Notes & Comments - Burnt Weeny Sandwich

December 1969, 41:10 min

BURNT WEENY SANDWICH
                  Notes and Comments
                    ver.11-Nov-1995

                   put together by
          Vladimir Sovetov (sova@bank.kemerovo.su)


#           From:  Playboy,   April, 1993
#
#   PLAYBOY: The titles of your records and songs are art statements, too.
#   ZAPPA: Well, you have to call them something, so why not call them
#          something amusing?
#   PLAYBOY: For example, Burnt Weeny Sandwich?
#   ZAPPA: I still eat burnt weeny sandwiches.  It's one of the great
#          things in life.  At least it's a great lunch. You take a Hebrew
#          National, put it on a fork, burn it on the stove, wrap two pieces
#          of bread around it, squirt some mustard on it, eat it and you're
#          back to work.


   WPLJ
   ~~~~

The W is the white, the P is the port,
the L is the lemon, the J is the juice.
White port and Lemon Juice ..."

#           From: cantrell@ssd.intel.com (Jay Cantrell)
#  WPLJ=WhitePort&LemonJuice, the original California cooler.
# A co-worker was singing the last Thursday.
#
#           From: From: saul+@pitt.edu (Alan Saul)
#  I quoted this last time WPLJ came up, but here it is again.
# From Roy Porter's autobiography, "There and Back", 1991,
# Bayou Press, Wheatley, Oxford, p. 79:
#
#  I didn't start dropping "bennies" until I came to Los Angeles in 1944. By
# that time pot was passe for me because I had never liked the feeling it
# gave me anyway. Pot (marijuana) made me self-conscious and a bit paranoid.
# It afforded no relaxation at all, especially while playing my instrument.
# Pot was good to sit and dig sounds with. Benzedrine was sold in two forms,
# pills and the inhalers. It was legal to buy the inhalers over the counter,
# but you were supposed to have a prescription for the pills. The pills were
# used legally, mainly by airline pilots, bus drivers, etc. - anyone who had
# to stay alert and awake in their occupation. The inhaler was a different
# story; anyone could purchase them. The benzedrine was inside the inhaler,
# saturated in an orange-coloured paper strip. At that time we were drinking
# Molotov Cocktails, which is white port wine mixed with lemon juice. Man, we
# would get four or five quarts of white port, buy some inhalers, break them
# open, put the strips in each bottle of wine, put the wine next to a heater
# or heat, and let it sit and dissolve for a few days. When you drink that
# shit, man it will blow your mind, but we would be feeling mellow being
# loaded for days without any ZZZ's. Cisco knew exactly how long to let it
# set and dissolve, just like a moonshiner.
#
#  Not recommended, folks, just for historical value.
#
#           From: pcrane@superior.carleton.ca (Peter Crane)
#  I think they mean White Porter Lemon Juice--a mixture of wine and lemon
# juice like the song says--sounds nasty, but you might want to have it with
# a Burnt Weeny Sandwich.
#
#           From: palmer@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (palmer richard allen)
#  Close:  White Port and Lemon Juice.
# See (hear) the original WPLJ by the Four Deuces, (Music City 790) 1955.
# Legend has it that the tune began as a jingle the group did for a local
# merchant (I think a juice company, but it's been years since I heard the
# story. The point was to sell the juice, or the port, by plugging the combo:
# "white port and lemon juice, ooh what they do to you!")
# Anyway, the jingle was played on the local radio and got so much
# response that someone talked the group into working it up into a full
# song. It is a classic!
#
#           From: tommi@freeport.uwasa.fi (Tommi Uschanov)
#  The full song was a hit and was only after that adopted into a wine
# ad jingle, according to notes to Vol. 1 of the two-volume _Music City
# Records_ anthology on the Swedish Earth Angel label (the label is Swedish,
# not Earth Angel, named for the Penguins classic!). The wine company was
# Swiss Colony, BTW. Zappa must have been very familiar with the original
# in his youth - it was a massive hit on the West Coast, and Music City
# was based in Berkeley.


#     Spanish rap transcribed and translated by
#        r.goetgeluk@frw.ruu.nl (Roland Goetgeluk) girlfriend :-)
#     corrected by
#        james@astro.as.utexas.edu (James McCartney) it seems on his own :-)
#

Por que no consigues tu,            |  Why don't you reach your,
tu carnal,                          |  your buddy,
que los compres some wine,          |  to buy some wine,
esa, undele,                        |  eh, come on,
pinchi vato, puto, .... ,           |  damn dude, faggot
dalgambre (?),                      |
esta ven......... (?))              |


Dile, por que no merece,            |  Say it to him, why isn't it worth it,
dale mucho vino,                    |  give him much more wine,
mas suave, mas suave,               |  cooler, cooler,
mas lindo que la chingada,          |  more fuckin' beautiful what the fuck,
hombre, undele pinchi vato, hombre, |  man, come on damn dude, man


Tu carnal, tu carnal ese tu,        |  Your buddy, your buddy, eh, you,
tu sabes, toda movida, toda movida, |  You know, all groove, all groove,
esa, tu sabes como es, pinchi vino, |  eh, you know how it is, fuckin' wine,
puta, undele pinchi vato, undele    |  faggot, c'mon damn dude, c'mon
hombre (?)                          |  man


Por que no hombre,                  |  Why not man,
te digo que si hombre               |  I tell you yes, man,
te digo, chingawese(?),             |  I tell you, we get tight,
esta meco, ponemos mas mecos        |  this meco (?), we put more mecos (?)
que la chingada, .. (?) ai ai vato. |  what the fuck, ai ai fuckin' dude


#	carnal = buddy, blood brother, not 'lustfulness'
#	pinche = damn or fucking, an expletive preceeding any noun
#		literally pinche means cook's helper.
#	vato = dude
#	puto = fairy, faggot
#	cabron = lit. male goat = mother fucker
#       mas suave, mas lindo que la chingada = cooler, more fucking beutiful
#	                                       suave means soft,
#                                              but is slang for cool.
#       la movida = the groove
#
#           From : james@astro.as.utexas.edu (James McCartney)
#  He's basically begging some guy to get his friend to buy some
# wine. He's saying "Your friend, your friend, you know the groove, you
# know how it is, fucking faggot, c'mon."


   Overture To A Holiday In Berlin
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#           From: Vladimir Sovetov (sova@bank.kemerovo.su)
#   This beautiful music has a very long history. It was written
# in 1960 or 61 by young clean shaved Frank for the film _The World's
# Greatest Sinner_. It also reappeared with sort of senseless words
# on 200 motels album as a song titled Would You Like A Snack
#
#       Howard:    La La La La
#       Mark:      Would you like a snack?
#
# Mmmmmmmmmmmm :-)))))))
#
#   Also exist ( on the FREAKS & MOTHERFU*#@%! bootleg for example ) another
# version of the lyrics dealing with real sojourn in Berlin
#
#           From: ck7263@albnyvms.bitnet (C. Gordon Keeble (gordo))
#
# This probably needs corrections..
#
# Holiday in Berlin
# ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
#
# Look at all the Germans.
# La la la la la la
# Watch them follow orders.
# La la la la la la
# See them think they're doing
# something groovy in the street.
#
# See the student leader.
# La la la la la la
# He's a rebel prophet.
# La la la la la la
# He's fucked up, he's still a
# Nazi like his mom and dad.
#
# Played for a night in Berlin. That afternoon we
# set up our shit and rehearsed.
# Half a dozen phony student rebels in the hall,
# came to see if I could find a way to help them all.
#
# "What is your desire?"
# La la la la la la
# "Help us start a fire."
# La la la la la la
# In the Allied center,
# 'round the corner, down the street.
#
# And then, we began to play.
# A bunch of punks arose from the crowd.
# Student rebels, their flags upraised,
# began to chant "Ho Chi Minh"
# "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh" Threw tomatoes!
#
# And the next thing knew, we were under seige.
#
#
#           From: Johannes Labisch 
#  The story behind that song is, when the mothers had a concert in Berlin
# 1968 (I think it was their first concert in germany), right on top of the
# student movement, the student wanted him to support their political ideas
# (which were pretty communistic), and he refused. So they throw tomatoes
# and stuff at him ("Don't throw stuff on the stage") and Frank said he'll
# never play in Berlin again. But Fritz Rau, a german concert promoter,
# talked him into come back again. "He said, if you don't like what these
# people were doing, you should come back and tell them"
#    ( FZ, quoted from memmory from an interview he gave here in 1988).
# A real nice place to raise your kids up.  :-)
#
#           From: Vladimir Sovetov 
#  For the uprising pictures check  _Uncle Meat_. movie


   Little House I Used To Live In
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#           From: sundin@adb.gu.se (Ulf Sundin)
#  On _Burnt Weeny Sandwich_ after _Little House I Used To Live In_ Zappa
# announces that they will try to perform _Brown Shoes..._ (if the audience
# keep quiet) but it sound like an empty promise.
#  It's not an easy piece to perform live...
#
#           From: "Peter de B. Harrington" 
#  I have a copy of BSDMI by the 1968 band from a show (in London?). So it was
# probably indeed performed, but I guess Zappa thought Valerie would fit
# nicely with WPLJ to finish off the album.
#
#           From: Pat Buzby 
#  I would have guessed this before too, but..no.  Recently I got a tape from
# Bologna in August '73 (in the same period as Piquantique, from BTB 1), in
# which the encore is "Brown Shoes," sung entirely by FZ and George Duke.
# This was quite a surprise.

   Valarie
   ~~~~~~~