Calvin is Cal Schenkel, the artist that made the cover for this album. Cal has been working with Frank since mid to late 1967 and many of Zappa's records are adorned by his cover art. Cal mentioned to Frank a story about two hitch-hikers he picked up, a couple who were arguing in the back seat while Cal drove to his office. They continued to argument even after he'd arrived so he left the couple arguing in the car while he went to work. At the end of the day when he went back to the car they were gone. Frank apparently was amused by this and proceeded to write the lyrics to the existing composition. That's more or less the story that I heard about it. Others might chime in and add more details.
I was already at the "might not get this" point, listening, when I read this comment, but with this background I think it should at least help make sense (just enough - too much sense is boring) of this track, now. You give some people a lift, and they just ignore you and argue with each other all the time. How random. (And then you're reminded of just what a crazy world this can be.) (I had an argument with another driver just half an hour ago actually. He decided he was going to swing right across and straight into the lane I was turning into, and that I had to get out of his way. I only realized he was doing this when his manoevre had begun to turn from stupid to dangerous. He hit his horn, swerved a bit back into the lane he was meant to turn into, then floored it and swerved in front of me. And he must have been screaming his lungs out, because I could hear him in the car. It should've ended there, but I moved over into the lane he should've started in, sped up to reach the passenger window he'd opened so that we could shout at each other through it, and asked him much too loudly where he got his licence. I couldn't hear the reply. It was a scream of some kind. Decided to get out of the situation and fell back to where I could keep an eye on him from a safe distance. We nearly both took our guns out and had a duel over whose interpretation of the Highway Code was correct. Random people everywhere. And if you start trying to imagine what they were thinking, I think you end up with some of the more disconnected parts of this song.)
In Calvin's own words: *I just left Frank's house & I'm stopped at the corner of Mulholland & Laurel Canyon Blvd waiting for a red light to change, when I notice these 2 hitch-hikers, a hippie couple standing there waiting for a ride. The next thing I know they are getting in the back of the car. I guess they must have thought I offered them a ride (I didn't tell them to come into my car or motion them or anything-- I wasn't even thinking of it), so I ask them where they are going & they didn't say ANYTHING! I drive down Laurel Canyon Blvd past the Log Cabin, past Harry Houdini's, past the country store & into Hollywood. (I'm with Sherri at the time, but I forgot that until she told me a couple of months ago-- & she remembers all this too!) I get to the bottom of the hill, I was going to turn right. I kind of asked them "look I'm turning right, do you want to get out here?" They didn't say anything. They were just blank. I figured they were on acid or something. I just couldn't communicate with them. I wasn't sure what to do, so I just continued on to my destination. When I get there I said, "OK, this is where I'm going. Good-bye!" They just stayed in the car & didn't get out. So I parked the car, got out & went up to my studio & started to work. I was working on the album cover for Uncle Meat. This is in my studio that was a dentist's office over a hotdog joint on Melrose. Every once in a while I'd look out of the window to see if they were gone but they were still sitting in the back seat of the car. An hour or two later, I looked out the window & I noticed they were gone. I thought, "finally!" Then shortly afterwards, I saw that they were back! They went to the supermarket for a loaf of bread & lunchmeat & started making sandwiches in the back of the car. They were eating their lunch! Then they left.*
Grand Wazoo is one of the great Zappa albums. Such a cool jazzy big band vibe going on throughout. When the remastered version of the album was released in 1995 the tracking order was changed (I think as per Frank's request), putting "The Grand Wazoo" as the opening track instead of Calvin - a much better way to open the album IMO. Keep going with this one JP. So much great music to come!
You should definitely continue. I share your reservations regarding this track, but the rest of the album contains some of the finest music Zappa created after Hot Rats.
Parts of this remind me of how Zappa wrote for larger ensembles with his orchestral works, eg. with the London Symphony Orch. . On side 2, George Duke plays some great keyboards on "Eat That Question", and "Blessed Relief" is one of Zappa's more straight ahead mellow sounding jazz pieces with a nice guitar solo.
Originally released w/Calvin as the first song. It's actually quite controversial in the Zappa musician community, many think Frank made a serious mistake reordering the songs on the CD version! But its his music, his choices... In recent years, there have been a lot of reissues of the original vinyl versions of classics Zappa albums, it was a revelation for me to hear "We're Only In It For The Money" as first released.
For me, musically this is his most satisfying era. Waka Jawaka & The Grand Wazoo. He also named these line-ups Grand Wazoo orchestra & Petit Wazoo (smaller version) - This song is very "visual" to me. Btw, Zappa fans might recognize a small "Who is making those huge brown clouds?" part hinting to "The Adventures of Greggery Peccary" from the same era. The latter is a tune you most definitely have to listen to at one time.
Frank made some of the most difficult music I've ever heard, I think it was part of his character, he clearly hated the conformity and predictability of everyday life and this world we live in and this was his way of busting out of that and breaking the mould so to speak.....another great analysis Jp thanks!
'Calvin' is admittedly a difficult entre into this album, maybe this is why Frank changed the song order upon it's re-release on CD in the 80's. But please continue with the album. Knowing a bit what you like by now, I promise that 'Blessés Relief' will become a song in your all-time best list (even though it is jazz though and through)!
This is by FAR the most difficult and weird song on the album. Don’t hesitate, the rest you’re more than ready for more. The other songs have more easy “payoff”.
You gotta sample the track off this album Cleetus Awreetus Awrightus! It's one of my very favorites of his. Glad you're at least on this album! Honestly this isn't one of the better tracks on this album. Cleetus is magnificent and really bright and totally instrumental.
It took me at least a few times listen to this until I could take it to me at all. After some years and hearing it many times I still couldn't recognize it when hearing a short part in the middle of the album at a friends house. Now, 50 years later I think it is one of the 5-6 best Zappa albums (and maybe one of the 10-15 best albums, all kinds) - since you never get bored!
"The True Story of Calvin & His Hitch-hikers" by Cal Schenkel: "My 39 Pontiac was in the shop & so I had borrowed a car from Frank. It was this 1959 white Mark VIIII Jaguar that used to belong to Captain Beefheart that Janet was using at the time. When it worked. You know, the one they slashed the seats in (but I don't remember that). I just left Frank's house & I'm stopped at the corner of Mulholland & Laurel Canyon Blvd waiting for a red light to change, when I notice these 2 hitch-hikers, a hippie couple standing there waiting for a ride. The next thing I know they are getting in the back of the car. I guess they must have thought I offered them a ride (I didn't tell them to come into my car or motion them or anything-- I wasn't even thinking of it), so I ask them where they are going & they didn't say ANYTHING! I drive down Laurel Canyon Blvd past the Log Cabin, past Harry Houdini's, past the country store & into Hollywood. (I'm with Sherri at the time, but I forgot that until she told me a couple of months ago-- & she remembers all this too!) I get to the bottom of the hill, I was going to turn right. I kind of asked them "look I'm turning right, do you want to get out here?" They didn't say anything. They were just blank. I figured they were on acid or something. I just couldn't communicate with them. I wasn't sure what to do, so I just continued on to my destination. When I get there I said, "OK, this is where I'm going. Good-bye!" They just stayed in the car & didn't get out. So I parked the car, got out & went up to my studio & started to work. I was working on the album cover for Uncle Meat. This is in my studio that was a dentist's office over a hotdog joint on Melrose. Every once in a while I'd look out of the window to see if they were gone but they were still sitting in the back seat of the car. An hour or two later, I looked out the window & I noticed they were gone. I thought, "finally!" Then shortly afterwards, I saw that they were back! They went to the supermarket for a loaf of bread & lunchmeat & started making sandwiches in the back of the car. They were eating their lunch! Then they left." FZ on "For Calvin (And His Next Two Hitch-Hikers)": (from The Complete History Of The Few Last Weeks Of The Mothers Of Invention (1972)) "This is dedicated to Calvin Schenkel, a long-time friend who has been responsible to a large extent for anything graphic/visual associated with the M.O.I. (from album covers to billboards to the animated sequence in 200 Motels). There are lyrics to this piece (which has already been recorded and is set for a fall release in the impending Grand Wazoo album), but we are performing an instrumental version for these concerts. The story depicted in the lyrics refers to a mysterious "Schenkel Mirage" which occurred while he was driving to work. The details are a bit deep, but perhaps you can use your imagination and extrapolate a situation from the text."
Do 'Blessed Relief' if you'd like to just relax and drink in ravishing musical beauty. It's one of those times Frank just let the music soothe the savage listener. There is a lovely guitar hook that is delightful and playful :)
This is a great album. It's got an _interesting_ opener in this track, but then settles down into things that are a lot more listenable and more straight-forwardly funny.
I really hope you finish the album. The rest of it is non stop funky jazzy fun with some of the only unironic moments of beauty in the Zappa universe thrown in for good measure.
To me Billy the Mountain is the best example of early Zappa societal satire and musical genius. Captured forever on the live "Just Another Band from LA" LP. Also of note is Call Any Vegetable lol
Do you know that beautiful sensation when a chord progression or melody finds a final resolution? Well, hard to believe for a Zappa piece, but Blessed Relief is 6:40 minutes of neverending, blissful resolution!
As especially evidence on this track, there is chaos in the music. Frank wrote some really beautiful music but often threw a wrench in the gears to jostle it. One of his reasons was he didn't want his audience to get too complacent. I suppose it drove the hired musicians crazy too. He wrote this music for others to play, but only played the guitar for his part of performing it. Especially in live performing, his exacting intricate compositions with all kinds of abrupt time changes were very challenging to his bandmates and, when it came time for him to play, he just improvised a solo. He didn't even compose very difficult guitar playing for himself to get note-perfect, just needed to get up there and compose a solo on the spot. That said, he created many "instant compositions" on the guitar and made it interesting listening for the audience. A fan could see him play on multiple shows in the same tour and not hear the same "freeze-dried", although fantastic, solo night after night. As well as being tasked with playing the exacting music as correctly as they could, they also always had to be looking in his direction because he could throw up a hand signal at any moment and it would change the tempo or style that they were playing in. And they were always watching. In this recording, that chaos is very evident. Never a dull moment in a live Zappa concert. Actually, scratch that. There could be dull moments in a Zappa concert and, oddly enough, because his guitar solos were always improvised, sometimes they weren't (he wasn't) as inspired, and the dull moment could be his playing.
If you catch my Flo, Eddie. I'll tell you a tale of Billy the Mountain and his girl Ethel, a tree growing from his shoulder. Gotta go meds are here. Time for my Playground Psychotics!🤡.
Pretty sure this is the order (It is on my LP version). 01 For Calvin (And His Next Two Hitch-Hikers) 02 The Grand Wazoo Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus 04 Eat That Question 05 Blessed Relief
For Calvin and The Grand Wazoo were swtched on the cd reissues and that switch was retained (I have no idea why) on the 2012 reissue, which was sourced from the analogmaster tapes rather than the digital masters used for previous cd releases.
@@Cpayne30 I agree. I never understood this thing of reordering stuff. I have a copy of Alex Harvey "Next" that's had it done to and it just doesn't sound right.
@@SPKdesign1 Interestingly, the original pressing of the album has "RE 1" in matrix on side 1, meaning it was recut before release. I'm not sure if that was sound or sequence related, but could be the latter since he swapped these two songs in the 90s. Another resequence I don't like is Peter Gabriel's So. I know he didn't want In Your Eyes to open side 2 originally, but I don't like it at track 9 _after_ the bonus track (This Is the Picture).
Hey Zappa faithful. I just looked at the vinyl of The Grand Wazoo and the time for "Calvin" on the label reads seven minutes, fifteen seconds. I guess that's a misprint. Every other reference to Calvin on CD) is six minutes and six seconds.
Haven't listened much of Zappa (it's a world I know I'm not prepared yet), only his MOI first three or four albums. This sounds very king crimson 70-73 era, not because of the metal instruments but - surprised? - because of the drums. No doubt, Zappa is great. It's more than great. I'll bite here and there, cause it's so good. Don't want to eat a lot, I want to leave space for other (even if less interesting and good) things.
Please do tracks from "We're only it for the money" "(1968) or "Sheik Yerbouti" (1979) or "Roxy and Elsewhere" (1974) next because they are fun albums with mostly short songs...or Uncle Meat for more serious music.
Interesting reaction - If you take pride in your role as an analyzer and explorer of Progressive Rock then you should really do yourself a favor and discover more jazz and classical, especially modern 20th Century classical because it will help you to better understand music like this. Yes its challenging but only if you've spent little to no time with avant garde/modern music
I have the Cd, with The Grand Wazoo as the first track. In my opinion, that works much better to get people into this album. I can see why they changed the order, from the LP to the Cd. This is the only Frank Zappa album I like. I listen to this one on a regular basis. I can't seem to get into anything else I've heard from him. Maybe we just don't have the same type of humor.
Perhaps uniquely amongst musicians, the quality of Zappa's output varies from 1/10 to 10/10. He produced some of the most sublime, fascinating, interesting music ever recorded. This isn't it.
Zappa is always Zappa, but I've always been less enthusiastic about his very late 60s to early 70s period. Hot Rats? Not for me. "Billy the Mountain"? Nope. Flo and Eddie? Blergh. So annoying. The Grand Wazoo is better than all of those, though, but I don't think it's prime Zappa at all. It's just one of those projects he completed while bound to a wheelchair, and I don't know if his depression at the time seeped into the music or not, but there's always been "something" missing in his music for me, from this time period. That said, things soon picked up, and once you get to something like Roxy & Elsewhere, he had arguably the best band in the world, and the music to match it!
@@Alix777. The only Zappa album that sucks is Thing-Fish. That's horrible. But yeah, I'm also not a huge fan of the 69-72 period except for Burnt Weeny Sandwich, which is an amazing album. Actually, Weasels Ripped My Flesh is great as well. It's just the early jazz noodlings I don't like too much. I don't think Frank had perfected them yet.
C'mon. A while back you said you wanted to do more live music. Let's do some! Here's Dupree's Paradise from 1973. It has both Ruth Underwood and Jean-Luc Ponty! ruclips.net/video/qr6mTloYJJs/видео.html
This always seems strange to me. I love Prog, I love Jazz fusion, I love Captain Beefheart, I love Tom Waits, plus other Avant guard, so I should like Zappa, but Frankly I don't. God knows I've listened but I still don't like it. And to be quite Frank, with his output of 100 or so Albums, I'm not going to waste my time wading through that lot to find something I may like.
I love Yes, Genesis, ELP, proggy Rush, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Zappa's instrumental jazz/complex rock, King Crimson, Camel, but I am just luke warm about Jethro Tull. Go figure.
Well it certanly had all the hallmarks, phrasing of a zappa track, initially. That said, cobbled together in a rather meandering, tuneless way. And at 6 mins a bit of a chore to get through. Not heard it in an age, and this might just be why. Hopefully it gets better (I can't remember), cos I'm sure we've not heard the end of this disc...
Calvin is Cal Schenkel, the artist that made the cover for this album. Cal has been working with Frank since mid to late 1967 and many of Zappa's records are adorned by his cover art. Cal mentioned to Frank a story about two hitch-hikers he picked up, a couple who were arguing in the back seat while Cal drove to his office. They continued to argument even after he'd arrived so he left the couple arguing in the car while he went to work. At the end of the day when he went back to the car they were gone. Frank apparently was amused by this and proceeded to write the lyrics to the existing composition. That's more or less the story that I heard about it. Others might chime in and add more details.
I was already at the "might not get this" point, listening, when I read this comment, but with this background I think it should at least help make sense (just enough - too much sense is boring) of this track, now. You give some people a lift, and they just ignore you and argue with each other all the time. How random. (And then you're reminded of just what a crazy world this can be.)
(I had an argument with another driver just half an hour ago actually. He decided he was going to swing right across and straight into the lane I was turning into, and that I had to get out of his way. I only realized he was doing this when his manoevre had begun to turn from stupid to dangerous. He hit his horn, swerved a bit back into the lane he was meant to turn into, then floored it and swerved in front of me. And he must have been screaming his lungs out, because I could hear him in the car. It should've ended there, but I moved over into the lane he should've started in, sped up to reach the passenger window he'd opened so that we could shout at each other through it, and asked him much too loudly where he got his licence. I couldn't hear the reply. It was a scream of some kind. Decided to get out of the situation and fell back to where I could keep an eye on him from a safe distance. We nearly both took our guns out and had a duel over whose interpretation of the Highway Code was correct. Random people everywhere. And if you start trying to imagine what they were thinking, I think you end up with some of the more disconnected parts of this song.)
In Calvin's own words:
*I just left Frank's house & I'm stopped at the corner of Mulholland & Laurel Canyon Blvd waiting for a red light to change, when I notice these 2 hitch-hikers, a hippie couple standing there waiting for a ride. The next thing I know they are getting in the back of the car. I guess they must have thought I offered them a ride (I didn't tell them to come into my car or motion them or anything-- I wasn't even thinking of it), so I ask them where they are going & they didn't say ANYTHING! I drive down Laurel Canyon Blvd past the Log Cabin, past Harry Houdini's, past the country store & into Hollywood. (I'm with Sherri at the time, but I forgot that until she told me a couple of months ago-- & she remembers all this too!) I get to the bottom of the hill, I was going to turn right. I kind of asked them "look I'm turning right, do you want to get out here?" They didn't say anything. They were just blank. I figured they were on acid or something. I just couldn't communicate with them. I wasn't sure what to do, so I just continued on to my destination. When I get there I said, "OK, this is where I'm going. Good-bye!" They just stayed in the car & didn't get out. So I parked the car, got out & went up to my studio & started to work. I was working on the album cover for Uncle Meat. This is in my studio that was a dentist's office over a hotdog joint on Melrose. Every once in a while I'd look out of the window to see if they were gone but they were still sitting in the back seat of the car. An hour or two later, I looked out the window & I noticed they were gone. I thought, "finally!" Then shortly afterwards, I saw that they were back! They went to the supermarket for a loaf of bread & lunchmeat & started making sandwiches in the back of the car. They were eating their lunch! Then they left.*
Grand Wazoo is one of the great Zappa albums. Such a cool jazzy big band vibe going on throughout. When the remastered version of the album was released in 1995 the tracking order was changed (I think as per Frank's request), putting "The Grand Wazoo" as the opening track instead of Calvin - a much better way to open the album IMO. Keep going with this one JP. So much great music to come!
I disagree, For Calvin should've stayed as the album opener, but oh well...
You should definitely continue. I share your reservations regarding this track, but the rest of the album contains some of the finest music Zappa created after Hot Rats.
This is the highest rated Zappa album on Progarchives and rightly so.
Parts of this remind me of how Zappa wrote for larger ensembles with his orchestral works, eg. with the London Symphony Orch. . On side 2, George Duke plays some great keyboards on "Eat That Question", and "Blessed Relief" is one of Zappa's more straight ahead mellow sounding jazz pieces with a nice guitar solo.
Originally released w/Calvin as the first song. It's actually quite controversial in the Zappa musician community, many think Frank made a serious mistake reordering the songs on the CD version! But its his music, his choices... In recent years, there have been a lot of reissues of the original vinyl versions of classics Zappa albums, it was a revelation for me to hear "We're Only In It For The Money" as first released.
For me, musically this is his most satisfying era. Waka Jawaka & The Grand Wazoo. He also named these line-ups Grand Wazoo orchestra & Petit Wazoo (smaller version) - This song is very "visual" to me. Btw, Zappa fans might recognize a small "Who is making those huge brown clouds?" part hinting to "The Adventures of Greggery Peccary" from the same era. The latter is a tune you most definitely have to listen to at one time.
Acctually that line of lyrics also comes from the song " Billy the mountain" from Live at Fillmore east. An album released in -71.
@@stefanandersson2402 Thanks for the info. I never had that album.. Of course I know Just Another Band from LA's version of Billy.
Parts of Greggery Peccary were being played as early as 1969 in what was called "Some Ballet Music" on the bootleg The Ark.
Zappa can be challenging but usually rewarding.
Frank made some of the most difficult music I've ever heard, I think it was part of his character, he clearly hated the conformity and predictability of everyday life and this world we live in and this was his way of busting out of that and breaking the mould so to speak.....another great analysis Jp thanks!
'Calvin' is admittedly a difficult entre into this album, maybe this is why Frank changed the song order upon it's re-release on CD in the 80's.
But please continue with the album.
Knowing a bit what you like by now, I promise that 'Blessés Relief' will become a song in your all-time best list (even though it is jazz though and through)!
This is by FAR the most difficult and weird song on the album. Don’t hesitate, the rest you’re more than ready for more. The other songs have more easy “payoff”.
Yes! Please by all means continue! This is one of my all-time favorite albums by Frank! 😁
You gotta sample the track off this album Cleetus Awreetus Awrightus! It's one of my very favorites of his. Glad you're at least on this album! Honestly this isn't one of the better tracks on this album. Cleetus is magnificent and really bright and totally instrumental.
There’s some really groovy jazz rock instrumentals on this. I would recommend continuing to explore the record
It took me at least a few times listen to this until I could take it to me at all. After some years and hearing it many times I still couldn't recognize it when hearing a short part in the middle of the album at a friends house. Now, 50 years later I think it is one of the 5-6 best Zappa albums (and maybe one of the 10-15 best albums, all kinds) - since you never get bored!
"The True Story of Calvin & His Hitch-hikers" by Cal Schenkel:
"My 39 Pontiac was in the shop & so I had borrowed a car from Frank. It was this 1959 white Mark VIIII Jaguar that used to belong to Captain Beefheart that Janet was using at the time. When it worked. You know, the one they slashed the seats in (but I don't remember that). I just left Frank's house & I'm stopped at the corner of Mulholland & Laurel Canyon Blvd waiting for a red light to change, when I notice these 2 hitch-hikers, a hippie couple standing there waiting for a ride. The next thing I know they are getting in the back of the car. I guess they must have thought I offered them a ride (I didn't tell them to come into my car or motion them or anything-- I wasn't even thinking of it), so I ask them where they are going & they didn't say ANYTHING! I drive down Laurel Canyon Blvd past the Log Cabin, past Harry Houdini's, past the country store & into Hollywood. (I'm with Sherri at the time, but I forgot that until she told me a couple of months ago-- & she remembers all this too!) I get to the bottom of the hill, I was going to turn right. I kind of asked them "look I'm turning right, do you want to get out here?" They didn't say anything. They were just blank. I figured they were on acid or something. I just couldn't communicate with them. I wasn't sure what to do, so I just continued on to my destination. When I get there I said, "OK, this is where I'm going. Good-bye!" They just stayed in the car & didn't get out. So I parked the car, got out & went up to my studio & started to work. I was working on the album cover for Uncle Meat. This is in my studio that was a dentist's office over a hotdog joint on Melrose. Every once in a while I'd look out of the window to see if they were gone but they were still sitting in the back seat of the car. An hour or two later, I looked out the window & I noticed they were gone. I thought, "finally!" Then shortly afterwards, I saw that they were back! They went to the supermarket for a loaf of bread & lunchmeat & started making sandwiches in the back of the car. They were eating their lunch! Then they left."
FZ on "For Calvin (And His Next Two Hitch-Hikers)": (from The Complete History Of The Few Last Weeks Of The Mothers Of Invention (1972))
"This is dedicated to Calvin Schenkel, a long-time friend who has been responsible to a large extent for anything graphic/visual associated with the M.O.I. (from album covers to billboards to the animated sequence in 200 Motels).
There are lyrics to this piece (which has already been recorded and is set for a fall release in the impending Grand Wazoo album), but we are performing an instrumental version for these concerts. The story depicted in the lyrics refers to a mysterious "Schenkel Mirage" which occurred while he was driving to work. The details are a bit deep, but perhaps you can use your imagination and extrapolate a situation from the text."
Do 'Blessed Relief' if you'd like to just relax and drink in ravishing musical beauty. It's one of those times Frank just let the music soothe the savage listener. There is a lovely guitar hook that is delightful and playful :)
This is a great album. It's got an _interesting_ opener in this track, but then settles down into things that are a lot more listenable and more straight-forwardly funny.
I really hope you finish the album. The rest of it is non stop funky jazzy fun with some of the only unironic moments of beauty in the Zappa universe thrown in for good measure.
Will likely continue :)
To me Billy the Mountain is the best example of early Zappa societal satire and musical genius. Captured forever on the live "Just Another Band from LA" LP. Also of note is Call Any Vegetable lol
Great stuff JP, some of this will show up later on in his epic Greggery Peccary.
Yes, it does have the horns playing a bit of "Brown Clouds", which was on "Greggery Peccary".
Yes, Conceptual Continuity.@@bobholtzmann
Do you know that beautiful sensation when a chord progression or melody finds a final resolution?
Well, hard to believe for a Zappa piece, but Blessed Relief is 6:40 minutes of neverending, blissful resolution!
As especially evidence on this track, there is chaos in the music.
Frank wrote some really beautiful music but often threw a wrench in the gears to jostle it.
One of his reasons was he didn't want his audience to get too complacent. I suppose it drove the hired musicians crazy too.
He wrote this music for others to play, but only played the guitar for his part of performing it.
Especially in live performing, his exacting intricate compositions with all kinds of abrupt time changes were very challenging to his bandmates and, when it came time for him to play, he just improvised a solo. He didn't even compose very difficult guitar playing for himself to get note-perfect, just needed to get up there and compose a solo on the spot.
That said, he created many "instant compositions" on the guitar and made it interesting listening for the audience. A fan could see him play on multiple shows in the same tour and not hear the same "freeze-dried", although fantastic, solo night after night.
As well as being tasked with playing the exacting music as correctly as they could, they also always had to be looking in his direction because he could throw up a hand signal at any moment and it would change the tempo or style that they were playing in. And they were always watching. In this recording, that chaos is very evident.
Never a dull moment in a live Zappa concert. Actually, scratch that. There could be dull moments in a Zappa concert and, oddly enough, because his guitar solos were always improvised, sometimes they weren't (he wasn't) as inspired, and the dull moment could be his playing.
love this whole album SO much. By the way, the rest of the album is less "difficult" than this track.
It's a grower.
Definitely, Definitely continue. Calvin is good but the rest is fantastic
If you catch my Flo, Eddie. I'll tell you a tale of Billy the Mountain and his girl Ethel, a tree growing from his shoulder. Gotta go meds are here. Time for my Playground Psychotics!🤡.
Pretty sure this is the order (It is on my LP version).
01 For Calvin (And His Next Two Hitch-Hikers)
02 The Grand Wazoo
Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus
04 Eat That Question
05 Blessed Relief
For Calvin and The Grand Wazoo were swtched on the cd reissues and that switch was retained (I have no idea why) on the 2012 reissue, which was sourced from the analogmaster tapes rather than the digital masters used for previous cd releases.
@@hansvandermeulen5515 They must have thought it ran better in that order. This is a more difficult track than The Grand Wazoo.
@@SPKdesign1I always prefer the LP order - this song makes for a brooding and odd opener. You can get the vocals out of the way!
@@Cpayne30 I agree. I never understood this thing of reordering stuff. I have a copy of Alex Harvey "Next" that's had it done to and it just doesn't sound right.
@@SPKdesign1 Interestingly, the original pressing of the album has "RE 1" in matrix on side 1, meaning it was recut before release. I'm not sure if that was sound or sequence related, but could be the latter since he swapped these two songs in the 90s.
Another resequence I don't like is Peter Gabriel's So. I know he didn't want In Your Eyes to open side 2 originally, but I don't like it at track 9 _after_ the bonus track (This Is the Picture).
Hey Zappa faithful.
I just looked at the vinyl of The Grand Wazoo and the time for "Calvin" on the label reads seven minutes, fifteen seconds.
I guess that's a misprint. Every other reference to Calvin on CD) is six minutes and six seconds.
By far my favourite song in the album!
How are you? Just. A question. When will you surprise us with Tim Blake's Crystal Machine album? A Hug. By the way, excellent review and very sincere.
Haven't listened much of Zappa (it's a world I know I'm not prepared yet), only his MOI first three or four albums.
This sounds very king crimson 70-73 era, not because of the metal instruments but - surprised? - because of the drums.
No doubt, Zappa is great. It's more than great. I'll bite here and there, cause it's so good. Don't want to eat a lot, I want to leave space for other (even if less interesting and good) things.
Peaches en Regalia!!!
Please do tracks from "We're only it for the money" "(1968) or "Sheik Yerbouti" (1979) or "Roxy and Elsewhere" (1974) next because they are fun albums with mostly short songs...or Uncle Meat for more serious music.
can u imagine if Zappa had been into LSD 😂 ? Thank goodness we were. 😢
From a true story
You should do Weasels ripped my flesh entirely side 1first , then side two without interruption
Not to be confused with the Great Gazoo.
Interesting reaction - If you take pride in your role as an analyzer and explorer of Progressive Rock then you should really do yourself a favor and discover more jazz and classical, especially modern 20th Century classical because it will help you to better understand music like this.
Yes its challenging but only if you've spent little to no time with avant garde/modern music
I have the Cd, with The Grand Wazoo as the first track. In my opinion, that works much better to get people into this album. I can see why they changed the order, from the LP to the Cd. This is the only Frank Zappa album I like. I listen to this one on a regular basis. I can't seem to get into anything else I've heard from him. Maybe we just don't have the same type of humor.
Tbh I prefer this song first in the album.
Perhaps uniquely amongst musicians, the quality of Zappa's output varies from 1/10 to 10/10. He produced some of the most sublime, fascinating, interesting music ever recorded. This isn't it.
Ah ! Someone said it ! Completely agree with you, this album is horrendous and awfully overrated.
You should check out Zappa’s record “Uncle Meat” if you like a lot of his avant garde jazz/neo classical influenced stuff
I love that album, but it's not the easiest listen.
Yes !!!! 100 times better than this awful album
@@Alix777. Just because you dont get it doesnt mean its awful
@@timcardona9962 if I can enjoy Uncle Meat yes I can enjoy good, challenging music. Even Ustvolskaya and Xenakis. This album is just so uninspired.
Despite this piece of music, there is a lot of very good music to come off this album. Title track is big band melodic jazz, with some bizarrniz.
Zappa is always Zappa, but I've always been less enthusiastic about his very late 60s to early 70s period.
Hot Rats? Not for me. "Billy the Mountain"? Nope. Flo and Eddie? Blergh. So annoying.
The Grand Wazoo is better than all of those, though, but I don't think it's prime Zappa at all. It's just one of those projects
he completed while bound to a wheelchair, and I don't know if his depression at the time seeped into the music or not,
but there's always been "something" missing in his music for me, from this time period.
That said, things soon picked up, and once you get to something like Roxy & Elsewhere, he had arguably the best band in the world,
and the music to match it!
The Grand Wazoo sucks, like Hot Rats and everything he did during 69-72 (except Burnt Weeny Sandwich)
@@Alix777. The only Zappa album that sucks is Thing-Fish. That's horrible.
But yeah, I'm also not a huge fan of the 69-72 period except for Burnt Weeny Sandwich, which is an amazing album.
Actually, Weasels Ripped My Flesh is great as well. It's just the early jazz noodlings I don't like too much. I don't think Frank had perfected them yet.
C'mon. A while back you said you wanted to do more live music. Let's do some! Here's Dupree's Paradise from 1973. It has both Ruth Underwood and Jean-Luc Ponty! ruclips.net/video/qr6mTloYJJs/видео.html
This always seems strange to me. I love Prog, I love Jazz fusion, I love Captain Beefheart, I love Tom Waits, plus other Avant guard, so I should like Zappa, but Frankly I don't.
God knows I've listened but I still don't like it. And to be quite Frank, with his output of 100 or so Albums, I'm not going to waste my time wading through that lot
to find something I may like.
I love Yes, Genesis, ELP, proggy Rush, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Zappa's instrumental jazz/complex rock, King Crimson, Camel, but I am just luke warm about Jethro Tull. Go figure.
you have to be stoned to really enjoy this and other Zappa songs....imo.
One of my favorite Zappa albums, but I typically skip this song. The rest of the album is much better, especially "Cletus..." and "Eat That Question"
You won't continue on with 'The White Album' but you post Zappa?
Zappa is absolutely necessary listening.
Zappa's better.
It's by far the worst track on one of my top 5 Zappa albums. The rest is absolutely fantastic (especially the title track).
Worst track on the album
title track, blessed relief and eat that question are where it's at on this album
Well it certanly had all the hallmarks, phrasing of a zappa track, initially. That said, cobbled together in a rather meandering, tuneless way. And at 6 mins a bit of a chore to get through. Not heard it in an age, and this might just be why. Hopefully it gets better (I can't remember), cos I'm sure we've not heard the end of this disc...
The worst track from an otherwise great album.