The Mothers without Zappa

The Grandmothers
Jimmy Carl Black - vocals & tambourine
Don Preston - keyboards & synth & lead/bg vox
Bunk Gardner - alto and tenor sax
Sandro Oliva - zappa guitar & vox
Emir Bladezipper - bass & vox
- [ a dutch drummer]

The Turf Club
August 16, 2000
$5 cover
2 beers @ $3 [summit pale ale]
----------------
best value for money in years

SETLIST
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• Call Any Vegetable
• "What was Zappa Really Like?"
• Peaches en Regalia / Latex Solar Beef
• Hey, Punk
• Who are the Brain Police?
• Neon Meat-Dream of a Octafish
• (Don Preston as Dom deWilde performing Beefheart)
• Lonely Nights (Freddie Fender?)
• Mom and Dad
• "What's the secret word tonight?"
• "Uh, I dunno. Wowie-Zowie"
• Wowie Zowie
• Money (That's What I Want)
• Lady Lady Queen Bee
  

[At this point I got up to dance to Ruben & the Jets
JCB:"My personal favorite"
and three or four more songs]

[Got Preston to sign my 200 Motels poster; told him one of the first shows
I went to was the Mothers without Zappa opening for the Doors without Morrison,
Flo & Eddie and the "Other Voices" Doors. Schaeffer Music Festival, Wollman
Skating Rink, Central Park, $3, 1971? ]
BREAK

Added Bunk Gardner's sig to the poster. "Nice to hear a soprano sax that
doesn't sound at all like Marsalis."

On return,
Rev Biff deBris (Preston) delivers the invocation,
promising vicarious atonement, urging all sinners
to deposit drugs and loose women on the stage,
removing the audience from the temptation.
The band would take on the burden of committing your sins for you.
No one took them up on the offer.

• New-Age MumboJumbo
• The Little House I Used to Live In

[the band really tightened up in the second set,
as the music got more complex.
Bunk Gardner & Don Preston were especially good.
Sandro Oliva, who looks more like Zappa than Ringo did,
as much as Harpo & Chico looked like Groucho in the
mirror sketch in Duck_Soup,
played quite well, incorporating some of FZ's conducting hand gestures
and mannerism. His guitar sound was close enough, and his solos were tight &
short. However, he looked like he was really concentrating on his playing.
Zappa's trademark was his multitasking, leading the band, scouting the
audience, balancing his checkbook, probably composing his next album,
then knocking off a killer solo and fading back.]

• Tina Pica (in italian)
• We are the Other People
• Indian of the Group [to the groove of Who Do You Love]

Jimmy Carl Black's personal history
justified braggadoccio
"I saw Elvis in '56, made a movie with Ringo and rode in Keith Moon's Rolls,"

• Duke of Prunes? (the vegetable song from Uncle Meat)
• King Kong
• Big Leg Emma [our first attempt at a single for the radio -

only made 2000 copies - if you have one, its probably worth more than your car]

• Brown Shoes Don't Make It

[this is a really hard song to sing.
it is full of slurs and shifts
and modulating keys. I was very impressed with
JCB's vocals. He's growly and a shouter, but he
executed some difficult singing quite well. It was like
following behind a old drunk in an rusty pickup on a twisty
mountain road. He might have taken a few curves wide
and swayed a bit, but avoided the cliffs and the guardrails
and got everyone home safely.
"Gotta meet the Gurney's and a dozen bright attorneys
TV Dinner by the pool, I'm so glad I finished school"]

• The Uncle Meat Variations
• Oh No / The Orange County Lumber Truck
• Walk the Path of Light (if you want to see paradise)

ENCORE

• Lonesome Cowboy Burt
• Willie the Pimp

#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$

Got JCB & Sandro to sign. Told JCB I'd told my son I was going to see
"this guy tonight", pointing to the cartoon of JCB as Lonesome Cowboy Burt
grabbing Suzy Creamcheese from behind & ripping off her shirt.
My hand went to cover the woman, then had to slide over to the two semi-naked
groupies, a second hand covering Suzy. Properly framed, I said
"There! That's who I'm going to see. And that guy being lowered down on a
wire is Mister Conductor - the Liverpool one, not George Carlin."

I told JCB afterward to look up Theo Bikel's Memoir.
Bikel devotes about a page and a half to apologizing for appearing in
200 Motels. "We had the same agent, I did it as a favor, I had no idea."
The orchestra in the prison camp motif really offended him.
Didn't stop him from singing the rousing [and obscene] finale,
Strictly Genteel. "And may the Lord have mercy on the fate of this movie".

I rented 200 Motels last year - the visuals don't hold up as well IMHO,
but the soundtrack contains some of FZ's best work, Strictly Genteel &
the "She Painted Up Her Face" sequence.
Ringo, JCB, Don Preston and Flo&Eddie are great,
George Duke is so out-of-place, it's jarring.


Overall, they were great. I was glad to hear just that particular era's music,
up to and including Hot_Rats. I was especially glad to hear Zappa without
all those damned Marimbas. Ruth & Ian Underwood were the first REAL musicians
he worked with and Z learned a lot about composing with them, but I find they
dominate the recordings. Orange Co Lumber could have used a few more horns,
but then it would have been too loud for the tiny club. Gardner & Preston
balanced nicely. The one thing they did really need was a decent falsetto
singer. Ray Collins, Roy Estrada, Flo & Eddie -- FZ always had a great falsetto
in the band.
I offered my services to JCB, sang four bars of "I'm Not Satisfied",
nobody took me up on the offer (but he did let me finish).

If I saw one of the other revival bands that Ike Willis or Napoleon
Murphy Brock or Dweezil or Thunes & Wackerman are running, I'd be disappointed.