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The soundtrack to the sixties. Lumpy Gravy (originally released in December 1968 on the Verve label; currently available as Rykodisc RCD 10504). 93 _High-

est Billboard chart position: No. 159. Personnel: various (the Mothers, plus a 50-person orchestra, plus spoken-word performances by various folks who visited the studio while Zappa was recording). “The way I see it, Barry, this should be a dynamite show.” 94

The best way to listen to this album is to hear it as the soundtrack to the most twisted fi lm imaginable; it is an energetic attempt to meld rock and roll, musique concrète, and avant-garde symphonic composition into an entirely new and shocking form of recorded entertainment. Courrier calls it “contem- porary audio collage art,” 95 _{whereas Watson refers to it as “a grating, contra-}

dictory work which mocks artists tied to single genres.” 96 _{It is a problematic}

album for many fans, especially contemporary fans, because it does not really contain any songs (although it does have a theme that Zappa’s bands would

occasionally play, as well as the melodies to the songs “Oh No” and “King Kong,” both of which would show up on a later albums). Zappa himself remarks that “It’s more of an event than it is a collection of tunes.” 97

The album would also cause Zappa no small amount of grief. Immediately after the release of Freak Out! and while Absolutely Free was being argued over by Zappa and his record company, Zappa was signed to a solo con- tract with Capitol Records as a composer and arranger, although his current record company, MGM, did not seem to know it at the time. The music on the album was recorded in late 1966 at Capitol studios in Los Angeles; the vocal and spoken-word parts were recorded in New York at the same time Zappa was working on We’re Only in It for the Money (as well as Cruising

with Ruben & the Jets and Uncle Meat ). Lumpy Gravy would spend more

than a year-and-a-half on the shelf while Zappa litigated and negotiated with Capitol and MGM. When he fi nally did get the master tapes from Capitol, he found that the album had already been cut and mastered at Capitol (which had its own way of doing things), and he had to literally take it apart and recut the entire album, piece by piece.

Lumpy Gravy is an incredibly ambitious musical project. It ultimately involved more than 50 musicians (labeled the Abnuceals Emukka Electric Symphony Orchestra and Chorus) and includes spoken-word sections, surf music, Dixieland jazz, electronic noise, and random percussion and sym- phonic bits all woven together through the magic of tape and razor blades.

In the liner notes to the album Civilization, Phase III, Zappa explains how

Lumpy Gravy was conceived:

One day I decided to stuff a pair of U-87s [microphones] in the piano, cover it with a heavy drape, put a sand bag on the sustain pedal and invite anybody in the vicinity to stick their head inside and ramble incoherently about the various topics I would suggest to them via the studio talk-back system. . . . In Lumpy Gravy, the spoken material was intercut with sound effects, electronic textures, and orchestral recordings of short pieces, recorded at Capitol Studios, Hollywood, autumn 1966. . . . The process took about 9 months.

The album cover for Lumpy Gravy features the rather cryptic question, “Is this phase 2 of We’re Only in It for the Money? ” It is an interesting question. In a lot of ways, Lumpy Gravy is the direction Zappa had been headed since

Freak Out!; it is the fullest realization of his musical ideas to date. On the

other hand, it does not seem to share much, thematically or conceptually, with the work that Zappa was doing on We’re Only in It for the Money and

Absolutely Free.

There are a couple of very interesting point-by-point analyses of Lumpy

Gravy. Ben Watson’s take on it in The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play is

a fascinating attempt to make a linear narrative out of what might be seen as an exercise in absurdism or Dadaism. Watson is aware of this danger and

takes great pains to work around this potential fault. Watson’s most engag- ing comment on the piece is when he writes that what makes Lumpy Gravy so interesting, especially in terms of Zappa’s expanding musical ability, is that it places several kinds of music “in a new context, freeing them from the pall of art music that reserves so much musical exploration for a high brow elite. 98

What Zappa was trying to do with Lumpy Gravy was to create something new; while it is easy to look back and make informed critical analyses of the piece, I am uncertain that Zappa had the piece as theoretically worked out as Watson claims he did. For Zappa, the idea of new was more tangible and less theoretical.

Kevin Courrier, in The Dangerous Kitchen: The Subversive World of Frank

Zappa, argues that the album works the same ground that U.S. composer

John Cage was working and places the album squarely in the genre of the avant-garde. Courrier quotes Zappa as telling Sally Kempton, a writer for the Village Voice, that “Cage is a big infl uence.” 99 _{Courrier, like Watson, sees}

Zappa as having a terrifi c master plan with Lumpy Gravy, arguing that Zappa “was after a philosophical grasp of the meaning of music.” 100 _{Zappa himself,}

in a number of different venues, has tried to explain what the album might mean and how it might fi t, philosophically, within his works.

Although I agree with both Watson and Courrier and fi nd their readings of

Lumpy Gravy to be both interesting and valid, I tend to see the piece as more

developmental. I am troubled by the desire to see Zappa’s craft as Athena- like—that he was, by 1966–67, a fully developed composer and that Lumpy

Gravy is the work of a young rock Mozart.

The way to view Lumpy Gravy is to see it as the response to an accident. There is no evidence to be found that this is the album that Zappa actually wanted to make. On the contrary, all evidence points to the fact that Zappa wanted to do a series of orchestral compositions and, because of time, bud- get, and contractual pressures, was unable to make the record he wanted to make. It then sat, half-fi nished, for close to a year while Zappa, MGM, and Capitol Records argued about it. By the time the tapes got to Zappa, he was a very different composer. The tape editing that he had done on Freak Out! and Absolutely Free had given him a direction; the way Absolutely Free was constructed, not as individual songs but each song as a movement of a larger work, gave Zappa the idea and courage to make Lumpy Gravy something bigger than he had perhaps intended it to be.

The album is also interesting when placed into the context of what Zappa was working on at the same time. Both Cruising with Ruben & the Jets and

Uncle Meat were more song-oriented albums, and, perhaps, if Zappa had been

willing to work on one album at a time, the elements of Lumpy Gravy would have been rolled into these other albums ( Uncle Meat, for instance, is a genu- ine refl ection of what Zappa had learned in making Lumpy Gravy ). Zappa’s success and his creative drive and focus, however, gave him the opportunity

to work on all of these projects simultaneously and thus compartmentalize some of his musical experiments.

The album, as one might guess, did not do too well (indeed, there were no singles released and, consequently, no airplay). It spent one week on the

Billboard charts, entering and exiting at No. 159. Contemporary reaction to

the album is mixed. The New Rolling Stone Album Guide calls Lumpy Gravy a “sometimes surprisingly lovely record of John Cage-ish modern music,” 101

whereas Durchholz ignores it completely. On the All Music Guide Web site, Francois Couture writes that the album “suffers from a lack of coherence, but it remains historically important and contains many conceptual continuity clues for the fan.” 102

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The doo-wop album. Cruising with Ruben & the Jets (originally released in November 1968 103 _{on the MGM / Verve Label; currently available as Rykodisc}

RCD 10505). Highest Billboard chart position: No. 110. Personnel: Frank Zappa, Ian Underwood, Don Preston, Jim “Motorhead” Sherwood, Roy Estrada, Bunk Gardner, Jimmy Carl Black, Art Tripp, and Ray Collins. “Is this the Mothers of Invention recording under a different name in a last ditch attempt to get their cruddy music on the radio?” 104

According to musicologist John Rockwell, doo-wop music is defi ned as “A style of vocal rock and roll popular in America in the 1950s and early 60s. It was essentially an unaccompanied type of close-harmony singing by groups of four or fi ve members; if an accompaniment was added it functioned as a restrained background, largely obscured by the voices.” Rockwell continues, defi ning the differences between black doo-wop (the original) and white doo- wop: “Their style differed from that of the black groups in that their sound was closer to Tin Pan Alley, and their lyrics correspondingly more escapist and less sexually suggestive.” 105 _{The Mothers of Invention album Cruising}

with Ruben & the Jets is satire and parody working at the highest level; not

only does it critique some of Zappa’s standard targets (white, middle-class, high school kids; love songs; cliques; cars; dropouts; capitalism), it also cri- tiques the white appropriation of black music.

Critics, fans, and band members alike have spent more than 30 years debat- ing this album. Is it a hoax? Is it an homage? Is it a cynical attempt to garner radio airplay? Is it a send-up of doo-wop? Is it one of the most carefully constructed satires ever? Or is it all of the above? It is an interesting album, one that really holds up over time and proves the timeless nature of doo-wop music. It also demonstrates the rather effortless virtuosity of the Mothers of Invention and the increasing studio mastery of Zappa. It is also, unfor- tunately, the swan song of original Mother of Invention Ray Collins, who

cowrote several of the songs on the album and seems to be the member of the band with the deepest ties to this kind of music.

The album has an interesting history that highlights a number of things about the Mothers: since their founding in 1965, they had improved immea- surably as musicians. Although the album is, on the surface, simple to a fault, repeated listening gives the listener a sense of the incredibly complex set of musical ideas going on underneath the music. What makes the album even more interesting is how it was made in the fi rst place. According to recording engineer Richard Kunc,

During a break at a session for some other album, we were sitting around talking about old high school days and doo-wop tunes. Ray Collins and some other people just started singing them. Then someone sat down at the piano, someone else played drums, and so forth. All of a sudden Frank said, “Hey, let’s make an album of this stuff !” Right then and there Cruising With Ruben and the Jets was born. He [Frank] came in the next day with charts for the whole album. 106

This is both virtuosity and fl exibility. In the ensuing years, Zappa seems to have added to the mythology of the album, arguing, for instance, that he had a much larger theoretical project in mind with the creation of Cruising with

Ruben & the Jets. Michael Gray argues that Zappa “had several reasons” for

doing the album, including, “the challenge of combining fragments from a whole wealth of genuine fi fties r’ n’ b’ numbers, and mixing them up with Fragments of Stravinsky.” 107 _{In an interview with Gray, Zappa also argues}

that Cruising was supposed to be educative, that it was an album of doo-wop and R&B, specifi cally intended to remind the record buyers of the late sixties where music had been. 108

Stravinsky is an interesting point of reference here. According to a number of biographers, Zappa was trying to do on Cruising what Stravinsky was trying to do in his neoclassical period. According to The Grove Dictionary of

Music and Musicians, neoclassicism is “a movement of style in the works of

certain 20th-century composers, who, particularly during the period between the two world wars, revived the balanced forms and clearly perceptible the- matic processes of earlier styles to replace what were, to them, the increas- ingly exaggerated gestures and formlessness of late Romanticism.” 109 _What

makes Cruising with Ruben & the Jets so interesting is that, in many ways, Zappa is reacting to his own music. On his fi rst four albums, Freak Out!,

Absolutely Free, Lumpy Gravy, and We’re Only in It for the Money, Zappa had

become a writer and producer of increasingly complex musical ideas. To cre- ate an album of neoclassical rock is a brilliant strategic move.

Listening to the album is a rewarding experience because it is not simple at all. There are a number of interesting musical ideas going on in many of the songs. Lyrically, although many of the songs are full of the kind of stupid

lyrics Zappa decries in his autobiography, they are also subtly critiquing these kinds of songs in the same way that many of the stupid lyrics on Freak Out! were doing. Zappa argues that, on this album, he was experimenting with what he called cliché collages and that these were important because the kind of music on Cruising “was just riddled with stereotyped motifs that made it sound the way it did.” 110 _{This combination of clichéd lyrics and stereotypical}

music makes for an album that seems simple on the surface but, with some examination, is as complex as many of the other records.

For listeners, especially those who were worried about the decreasing num- ber of songs on recent Mothers of Invention albums, this album must come as a relief. It is nothing but one pop song after another. The album starts with the song “Cheap Thrills,” featuring very nice harmonies and, on the remaster, some very tasty upright bass. 111 _{The lyrics are hilariously subversive. After an}

angelic beginning, the narrator repeatedly argues that what he wants from his date are a variety of cheap thrills up and down his spine, in the back of his car, all over the place. Right off the bat, then, the album is challenging our expec- tations: in a doo-wop setting, Zappa is arguing, not so subtly, for emotionless sexual gratifi cation. The next song is a true return to Freak Out! form. “Love of My Life,” which would be a concert favorite for most of Zappa’s career, is full of the silliest of lyrics, starting with “I love you so . . . don’t ever go,” and moves on to “Stars in the sky . . . they never lie.” It simply does not get more banal than this. Musically, however, this song is astonishing. The harmonies are incredible, with separate bass, high tenor, and tenor parts all, at times, working three different themes simultaniously. 112 _{When Zappa tells Barry}

Miles that the album should be seen as “careful conglomerates of archetypal cliches,” 113 _{he seems to be talking about songs like this.}

“How Could I Be Such a Fool,” a song originally on the Freak Out! album, is given a thorough rewrite, placing it much more in the doo-wop genre (on

Freak Out! it is intensely melodramatic, featuring a great trumpet chart as

well as some glorious percussion). On Cruising the song retains some of its great melodrama, but it is sped up and simplifi ed (the accompaniment is mainly piano, bass, drums, and guitar, gone are the trumpet and marimba). What is substituted are voices, especially during the chorus; what was done by instruments on Freak Out! is done with voices on Cruising .

“Deseri,” written by Ray Collins and Paul Buff, is closer, in some respects, to the kind of close harmonies that the Beach Boys were doing (surprisingly, despite their popularity, the Beach Boys never really seem to be a target of Zappa’s satire). The song is a sunny, major-chord romp that features typically silly lyrics. The middle of the song has a hilarious spoken-word section that features such complex rhymes as “I saw you walking down the street / And my heart skipped a beat.”

“I’m Not Satisfi ed,” another remake from Freak Out!, is much more closely related to the blues than other songs on the album. Borrowing a wandering bass line from, among other places, the Clyde Otis and Nancy Lee song “The

Stroll,” the song features some interesting guitar work (buried in the mix) and another set of complex vocals. What makes this remake so interesting is how different it is from the original Freak Out! version. On that album, it is a very Byrds-like rock song, with jangly guitars and rockin’ Jerry Lee Lewis– style piano. On Cruising, it is a much darker R&B-based song. Much like the paring of “How Could I Be Such a Fool” (dark) with “Deseri” (light), the album pairs “I’m Not Satisfi ed” (dark / slow / blues / R&B) with the next song, the light, sunny, funny “Jelly Roll Gum Drop.”

“Jelly Roll” starts off with an almost direct quote of “I Can’t Help Myself” (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch), a Holland-Dozier-Holland song made famous by the Four Tops in 1965; it was certainly as close to Motown as Zappa would ever come. The song soon moves out of this genre and into a more straight-ahead rock genre. The song itself refers to a number of dances that were popular at the time, “The Pachuco Hop and the L.A. Slop,” and also seems to refer to a general style of the times. On the album’s liner notes were instruction on “How to Comb & Set a Jellyroll,” a popular men’s hairstyle in the fi fties (Zappa is seen wearing one in what is ostensibly his high school picture, on the back of the album). The idea of “jellyroll gum drop” seems to have a similarity with “sugar pie, honey bunch” or “Candy Girl,” a 1963 song by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, both of which equate and objec- tify women with overly sweet confection (and confi rming Zappa’s theory that love songs gave people the wrong ideas about love).

“Anything,” the next song on the album, is unique in the sense that it is not a Frank Zappa song. Written by Ray Collins, it is a far more serious