The Unexpexted Zappa Orgy of 1Q25 Part III—Hot Rats Sessions B

When MGM Records neglected to exercise a contract option in 1968, FZ founded Bizarre Productions with manager Herb Cohen. This company mutated into Bizarre Records (with distribution taken care of by Warner Brothers' Reprise label) by October 1968. "Sister" label Straight Records was formed by FZ in the spring of 1969 to release material by slightly off-center artists, but these artists were not nearly as extreme as those on Bizarre (hence, the name "Straight" versus "Bizarre"). After Straight finished its independent run with Reprise and Warner Brothers-distributed stints, the DiscReet label was created in 1973.

— Zappa Wiki/Jawaka

Tryin’ to buy a grunt with a third-party check.
— Captain Beefheart, “Willie the Pimp”

There’s an unlikely, if  distant, connection to Ol’ Blue Eyes: the Reprise record label was founded in 1960 by Frank Sinatra. Warner Bros.

purchased the label in August of 1963. And now: back to our regularly scheduled programming.

It shouldn’t really surprise me that the music made during these

sessions which did not appear as tracks on Hot Rats would surface

on, e.g. Weasels Ripped My Flesh (“Directly From My Heart to You”)

Studio Tan (“Let Me Take You to the Beach.” here under the working title

of “Dame Margret’s Son to Be a Bride”) and Burnt Weeny Sandwich (“Another

Waltz,” here, 28 minutes of music-making would reduce and morph into

“Little House I Used to Live In.”) So, I waive any and all surprise pertaining

thereto. “Directly From My Heart to You” as released later on Weasels runs five

minutes and a quarter; the unedited master here runs five minutes longer, and I can

report that they are five toothsome minutes. Disc 4 sees “Son of Mr Green Genes

being workshopped, and more work towards “It Must Be a Camel.” The bulk

of the disc, though, is an almost 33-minute master take of “Big Legs,” which when

edited, will greet the world as “The Gumbo Variations.” I live for discoveries like these,

I freely admit. There’s more work on the jazz waltz here dubbed “Arabesque,” which

will see light on Weasels as “Toads of the Short Forest,” which was Zappa’s nickname

for “the crabs.” The disc closes with almost six minutes of Ian Underwood playing

keyboard overdubs which will appear on Burnt Weeny Sandwich. Remembering how

strong the final albums are, makes it a joy to hear these musical notions in embryo.

Since I had begun with Disc 5 whose mainstay was the 1987 digital re-mix of the album.

That leaves Disc 6, which takes us back further, opening with a two-minute acetate of the saxophone tune of “Little Umbrellas,” recorded at Studio Z in Cucamonga, “circa

1961-64.” Then 1969 mix outtakes of “Minuscule Umbrellas,” as Zappa says on tape,

“It Must Be a Camel,” and “Son of Mr Green Genes.” There are more sundries, perhaps

most notably a 1970 Record Plant mix of “Bognor Regis” (you may be pardoned if you

might not recall from earlier, substantially a showcase for Don “Sugarcane” Harris’

violin; cool, where “The Gumbo Variations” run hot.)

In sum, while nothing would have prevented me from observing so before, had I been

facing the right direction, the experience of passively “participating” in the making

of the album by listening to all the myriad pieces of the puzzle has put for me into sharp

focus the tripartite symmetry of Hot Rats: one-third of the album (that is, two of the six

tracks) is rhythmically straight—“Peaches en Regalia,” the number Zappa would jestingly count in for his bandmates when they visited him while he recovered in hospital after he

was attacked and pushed off the stage of London’s Rainbow Theatre, and “Son of Mr

Green Genes,” an instrumental timbral reimagining of a song from Uncle Meat, faithfully following the song’s form. Another third is the two compact jazz chamber music vignettes—“Little Umbrellas” and “It Must Be a Camel,” brightly polished jazz gems whose finished perfection gives no token of their volcanic birthing. And the remaining third is the

exultantly extrovert vulcanism of “Willie the Pimp” and “The Gumbo Variations”—vehicles

for the trading off of athletically virtuosic solos, not forgetting Captain Beefheart’s by turns gravelly and hootey vocalizations.

Insofar as recording my musings here has a purpose, I doubt that the purpose is to get the Reader to purchase this set. Presumably, if you are inclined to find such a cornucopia

of source documents for a seminal album by an iconic countercultural American musical master an engaging listen, you may likely already own the Sessions. For the other Readers, though (held in no less warm regard by the Author) I expect the principal end will be a renewed interest in hearing the album itself, an album, as one witty promotional spot

puts it “almost too psychedelic, almost too spiffy to listen to,” and to which I myself will

listen afresh directly.