Lumpy Gravy

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Lumpy Gravy
Studio album by Frank Zappa

Publication
(s)

May 13, 1968

Label (s) The Verve Music Group
Rykodisc (CD)
VideoArts Music (CD)

Format (s)

LP vinyl , CD

Genre (s)

Progressive rock , avant-garde , jazz rock

Title (number)

22nd

running time

31:39

production

Frank Zappa

Studio (s)

Capitol Records Studios, Hollywood
Apostolic Studios, New York

chronology
We're Only in It for the Money
(1968) 		Lumpy Gravy Cruising with Ruben & the Jets
(1968)

Lumpy Gravy is a music album by Frank Zappa , his first solo album. It was released in 1968 on the Verve label and is classified as part of the progressive rock genre, but also contains numerous orchestral elements of new music .

meaning

After three albums with the Mothers of Invention , Lumpy Gravy is Frank Zappa's first solo album. It was completed in February 1967, but was only released 15 months later due to contractual conflicts after the later recorded album We're Only in It for the Money . As Zappa said in an interview with Melody Maker magazine, the album title goes back to a TV commercial for an instant sauce from the brand "Aloma Linda Gravy Quick". In the same interview, Zappa said Capitol Records producer Nick Venet had given him the opportunity to compose for a 40-piece orchestra - his first chance to get a professional recording of his orchestral pieces. Finally, a 13-month legal battle with his record company Verve delayed the release.

On the one hand, Lumpy Gravy is carried by the choir passages, which are unsung dialogues. To do this, the speakers put their heads in an open Steinway grand piano, on which the forte pedal had been weighed down by a sandbag. The spoken texts that stimulated the undamped strings of the grand piano were recorded. The improvised conversations followed a thematic guideline given by Zappa. These vocal parts were connected by mostly incomplete pieces of music of various kinds and, from Zappa's point of view, merged into a compositional unit. He said, "The whole thing is more of an experience than a collection of melodies."

The instrumental set pieces are the piece Duodenum (aka Theme From Lumpy Gravy , aka Bwana Dik ), which sounds like a Western film music , the title of which is reminiscent of an incident in the life of the young Zappa: after a collapse due to a duodenal ulcer, he closed to withdraw from his parents. The introduction to Oh No comes from the score composed by Zappa for the B-movie The World's Greatest Sinner , the melodic “Oh No” itself is one of Zappa's favorite pieces. It was later often played live, as was the jazzy piece "King Kong" from the album Uncle Meat . Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance is the instrumental version of the song of the same name and almost simultaneously released from the album We're Only in It for the Money . With the exception of King Kong , all compositions date from before the Mothers of Invention. The spoken and played parts are interspersed with a multitude of electronic alienations that have been cut together, from audio tracks in fast motion or slow motion to intense stereo effects and sometimes subtle, sometimes rough sound collages.

Zappa emphasized the inner connection that exists between the material recorded in New York for the albums We're Only in It for the Money , Lumpy Gravy , Uncle Meat and Cruising with Ruben & the Jets : “If I had all the master tapes and you with one If you cut the razor blade apart and reassemble it, that would make a complete piece of music worth listening to again. And I could cut that up again with the razor blade and put it back together again and it would still make sense. And that about 20 times. ”Zappa called his way of working a“ project / object ”. This concept was based not only on the idea that each individual plan (project) was part of a larger whole (object), but also on the idea that Zappa called "conceptual continuity" that already known elements changed themselves by adding new components.

reception

Lumpy Gravy did poorly in professional reviews. Zappa biographer Barry Miles judged cautiously: "It is considered the most experimental album by Zappa." Rolling Stone author Jim Miller was already clearer. He considered the musical structure to be "surprisingly conventional and even boring"; the album is an "idiosyncratic musical faux pas that is worth listening to for that reason alone." The German rock journalist Carl-Ludwig Reichert described Lumpy Gravy as a "highly bizarre instrumental work". His colleague Volker Rebell saw “a shimmering cosmos of the most varied musical particles and fragments”, which gives the impression that a “musical note box” had been dumped. For Rebell, the album radiated “a clinically sterile cold”. The music critic Ben Watson compared the album with works by Musique concrète composer Luc Ferrari .

Publications

The album Lumpy Gravy has been released in several different versions. The following overview clarifies the main distinguishing features.

  • The 8-track tape cassette, which was released in small numbers by Capitol Records before the dispute over the publication rights was over, is probably one of the rarest Zappa releases ever. Unlike all other Lumpy Gravy versions, it contains only orchestral music (a few minutes of which cannot be found on the other album versions), while the choir passages and the elements played by the band are missing. The pieces also have other names:
  1. Sink Trap (3:12)
  2. Gum Joy (2:36)
  3. Up and Down (1:48)
  4. Local Butcher (3:50)
  5. Gypsy Airs (1:41)
  6. Hunchy Punchy (1:39)
  7. Foamy Soaky (1:10)
  8. Let's Eat Out (2:07)
  9. Teenage Grand Finale (4:54)
  • The original LP was released in May 1968 in both a stereo and a mono version on the US market, and from October 1968 also in stereo and mono versions outside the United States.
  • LP re-releases appeared in Great Britain in 1972 and Canada in 1973.
  • In 1975 Metro Records released an LP re-release under the title “Superstarshine Volume 26: Frank Zappa” in the Netherlands, which also differed in the cover from the original.
  • In the mid-1970s, the LP was barely available on the market, which caused Schwarzkopierer to release the album as a "facsimile bootleg". These bootlegs differ from the original LP in that they have a slightly poorer sound quality and the slightly more blurred print of the cover.
  • Another LP re-release was found in the 1985 compilation by Barking Pumpkin Records The Old Masters Box One .
  • The first CD release -  Lumpy Gravy and We're Only in It for the Money appeared together on one phonogram - was released in 1986 on Rykodisc (USA) and, with a two-year delay, on Zappa Records (Europe) and VACK (Japan).
  • Further CD versions - this time with index markers for the individual tracks - were released on Rykodisc and VACK in 1995.
  • In 2001, another CD version with a cardboard cover was released in Japan on Rykodisc / VACK.

successes

Although the material proved to be "hard to digest" for ordinary pop music consumers, Lumpy Gravy climbed to 159th place in the US charts. The success of the Mothers album We're Only in It for the Money , released just a few weeks earlier, may have contributed to this .

staff

The Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra & Chorus

production

  • Producers: Frank Zappa, Nick Venet
  • Sound engineers: Joe, Rex, Pete, Jim, Bob, Gary, Dick Kunc
  • Cover design: Cal Schenkel

Track list

All compositions are by Frank Zappa.

Part One

  1. The Way I See It, Barry (0:06)
  2. Duodenum (1:32)
  3. Oh No (2:03)
  4. Bit of Nostalgia (1:35)
  5. It's from Kansas (0:30)
  6. Bored Out 90 Over (0:31)
  7. Almost Chinese (0:25)
  8. Switching Girls (0:29)
  9. Oh No Again (1:13)
  10. At the Gas Station (2:41)
  11. Another Pickup (0:54)
  12. I Don't Know If I Can Go Through This Again (3:49)

Part Two

  1. Very distracting (1:33)
  2. White Ugliness (2:22)
  3. Amen (1:33)
  4. Just One More Time (0:58)
  5. A Vicious Circle (1:12)
  6. King Kong (0:43)
  7. Drums Are Too Noisy (0:58)
  8. Kangaroos (0:57)
  9. Envelops the Bath Tub (3:42)
  10. Take Your Clothes Off (1:53)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Volker Rebell: Frank Zappa - freak genius with tailcoat habit . In: Rocksession 1 . Rororo non-fiction book, 1977, ISBN 3-499-17086-8 , p. 261.
  2. ↑ Interview with Melody Maker (as of March 2007)
  3. ↑ Chris Federico: Analysis of the piece (March 2007)
  4. ↑ Barry Miles: Zappa . German edition. Rogner & Bernhard at Zweiausendeins, 2005, ISBN 3-8077-1010-8 , p. 168.
  5. ↑ Barry Miles: Zappa . German edition. Rogner & Bernhard in Zweiausendeins, 2005, ISBN 3-8077-1010-8 , p. 75
  6. ↑ Film music The World's Greatest Sinner (March 2007)
  7. ↑ a b Barry Miles: Zappa . German edition. Rogner & Bernhard at Zweiausendeins, 2005, ISBN 3-8077-1010-8 , p. 200.
  8. ↑ Chronology of the Zappa compositions (as of March 2007)
  9. ↑ Barry Miles: Zappa . German edition. Rogner & Bernhard in Zweiausendeins, 2005, ISBN 3-8077-1010-8 , p. 192.
  10. ↑ Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso: I am the American Dream . Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, Munich, 1991, ISBN 3-442-32536-6 , pp. 157f.
  11. ↑ Review by Jim Miller (March 2007)
  12. ^ Carl-Ludwig Reichert: Frank Zappa . DTV, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-423-31039-1 , p. 41.
  13. ↑ Mike Fish, Ben Watson: Frank Zappa on CD . Wire, 1991, quoted from Richard Kostelanetz (Ed.): The Frank Zappa Companion . New York 1997, ISBN 0-02-864628-2 , p. 133
  14. ↑ Capitol-8-Track-Version (March 2007)
  15. ↑ Album versions on The Zappa Patio (March 2007)