Mothers: too much!

By Bob Melton

The Daily Aztec, 5 October 1970

As I sit down to type this review, I have just heard the news of Janis Joplin's death, presumably from an overdose of drugs, alcohol, or both. Coming so soon after the deaths under similar circumstances of Al Wilson and Jimi Hendrix, it really casts a pall over the groovy mood I've just been put in by Frank Zappa and his delightful new Mothers of Invention.

I'll try to get on with it, pausing long enough to throw in the statement that UNLESS ALL THE MUSICIANS, POETS, WRITERS, ARTISTS , REVOLUTIONARIES, REFORMERS, AND ANYONE ELSE IN ANY ANY WAY INVOLVED IN THE MOVEMENT, OR SOCIAL CHANGE, OR THE NOW GENERATION, OR WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT, GET OFF THE GODDAM DRUGS, INTOXICANTS , AND STIMULANTS, RIGHT NOW, MANY OF THE BEST MINDS AMONG US ARE GOING TO BE RUINED OR LOST, AND OUR CHILDREN WILL HAVE TO DEAL WITH AN EVEN MORE FOULED UP, PARANOID OLDER GENERATION THAN WE'VE HAD TO! ! !

With that thought in mind, it's sad to think that the magnificent improvisatory music which was a part of Zappa's thing this Sunday evening was played for, an audience a good third of which was too spaced out to perceive it as anything but "weird" sounds.

But that can't be helped by Zappa, or by his great new band: former Turtles Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, vocals, tambourine, maracas; Zappa, guitar and vocals; George Duke, organ and trombone; Ian Underwood, electric piano and soprano saxophone; Jeff Simmons, bass; and the phenomenal English drummer Aynsley Dunbar.

One thing Zappa could have done better was in his choice of a warmup group. Gary Solbue, activities advisor to the Cultural Arts Board (CAB), who produced the show, said CAB contracted only for Zappa, but that the head Mother announced Friday he would bring a Los Angeles warm-up band and pay them himself.

He should have saved his money. The group in question, something called Head Over Heels, was a hard-rock trio of a type that by now has become horribly stereotypical and a crashing bore. Hey, look at us! We almost look like Cream! Hey, listen! We almost sound like Cream! Well, almost... well, don't we almost look like Cream?

It's very mysterious that Zappa should pay this type of aggregation and actually share his program with it. Probably somebody he nows is related to one of them, or maybe he just wanted to make his own set sound that much better.

Which it did anyway. The bad taste of Head Over Heels was soon forgotten as the Mothers tuned up – Volman, chubby and frizzy-maned, juggling his tambourine; Kaylan gurgling Ripple; Zappa, in brown and white tye-dyed jeans and lavender top (he soon shed the top), fondly recalling his San Diego boyhood ("I went to Grossmont High and Mission Bay High; you can see how much good it's done for me.")

Volman and Kaylan are very effective both in comic routines within the songs and in the sticky-sweet falsetto parts which are so much a part of Zappa's parodies of 1950's rock (of which there were many samples this night.)

There was also a lot of instrumental work. My notes contain mostly exclamations of surprise and delight at the surging, varied, powerful straight ahead and free jazz playing. Organist Duke and bassist Simmons were tight and solid. Long-time Mother Underwood put his electric piano plinks in just the right places, and at one point uncorked a squealing, raging soprano saxophone solo that was, straight out of the late John Coltrane.

Hidden somewhere within Zappa the iconoclast, and surfacing at times like this, is one of the finest electric guitarists in the world. His time is uncanny, his articulation clear as a bell at any volume (like Jerry Garcia, but with a softer, more jazz-like timbre) , and he's totally mastered the wawa pedal.

It's a treat to see a blues-rock drummer like Dunbar, formerly with John Mayall, develop into a complete percussionist. His playing (even his backbeat work) was fleet and fluent, and he constantly superimposed crossrhythms and odd meters in a way that few, if any, drummers in the audience (myself included, dammit) could do without a hell of a lot more woodshedding.

Besides the jazz work and the parodies , Zappa presented an excerpt from his opera "200 Motels" ("Definitely X-rated material; anyone who will be offended should leave now.")

The section performed involves the rock musician's search for love while on the road or, as Zappa put it, checking into the motel and going out "looking for nookie."

After a detailed and animated listing by Volman, Kaylan, and Simmons of the best places to get laid "the day before the gig" in several major cities, the piece segued into a giant parody of the operatic production of another rock group, the Who, with Volman swinging the mike over his head Roger Daltrey style and the group shrieking "Feel me! Heal me!"

What followed, beautifully and tenderly portayed by Kaylan and Volman, was the inevitable confrontation between musician (Kaylan) and young lady (Volman) in the front seat of a car: "... Of course I have a hit record – do you think I'd lie to you just to get in your pants? ... We are not groupies, no matter what you say – do you really have a hit reacord? ..... I want a wide, steaming, sweating, dripping (BLEEP!), with a pretty girl attached ... I have a problem – I can't (BLEEP!) unless you sing me your hit song. ..."

The relationship, was obviously consummated, since Dunbar hit every cymbal in sight, and the entire group romped into a boffo version of the ex-Turtles' own "Happy Together?"

A standing ovation brought a Santana-like theme, more magnificent Zappa and Dunbar, and a melancholy closing about a young girl being shot in the park by police. A quiet ending. No screaming last crescendo. Zappa makes the unexpected seem inevitable.