Bath Festival of Blues & Progressive Music
Royal Bath and West Showground in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, England
27–29 June 1970
A New Nation?
By Bob Young
Most people at Bath will be aware of the spiritual and political hopes which were inspired by Woodstock and will have some sense of the importance of rock music in the American protest movement. In Britain we have had rock and student protest and festivals, but these aspects of the Underground (culture of young people) have not come together with anything like the coherence and intensity of the American scene.
We have asked Bob Young to spell out the history of pop music and its relations with protest and festivals in order to provide a perspective on our own experience. (read more)
FRANK ZAPPA & THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION
Frank Zappa, guitar, conducting, and hand signals
Ian Underwood, piano and saxophone
Aynsley Dunbar, drums
Mark Volman
Howard Kaylan
Jeff Simmons
George Duke
The Mothers of Invention could only have come out of America. Borrowing on the influences of doo-wop Greaser Rock, third stream jazz, the classics, Madison Avenue Hot Dog advertising and electronic music, they made one of the most revolutionary bands of the decade.
Maybe a bit too revolutionary, though, because they were eternally being thwarted by listeners and radio programmers who couldn't see beyond the first chrome guitar. Vexed, Zappa disbanded them last November. Since then, each went his own way, and Zappa did an album, 'Hot Rats', with Ian Underwood.
It is, though, hard to keep a good man down and Zappa has bounced back with a frequently-changing band, including his old sidekick Ian Underwood, and Aynsley Dunbar from the Retaliation.
Zappa was actually an ad man at one time, which might have something to do with his outlandish presentation. But he has always been bizarre. In the mid-Sixties, while everyone in the States was mimicking the English bands, he formed Captain Glasspack and his Magic Mufflers – definitely not English. By 1965, they evolved into the Mothers of Invention. In 1966 they entered history with the album, 'Freak Out'.
According to Zappa, "The Mothers set new standards for performance ... in terms of pure musicianship, theatrical presentation, formal concept & sheer absurdity ...'
In order to enlarge upon such themes, they opened a run in a
Greenwich Village theatre, calling their show, 'Absolutely Free.'
The
theatre was, says Zappa, 'devastated by cherry bombs, mouldering
vegetables, whipped cream, stuffed giraffes & depraved plastic
frogs ... the whole range of expressive Americana'.
Since then, the Mothers have always been suberbly underground,
never capitulating to any sell-out commercialism and pioneering
such things as wah-wah pedals, electronically modified woodwind
instruments and a profound usage of musical theory.
A wide list of present rockers came out of the Mothers' school: Jim Fielder of Blood, Sweat and Tears, Henry Vestine of Canned Heat, Billy Mundi of Rhinoceros, and CTA producer James Guercio.
At present. Zappa seems to be in control of the ten-thousand activities he's undertaken. Besides producing acts for his own record label (Bizarre/Straight in the States), he has been arranging an album of Mothers' material for French jazz violinist, Jean Luc Ponty. Zappa has just finished another solo, set for November release, and a Mother's album, tentatively titled, 'The Weasel Ripped My Flesh,' will be released late this year.
DISCOGRAPHY:
'Freak Out', August 1967, MGM
'Absolutely Free', May 1967, MGM
'We're Only In It For the Money', January 1968,
MGM
'Lumpy Gravy', May 1968, MGM
'Cruising With Reuben and the Jets', November 1968,
MGM
'Uncle Meat', April 1969, Straight/Warners
'Burnt Weenie Sandwich', February 1970, Straight/Warners
'Hot Rats', February 1970, Straight/Warners
Source: slime.oofytv.set