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punknaynowned
Frank Zappa Status
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1968 11 10 KSAN Berkeley, CA w/ Tom Donahue
Here's a bio pic on Donahue from The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
http://rockhall.com/inductees/tom-donahue/bio/
1.
beginning starts in media res:
[string melody of The Idiot Bastard Son or Peaches(?) fades]
FZ: ...play it in its raw state.
TD: where would ... where would this fall uhh in, in time? Is this,
FZ: [aherm] Well this was recorded
TD: Was this recorded with the first LP or -- ?
FZ: No. This was recorded about ahh a year and a -- a little over a year ago. Up in New York.
TD: "Agency Man".
[cues to a live version of "America Drinks" w/ Ray Collins improvising the end bit :"Wednesday we'll go topless, Thursday we'll go naked, Friday we'll
shoot up a Volkswagon," where Frank laughs and Ray says casually, "should be fun" : this portion of live tape ends with Frank explaining that they had
gotten kicked out of playing in this very venue playing this song, then the tape edits
directly into "Agency Man" in a different edit or version but nearly as found on the official release "Mystery Disc"]
TD: That's "Agency Man" and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.
2.
TD: This is Tom Donahue and Frank Zappa of the Mothers of Invention is our guest in the studio tonight and uhhh, we heard "Agency Man". Which is,
what do they call it? I guess an outtake in a sense.
FZ: Yeah it's an outtake,
TD: Something you decided not to work with. Ruben and the Jets is the most recent release of the Mothers and we're gonna get to that later on. I
know I wanna play some of it
FZ: Mm-hmm
TD: Later on and talk about it. But umm, About six months ago there was a period of time on the top forty stations all of a sudden there were three
or four records that sounded like records from the fifties. They have that '57/'58 sound.
FZ: Well I never listen to the radio, so that could have been true
TD: Yeah heheh. Well it ahh they all had that same simple sort of Moonglows beat to 'em.
FZ: Well y'know if you analyze the sound of what the Moonglows did it wasn't really as simple. Rhythmically it was pretty simple but harmonically it
was amazing for the things they got away with and in the chord structure they were working on. And they were very tight and they were a very good
vocal group. Really exceptional.
TD: It was a period of time though when there was a tremendous variation in the musical ability of groups who were scoring with records. Sometimes a
really frightening variety.
FZ: Yeah, well, y'know. That's one of the things that I like best about that kind of music is that even the ones that weren't competent musically had
so much to offer in the emotional department.
tD: Oh yeh
FZ: that it didn't make any difference
TD: on the basics all the time
FZ: That's right, it's glandular, y'know. I can identify with that.
TD: That would used to be the BIG argument that was offered by adults during that period of time that didn't dig the msuic was that it was too
simple.
FZ: Yeah. I've been handed a book here called, "Who's Who In Rock and Roll". It must have been published about twelve years ago. Some sort of
greasing that Alan Freed put out. It has a thing in the back where he's taking all the credit for putting rock and roll together and making it all
happen. Let's see, where is this thing? It's got a quotation from -- ah yes,
"Rock and Roll keeps rolling" is what the headline says. And then it starts off this way,
"Rock and Roll is lewd. In plain fact dirty' blasts Frank Sinatra. 'You're so wrong, Frankie', echo thousands of rock and roll fans. 'I consider it
the greatest music ever,' says the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley.'
TD: And et cetera et cetera.
FZ: Yeah and they're still doing that in various levels today
TD: Yeah they're still playing that same kinda rap. There were a lot of closet fans in those days
FZ: [exagerrated smarmy laugh]
TD: Just like those closet queens y'know
FZ: Uh-huh,
TD: Who listened to rock all the time and very seldom would admit it to their friends.
FZ: Yeah
TD: I used to -- I had a friend who was teaching English at the University of Pennsylvania about '56, '57 when I started playing in Philadelphia.
FZ: Yeah,
TD: He'd aways told me he'd never listened to any of it but all of a sudden started rappin to me about what I should be playing more of ... and ahh
became a fan in a hurry. I expect he had been all along.
FZ:: Rock and roll music is good for you. It's very healthy for you. I think it's --ah, one of the greatest problems facing the entire world today
is mental health and poor education. And I can't say that rock and roll will improve your education. Well, it might because there's a lot of things
to be learned about the way you're supposed to act in a given social situation.
TD: Yeah right, rock tells you how to treat girls,
FZ: that's right,
TD: and it tells you what to do or how to feel when your heart's been broken,
FZ: that's right
TD: It's got a lot of things in
FZ: Unwritten social code of the younger generation is implied in the relationships of the boy to the girl in most of the love lyric siuations in
these records. They don't even have to come out and spell it out, but the whole social system is implied in those records and then, that's how I
learned to do what I do. Gettin all those instructions.
TD: hahhahha
FZ: You couldn't find out any other way. Your mother and father didn't know. They hated you 'cause y'know, you were creepy, you were a teenager,
y'know. When I was in my teens, calling somebody a teenager was really the nastiest thing you could say to me. 'You TEENager. Juvenile delinquent,'
and all that stuff.
TD: There was a -- it's it's impossible to take anything back and say 'This is the beginning'.
FZ: Mm-hmm.
TD: I mean Alan Freed can say what the beginning of rock and roll was. To me it was always a record by Don Howard called 'Oh Happy Day'.
FZ: I remember that. Yeah. Ahh, I , I don't think that was the beginning for me. I think that the first thing that I heard was ahh, it was either
'Gee' or 'Sh-Boom'. I forget which came out first but it was back in that era.
TD: Yeah, well, but I think 'O Happy Day' was before that
FZ: yeh?
TD: Yeah, Yeah I think it really did come out before that. Yeah I think what happened, it went around a couple times.
FZ: Hmm
TD: and it was just the one cat singing, y'know the voice
FZ: The low voice
TD: Y'know how people had 'good voices' or 'bad voices'
FZ: yeh
TD: and this is a bad voice. It was the first record BY somebody
FZ: Well, the 'bad voice' that made money, heheh
TD: Right, heheh
FZ: 'That's the beginning of rock and roll'. There ya have it.
TD: Yeah, right. Well, y'know maybe it's
FZ: See, he opened up the way for us.
TD: They say that part of the appeal has been that people could say 'I can do that'.
FZ: Yeah. That's Right. That's a reason why people like Johnny Carson and those talk show people on television make it big because, 'well, y'know
there's a nice simple guy, he can't hurt ya, y'know, I can do that. I can identify with them'.
TD: And he looks right.
FZ: Yeah, huhuh
TD: Y'know he's got brown hair and he's the right size
FZ: hahah. Brown hair, white skin, blue suit.
TD: When Les trained[or Les Trane?], first started teevee, first thing I said was 'Man, you'll never make it. You are the wrong color.'
TD: Mm-hmm
FZ: You may be white but you've got dark hair, you're Jewish, you're all the things you shouldn't be to do that kind of show,
FZ: Mmhmm. And then what happened?
TD: He still didn't make it.
FZ: Errrmm.
3.
FZ: Do you think it's possible we could listen to this record?
TD: What do you want to play?
FZ: There's a record sitting over there that's called 'The Handsome Cabin Boy" from an album called Blow Boys Blow. 'Ewan MacColl and AL Lloyd sing
songs of the sea' and it's one of my favorite songs. And it probably doesn't belong on a radio station but seeing how this is sort of underground and
everything you might sort of get into the mood of it. It's actually a sea chanty which is a -- it's a whale -- it's something you'd sing on a whaling
ship. You know when they wouldn't have anything else to do. And it's an interesting tune. Melodically I think it's very appealing and it has an
interesting story line. And it says on the back of the album, [reads] ''It is a common sailor's dream that among the crew is a girl dressed as a boy.
Oddly enough in songs based on this fantasy it is nearly always an officer who discovers the girls identity. In this case, the plight of the
pregnant cabin boy might be considered tragic, seen from the girl's viewpoint. But as the sailors see it the situation is inexhaustibly comic. The
version of this much loved ballad that is sung here is unusual for the equivocal role played by the captain's wife. '' And if you listen very closely
to the lyrics, they're very trippy.
[cue Handsome Cabin Boy] <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KaNoP0zSSgo" frameborder="0"
allowfullscreen></iframe>
4. [they both talk over each other in this section again and again]
TD: That's ummm Roshimon.
FZ: Roshimon? What's that?
TD: Well, it's a Japanese play that's been made into about fifteen movies,
FZ: Yeh?
TD: Where ahh a woman who is supposedly raped by a man that a kinda she and her and the man that she's with
FZ: Yeh?
TD: and each of them runs down the story,
FZ: Yeh
TD: but they each tell it a totally different way.
FZ: Oh, I've heard about that
TD: Yeh, you've been there
FZ: But I haven't seen the cinema - No I haven't BEEN there. I can see the similarity between that and the bizarre relationship between this cabin boy
and whoever it was that was strapping him or her or whatever it was on this ship
TD: heheh
FZ: But I'd like to dedicate that song to the GTO's and the BTO's of Laurel Canyon because I'm sure they'll understand it.
TD: And next.
FZ: And next we have a record called Grunion Run which was recorded about six years ago in a studio that I used to own in Cucamonga, California. And
it was produced by Paul Buff who is ahh also happened to be the enginner on another fantastically successful teenage record a few years back that we
all know and love 'Wipeout'. He's the man responsible for comitting that thing to tape. And he's still trying to live that disaster down. And he --
under our -- forcing him, agreed to record this piece of music called 'Grunion Run'. Which at the time seemed to be not very commercial at all.
Y'know, he didn't really want to do it. But it wound up being the b-side on a record called 'Tijuana Surf'. Which turned out to be a good selling
record. It sold 8000 copies in Fresno, and 150,000 copies in Mexico where it was number one for seventeen weeks.
TD: "Wipeout" was on the charts longer than any other record. I think it was either five or six years,
FZ: Really? That tells you something about the people who recorded it and who bought it. And also the people who played it on the radio, cuz they
really helped out.
TD: Only the best.
FZ: "Grunion Run" was a little ahead of its time because of the technique of the fuzztone stuff in there. The fuzztone used on the guitar in this
record was a homemade number before they were commercially available, Paul Buff the electronic wizard who is now the recording engineer at Original
Sound Records for Art Laboe in Los Angeles had manufactured this little homemade cheapie fuzztone by accident. He tried to make a transistor
amplifier, didn't know what he was doing and found out that everything that you plugged into it distorted like crazy. So he started running everything
through it, the bass, the guitar, y'know?
5.
FZ: Here it is, the b-side of 'Tijuana Surf'
[cue 'Grunion Run' by The Hollywood Persuaders] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVoyIQZA76Q
6.
TD: The Grunion thing is uuhhh peculiar to uhh southern California isn't it?
FZ: The grunion? Oh, oh yeh. Some people don't know what a grunion is. It's a fish that comes up out of the water and sort of runs up onto the beach
on its tail and squats in the sand and lays eggs. And during this procedure, southern california teenagers gather together with their cars, line their
cars up on the beach, aim their headlights out on the sand, turn them on and then run out there on the beach and grab the fish while they're laying
their eggs. [pause] Tells ya a lot about the southern california teenager doesn't it?
TD: Yeahahha, Well, what's the line? I saw in a book recently that said that you gotta understand that they start out having their brains baked out
by the sun.
FZ: No, I don't really think that it works that way. That's sort of the kinda thing that a person from San Francisco would say about a person from
Los Angeles.
TD: HA! I wouldn't lie to somebody from Los Angeles . . . Who was that originally?
Other voice: ahhh, Max Shulman
TD: Yeah, Max Shulman
FZ: That says their brains are baked out in the sun? Well, I think that the school systems in California have a tendency to sort of y'know?
TD: Make a major contribution.
FZ: Yeah. I don't think you really need to rely on the sunshine to do away with the intelligence of the young people. School system is designed to
take care of that. Blot --
TD: That where you're from?
FZ: Blot you're creativ -- Oh No, I was born in Baltimore. Wish I was from El Monte
TD: Yeah someone called me a while ago and asked me if you were from El Monte and if so what part of El Monte you were
FZ: No. Most of my time spent in that area was spent in Pomona, Ontario and Cucamonga, California. Which is a few miles east of El Monte.
[Edited on 5-11-10 by punknaynowned]
[Edited on 5-11-10 by punknaynowned]
[Edited on 5-11-10 by punknaynowned]
[Edited on 6-11-10 by punknaynowned]
[Edited on 6-11-10 by punknaynowned]
[Edited on 27-8-12 by punknaynowned]
[Edited on 27-8-12 by punknaynowned]
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DED
Administrator
Posts: 1139
Registered: 16-3-2006
Location: NL
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Mood: a happy upgrader feeling
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grows like weed
tell us if you're ready
[Edited on 5-11-2010 by DED]
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punknaynowned
Frank Zappa Status
Posts: 1283
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ok, I think this is free of errors or reasonably so 
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DED
Administrator
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$%^&*(
The player that came within BBFlashback is self starting. Have to find another one.
Song seems to be part of equal to "Daar was laatst een meisje loos" Dutch folksong about a girl who wants to be a sailor and ends up pregnant in the
bed of the captain. Wonder how she did that 
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punknaynowned
Frank Zappa Status
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Registered: 29-8-2006
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see that's an example of what I wondered at the beginning,
I don't know if there is another on the web. Will keep looking.
Yeah it's a sordid tale but it' so funny to me that it is a sailor's song and they used to think it was funny ... lyrics and notes on original:
http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/lloyd/songs/thehandsom...
this is the tune as played by  Jerry Garcia and David
Grisman;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWQk3jBbUkM&
the vid of course is a yuppie sailboat and you miss the old man Ewan MacColl singing the lyrics . . . in english, yes, I know.
here the voice is similar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEXayWgy5_g
here Tim Browne in County Kerry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zyZJhNBbAY&
of course, I think Kate Bush's version is far better than the other's here, but so different
[Edited on 6-11-10 by punknaynowned]
[Edited on 6-11-10 by punknaynowned]
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punknaynowned
Frank Zappa Status
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Registered: 29-8-2006
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there that should be better!
sends just to a page where a seeker can push the button themself!
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DED
Administrator
Posts: 1139
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Location: NL
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But thats a problem we like to keep our visitors on board. We host as wel as the player as the flv.
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punknaynowned
Frank Zappa Status
Posts: 1283
Registered: 29-8-2006
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oh no!
I removed the link entirely
what is an flv ... I'll go look it up
sorry to clutter your morning
it is all experiment for me but I try to learn in a changing world
[Edited on 6-11-10 by punknaynowned]
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DED
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Quote: Originally posted by DED  | $%^&*(
The player that came within BBFlashback is self starting. Have to find another one.
Song seems to be part of equal to "Daar was laatst een meisje loos" Dutch folksong about a girl who wants to be a sailor and ends up pregnant in the
bed of the captain. Wonder how she did that
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| Quote: |
Once there was a maiden keen
longing for sailing, longing for sailing
once there was a maiden keen
longing to be a sailor at sea.
She did have to climb the mast
tie up the sailcloths,
tie up the sailcloths
she did have to climb the mast
tie up the sailcloths real firmly with rope.
But by tempest and adverse wind
the sails altogether,
sails altogether
but by tempest and adverse wind
sails altogether knocked down on the deck.
She was ordered in the cabin
to get a beating,
to get a beating
she was ordered in the cabin
to get a beating and then it came out.
Please, my captain, hit me not
I am your lady-love,
I am your lady-love
please, my captain, hit me not
I am your lady-love as you can see.
Daar was laatst een meisje loos
die wou gaan varen,
die wou gaan varen
daar was laatst een meisje loos
die wou gaan varen als lichtmatroos.
dutch lyric Daar was laatst een meisje loos : Songs D or Lullabies
commentary: Old-fashioned but still well-known children's song. Former folk song, dating from the 18th century.
Complete lyric original folk song (7 verses): Dutch folk songs.
First line: in the original Dutch text the order of the words is also turned round (keen behind the noun instead of before it).
Last line: in former times a singer on a market did show images of the story on a so called 'roll-up cloth' (roldoek). Apparently, in this case the
last picture showed the love between the girl and the captain (in Dutch literally: as you can see here). |
This is the version as we sing it nowadays but the original goes beyond (verses 6 and 7)
What happened in the cabin
The chief-mate doesn't know
But before the ship was ashore
a little sailor was born
Me myself nowadays like to find out what happened in the cabine 
[Edited on 6-11-2010 by DED]
[Edited on 6-11-2010 by DED]
[Edited on 6-11-2010 by DED]
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DED
Administrator
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| Quote: Originally posted by DED |
But thats a problem we like to keep our visitors on board. We host as wel as the player as the flv.
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I've figured it out. I knew I had to copy with the style of Conny's CSS that points always to the main index files to get the fonts and colors an so
on. Every linking should be relative from the base.
I'm now planning to record the you tube movie, I dont want to depend on movies I can't control.
The user can delete it, or Youtube can take the sound out for some reason.
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punknaynowned
Frank Zappa Status
Posts: 1283
Registered: 29-8-2006
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o mi gosh
well that's a lot of stuff. there's 12 songs that I know are played for this one interview that are on youtube
maybe the whole thing would be better with no video
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DED
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I got loads of space and recording is not such a hell of a job. First we can use the embbeded video from YT later we can see what we do.
The result however will be great. Have you seen the first part above on the site? Looks good and is interactive.
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punknaynowned
Frank Zappa Status
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yes it is!
ok!
I'm collecting the tracks as much as I can
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punknaynowned
Frank Zappa Status
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1968 11 10 KSAN Berkeley, CA w/ Tom Donahue -6 -- 14
-6. El Monte cultural hotbed of the 1950's
FZ: El Monte is a sociological phenomenon that really should be studied very carefully. There's amazing things that took place there during the
fifties. Y'know, whole sections of historical folklore happened there and then just disappeared and were forgotten.
TD: I don't know if it necessarily disappeared
FZ: Well, there are a few
TD: Just like somebody somewhere is putting it all down, recording it all
FZ: I don't know whether they're really putting it down. I think that some people remember it but it should be treated in a scholarly work and the
details of this should be turned over to an institution that saves that stuff for future generations. Y'know when future generations want to really
know the why's and wherefore's of the jelly roll hair-do, the black leather jacket, the parking lot knifing, tire slashings and the true function of a
tire chain as applied to teenage recreation. These things should be recorded by one of those scholars y'know that's supposed to have chops to do that
stuff. Instead of relying on the memory of poor rock and rollers who were forced to work at the El Monte Legion Stadium, in one of the worst
acoustical environments in southern California.
TD: Oh worse yet perhaps a history could be written on the basis of -- of what the newspapers were saying about those teenagers.
FZ: Heh yeah
TD: Or ahh what their supposed to do
FZ: Yeah
TD: My favorite movie is a teenage movie made in the mid-fifties because they didn't have anything right then --
FZ: Yeah
TD: and seen ten years later, it's really --
FZ: Which movie? Do you remember some of those? How 'about Girl's Town? Did you ever see that one?
TD: Yeah, I've seen Girl's Town and seen a lot of 'em. I've seen a lot of the old ones that have Frank Gorshin in 'em. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0331319/
FZ: Yeah
TD: Who's that singer, recorded for Warner Brothers?
Other Voice: Connie Stevens...
TD: Commie Stevens, Concetta Rosa [?] http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0828328/
FZ: There's one that has Paul Anka in it
TD: Yeah, I've seen one with Paul Anka in it. Then there were a number of 'em umm well, the car movies I thought were the best.
FZ: Yeah, the really good cars. MM. If they only knew about things like that in Europe. Y'know it's very hard to go to Europe and play a concert and
sing a song about a '39 Chevy and see these people wailing around on bicycles and they just don't know what you're talking about.
TD: Yeah
FZ: And even if they knew what the car was they can't project into the mystique of the fuzzy dice and the taco balls around the windshield. Y'know you
just can't tell that to them.
TD: They don't know about going to Mexico and gettin a reupholstery job
FZ: eheh
TD: and standin over 'em in Tijuana to make sure that ahh
FZ: Yeh make sure you get your fifty dollars worth
TD: Yeh that they put the right kinda stuff into it, not old newspapers and uhh
FZ: mm-hmm
TD: Find it tuck rolled
7.
FZ: We have another hit tune
TD: Tried to sneak out [sic?]
FZ: heh, This is a piece of music written by Pierre Boulez and it's one of my favorite pieces of music. From a piece of -- one little piece of a
larger piece of music that he wrote. And the title of which I can't pronounce in French but in English it means A Hamemr Without A Master and its --
I think it's got bongos in it ahh . Here's the instrumentation: Marjorie McKay alto singer, Arthur Leghorn flute, Milton Thomas viola, William Kraft
vibraphone, Dorothy Remson xylo/marimba, Thedore Norman guitar and Walt Goodman percussion, bongos, maracas, tambourines, claves, bells, tam-tams,
traingle, gong, cymbal and small cymbals. I'd like to say something about the conditions under which this record was made. It's been around for
quite some time, it was originally released as a mono recording and now is available in stereo for some strange reason and was done during a time when
it was not the popular thing to do to record avant garde music or new music at all. And they figured, 'well, we'll do it because Boulez is making a
reputation. He's one of those hot new European composers and it sold surprisingly well when they put it out. The only problem is that rumors through
the studio musician grapevine in Los Angeles came back to me and a number of other people that the music was so difficult that the performers on the
piece just sort of started making uhhh up their own things in spots, y'know? And nobody except Boulez could tell that it was not what was supposed to
happen. And I got the score to the piece and tried to follow along with this version of it and it doesn't match up. You can see that there are
errors in it. But I have since listened to a recordings conducted by Boulez and I like this one better cause it has a better beat. If you go for
bongos kids, this is for you.
[cue Le Marteau Sans Maitre ] [this is not the same version of course though I believe it is the proper section though Frank never says so : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO00g3Ow3Lk&
8.
TD: We'll be rappin with Frank in a minute.
[cue "America Now" commercial: a book about conservative thinking in a new media age, 1968 with details about where to order it]
9.
[cue "Berkeley in MOI ad" where FZ counts in "One, Two, Buckle my shoe..." as on Absolutely Free, with the ad announcer flying overtop saying the MOI
will be in Berkeley, CA; folowed by FZ complaining that he had to come all the way to a studio in Berkeley to record this ad, "And I think that's a
real drag to have to do. For a show in Berkeley of all ridiculous places"; followed by announcer on details of how to order tickets]
10.
TD: This is Tom Donahue we're talking to Frank Zappa of the Mothers of Invention. We have early electronic music,
FZ: Well that's not electronic music
TD: Well, it's ... ahh ok, early avant-garde.
FZ: Yeah. Ok, ... Tom. Now here's a little early teen grease. It's, it's sort of middle period teen grease actually. It's called When we get
married by the Dream Lovers. And we discussed earlier the fact that the unwritten social code of the younger generation is embodied in their music?
Just listen to the life described by the lyrics of this song.
[cue When We Get Married
45 on Magnavox player: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdjoTNkuMNU
45 on better sound playback: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GZ3Uc87hQU& ]
11.
[cue Memories of El Monte: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlXy5jzCjPE ]
12. Frank remembers El Monte:
TD: Memories of El Monte at El Monte Legion Stadium.
FZ: Yes indeed. I'd like to say that Ray Collins and myself wrote that tune a long time ago and we started hussling it all over town in Los Angeles.
This is when we were living outside of town in the sticks and we wanted to be teenage songwriters and I think it was the first teenage song that I
ever wrote. And I thought, 'God! I like this stuff so much and it must be so easy to write those kinda songs,' but we really sweated our buns over
that one trying to get it together and make it really swell. So we wind up taking it to, of all people, Art Laboe and he says, 'Well I got a group.
I got this group called the Penguins, y'know they made Earth Angel, y'know? And a few of them are working at the car wash but I can get 'em down here
to sing this tune'. So he actually brought ... The Penguins, or he purported these people to be The Penguins to the recording studio and introduced
them to us and we showed them how the song went and they sort of liked it and it took about two or three months to actually get him to finally have a
session and record the tune. They recorded it and they put it out on the market and it sold about 4000 copies in New York and nobody in El Monte even
wanted to know about it.
TD: Heh,
FZ: Y'know, they -- 'Forget it!' -- they don't like to be reminded that they live in El Monte, I guess or that El Monte was really something
spectacular. Well, there might be a few who like the idea of it. Pandora likes it. But we still perform this tune on stage sometimes, y'know, just
to -- for fun.
13:
FZ: OK, the next record is from a Charlie Mingus album that I grew up with called Mingus Ah-Um. And the name of the tune is Goodbye Porkpie Hat-
dedicated to Lester Young.
[cue Goodbye Porkpie Hat, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEyETVtEg3A]
14.
[cue Lucy Mae Blues: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsZu1QDD7Ck]
FZ: That was Frankie Lee Simms singing the Lucy Mae Blues. One of my favorite records when I was in high school.
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DED
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added ..... pfffffff
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DED
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| Quote: Originally posted by punknaynowned | oh no!
I removed the link entirely
what is an flv ... I'll go look it up
sorry to clutter your morning
it is all experiment for me but I try to learn in a changing world
[Edited on 6-11-10 by punknaynowned] |
Sorry I didn't react on this.
.flv is flashvideo it is the smallest videoformat at this moment.
Its the kind of video you look at in You tube.
You have to upload a video in another format f.i. mp4, Avi and so on.
They convert it to FLV.
We can do it ourselves but off course than you need a flv player than can open a flv video in a website.
we have several to use, some of them are self starting and some not. If the videofile is the only file on a page selfstarting is preferred but if you
have more content, it is often not handy.
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MTF
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Cool interview.
Just a little correction, though. KSAN wasn't in Berkeley; their studio was on Sansome Street in San Francisco. KSAN broadcast at 94.9 FM, and was
known as "The Jive 95."
Turns out I know Jerry Graham, the guy who replaced Tom Donahue as General Manager of KSAN. I see Jerry just about every day: we take our dogs to the
same dog park...
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punknaynowned
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that's aweome!!
small world, eh MTF?
Yes! I'm sure you are right about KSAN. And Yes, I should explain about that somewhere. This looks like a good spot.
This tape is the KSAN tape of a previous 1968 11 10 KPFA Berkeley recording.
This tape of this interview was rebroadcasted by KSAN (noted call letters at end of tape) at a date later than the one given here (1968 11 10), as it
was earlier reported to have been broadcast and at least recorded by KPFA which at that time did reside in Berkeley.
But this is a later rebroadcast of an earlier interview. So to make that distinction I told two half truths in the title in order to tell the whole
story of this tape's origination 1968 11 10 Berkeley and following dissemination (KSAN).
Make sense?
And there's still more for this yet to come...
[Edited on 14-11-10 by punknaynowned]
[Edited on 14-11-10 by punknaynowned]
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punknaynowned
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15.
TD: OK, you are from Baltimore originally you said earlier. Speaking of uptight towns,
FZ: Yes, hehmm
TD: and ahh
FZ: Distressing, repulsive uptight towns.
TD: How old were you -- The problem with the kind of city where people are always sayin, 'You haven't seen the nice part of it.'
FZ: Yeah-ha-ha-ha
TD: How old were you when you came out to California?
FZ: About ten years old. And the first place we lived was Monterrey. And the second place we lived was Pacific Grove. Then we moved to southern
California. So my first taste of California was up here in rain country.
TD: Did ya have a car early?
FZ: No, I didn't, my parents wouldn't let me drive because they knew that if I ever got my hands on a car that I would immediately disappear from the
dismal places that I was forced to live in. See, my father worked for the government, uhhh in various things. He was either working directly for the
armed services or he was employed in the defense industry. And he was always forced to live in these really cruddy places. Monterrey being one of
them. And uhh, When we finally moved to southern California it wasn't much better because we wound up living in Lancaster which is in the middle of
the desert and it's sort of a depressing place with uhhh, y'know well, just nothing happening there. So they made sure that I didn't learn to drive
or anything. They wouldn't even sign a permit for me to take driver education in school. So I didn't get a car til I was about twenty-three. But I
had absorbed enough of the legend and lore of the auto freak in southern California to be able to write a few songs pertaining to that subject.
TD: Back for a moment. When we were playing The Grunion Run,
FZ: Yes
TD: Ahhmm, all of a sudden Dick Dale occurred to me.
FZ: mmHmmm
TD: He was a southern California phenom that
FZ: Yes, Phe-nom
TD: that came out past Bakersfield.
FZ: Well I remember when Capitol Records paid a very large amount of money to
TD: Million dollar gaurantee,
FZ: Yeah, that's right. Snatched him right up to make him the giant star that everyone knew he was destined to be because everyone knew that surf
music was really what was happening. Now as we look back upon surf music as a phenom and we can also look forward to a resurgence of surf music in the
future. Probably disguised as something else. Maybe the literal association between the music and ahhhh, the ah, the ocean will go ... (ahemm)
someplace else. (coughs) But the type of music, the style of the music may return and there were some very interesting things happening harmonically
in the surf hot-rod type of rock and roll music. I remember especially a song called "Summer Means Fun" by Bruce & Terry. Do you remember that
record?
TD: Yeah
FZ: It has some of the most interesting - ahhh, modulations in it. Some really groovy chord changes, the words are a little puny, but
TD: They had a couple of good records,
FZ: Yeah,
TD: They had some other things that were
FZ: Yeah, but that -- that one was really neat and like 'The Little Old Lady From Pasadena" -- Cuz I can remember hating these records when they came
out, cuz I thought 'God they sound so white and disgusting and they're talking about a way of life I can't identify with'. But then if you back off
like, say five years from uhhh, when it was out and then say y'could say, 'Well, haha, it's an old record, let's listen to it and see what it sounds
like', if you just hear the music that was in it there was some very ingenious stuff there.
TD: Yeah, when we were playing the record with the fuzz tone on it -- we lost the record evidently - you were talking about stumbling into that
accidently. Ahh, before that time there'd been a record by Tony Fischer called 'The Big Hurt'. Do you remember that?
FZ: Yes
TD: That was the record that had flange phasing which we know which was so popular all over again.
FZ: Yeah. Do you know how that was supposed to have occurred?
TD: I would imagine accidently.
FZ: Yeah it happened accidently in the transfer of the tape and uhhh then he tried to duplicate the effect and he couldn't duplicate it. Now this
person, this ahh electrical wizard, Paul Buff, heard that record too and he said, 'Why I can do that. I can make that happen any time I want.' And
he cranked out a country and western tune in Cucamonga that was never released in 1960 that had phasing on it. I have the master tape of the thing at
the house. I inherited a bunch of old masters from this studio and I heard this thing -- and it has the date on the box and it was a paid-for session
that somebody came in and said, 'Here, record me and do something special to it,' -- and if you can imagine cowboy music with that y'know, flange. It
was a really peculiar sound,
TD: Yeh
FZ: But I understand there's a future development on that. There's the guy that was doing these effects in England. They call him George the Flange.
He's a recordist, he's not an engineer. He's a guy, like a maintenance man, or runs the recorders that ahh -- sort of gets credited for all the
contemporary versions of the flange -- has invented a thing called the reverse flange. The guy who engineered the Traffic album, Eddie Kramer has
told me that this device which they are currently employing on some things they are recording now, will make a sound appear to come from behind your
head. If you are listening to a stereo system and facing the speakers y'know, something coming out of the right and something's coming out of the
left, when they push the button for the reverse flange something will come from behind your head
TD: Mmm
FZ: And I was thinking the ultimate use of this effect would be to have some music going on and you're grooving and tripping out on a teenage
psychedelic level and then from behind your head you hear the heat come in and say 'Alright, this is it!' y'know
TD: Yeh, Kramer also did a couple Stones LPs and Jimi Hendrix
FZ: Yeh
TD: and Blue Cheer,
FZ: Yeah, the new...
TD: Blue Cheer was a group I wanted to ask you about. About how you react to them. Because I see Blue Cheer as being today very representative of
older rock and roll in a sense.
FZ: Why? Because they recorded 'Sumemrtime Blues' by Eddie Cochrane?
TD: No. Because the kind of audience they appeal to. They almost invariably - the people who dig Blue Cheer are young teenagers but they're really
super fans of them.
FZ: Well, I'll tell you the honest to golly truth. I've never heard their record, and we've worked with them twice and I was never around when they
played. I don't even know what they sound like.
TD: Yeah
FZ: All I know is legend and lore and that they have a lot of amplifiers and they play very loud.
TD: They do play very loud.
FZ: I've met the guys in the group but I don't know anything about their music.
TD: Mmhmm.
16.
FZ: Well, let's see. We -- Ohh. we have a record coming up now that is one of my all time favorite uhh teenage grease records. This is The Letter
by Vernon Green and the Medallions. And I think it ranks very high on the list of the type of tune which has the lead vocalist speaking a passionate
love message to his sweetheart in the middle of the song is one of the main attractions of the item. And this was very big on our high school charts
around 19 (I'd say it would be) '55 or '56. It's a very passionate record. You can take your pants off for this one.
[cue The Letter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMlotHd1fS8]
17.
TD: This is Tom Donahue and our guest tonight is Frank Zappa of the Mothers of Invention. OK Frank, we've had ahh a love letter there. A lot of those
records always to me sounded like a -- some of the basic ideas that come from Ink Spot records.
FZ: Yes, uhh that would seem to be their original source on some of these speaking techniques. But the thing that's interesting about this -- the
talking part on this record is, everyone I've questioned about the meaning of this one line in the song just shakes their head and goes away. When he
says, 'whispering sweet words of pismotality', y'know. I looked it up in the dictionary,
TD: heheh
FZ: the minute I heard the record and I can't find it. And if anybody out there knows what a 'pismotality' is,
TD: Nice sounding word
FZ: Yeah but, 'whispering sweet words of pismotality' it sounds so obscene when you sneak it in there like that.
TD: How 'bout Ruben and the Jets, ya haven't played some of that,
FZ: Yeh, you could grease--
TD: How 'bout Richard Berry on there?
FZ: Yes, I would like to pay my respects to Richard Berry because I think that he is one of the most creative forces in rock and roll music. Uhh, he
wrote 'Louie Louie'. And the original version of Louie Louie is quite a bit different than what the Kingsmen eventually wound up doing to it. Making
a record that stayed on the charts for 200 years in uhhh Oklahoma and places like that. Richard Berry's version of Louie Louie in the mid fifties was
revolutionary. It was the strangest thing that I had heard, y'know? The harmonization of the group, his seventh chords and the things that -- and the
way they were voiced and just the overall sound of the record was very fresh, y'know? It was a departure from the rest of what was going on in rock
and roll and he's written a great number of songs and a lot of them never got to be big hits but I think they are all extremely good songs. And the
other tragic aspect of the career of Richard Berry is that he never made a lot of money from the things that he wrote because in those days it was the
standard operating procedure of record companies to sign the artists and writers to contracts with royalty payments so low that they're virtually
non-existent and then when it came time to pay them they would explain to the artist, 'Well, it didn't sell too good and uhh-'
TD: They'd charge extortion [?] prices...
FZ: Yeah right and they'd always stick the artist and uhh , like, the guy would -- for instance he would probably say to Richard Berry, 'Well, we got
you guys some wine when you were recording y'know? And we paid ya twenty-five dollars a day you made the record. What more do ya want?' And then of
course they would give each member of the singing group a hundred copies of the record that he got to pass out on the grounds of Manual Arts High
School or something like that and he gets to be a hero for a week at school --- and they would just sort of fart him off like that.
TD: I think Mr Berry's 'Louie Louie' was later on -- I think, '58 or '59.
FZ: No. It was earlier than that.
TD: Yeh,
FZ: It was in the mid '50's. And aah, the other side of it was very nice. 'You Are My Sunshine'.
18.
FZ: Let's ... this is a song called 'Daddy Daddy'. Which has a nice portrayal of a mid-'50's father and his attitude towards the young boy coming to
visit the young girl while they make out.
[cue Daddy Daddy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtT-Icm_NAQ]
[Edited on 27-8-12 by punknaynowned]
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punknaynowned
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I'm not sure Ed how you were able to make that stand-alone player work for the Ewan MacColl clip.
But I could not find a youtube clip of this Richard Berry song. The 30 sec sample from amazon was all I found,
http://www.amazon.com/Daddy/dp/B001CX8G6Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=...
I left the end bracket to make it easier to handle 
there are only a few more items left to this interview...
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