Bizarre Records – First Underground Conglomerate
By Record World
"Just what the world needs. Another record company."
That line, from an early announcement ad for Bizarre Records, tells a lot about the organization behind it, which is fast becoming the underground's first entertainment conglomerate.
Bizarre, Inc., founded by Frank Zappa and Herb Cohen eight short months ago, has grown from one record company with a publishing arm, into a multi-media entertainment complex with the most unusual array of talents, products and services in show business. With the announcement a few days ago of the company's second label, Straight Records, whose roster includes a strong contingent of underground artists such as the abstract rock band Alice Cooper, Tim Buckley, Judy Henske and Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, Bizarre has achieved status as the most aggressive avant garde record company in the record business.
The backbone of the organization, of course, is Bizarre Records. The label's first release, "The Berkeley Concert," a two-disk recording of the last Lenny Bruce concert, is already a strong contender for comedy album of the year honors. Albums by the Mothers of Invention and Wildman Fischer were released earlier this month. The Bizarre label is distributed by Reprise, while Straight Records product is distributed independently.
Records Only Part
But records are only a part of the Bizarre story. Other "leisure-time interests" as the establishment conglomerates call them, are music publishing, personal management, film production, book publishing merchandising and advertising.
Bizarre's music publishing interests – the Bizarre Music, Third Story Music, Frank Zappa Music (all BMI) complex – holds the rights to a wealth of material, including all songs by Tim Buckley, Fred Neil, Judy Henske and Frank Zappa, as well as modern standards such as "Hey Joe."
Meanwhile, artists the organization manages include the Mothers, Tim Buckley, Linda Ronstadt, Captain Beefheart and the GTOs. While the GTOs are involved in their own very special activities in the L.A. rock scene, the other artists are among the hottest concert attractions in this country and Europe. This year the Mothers will tour Europe twice, and Buckley will make his third continental concert tour this fall.
Bizarre's film production activity is currently centered on "Uncle Meat," a movie now being completed by Zappa. The Mothers' new Bizarre album, bears the same title and in fact is the soundtrack from the film.
Zappa and the Mothers have been tapped for music for other film makers' work, too, creating Bizarre's soundtrack production. Haskell Wexler, who is completing a film titled "Medium Cool" for MGM, will use tracks from the Mothers LPs in the movie's soundtrack. And director Roger Corman, whose "Wheels on Fire" motorcycle film is the talk of the West Coast film colony, has commissioned Bizarre to produce the track for the film. In addition, Tim Buckley composed original material for the current smash movie, "Changes," and will do the same for "Wild Orange," a film he will also star in. Production on "Wild Orange" begins this month in New York.
Bizarre's first book publishing venture, Zappa's "The Groupie Papers," a compilation of the memoirs of the Plaster-casters, the GTOs and other girls of rock, along with transcribed groupie interviews, will be ready to show to publishers by next month.
Ad Agency a Hit
Finally, Bizarre's advertising agency, Nifty, Tough and Bitchin', is becoming a leading producer of music for radio and television commercials. Among the agency's recent clients are Ludens Cough Drops and Hagstrom Guitars. Bizarre's soundtrack for a Ludens commercial won several awards.
All of these diverse activities are handled professionally by a staff whose most remarkable quality is a common disdain for conventional business pomposity. Bizarre's refusal to take itself seriously, a tone set by Zappa and Cohen and their iconoclastic stance on the rock musk scene, produces lines like "Just what the world needs. Another record company."
The company's executive offices are becoming ground zero for the Coast's creative scene. Rock and roll guerillas are constantly dropping in to audition or rap. New journalism writers know they can always find a story there, and regularly fall by to absorb the atmosphere and leave with several leads on different items. Then there are the company's artists, and friends, poets looking to record, burrito salesmen arranging to cater parties, agents and managers, irate parents and out-of-work seismologists.
Donna, Kimberly and Pauline, the charming secretary-assistants, direct this traffic with an aplomb indicating several years of experience each in front-line soup kitchens.
Grant "Captain Weirdo" Gibbs is the company's sales-promotion-advertising director, and sits in an office crammed with promotion material, records, tear sheets, clippings and posters, a telephone constantly to his ear, guiding the organzation's flow of information.
Joe Gannon, who handles the management side, works closely with Cohen directing the affairs of Bizarre's many artists, plans all concert engagements, and produces Bizarre concerts and other events. Cohen arrives at the office at 9 each morning and juggles appointments, phone calls, surprise visitors, listening sessions, meetings and strategy sessions until 8 each evening, and somehow manages to handle the personal affairs of Frank Zappa and Tim Buckley while guiding the entire Bizarre complex.
Zappa checks in to the office occasionally, but most of his time is spent either touring or lecturing at various Universities, or if he's in town, recording, editing film, or rehearsing. Free of administrative hassles, he concentrates on creating.
Creativity is what Bizarre is all about. To the casual establishment observer, the Bizarre operation is mostly a collection of artists who have been rejected by other record companies as having "no commercial potential."
But Zappa remembers being told at the beginning that the Mothers of Invention had no commercial potential. With five chart albums, including LPs that have won awards, now, the music industry must think twice before making a judgment on the potential of Bizarre.