Uncle Meat

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Uncle Meat
Studio album by The Mothers of Invention

Publication
(s)

April 21, 1969

Label (s) Bizarre Records
Reprise Records
Zappa Records (CD)
Barking Pumpkin Records (CD)
Rykodisc (CD)
VideoArts Music (CD)

Format (s)

LP vinyl , CD

Genre (s)

Progressive rock , jazz rock , avant-garde , musique concrète

Title (number)

31

running time

75:57 (LP) 120: 25 (CD)

production

Frank Zappa

Studio (s)

Apostolic Studios, New York
Sunset Sound, Los Angeles

chronology
Mothermania
(1969) 		Uncle Meat Hot Rats
(1969)

Uncle Meat is an album by Frank Zappa's band The Mothers of Invention . It was released in 1969 as a vinyl double LP on the Bizarre label and can be assigned to both the progressive rock genre and the emerging jazz rock . It was released as the supposed soundtrack of a film of the same name, which, however, did not even exist. It wasn't until 1987 that a video with this title appeared, according to the Internet Movie Database a documentary about an unfinished film.

staff

occupation

production

  • Producer: Frank Zappa
  • Sound engineer: Richard Kunc, Jerry Hansen
  • Cover design: Cal Schenkel

music

Uncle Meat is the sixth album by the Mothers of Invention. The album shows a further development of Zappa's music towards jazz and art music - as Zappa saw it. It also contains half caricaturing, half homage elements from doo wop , blues and rock 'n' roll as well as sound fragments from the film. The album is held together by dreamy melodies, stream-of-consciousness texts (often about places and incidents from everyday teenage life in the suburbs of Los Angeles) and film-music-like themes with recurring variations and repetitions. The six-part piece “King Kong” with its jazz improvisations resembles Zappa's follow-up album Hot Rats , on which with “Son of Mr. Green Genes” the theme of the Uncle Meat piece “Mr. Green Genes ”will be resumed.

Criticism

“It's exciting to hear one of the most creatively fertile minds of rock pushing restlessly into new territory, even if he doesn't always know exactly where it's going. ... Although some may miss the gleeful satire of Zappa's previous work with the Mothers, Uncle Meats' uninterrupted abundance of musical ideas makes it one of his most intriguing works. ”

- Steve Huey : Allmusic

"Masterpiece alarm!"

- Udo Gerhards : Baby blue pages

CD version

In 1987 Uncle Meat was released as a double CD containing additional material:

  • a new piece of Tengo Na Minchia Tanta (Sicilian for “I have a big penis”) sung in Italian by Massimo Bassoli
  • about 40 minutes of sound from the film.

These additions are sometimes not welcomed by fans and critics and are referred to as “penalty tracks”, because Tengo Na Minchia Tanta comes from a completely different period in Zappa's career and the film sound clips are viewed as superfluous. In addition, due to the large volume, the publication as a double CD was necessary. The additional material was inserted between the last track on side 3 of the original LP and the first track on LP side 4.

Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
Uncle Meat
  US 43 05/31/1969 (11 weeks)

Track list

All titles were composed by Frank Zappa, unless otherwise mentioned (*).

vinyl record

page 1

  1. Uncle Meat: Main Title Theme - 1:56
  2. The Voice of Cheese - 0:26
  3. Nine Types of Industrial Pollution - 6:00
  4. Zolar Czakl - 0:54
  5. Dog Breath, in the Year of the Plague - 3:59
  6. The Legend of the Golden Arches - 3:28
  7. Louie Louie (At the Royal Albert Hall in London) (* Richard Berry ) - 2:19
  8. The Dog Breath Variations - 1:48

Page 2

  1. Sleeping in a Jar - 0:50
  2. Our Bizarre Relationship - 1:05
  3. The Uncle Meat Variations - 4:46
  4. Electric Aunt Jemima - 1:46
  5. Prelude to King Kong - 3:38
  6. God Bless America (* Irving Berlin ) - 1:10
  7. A Pound for a Brown on the Bus - 1:29
  8. Ian Underwood Whips It Out - 5:05

Page 3

  1. Mr. Green Genes - 3:14
  2. We Can Shoot You - 2:03
  3. If We'd All Been Living in California… - 1:14
  4. The Air - 2:57
  5. Project X - 4:48
  6. Cruisin 'for Burgers - 2:18

page 4

  1. King Kong Itself (as played by the Mothers in a studio) - 0:49
  2. King Kong II (its magnificence as interpreted by Dom DeWild) - 1:21
  3. King Kong III (as Motorhead explains it) - 1:44
  4. King Kong IV (the Gardner Varieties) - 6:17
  5. King Kong V (as played by 3 deranged Good Humor Trucks) - 0:34
  6. King Kong VI (live on a flat bed diesel in the middle of a race track at a Miami Pop Festival … the Underwood ramifications) - 7:24

CD

CD 1

  1. Uncle Meat: Main Title Theme - 1:56
  2. The Voice of Cheese - 0:26
  3. Nine Types of Industrial Pollution - 6:00
  4. Zolar Czakl - 0:54
  5. Dog Breath, in the Year of the Plague - 3:59
  6. The Legend of the Golden Arches - 3:28
  7. Louie Louie (At the Royal Albert Hall in London) (* Richard Berry ) - 2:19
  8. The Dog Breath Variations - 1:48
  9. Sleeping in a Jar - 0:50
  10. Our Bizarre Relationship - 1:05
  11. The Uncle Meat Variations - 4:46
  12. Electric Aunt Jemima - 1:46
  13. Prelude to King Kong - 3:38
  14. God Bless America (* Irving Berlin ) - 1:10
  15. A Pound for a Brown on the Bus - 1:29
  16. Ian Underwood Whips It Out - 5:05
  17. Mr. Green Genes - 3:14
  18. We Can Shoot You - 2:03
  19. If We'd All Been Living in California… - 1:14
  20. The Air - 2:57
  21. Project X - 4:48
  22. Cruisin 'for Burgers - 2:18

CD 2

  1. Uncle Meat Film Excerpt, Pt. 1 - 37:34
  2. Tengo Na Minchia Tanta - 3:46
  3. Uncle Meat Film Excerpt, Pt. 2 - 3:50
  4. King Kong Itself (as played by the Mothers in a studio) - 0:49
  5. King Kong II (its magnificence as interpreted by Dom DeWild) - 1:21
  6. King Kong III (as Motorhead explains it) - 1:44
  7. King Kong IV (the Gardner Varieties) - 6:17
  8. King Kong V (as played by 3 deranged Good Humor Trucks) - 0:34
  9. King Kong VI (live on a flat bed diesel in the middle of a race track at a Miami Pop Festival… the Underwood ramifications) - 7:24

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b review on www.allmusic.com (English, with sound examples - as of February 2007)
  2. ↑ a b c d e Baby Blue Prog Reviews: Frank Zappa: Uncle Meat: Review - detailed review (as of February 2007)
  3. ↑ The film Uncle Meat in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  4. ↑ Uncle Meat in the English language Wikipedia
  5. ↑ "massimo bassoli" on www.united-mutations.com
  6. ↑ Reviews on www.progarchives.com
  7. ↑ Charts US