Análisis y conclusiones del carácter descentralizador propuesto en los PEDZE

The Flo & Eddie Years. Chunga’s Revenge (originally released in October 1970 on the Bizarre / Reprise label; currently available as Rykodisc RCD 10511). Billboard chart position: No. 113. Personnel: Ian Underwood, Max Bennett, Aynsley Dunbar, Jeff Simmons, George Duke, John Guerin, Don “Sugarcane” Harris, Howard Kaylan, and Mark Volman.

Fillmore East, June 1971 (originally released in August 1971 on the Bizarre / Reprise label; currently available as Rykodisc RCD 10512). Highest Billboard chart position: No. 38. Personnel: Ian Underwood, Aynsley Dunbar, Jim Pons, Bob Harris, Don Preston, Howard Kaylan, and Mark Volman.

200 Motels (originally released in October 1971 on United Artists Records; currently available as Rykodisc RCD 10513 / 14). Highest Billboard chart position: No. 59. Personnel: Ian Underwood, Aynsley Dunbar, George Duke, Howard Kaylan, Mark Volman, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Just Another Band from L.A. (originally released in March 1972 on the Bizarre / Reprise label; currently available as Rykodisc RCD 10515). Highest Billboard chart position: No. 85. Personnel: Ian Underwood, Aynsley Dunbar, Don Preston, Jim Pons, Mark Volman, and Howard Kaylan. “I’m interested in things of a glandular nature.” 29

Two months after the release of Weasels Ripped My Flesh, Zappa released

Chunga’s Revenge, supposedly a sort-of-solo album, although one with por-

tents of things to come. The liner notes indicate, for instance, that “All the vocals in this album are a preview of the story from 200 Motels. ” In this case, the vocals were by the 22- and 23-year-old ex-lead singers of the Turtles, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, otherwise known as Flo & Eddie.

These four albums, the collected output of the Flo & Eddie years, rep- resent a radical departure for Zappa. They are diffi cult albums for fans and critics and have taken, unfairly I think, a pretty severe beating over the years (see following paragraphs for more on contemporary critical reactions). This reaction comes from a couple of places: (1) these albums represent a defi ni- tive break with the old Mothers of Invention. Some fans and critics simply can not get over the breakup of that band. Billy James, for instance, argues that “Zappa’s recorded output through the early 70s remained notoriously prolifi c and innovative as ever but in some people’s eyes never really recap- tured the spirit of his original band.” 30 _{(2) There is a (not so) subtle change}

in attitude. Although the lyrics are still gleefully antiauthoritarian, the albums are, for lack of a better term, smuttier. It is diffi cult work to understand and place these albums in their proper historical and cultural context, and it is work that many do not approve of. There is, upon hearing these albums for the fi rst time, a grand tendency to rush to judgment on the shockingly sexual lyrics, but when one considers the time in which the albums appeared, they present a real challenge to U.S. ideals of authority, rock and roll, capitalism, sex, love, and culture.

Chunga’s Revenge is a nice starting point to discuss this change because it, like the two previous albums, is a transition piece; some of the songs on the album were recorded at the same time as Hot Rats, whereas others were recorded quickly in Los Angeles and England immediately after Kaylan and Volman joined the group. 31 _{Indeed, the listener is not introduced to Flo &}

Eddie until after the song “Transylvania Boogie,” which opens the album. “Boogie” is what many had come to expect from Zappa. It is a song that would not be out of place on either Hot Rats or Burnt Weeny Sandwich, an extended acid rock jam that shows off the evolving nature of Zappa’s gui- tar playing (which was ever more often straying from the blues and moving toward something entirely different). It also introduces listeners to English drummer Aynsley Dunbar, a much more accomplished rock drummer than Jimmy Carl Black. 32 _{The next song, “Road Ladies,” starts a two-year period}

of songs about the sex lives of the band members, starring Flo, Eddie, Frank, and the band. It is an interesting song for a couple of reasons: It is one of the fi rst rock songs about the (supposed) downside of being in a rock band (something Jackson Browne would perfect with Running on Empty ), and it is the fi rst of many controversial songs about groupies and sex and band members. It is also the fi rst of many songs in which the band members would adopt larger-than-life personas (i.e., Flo & Eddie were to become caricatures of rock stars, and they would play these characters well, creating a rich tab- leau of silliness that would take Zappa fairly far away from his original work of subtle critique and into the world of absurdity, parody, caricature, and satire).

Musically, the song is a basic blues vamp that would reappear in a slightly different form in the song “What Kind of Girl Do You Think We Are?” on

Fillmore East, June 1971. It makes the argument that life on the road is a hor-

rible torture; over this basic blues (featuring a hilariously clichéd organ intro), Zappa sings, in the style of an old bluesman, a litany of things that are wrong with being on the road, including the loneliness of having only groupies and employees to hang around with, the piles of dirty laundry that abound, and the crappy places one has to play. Zappa also laments, “When the P.A. system eats it, / And the band plays some of the most terriblest shit you’ve ever known.” These are legitimate symbols of life without the comforts of home. They potentially alienate the band’s fans, however. It is always a mystery as to why bands do this. Touring is undoubtedly exhausting and diffi cult work, but it is not like the exhausting and diffi cult work that many, if not most, of the people in the audience are doing every day. It is one of those sticking points that gets Zappa into trouble; one has to assume that Zappa knows that he is lucky (and the song indicates that he knows this) and that this complaining is part of the rock star persona that he and the band had adopted.

One way to read this song is that it is not just a collection of gripes by Zappa but is a setup for Zappa’s continuing exploration and critique of male privilege. The so-called answer to all of the perceived troubles that Zappa sings about in the fi rst two verses is sex with groupies; the interesting thing is that it is not Zappa who sings about this solution, it is Flo & Eddie, the rock stars of the band. This change in dynamic is important. Zappa’s complaints about the road—the alienation and exhaustion, the fact that you do not really have any friends (only sycophants and employees), that the band that bears your name can not play, and that the halls you are booked into can not take the time to set up the sound systems correctly—are the same kinds of com- plaints any worker would have about missing all of the comforts of home. Flo & Eddie sing in the chorus about missing the girls back home and the downside of the road, having to get a shot from the doctor because of “what the road ladies done to you.” Much like his indictment of teenage lust and the silliness of pop songs, Zappa is critiquing the privilege that the men in his band assume (that your stature as a pop star makes you extradeserving of female attention); although there is some evidence that Zappa, in his younger days, partook in the groupie scene to some extent, he seems to have stayed away from the kinds of insane antics that some of his band members proudly engaged in with great frequency (and which are revealed on the next several albums). Mark Volman seems to indicate that Zappa understood the satire he was creating: “He [Zappa] always had this idea to do a satire of an anti-pop band and now [because of the addition of Flo & Eddie] he had the ability to mock pop through the faces of a pop band. It became a satire on satire.” 33

It is also important to remember the time in which these songs were being written and performed: It is 1970, pre-AIDS, post-sexual revolution United States. Ideas about sex, at least by those in Zappa’s generation, were radi- cally different than they were 10 years before or would be 10 years later. The ideology that one could go on the road, get the clap, get a shot, and be well

is, in this era of AIDS, an unheard-of and unhealthy attitude and one that is easy to condemn in retrospect. In fact, what is much more surprising than the frank discussion of sex on the album (and on the subsequent albums) is the complete lack of discussion about the disintegration of the student move- ment, something upon which Zappa had cast, from time to time, a critical eye. Perhaps Zappa did not want to gloat or was burned out by the whole thing; whatever the reason, the fact that much of what Zappa had predicted in 1965–67 had come true, in a far more horrible fashion than anyone could have predicted.

Chunga’s Revenge was released in October 1970. Five months prior to this, the National Guard had fi red 61 shots at 13 unarmed students, killing 4 of them, at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. 34 _{The reaction to this event by}

many Americans was “they got what was coming to them,” and Zappa’s lack of comment—song after song about groupies, sex, and life on the road—was both a retreat and a diversion. Riots and protests, as Zappa has said previ- ously, are not going to work. All that is left is sex.

This turn away from protest toward sex should not be all that surprising. According to historian William Manchester, late 1970 and early 1971 saw Americans fondly looking backward: “nostalgia became big business.” 35

The people were scared and tired and wary. The monumental changes of the past 10 to 20 years had worn people down; fewer and fewer people lived on farms or in small towns, gas prices (related, of course, to gas con- sumption) were rising with great rapidity, and the number of shopping centers in the United States had increased by 13,000 in 10 years. It was an alienating time.

The year 1970 also saw many Americans realize that there was money to be made off of Americans’ interest in sex. Soft-core porn director Russ Meyer was celebrated in 1970 for making his 21st successful fi lm in a row (a record no mainstream director could ever approach). Meyer was quoted as saying that his fi lms made money because “I don’t play games with an audience.” 36

New York had more than 200 adult bookstores, and one X-rated fi lm, What

Do You Say to a Naked Lady (directed by Allen “Candid Camera” Funt) was

grossing more than $7,000 a day in San Francisco alone. Manchester writes of 1970 that “curiosity about sex seemed to be insatiable” and that much of the writing, talking, looking, listening, and thinking about sex “was rooted in the era, in the sexual revolution and the mini-micro-bikini-topless-bottomless mood of the times.” 37 _{It was simply a different time. The year 1970 saw the}

beginning of the debate over sex education (one that has not abated), with one pro-sex-ed national spokesperson arguing that children should be taught about sex “not as something you do but as something you are.” 38 _Although

Zappa likely agreed with the statement, the more brutal truth was the fact that the very same year, right-wing antisex crusaders in Racine, Wisconsin, succeeded in convincing people that sex ed in the schools “was a Communist plot to undermine the morals of the pupils.” 39

The year 1970, of course, is also the year of feminism. It had been around, of course, forever, but 1970 saw the fi rst fl owering of a powerful and unique ideological movement by and for women. It is important to remember that feminism was different in 1970 than it is now; it was both newer and more of a challenge to accepted cultural and social norms. There was much political theater, including the famous incident of former child actress Robin Morgan disrupting the 1968 Miss America Pageant and informing the world that she had started an organization calling itself the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (or WITCH for short). This is the same year that Abby Rockefeller, granddaughter of business giant John D. Rockefeller, informed the world, in a phrase that had to be dear to Zappa’s heart, that “romantic love between men and women was ‘counter-revolutionary.’ ” 40

Against this backdrop of revolutionary anger, Chunga’s Revenge is a tame statement, not the horrible and reactionary piece of misogyny it often is accused of being. Accusations of sexism by critics of Zappa do not fi t in light of the concurrent cultural revolution. 41 _{Often, lyrics that on the surface seem}

misogynistic actually critique the system, not the women trapped within the system. “Road Ladies,” which is as smutty as Chunga’s gets, is a relatively tame piece of work, and although the albums would get dirtier ( Fillmore

East, June 1971, discussed later, is admittedly a joyously fi lthy album), they

would never fail to signify and critique the cultural revolution of the times. In many ways, in fact, Zappa seems to have predicted this tumultuous time in the history of male-female relationships; one of the primary themes in his music since the founding of the Mothers in 1965 was the falseness of boy-girl relationships.

Ironically, “Road Ladies” is followed by one of Zappa’s most beautiful songs, the instrumental “Twenty Small Cigars.” A leftover from the Hot

Rats session, its acoustic bass and brushed drums place it squarely in the

jazz idiom. 42 _{The song lasts only 2:17 and segues immediately (through a}

fairly harsh edit) into “The Nancy and Mary Music,” an attempt, it seems, by Zappa to have the current band pull off one of the long instrumental improvisations / experiments for which the Mothers were so famous. “The Nancy and Mary Music” is not to everyone’s taste, although Watson argues that it is interesting because it involved the use of the audience as a musical instrument and introduced George Duke’s ability to work within “Zappa’s freaky-funk concept.” 43

The next two songs, more traditional vocal pieces, feature the comic styl- ings of Flo & Eddie. “Tell Me You Love Me,” which would be performed by nearly all of Zappa’s future groups, is a typical Zappa antilove song. The primary difference is the more complex vocals Zappa was able to get with his new lead singers. Lyrically it is no different from earlier songs like “Love of My Life” or “I Ain’t Got No Heart.”

“Would You Go All the Way” is in some ways more interesting. It deals with themes that seemed to amuse Zappa: the cliché-ridden horror movies of

the fi fties, the desperation of servicemen (again, the theme of what men will do to get sex from women seems to inform this song), and the wretchedness of adolescent sex. Musically it is another parody of early sixties happy rock (it is a perfect Turtles song, undoubtedly mocking the former employers of Flo & Eddie) that, as it progresses, becomes a heavier blues workout (featuring, of all instruments, a trumpet). The lyrics are a mélange of clichés about the fi fties, including white socks and black pants, a rolled up T-shirt, and “A ’55 Chevy that his brother just stoled.” What this typical fella wants, of course, is a date, “An’ he asks you for a date / To the servicemen’s dance!”

When the two eventually go to the servicemen’s dance, we fi nd that it is really just a brothel. As it moves out of the poppy sounds of the fi rst two verses, the song becomes both bluesier and sleazier, ending with a repeated chant, “would you go all the way for the USO / would you go all the way for the USA?” In light of what was going on at the time (Vietnam) and the era in which Zappa had been raised (the immediate aftermath of World War II), the sort of argument he makes in the out choruses of this song are particularly poignant: the girls are encouraged to go all the way to show their patriotic fervor, another example of male privilege at its fi nest.

Following these two songs is the fi ne instrumental title track, “Chunga’s Revenge.” Another leftover from the Hot Rats album, it is a much more blues-based piece, with a tremendous guitar solo and an infamous wah-wah sax solo by Ian Underwood. 44

The funniest song on the album, and one that has given critics and fans fi ts for years, is the song “Rudy Wants to Buy Yez a Drink,” a ditty about a union boss. Zappa’s relationship with unions, like his relationships with sex, the coun- terculture, and religion, is a complicated one. Musically it stands out; mixing beer hall clichés (trombone and tuba) with show-tune phrasing and surf guitar, it immediately sounds old fashioned, which is exactly the point. Zappa sees unions as atavistic—old fashioned. It is a complex argument, however, one that critics seem to want to avoid. In one sense, Zappa seems to be against systems—religion, political parties, public education, unions, and so forth. Zappa was the quintessential small businessman and quasi-libertarian. He wanted the role of the government to be to create a space where anyone (in his case the artist) was free to do what he or she needed to do (in his case create). The things that Zappa seemed most interested in critiquing are all systems of some sort: the way things are sold to people, the way art has been turned into a business (Zappa’s complaint is that record companies are more interested in making money than in releasing good or interesting music). Seen in this light, Zappa’s antiunion stance is not out of place. It is a surprising stance to some, especially because Zappa seemed, at times at least, sympathetic to leftist causes. Zappa’s caustic critique of fl ower power and student demonstrations should indicate to all that he is contrary by nature and hostile to groupthink, and to expect him to have a regimented ideological position that endorses a particular group is expecting something of him that he certainly never promised. 45

The album ends with the heartbreaking soul / doo-wop song “Sharleena.” 46

In many ways this song seems calculated to show the listener, despite all of the silliness that has ensued on the rest of the album, that the new guys can sing; the falsettos and harmonies of Flo & Eddie take the song into another place. It is no wonder that Zappa would return to the song several times on several albums, especially with bands that had great singers (Ike Willis and Ray White, perhaps Zappa’s best singers, handle the vocals on the versions recorded on Them or Us and You Can ’ t Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 3 ). It