetic noses – with Frank Zappa before running for Mayor (and issuing forth a most somber soliloquy which seems even more relevant to today's socio-political atmosphere). We can see Peter bargaining to regain his musical soul from a metaphorically-steeped record-biz Beelzebub, and Micky battling the evil Wizard Glick and his far from subliminal television-brainwash machine (in an episode the fuzzy-headed Monkee, by the way, also directed).

And Davy? He gets the girl(s). And also taught Axl Rose how to dance, need I remind anyone.

It's all wacky and definitely wild throughout, you bet. But it's particularly surprising how extremely fast-paced and ingeniously edited these half-hours are, and in Series Two especially each show began doing, saying – and showing – things on the family tube that were absolutely unseen and unheard of across the pre-Python/Saturday Night Live landscape.

Plus the music throughout is top-notch, it should go without mentioning. Even the sequences where Liberace takes a sledge hammer to a grand piano.

Come 1968 however, all that was left for The Monkees was to star in the greatest rock 'n' roll film ever made (it's called Head, by the way) before paving the TV way for various Partridges, Banana Splits, and even their old nemesis Don Kirshner's Rock Concert. Lest we never forget Mike Nesmith's landmark Elephant and Television Parts series as well, full of the visionary and pioneering work he continues to this very date right there on his own Video Ranch Dot Com.

But for now, you better get ready to take a giant step back; back to the very beginning. To 7:30 pm, September 12, 1966. Disc 1, Episode 1 of Season 1 of The Monkees. Why, it really is more fun than a barrelful of, well, old Rolling Stone magazines.

IRWIN CHUSID (author, Songs In The Key Of Z): Outsider music is a slippery genre. It’s musicians who tend to be self-taught, untrained, working certainly way outside the channels of mainstream music. There are very important qualifications: They are sincere about it. They mean it. They’re not doing it to be funny. They’re not doing it to be outrageous. This is a sincere musical expression. Wild Man Fischer in many ways is a poster child for outsider music.

MARK MOTHERSBAUGH (Devo): At his best, he’s mainlined right into this creative kind of subconscious. It’s coming from a pure place.

DENNIS P. EICHHORN (tour manager; Real Stuff Comics creator): I’ve seen him really work a crowd and have every single one of them responding to him positively. When he’s performing and when he’s got the pep, he’s one of the greatest entertainers you’d ever see in your life.

IRWIN CHUSID: The appeal of Larry’s music is that it’s real. You’re hearing something that is the musical vision of one singular human being that really comes from the heart and soul of an individual.

SOLOMON BURKE (King of Rock & Soul and Larry’s initial mentor): A very, extremely talented young man.

LARRY: I just think I’m the best rock singer in the world.

DAVID FISCHER (Larry’s older brother): I still don’t think he’s a good singer. I might be wrong.

* * * * * * * * * *

LARRY: You know what happened to my career? Nothing. I have nothing, you know? Once in a while I go out and sing, but that’s very rare. I’m too scared of the music business. And I’m too scared of all the people in it. Is that sad or what?

“DERAILROADED”:
I have been derailroaded / Derailroaded by everybody / I have been sent off the track / To wander like a fool / They are liars, and they are thieves / And they left me to stand around / Like a derailroaded fool

LARRY: That’s what the show-business people are like. They love to torture their entertainers. Those fuckers in show business, you know? They turned me into the psycho I’ve become.

BILLY MUMY (producer, Pronounced Normal, Nothing Scary): It’s unfortunate that Larry has not had more commercial success with his music. But Larry is a manic-depressive paranoid schizophrenic. And that is an interesting mixture of energy.

DR. LOUIS SASS (Professor of Clinical Psychology, Rutgers University): A person with schizophrenia is characterized by delusions. Hallucinations. Usually auditory hallucinations. A lot of it has to do with a feeling of conspiracies being directed at you. Everyone’s out to get you.

LARRY: I’m scared. There’s people after me. I don’t know who’s involved. I just don’t know who’s involved. It’s been a nightmare. All kinds of things have happened to me. Things that you would not believe.

“THE WILD MAN FISCHER STORY”:
In the year of 1962 / I got thrown out of school / In the year of 1963 / I was committed to a mental institution / In the year of 1964 / I was released from the mental institution / In the year of 1966 / I was committed to the mental institution again

LARRY: Well, my life has not been all that pleasant. My father died when I was young and my mother didn’t love me, or didn’t care about me. She used to make me eat on the sink. They made me stand up and eat on the sink. My mother didn’t love me.

GAIL ZAPPA: The thing about Los Angeles – there are a lot of freaks here. Freaks are people that have figured out a way to, in spite of society, express themselves. And so Larry is just another one of the freaks.

“WHY I AM NORMAL”:
I would say I’m a normal, everyday person, you know? I like girls. I like to eat at restaurants. I like sports cars. I like motorcycles. I’d like to get married one day, have kids. You know, raise a normal family. My mother always used to, you know, wonder about me. She wondered what I was gonna do when I got older. I said Mother, don’t worry about me. I’ll get a job! I’ll go straight!

LARRY: The first audition I went on was for Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. And I got it.

DAN ROWAN (Laugh-In episode # 16, 1968):
Now that he’s been exposed on national TV, don’t you think he’ll fly to stardom?

FRANK ZAPPA (producer, An Evening with Wild Man Fischer): I thought that from the very first day that I met him, somebody should make an album about Wild Man Fischer.

LARRY: Frank Zappa told me that he could make me a rock star. And if Frank Zappa told you that, wouldn’t you think you might be able to become a rock star?

FRANK ZAPPA: But when you’re working with someone like Wild Man Fischer, the problems that arise become too much to bear.

“DO THE WILDMAN”:
There’s a new dance goin’ round the land / Come on everybody, do the Wild Man / Throw your arms up, pretend you’re a child / That’s it now, you’re getting wild

FRANK ZAPPA: One thing that you must remember about Wild Man Fischer is that he actually is a wild person. And, uh, Larry is dangerous.

LARRY: He loved it. He said that if he ever had a son, he wanted his son to be just like me. I swear to God he said that.

FRANK ZAPPA: I spent three months working on the Wild Man Fischer album. And at the end of that time not only was I accused of robbing Wild Man Fischer and cheating Wild Man Fischer and abusing him – most of this from Wild Man Fischer himself – but the album itself did not sell a large amount of copies.

“THE WILD MAN FISCHER STORY”:
In the year of 1968 / Have I made a mistake? / Will I end up a bum? / Will I end up a crumb? / Will I end up in hell? / Will I end up in jail? / Will I end up in Jesus? / Will I end up in trees? / Will I end up rich, rich, rich, rich? / Wild Man Fischer / Wild Man Fischer / Merry-go, Merry-go, Merry-go-round / boop boop boop…

LARRY: Well, I never became a rock star. Frank Zappa fired me. That’s it.

“FRANK”:
Frank’s got money in the bank / Frank’s got women he can spank / Frank owns my publishing rights / You could say he’s on my mind / Think about him all the time…

LARRY: You got to have three things: You got to have talent. You got to have luck. And you got to have persistence.

GAIL ZAPPA: I never thought that he would have a real career. And I see him now, and he looks like a very, very exhausted version of that person that I knew then. He’s almost identical.

* * * * * * * * * *

LARRY: Want to hear how I started a multimillion-dollar empire? “Go To Rhino Records” – you ever heard that song before?

“GO TO RHINO RECORDS”:
Go to Rhino Records / On Westwood Boulevard / Go to Rhino Records / On Westwood Boulevard / You can get Herb Alpert / And Jackie Lomax / For 40 cents / Da-doo, Da-doo

LARRY: That’s the first song that was ever done for Rhino Records. I started a multimillion-dollar company! I became Rhino Records’ mascot! Think about it.

“THE BOUILLABAISSE”:
Don’t ever forget the money / Don’t ever forget the money…

DAVID FISCHER: Larry never seemed to have any money, no matter how many albums the guy was doing. It was beyond me. If they do an album on somebody and if it’s not successful, why are you doing another? And what was he supposed to get out of it? I mean, he certainly was very upset and bitter about it.

“IT’S A MONEY WORLD”:
It’s a money world / It’s a money world…

LARRY: Show business is really hard. You really can’t trust that very many people. Rhino Records, and most people, have taken advantage of me. Here’s a song I wrote about the music business:

“DERAILROADED”:
Money occupies your mind / Money can buy your songs / Money is all you buy / It’s a money world / I wish there was no such thing as money

AGREEMENT DATED 12/1/83:
“This is to prove that Larry Fischer received $750.00, (seven hundred & fifty dollars), as an advance for his album called Nothing Scary. (signed) Larry Fischer.”

“DON’T BE A SINGER”:
All you’ll ever meet are cheaters and liars / Liars and thieves / And robbers and swindlers / That’s all you’ll ever meet, that’s all you’ll ever see / Don’t be a singer

LARRY: I don’t want to be a rock singer no more. It’s a horrifying experience. It’s a nightmare. It’s not as good as you think it is. People use singers.

LARRY (letter to Dennis Eichhorn):
“Dear Denny, I like you. You are a nice guy. You know, I quit show business. I hate show business. It’s full of crooks. And you’re one of them. A nice crook. Your friend, Larry.”

MARK MOTHERSBAUGH: He’d call me up and go “Mark, I’m quitting show biz. Do you blame me?” I’d go “No, I don’t blame you. It’s an awful business.” He would quit show business about two or three times a week.

“IT’S A HARD BUSINESS” (recorded with Rosemary Clooney):
Rosemary, I’m thinking of quitting this impossible business / Oh really, Larry? I hope not / It’s just too hard / It’s a hard business / Please tell me that you agree / It’s a hard business / It’s hard for you and hard for me / It’s a hard business / Reaching way down in your soul / It’s a hard business / Singing jazz or rock ‘n’ roll

* * * * * * * * * *

LARRY: The main reason I got into the music business was to impress my family, earn a living, complete my dream. But I knew I would never be able to tour. I’m too paranoid.

RUDY RAY MOORE (The Avenging Disco Godfather): This is the way I would interpretate [sic] that particular phrase of “derailroaded”: The railroad carries a train, and the train has come off of the tracks and fell over. And where am I going from here? Sounds like a sad story.

“ONE OF A KIND MIND”:
My mind is one of a kind / And if you ever come across a mind like mine / Make sure you dig it, and dig it for gold / Because my mind is one of a kind / Right?

DR. LOUIS SASS: I think there are a lot of different reasons why people are drawn to Larry’s music. One of them is a little bit like the reason why people a century or two ago would go sometimes to the asylums to look at the patients. It’s a kind of voyeurism to stare at this person who seems so weird and so uninhibited. But a second reason, of course, is that we’re really moved by what he says and the story that he tells of his life and of his sufferings.

MARK MOTHERSBAUGH: He’s a force of nature. He’s like a poet. He’s a bard in the best of ways, I think. If he grew up in Mongolia, he might have been considered a shaman. And everything that he is and does would be tolerated.

LARRY: I guess I’m getting older now. I can’t be a musician/singer anymore. I’m too old. I want to be a musician/singer. I want to make everybody happy.

“DO YOU EVER HAVE A GOAL IN LIFE”:
My goal in life was to become a singer / But it didn’t come true / I think / I don’t know / Who cares? / Bye-bye

* * * * * * * * * *

All of the above dialogue and lyric are taken from Josh Rubin’s stellar documentary Derailroaded: Inside The Mind of Larry “Wild Man” Fischer, newly available on DVD from MVD Visual.

Lawrence Wayne Fischer passed away on June 16, 2011

Long before the Valley Girls, Jewish princesses, mud sharks, dental floss, yellow snow and, tragically, the cancer which claimed him in 1993, there was simply Francis Vincent Zappa, a young kid with an above-eclectic record collection who escaped the confines of Lancaster, California to arrive in Hollywood with his “rockin’ teen combo” The Mothers of Invention in 1965. His career on stage and disc thereafter caused countless unsuspecting youngsters such as myself to immediately set aside their Monkees albums in order that we could join our newest mentor upon this most adventurous of all, as it turns out, musical path.

But exactly how did this seemingly unassuming composer/guitarist with a penchant for sinister footwear become one of the most musically and socially iconoclastic participants of the 1960s; an era seemingly awash in just such creatures? A fascinating new documentary from Sexy Intellectual, Frank Zappa: The Freak-Out List, uses the 179 names listed within the original 1966 issue of the Mothers’ debut album Freak Out! as a guide to explaining, well, why the music therein sounded the way it did.

As in, sounded like NOTHING ELSE released that year …or ever since, for that matter.

Setting aside the litany of Zappa’s friends, teachers, business associates and various showbiz personalities (such as Lenny Bruce and John Wayne) to concentrate instead on the seventy-one musical figures listed (which Frank said at the time “have contributed materially in many ways to make our music what it is; please do not hold it against them”), The Freak-Out List and its superb cast of interviewees – including three former Mothers and the University of Southampton’s Professor of Music David Nicholls – duly cite the connections between, for example, Bob Dylan and “Trouble Every Day,” not to mention The Cadillacs and the Cruising with Ruben and the Jets album …yet I’m still not exactly sure why Frank dedicated one of Freak Out’s most alarming numbers, “Help I’m A Rock,” to Elvis Presley (though I have my theories).

It is in its detailed examinations of the classical composers and rhythm ‘n’ blues musicians however, who first awoke young Frank to the possibilities of a life and career submerged in musical exploration, which truly give this film the meat of its matter. Of course the quote “The present day composer refuses to die!” will be familiar to anyone who read the fine print inside the Mothers’ key early albums. But as The Freak-Out List explains, the man who first uttered those defiant words in 1921, French composer Edgard Varèse, remained a major influence upon, and inspiration to, Frank Zappa throughout his life.

Since first reading his name in a 1953 Look Magazine article and subsequently unearthing his Complete Works Volume 1 album, Zappa took to Varèse’s above-free-form, percussion-based experimental/electronic work, referencing and returning to it often for the remainder of his life. In fact, so utterly besotted was he with the man, the young Zappa convinced his parents to allow him a long-distance phone call to the composer as a fifteenth birthday present. (Most unfortunately, the two never actually met: Edgard passed away just months before the Freak Out! album was released).

Likewise we learn of, and actually hear via side-by-side audio/visual clips, the above-obvious influence of Arnold Schoenberg’s “Accompaniment to a Film Score” on Zappa’s very own film scores, and precisely how snatches of Holst and Stravinsky end up weaved into the Mothers’ Absolutely Free album of 1967. Why, as Frank himself told the likely bemused readers of Hit Parader magazine that year, “buy everything that you can by Igor Stravinsky and dance to it.” Hotcha!

Zappa biographer Ben Watson rightfully warns us, however, that such “spot-the-musical-quote” playing misses the point. One should instead concentrate on “how Frank makes you think about classical music” while you’re trying to get jiggy with, say, “Invocation and Ritual Dance of the Young Pumpkin.”

Now, on the all-important flip side of The Freak-Out List lie the many doo-wop and r ’n’ b artists Frank was also seriously grooving to, as he mastered drums then guitar in his very first Lancaster desert garage bands (…when he wasn’t locked in his room composing film scores, that is). For instance, it is impossible to hear any of Zappa’s multitude guitar solos, recorded or otherwise, without being directed straight back to the magnificent Johnny “Guitar” Watson, and The Freak-Out List presents joyous, yet ultimately heartbreaking footage of the two’s final musical get-together chez Zappa.

Elsewhere, we’re shown how no less a kindred musical spirit as Miles Davis, and his In A Silent Way album in particular, helped create a context for Zappa’s landmark “jazz-rock” (as it would be pigeon-holed today) Hot Rats. Yes, although he once (in)famously claimed “Jazz isn’t dead; it just smells funny,” Frank obviously kept his fair share of Eric Dolphy records alongside the Varèse, and co-operated so fully – and so successfully – in jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty’s King Kong project that Ponty ended up as an actual Mother himself for two entire tours.

So, then: Dozens of albums, hundreds of compositions, and thousands of performances later, we still may not be able to get a sufficient grip around the art, or as some would say artifice, of Frank Zappa. But ever since leaving on what was called his final tour, just before 6 pm on Saturday, December 4, 1993, all we have left are his dedicated scholars, followers, and now films such as The Freak-Out List (plus Sexy Intellectual’s companion DVD Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention In The 1960s) to guide us towards our understanding and appreciation of a figure so prolific, so public, yet so baffling.

In an interview with Jazz & Pop magazine in 1967, Zappa explained “that whole Freak Out! album is to be as accessible as possible to the people who wanted to take the time to make it accessible. That list of names in there, if anybody were to research it, it would probably help them a great deal.”

As always, however, just don’t hold it against them.

What Ever Happened To The Mothers Of Invention?

by Frank Zappa

(Hit Parader no. 48, April 1970, pages 23-24)

The Mothers of Invention, the infamous and repulsive rocking teen combo, is not doing concerts any more. Jimmy Carl Black (the Indian of the group) has formed another ensemble which he calls Geronimo Black (named after his youngest child). Don (Dom De Wild) Preston is collaborating with avant garde dancer Meredith Monk in performances of electronic music. Ian Robertson Underwood is preparing material for a solo album. Roy Estrada, Bunk Gardner, Buzz Gardner and Art Tripp are doing studio work in Hollywood. Motorhead (James Euclid) Sherwood is working on his bike and preparing for a featured role in a film with Captain Beefheart. Frank Zappa is producing various artists for his record companies, Bizarre and Straight (which he co-owns with Herb Cohen), working on film and television projects and is currently writing arrangements for a new album by French jazz violinist Jean Luc Ponty. This Ponty album, to be released on World Pacific, will mark the first attempt by any other artist to record a whole album's worth of Zappa's writing, exclusive of The Mothers of Invention interpretations.

It is possible that, at a later date, when audiences have properly assimilated the recorded work of the group, a reformation might take place. The following is a brief summary of The Mothers' first five years of musical experimentation and development.

In 1965 a group was formed called The Mothers. In 1966 they made a record which began a musical revolution. The Mothers invented Underground Music. They also invented the double fold rock album and the concept of making a rock album a total piece of music. The Mothers showed the way to dozens of other groups (including The Beatles and Stones) with their researches and experimentation in a wide range of musical styles and mediums.

The Mothers set new standards for performance. In terms of pure musicianship, theatrical presentation, formal concept and sheer absurdity, this one ugly band demonstrated to the music industry that it was indeed possible to make the performance of electric music a valid artistic expression.

In 1967 (April through August), The Garrick Theater on Bleecker Street in New York was devastated by cherry bombs, mouldering vegetables, whipped cream, stuffed giraffes and depraved plastic frogs... the whole range of expressive Americana... all of it neatly organized into what people today would probably call a "Love Rock Long-Hair Tribal Musical." The Mothers called it “Pigs And Repugnant: Absolutely Free" (an off-Broadway musical)... it was in its third month when "Hair" first opened.

The Mothers was the first big electric band. They pioneered the use of amplified and/or electronically modified woodwind instruments... everything from piccolo to bassoon. They were the first to use the wah wah pedal on guitar as well as horns and electric keyboard instruments. They laid some of the theoretical groundwork which influenced the design of many commercially manufactured electro-musical devices.

The Mothers managed to perform in alien time signatures and bizarre harmonic climates with a subtle ease that led many to believe it was all happening in 4/4 with a teen-age back beat. Through their use of procedures normally associated with contemporary "serious music" (unusual percussion techniques, electronic music, the use of sound in blocks, strands, sheets and vapors), The Mothers were able to direct the attention of a large number of young people to the work of many contemporary composers.

In 1968, Ruben Sano lifted his immense white-gloved hand, made his fingers go "snat!" and instantly Neo-Greaser Rock was born. A single was released from Ruben's boss album (remember Cruising with Ruben & the Jets ?) called "Deseri." It was played on many AM stations (actually rising to #39 on the Top Forty at KIOA in Des Moines, Iowa) until programmers discovered Ruben & the Jets was really The Mothers under a disguise.

Meanwhile, the so called Underground FM stations could boast (because they were so cool and far out) that they actually went so far as to play The Mothers of Invention albums on their stations. Yes. Boldly they'd whip a few cuts from Freak Out on their listeners between the steady stream of important blues numbers.

And then of course, there was Uncle Meat, recorded back to back with Ruben & the Jets (a somewhat unusual production procedure). In spite of the musical merit of the album, the only thing that drew any attention was the fact that several words, in common usage, were included in candid dialogue sections.

Awaiting release is a collection of 12 complete albums of Mothers' music, a retrospective exhibition of the group's most interesting work, covering a span from two years prior to the actual formation of the ensemble, through August 1969. Included in the collection is documentary material from first rehearsals, tracing the development of the group through to its most recent live performances in the U.S. and Europe, some of which have become almost legendary. To those people who cared at all about The Mothers' musical explorations (and also those who didn't care & who wish to be merely entertained), this collection will prove of great interest.

    To all intents and counter-purposes as those Sixties suddenly became Seventies, the hitherto diabolical music of Frank Zappa somehow entered the denimed underground mainstream via that bitchy little largely instrumental brew known, to this day, as Hot Rats.

Now, maybe it was its utterly polarizing – not to mention polarized – cover art, its hotcha buncha proto-fusion guitar solos, or maybe even (as I’d like to think) the fact that none other than Captain Beefheart scored a Billboard album chart placing courtesy of his magnificent Rats showcase “Willie The Pimp.”  Yet whatever the cases may be, this album’s opening three and a half minutes, “Peaches En Regalia,” quickly became a hep FM staple throughout those glorious Nixon years (before becoming totally co-opted as late night chat show breaks thanks to Paul Shaffer and his ilk), and before he could say “hmmmm,” FZ found himself on the road to eventual artistic Stadium Rock ruin and, as a direct result, the disintegration of his first, classic, and BEST-ever batch of manic musical Mothers.  Pity…

Still, despite its current digital sheen (wherein such essential elements as Ian Underwood’s mightily majestic “organus maximus,” not to mention “Peaches’” concluding Hare Krishna finger-cymbals, seem to have been all but obliterated during remix by FRANK’S LEAD GUITAR), Hot Rats still recalls to what’s left of my mind glad-happy High School daze spent with partner-in-teen-mischief Richard, crashing the local stoners’ TV parties and serving them up mayo-on-catfood sandwiches …all to the hot-rockin’ accompaniment of “The Gumbo Variations,” y’know.

“Memories”…..      

    “The recording of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band spanned 129 days; perhaps the most creative 129 days in the history of rock music.”
(author and “Beatle Brain of Britain” Mark Lewisohn)  

Whilst those “Fugs of the West Coast,” The Mothers of Invention, were spending month upon month held over in New York City’s Garrick Theatre performing their 1967 Pigs and Repugnant Revue, Frank Zappa was spending his every waking hour off stage holed up in the city’s pioneering 12-track (!!) Apostolic recording studio over on East 10th.  The ultra-productive time spent there, which resulted in not only the epic We’re Only In It For The Money but several other stellar FZ / MOI LP’s (not to mention reams of archival material which continues to dribble out posthumously via the Zappa Family Trust), constitutes what I firmly believe to be THE most fitfully fruitful time ever spent by man or beast committing rock ‘n’ roll to magnetic tape …and yes, that includes those pious Pepper sessions as well.

Right alongside Apostolic’s utterly brilliant recording engineer Richard “Dick Dynamite” Kunc and his latest audio toys (variable speed oscillators, the grand new “Apostolic Vlorch Injector,” plus assorted policemen and breakfast rolls), Zappa and band stitched together, for starters, "most of the music from the Mothers' movie of the same name which we haven't got enough money to finish yet" as well as the first, and I’m sure you must agree, BEST of all those late-Sixties so-called R ‘n’ R Revival elpees Cruising With Ruben and the Jets.

Now, while the Uncle Meat soundtrack still sounds as magnificently minced and phonically fully-flavored today as it did upon its ’69 release, the digitized Ruben most unfortunately suffers from a typically fool-headed remix and re-record which obliterates the Mother/Jets’ original greasy, bottom-heavy finger-snatting and replaces them all with synthesized bass sloops and Eighties-anemic drums-that-go-“pooh” (instead of poot), I’m so sorry to report.  “When I sat down and listened to the CD I got sick in the pit of my stomach, man,” so go the wizened words of Mother woodwinder Bunk Gardner (as reported in our ant bee Billy James’ indispensable Necessity Is… The Early Years of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention book).  “The music was from one era and you could tell the rhythm section was from the 1980s; it didn’t make sense at all to me.  And the thing that blew my mind was, didn’t Frank hear that?”

Apparently not.  Still, for those who naturally prefer jelly roll gum drops and Chevy ‘39’s over tangerine trees and newspaper taxis.....    

    The first Friday of most every month throughout 1967 and into ’68, I was formally excused from school so that my mother could take me all the way into Toronto for orthodontic appointments.  As my due reward afterwards, I would be treated to a tasty french-fry-and-chocolate-milk lunch in the sumptuous Eaton’s Department Store cafeteria, then left for an hour alone in the adjacent Music Department while dear mom ran her errands elsewhere.

Gawd, I truly was deep in pre-teen heaven in there, believe you me:  Guitars – just like the one Tommy Smothers played on TV every week! – lining each wall, while right over there were more record albums gathered alphabetically together in one place than my wide young eyes had ever ever seen.  

But it was while methodically flipping through that “Misc. M” bin one innocent Friday in seach of the latest Monkees long-player that I came across an image which shook me to the very core of my hitherto safe, sound, Micky’n’Mike-loving spine:

A foreboding, dark purple sci-fi sky shot through with lightning bolts, beneath which were strewn an above-motley crew of comic-book cut-outs (some of whose eyes were obscured with sinister black bars!)  And in front of all that stood what appeared to be a group of bearded, ugly, definitely NON-Monkee-looking men wearing… wearing dresses and standing by a mess of rotten vegetables which for some reason spelled out the word “mothers.”

Subconsciously at least, I recognized this was sort of for some reason like the picture on front of my latest Beatle album.  But I also instinctively gathered something BAD was afoot.

So for the next several months, as if revisiting a decaying body rotting in the back woods or the scene of some other such crime, I’d patiently let Dr. Shanks, D.D.S. rip around my mouth, rush with Mom to scarf down some Eaton’s fast-food, then creep back towards those record racks to check if …IT… was still hidden there.  Why, one grave Friday I even showed the offending, but somehow alluring record jacket to my mother (who, immediately sensing things untoward indeed, said “put that down, Gary.  We’re going home.”)

Flash forward a couple’a years:  By now, my comparatively straight teeth and I were enrolled in the local high school, specializing in Fine Arts and pouring over my latest charcoal still-life when the most incredible music suddenly burst from the record player at the back of the room.  It was Eric Shelkey’s turn to bring vinyl in to accompany the day’s lesson y’see, and Eric, being by far the most freeeky, out-there student in all our Grade 9 Specialty Art class (I mean, the guy wore little round eyeglasses just like John Lennon, and his hair actually reached below his shirt collar!) certainly did not disappoint with his choice of music.  Yep, instead of the usual docile strains of Tommy Roe or, at “worst,” Blood Sweat and Tears, the room was this morning filled with fully- stereophonic snorks, wheezes, electronic noises (much like those the microphone made in the auditorium downstairs when it wasn’t working), and some creepy voice which kept whispering “Are you hung up?” over and over again. 

Understandably I suppose, just like my mother had back in Eaton’s music department, our hitherto pretty patient art instructor Mr. Pollard walked quickly to the back of the classroom, turned the volume all the way down, removed the offending twelve inches from the turntable, inserted it back in its sleeve, and told Eric he could pick his record up after class, thankyouverymuchnowpleasegetbacktoworkeveryone.  Of course, me being me, I made sure to follow Eric out into the hall afterwards to find out the name labelled in the middle of this wondrous, forbidden twelve inches.  Most obligingly indeed, but being careful to check both ways first to see if anyone was looking, he pulled the album slowly from his portfolio case.

AND THERE IT WAS.  That same diabolical image which had haunted my post- orthodontic Fridays all those years ago!  

Winking at me most conspiratorially, Eric invited me over to his place to listen to the entire record that day immediately after school.  I naturally saved up my allowance and bought my OWN copy a couple of months later, locked myself in my room, and it would be quite some time until I ever listened to Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Ltd. -- or anything else, for that matter – quite the same way ever again.  I couldn’t say it then, but I surely will now:

Thank you, Frank Zappa.

Caveat Emptor however:  In its initial digital incarnation alongside the very dynamite Lumpy Gravy, the Mothers’ masterful Money was subjected to hideous late-Eighties remixing and the replacing even of its magnificent original rhythm tracks!  But I’m assured the current CD version holds the exact same We're Only In It For The Money I like to think shock ‘n’ awed not only my own, but unsuspecting classrooms the world over back in those once-swinging Sixties.  Grab your own copy today, please.

  (Still whizzing and pasting – and pooting even -- through my newly-acquired stack of vintage Zappa material, folks, only to discover…..)

Those sophomore 12-inches from Frank and his Mothers are, I’m afraid, just too easily overlooked and unheard, stretching as they do between the twin monumental peaks of Freak Out and We’re Only In It For The Money.  But in rear-view, I posit that spiffy little long-player known as Absolutely Free, recorded in a mere twenty-five hours circa 11/66, reveals itself to be, maybe, just maybe, the man’s true whacked masterpiece.

Two vinyl-side-long suites examining the festered underbelly of LBJ’s America, its ragged overall sheen of wise-ass vocals and hot-rawk jamming may indeed lure the listener in for Just Another Boogie From L.A., granted.  But as no less an expert on the subject as original Mother Don Preston has since revealed, much of Absolutely Free was in fact painstakingly rehearsed and recorded in intricate four-and-eight-bar sections requiring dozens of takes apiece, and the music itself was just as comfortable quoting Stravinsky as it was the Supremes, Kingsmen, and/or the band’s beloved vegetable-encrusted doo-wop. 

Also, this record just happens to contain the legendary original appearance of “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It” which, if I may be so bold, absolutely eats Pete Townshend’s “A Quick One While He’s Away” in the mod mini-opera department.

But finally, take one quick listen to “Why Don’tcha Do Me Right,” the band’s 1967 non-hit single included as an Absolutely Free bonus track, and find yourself agreeing with Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play Zappauthor Ben Watson when he claims that had The Mothers released only a rare seven-inches or two or three like this back in the daze, then duly disappeared, they’d be widely hailed today as one of the world’s most wholly Nugget-worthy Garage Rock Wonders.  Excuse me while I call Little Steven’s radio show with a request…..             

PS:  Quiz Time, boys and girls!

Which future member of none other than Monty Python made his audio debut on Side Two of Absolutely Free ??

First correct response wins an all-expense-paid trip as the first member of the Peace Corps to be sent to Alabama, as The Big Surfer would say…..

  My olde Pig Paper co-conspirator John Pinto just blessed me with seventeen – count ‘em !! – vintage Frank Zappa / Mothers Of Invention albums …or, should I at least say, their Reagan-era digital incarnations (more about THAT later).  So as you’ll soon plainly see I’ve been having late-night balls revisiting these choice gems, in chrono-logical order, one-by-one and track-by-track, recalling all the trouble I got in at home and especially school upon purchasing and playing, as loudly as was humanely possible, their original Verve vinyl pressings as a snotty young Canuck.  

(btw:  say what you may about Canada of course, but remember that the initial pressings of We’re Only In It For The Money up there in the Grey Wide North sported the uncensored “Pepper” parody cover right up front, whereas them Yanks had to have it hidden safely inside that ugly Motherly-yellow gatefold.  So THERE).

anyways, Starting at the Start then, Frankly speaking:  Freak Out.  

Four (count ‘em!) long-playing sides BEFORE Blonde On Blonde;  multi-minute suites of musique concrete slapped right alongside nice cute pop songs …BEFORE The White Album;  an album-length “concept,” as it was, BEFORE Arthur, Tommy, or even Confessions of a Teenage Opera [sic!] …though, admittedly, several years AFTER the Little Deuce Coupe and All Summer Long LP’s.  

And, speaking of Big Brother Bri and the Summer of 66, Freak Out proved a ground-breaking, genre-busting, earth-quaking true lush orchestral song cycle BEFORE posh li’l Pet Sounds ever did.  

And, possibly as a direct result, it sold just about as badly back then too, even in the comparatively hep U.K…..

John Trubee's The Communists Are Coming to Kill Us! is a Lost in the Grooves exclusive, available now from Maryatt Music Group. Click to sample John's singles collection or purchase.

John Trubee's legendary Prank Call CDs, available as MP3 samples, downloads or full CDs:

Greatest Prank Phone Calls Of All Time Vol. 1
Greatest Prank Phone Calls Of All Time Vol. 2
Greatest Prank Phone Calls Of All Time Vol. 3
Greatest Prank Phone Calls Of All Time Vol. 4

Review:
John Trubee and the Ugly Janitors of America The Communists Are Coming to Kill Us! (Enigma, 1984)

Mr. Trubee is best known as the man behind “Blind Man’s Penis,” a demented poem with lines like “Warts love my nipples because they are pink/Vomit on me baby, yeah, yeah” that was sent to a song-poem mill and turned into a deadpan country song which subsequently became an underground novelty hit. Lesser known, but far stranger, is his follow-up album. Trubee got the ball rolling by sending a fake suicide note to several associates, including L.A. Reader rock critic Matt Groening and Enigma’s Bill Hein, who agreed to meet with Trubee and negotiate a record deal. In Trubee’s words: “It was no negotiation. I wanted to do the record badly--that was obvious. It was similar to a horny teenage boy negotiating with a supermodel to lose his virginity. There is no deal--he just gets with her fast before she changes her mind. I told Bill I'd do it for no money. He set up mastering time at Capitol and I walked in … with a brown paper bag full of reel tapes and cassettes of teenage poetry rants, prank phone calls, aborted horn chart recordings from music school, and other weirdness. I had the flu and I sat with Eddie Shierer for six hours editing all this madness into an album.” What resulted was an extremely unique and, well, odd record. I came across it in a used bin shortly after it came out. It was both annoying as hell and insanely captivating, a collage of atonal avant-jazz, primitive electronic compositions, and spoken rants against stuck-up college girls and the suave men who slept with them, plus those juvenile prank calls, a revelation long before the genre became a pop cultural phenomena. If the record that was attached to the Voyager space probe had contained the sounds of all the alienated, pissed-off, shat-on people on earth, it would sound something like this. (Chas Glynn, from the book Lost in the Grooves)