Who IS Frank Zappa

Gonna have a listen to Thing-Fish again, I just have to find a good time to do so, there has to be no one around ;)

Got a bunch more reissued Zappa albums in the mail, listening to Francesco Zappa right now, as the others are all double albums. I may have listened to this one before once, but it was years ago. I know Frank didn't write the music, but it feels like something I'd enjoy listening in December during Christmas time. Just has that feel, what with the synclavier sounds and all.

darkshade wrote: There's a level of "darkness" during some moments of the album, like those looooong held out bass notes.

Yeah... like "The Crabgrass Baby".  There really aren't any other FZ tunes like it, except "Dio Fa".  Dark droney stuff.

Burnt Weeny Sandwich is one of the best Zappa albums, top 20 easily, top 10 depending on my mood.

Yes, CP III.

Inspired to listen to Burnt Weeny Sandwich myself, a thought occurred; does anyone else find many of the compositions sound like stuff Frank would write in the 80s for the synclavier?

No.

I believe Frank Zappa had a huge influence on the band Gong. Especially the early Gong material. Oddly enough a track from The Man From Utopia titled "The Radio Is Broken" is stylistically based on the Gong sound. Another track titled "We Are Not Alone" is reminiscent of a Gong instrumental.

I wonder if anyone could help me out, years ago I was given a CD by my English tutor of some Zappa tracks, and that's pretty much all the info I have on them. I don't know if it was an official release or bootleg (sounds more bootleg though, the sound quality isn't that great) but it contains 3 tracks, the first I can identify as the 'Studerbacher Hoch' section of 'Billy the Mountain' which is the album version but with an organ, sax and guitar solo which was cut to make Billy the Mountain fit on a record side. This track runs for 14 minutes.

It also has two improvised pieces which I cannot for the life of me identify, each running at 5:20 and 20:20.

Any ideas where these came from?
I tried music identification software but it was broken by Zappa's musical prowess.

HarbouringTheSoul wrote: It's definitely not an official release, but you can try poking around here to see if it's a bootleg.

Aha! Thanks, will begin nosing around.

But if anyone wants to save me time, below is the second track.

Canterzeuhl wrote: HarbouringTheSoul wrote: It's definitely not an official release, but you can try poking around here to see if it's a bootleg. Aha! Thanks, will begin nosing around. But if anyone wants to save me time, below is the second track.

This is the guitar solo from "Pound for a Brown" as played on Oct 11, 1971 at Carnegie Hall. It was actually officially released, on the 2011 Carnegie Hall album and as the beginning of "The Subcutaneous Peril" on the 2012 Finer Moments album. Both of these are edited (and thus shorter) and weren't released at the time you got the CD, so I assume what you have is a live audience recording. It would make sense if the "Billy the Mountain" excerpt on your CD was also from that show, and the 20-minute jam might be from that show's "King Kong".

EDIT: And a little bit more googling reveals what is likely the source of your CD. I would rather not share the link because it contains a download link for a bootleg, which I doubt sits well with this forum's rules, but the tracks appear to stem from a planned two-disc version of the Just Another Band from L.A. album that Zappa ultimately scrapped in favor of the single-disc version.

The final album contains an edit of "Billy the Mountain" that removes about eight minutes of soloing so that the whole thing fits on one album side. On the double-disc version, it would have been split over side two and side three, and your 14-minute track is simply the part that would have appeared on side three, so about six minutes of it should overlap with the officially released version and the rest should consist of the removed solos. The remainder of side three would have been made up of the track you uploaded, which is indeed a "Pound" solo from the Carnegie Hall show and was supposed to be called "The Subcutaneous Peril" (just like the Finer Moments track, which is longer and also contains solos from other songs). Unlike what I suspected earlier, I assume this is the official edit that would have ended up on the album, and the bad sound quality stems from the fact that it's a bootleg copy.

The 20-minute track that you have was supposed to make up side four and was called "An Easy Substitute for Eternity Itself". It's also from Carnegie Hall, so I assume it's either the solos from "King Kong" (which lasted 30 minutes in that show) or a compilation of various solos from the show.


Edited by HarbouringTheSoul - March 13 2013 at 05:05