The Mothers of Invention are laconically setting up. Jim Pens, the bassist, is skinny, blond and non-descript. Behind him slouches Ian Underwood, a veteran Mother and musical superman (he has a masters in music) who handles the saxes and the keyboards. His eyes are glazed and his skin is the color of old paste. He looks undernourished. Aynsley Dunbar, pounding away in the rear, is the drummer. Dunbar, appropriately cool and English looking, comes to us via the proven John Mayall route. Upon graduating from the Bluesbreakers he formed the 'Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation', a group responsible for two of the thousand or so mediocre British blues albums. He taps the skins quietly and tries not to look bored. (read more)

Source: The Stony Brook Statesman

There was no post concert review in Statesman, only a picture gallery on page 15.

Source: The Stony Brook Statesman

Mothers - Fillmore East, June 1971
(Bizarre-Reprise MS-2042)

This album, the latest in a series of releases by profane or insane genius Frank Zappa, cannot even be dealt with seriously. It exists and should be listened to at least once if only to understand why the Turtles really made it big with "Happy Together" but couldn't get out of the midwest any other way.

Physically the album has a little of the Zappa stream of fine instrumental imagination, usually a counterplay between Frank and Ian Underwood (keyboards), in the upper frequencies of the electric registers. For the rest, the jolly fatman of the Turtles and Frank, in the lighthearted vein of the timeless bouncing tambourine tapper, trade skittish suggestions to the accompaniment of any old rock and roll song. It's not a rock opera but a light musical comedy, which is what every Mothers audience has been screaming for years and usually didn't get. Instead the boys would spend most of their time doing something like their fantastic "King Kong Suite" from the never to be forgotten and never to be released movie Uncle Meat (also on the album of the same name). Have the Mothers gone commercial, or is it only good clean far out fun? Either way it doesn't matter. You pays your money and you gets your fun.

By the way, in the middle of the second side at the climax of the scene it is, of course, "Happy Together," a song you probably don't own, or, if you do, your 45 is really old and scratched. The Bullet.

Source: The Stony Brook Statesman

Who knows what surprises are in store when The Mothers make an appearance? They've run the gamut from satirical rock and roll, straight rock, classical rock to experimental classical. But always, Frank Zappa has been an innovator. (Read more)

Source: The Stony Brook Statesman

Zappa. The name alone is enough to drive some people to musical ecstasy, others to physical disgust. Zappa is well-known as being a trained and sophisticated musician, an exciting stage performer, and gross. This final adjective may not be true anymore – the umbrellas brought by people in the front rows proved unnecessary – but the first two attributes still hold as much as ever.

At Saturday night's concert, the Mother's infamous craziness was still in evidence, but it was secondary to the business of making good music. (Read more)

Source: The Stony Brook Statesman

About 10 years ago, there was a man out among the sun-drenched foothills and taco stands of Los Angeles, writing songs (on whatever it is that they write them on out there) that did not quite fit into the dog, two kids, house in the suburbs mold, and the type of music that mold generates. (Read more)

Source: The Stony Brook Statesman

For the past 14 years, Frank Zappa has been churning out product with an efficiency that Pepsi-Cola would envy. He has a cult following with a devotion that could keep him selling records into middle age and supposedly a catalogue of unreleased material for enough albums to take him there. However, a question that has always remained one of contention is whether Zappa is one of the most accomplished, original, saterical talents of our time or whether he is just another jerk with a gimmick. (Read more)

Source: The Stony Brook Statesman

Frank Zappa is a force to be reckoned with, but due to his firm belief in being as unorthodox as possible, he is, by and large, ignored by the masses. However, the masses present at the Stony Brook gym for the 11 PM show Saturday night obviously were not of the ordinary breed (Read more)

Source: The Stony Brook Statesman