Absolutely Free ad on page 2.

Source: Crawdaddy Archive

We're Only In It For The Money ad on page 48.

Source: Crawdaddy Archive

Frank Zappa cartoon on the cover. No Zappa content inside.

Source: Crawdaddy Archive

Anyway, in this age of specialists I specialize in sitting around stoned and trying to draw comparisons between records, groups, album covers, what-have-you; and that's mostly what this is about, the records being Permanent Damage (Straight STS-1059), by the G.T.O.'s, An Evening with Wildman Fischer (Bizarre 6332), Trout Mask Replica (Straight STS 1053) by Captain Beefheart, and various Mothers of Invention albums. (read more)

Source: The Waldo Scrapbooks

(1) Frank Zappa is chief Mother on the Hollywood hagiography, the conscience of the industry, the essence of West-coast pop, a rare fusion of the energies, creativity and ideas that make up the Big Beat which lives on.

Plotting in his cell, a crazed Artephius, Zappa preserves this vital energy, tends the nerve plants, stores the beauty in Canopic urns, de-fuses the explosives for later use and watches with mild dismay as fads and bubblegum music crash past his garden gate. He rarely goes out, preferring to stay in and grow the tapes, all at 15 inches per second. (read more)

Source: slime.oofytv.set

Captain Beefheart, fresh from his failed attempt at respectability has joined Frank Zappa’s regular touring band. “He called me up last year and apologized.” Zappa explained before a recent performance. “then asked me for a job. I auditioned him once and he flunked. He couldn’t keep his rhythm together. I tried him out again and he squeaked past. He’s currently in the process of squeaking past. I have to tell him exactly what to do. He doesn’t have any trouble understanding what the concept is, it’s just getting his body to do it. He’s got a coordination problem.” (read more)

Source: archive.org

For the last ten years, people have been trying to figure out whether Frank Zappa is a genius or an asshole. He is generally acknowledged as one of the most eccentric, if not the best, of America’s popular music composers. Three years before the Moody Blues’ much heralded combination at rock with orchestra, Days Of Future Past, Zappa had put together a much more challenging synthesis of classical avant-garde postures with a socio-musicological history of rock, an album called Freak Out by his brainchild Mothers of Invention. This was also the first album to feature integrated horn charts in a rock context, thus making it a primer for the more obvious synthesis later attempted by Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago. (read more)

Source: archive.org

We are into essences here. Masterwork. Trout Mask Replica is nothing less than this century's answer to Edgar Allen Poe. (Who dresses these tormented types?) It's a little more folksy than Poe, and has references to more casual musical forms, but for the most part it’s pretty artistic. Side four ended the relevance of TV and side three created a whole school of approximation. Alice Cooper, for example, has listened to side three and we know what will happen next. (read more)

Source: archive.org

Zappa was attending the Billboard Talent Forum at the Beverly Hilton in the hope of moving a two-year-old videotape of a Mothers show, called A Token of His Extreme. It has splendid animation by Bruce Bricktord in the manner of a nightmarish Gumby cartoon and represented a $200,000 investment to Frank, who had also brought to the convention mixes from his two forthcoming albums and the one he had produced for Grand Funk Railroad, Good Singin', Good Playin'. Like any good salesman, Frank was remembering visitors' names, whether or not they wore them on plastic badges. Offer him the power handshake and he'd return it; you could also get the traditional shake. It was your choice. (read more)

Source: archive.org

The primary philosophical conceit of Frank Zipper’s outrageous musical preparations is and always has been that he goals on stoned white punk “youth culture” as bitterly as he does on their elders – America itself. And you. He puts you down like a furry Don Rickles. Once you learn to love it and, in that, transcend it, he changes direction and leaves you in his ugly dust once again. (read more)

Source: archive.org

Recorded live late in 1976, Zappa in New York sounds as much like formula work as anything this character has ever foisted upon his public. Anyone at all familiar with Zappa's recent work could have guessed how many minutes this album would devote to audience-appeasing raunch, or what proportion of the concert would be extended in more cerebral endeavors. Even the infamous Zappa sneers could have been pencilled in beforehand. (read more)

Source: The Waldo Scrapbooks