Notes & Comments - Lumpy Gravy
December 1967, 31:38 min
Discography
| Notes & Comments
LUMPY GRAVY
Notes and Comments
ver.12-Dec-1995
put together by
Vladimir Sovetov
lyrics from e-vaults of
Robbert Heederik
titles and times from
demery@natlab.research.philips.com (David Demery)
special thanks to
Robbert Heederik
John Henley
Mike Lambiaso <71052.1234@CompuServe.COM>
IS THIS PHASE 2 OF: WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY?
#About Frank's T-shirt mystery
#
# From: gworsham@ix.netcom.com (Gary Worsham ) writes:
# Ok, pony up: I'm pretty sure that in one of the late great issues of
# Society Pages, this was discussed. It appears to be an industrial
# baseball team T-shirt that FZ picked up somewhere. And it would seem
# that it was pronounced pipe-co.
#
# From: demery@natlab.research.philips.com (David Demery)
# I've read that FZ interview too, so I'm with you on this, Gary.
#From Society Pages (US Edition) Issue No. 7, Page 20
# Den Simms: Ok. What was "Pipco"?
# Frank Zappa: Pipco ... it baffled me for a long time. Turns out to
# be a little league shirt from Santa Barbara, a Santa
# Barbara pipe company, I believe.
# DS (laughs): So, maybe it was [pronounced] "Pipe-Co".
# FZ: Yeah.
#
#CC
# From: Vladimir Sovetov
# That same t-shirt can be seen also on the front cover of WOIIFTM CD
# and on 1966 MOI concert photo ( check D.Walley _No Commercial Potential_
# book pp.78-79 )
Lumpy Gravy, Part One 15:35
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Index Point CD Booklet Index Point Elapsed Time
----------- ---------------------- ------------
1. The Way I See It, Barry 1 1 00:00
2. Duodenum 2 2 00:06
3. Oh No 3 3 01:38
4. Bit Of Nostalgia 4 4 03:41
5. It's From Kansas 5 5 05:16
6. Bored Out 90 Over 6 6 05:46
7. Almost Chinese 7 7 06:17
8. Switching Girls 8 8/9/10 06:42
9. Oh No Again
10. At The Gas Station
11. Another Pickup 9 11 11:05
12. I Don't Know If I Can Go 10 12 11:59
Through This Again
# From: demery@natlab.research.philips.com (David Demery)
# So, what we see from carrying out this exercise is that Track 1
# has an error in it, 3 index points appear under a single index.
# This should be added to any `error' file that is being kept of
# Zappa releases.
# Having checked the elapsed times under both play and pause
# modes, some of you might find a difference of -1 second for some of
# the indexes, so don't blame me if the times don't exactly match what
# you see on your own player.
4. Bit Of Nostalgia 03:41
-----------------
A bit of nostalgia for the old folks.
^^^/////^^^^//////^^^^^^ ( short hot piece )
# Can anyone identify music? Is it something from Cucamonga years?
#
# From: demery@natlab.research.philips.com (David Demery)
# Do you mean the really short piece during Bit Of Nostalgia, or the
# longer piece (the fast old jazz one) during It's From Kansas? Either
# way, neither piece is from Cucamonga Years. (I don't recognise either,
# by the way.)
#
# From: Vladimir Sovetov
# Both, of course :-)))
I'm advocating dark clothes.
If I'm not alone, I wonder if I've been asleep
As long as I have.
Did you ever live in a drum?
# From _Civilization Phaze III_ booklet
#
# In 1967, we spent about four months recording various projects (Uncle
# Meat, We're Only In It For The Money, Ruben and The Jets and Lumpy Gravy)
# at APOSTOLIC STUDIOS, 53 E. 10th ST NYC. One day I decided to stuff a
# pair of U-87's in the piano, cover it with heavy drape, put a sand bug
# on the sustain pedal and invite anybody in the vicinity to stick their
# head inside and remble incoherently about the various topics I would
# suggest to them via talk-back system.
# This set-up remained in the place for several days. During that time,
# many hours of recording was made, most of it useless. Some people who
# took the challenge included Spider Barbour ( leader of the rock group
# _Crysalys_, which was also recording at Apostolic when we weren't booked
# in, All-Night John (the studio manager), Gilly Towney (sister of the
# guy who owned the studio), Monica (the receptionist), Roy Estrada and
# Motorhead Sherwood (members of the _Mothers Of Invention_), Louis
# Cuneo (a guy who used to come to our live shows at the Garrick Theater
# and laugh like a psychotic turkey), and a few others.
# Some of this dialog -- after extensive editing -- found its way into
# the _Lumpy Gravy_ album.
5. It's From Kansas 05:16
----------------
^^^/////^^^^//////^^^^^^ ( fast old jazz )
# Can anyone identify this piece? Was it used for CC somewhere else?
#
# Hope I place it right Brian
# From: bzavitz@fres2.glfc.forestry.ca (Brian Zavitz)
# Another sped-up tune is the unofficially released "Revenge of the Knick
# Knack People" (which can be found, among other places, on Apocrypha). I
# think this song was produced around the same time as Lumpy Gravy, it's too
# bad that RYKO didn't include it on the CD.
6. Bored Out 90 Over 05:46
-----------------
Bored out .90 over with three Stromberg 97's.
^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# From: bcmelak@omnifest.uwm.edu (Bill Cmelak)
# Yes, that's right! Hot rod jargon it is. Stromberg 97's were very popular
# carburetors on many old hot rods. I'm not positive, but, I think the yellow
# hotrod coupe in Amerrican Graffiti had 6 of them on the engine. (It has 6 of
# some kind anyway.)
# As for .90 over, that's the amount that combustion cylinders are bored out
# in thousandths of an inch. Either to clean up worn cylinder walls or just to
# enlarge the combustion chamber size to gain more power. Most likely the later
# in this instance.
7. Almost Chinese 06:17
---------------
Good bread, because I was making, ah, two-seventy-one an hour.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
#:-) See for details _10. At The Gas Station_
10. At The Gas Station
------------------
I worked in a cheesy newspaper-company for a while,
but that was terrible,
I wasn't making enough money to build anything.
(Louie Louie!)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
#CC
# One of endless references to this pop standard
And he needed a job,
so I gave him a job at the gasstation at which I was fired
because, you know, he was gonna work there.
And he had his car in a rack and he was lubing it
^^^^^^^^
# From: John Henley
# grease rack - lifts the car above ground for working from underneath
Then I went to work in an aircraft-company and ah...
I was building these plans.
I worked on the XB 70.
^^^^^
# From: Vladimir Sovetov
# This is supposed to be a real monster of supersonic strategic bomber with
# Wagnerian nickname _Valkyrie_. 6 x General Electric XY-93 engines,
# 32 meters width, 56.38 m length and weight 205,000 kg. October 14, 1965
# one of the experimental beastes ( I believe welded by Frank roadie :-) hit
# 3,218 km/h mark on the fantastic altitude - 21,336 km. Despite that never
# was manufactured as mass product B-70 (may be no one could weld it correctly
# because, you know, Sherwood have found another job :-)))
I was the last welder on there, but it was pretty good bread
because I was makin' ah 2.71 an hour,
^^^^^^^
makin' a hundred and a quarter a week,
#:-)) Here is it! Details you desperately need in _7. Almost Chinese_
So I got an Oldsmobile, a groovy Olds,
but I was going with this chick at that time,
and by the time I got the Olds running decently,
she went out and tore up the engine and the trans and,
^^^^^
# From: John Henley
# trans = transmission
11. Another Pickup 11:05
--------------
////^^^/////^^^^/////^^^^////// sped up piece of music
# From: fnerdd@aol.com (Fnerdd)
# Back in the days of vinyl I had a record player that would play at 16RPM,
# half the speed of a 33RPM LP. I played some of Lumpy Gravy's sped-up parts
# on it, and it sounded just like regular traditional jazz.
# Also were all the funny little snorks and coughs, which sounded like
# regular folk snortin' & coughin' at half-speed.
12. I Don't Know If I Can Go Through This Again 11:59
--------------------------------------------
All right!
I don't know if I can go through this again.
# From: John Henley
# Make sure this doesn't come across as someone saying "All right!" as in
# "everything's great." I think it's the conductor saying "All right" as in
# "we'll do another take now," and the unidentified player says "Ohhhh"
# before "I don't know...."
13.08
^^^^^/////^^^^^/////^^^^^/////
13.45
# That beautiful piece of serious music can be found between 1.48 and 2.25
# seconds of WOIIFTM track _Mother People_ too. (Times from old Zappa Records
# WOIIFTM/LG CD ZAP 13)
Lumpy Gravy, Part Two 15:42
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Index Point Elapsed Time
----------- ------------
1. Very Distraughtening 1 00:00
2. White Ugliness 2 01:33
3. Amen 3 03:55
4. Just One More Time 4 05:28
5. A Vicious Circle 5 06:26
6. King Kong 6 07:38
7. Drums Are Too Noisy 7 08:21
8. Kangaroos 8 09:19
9. Envelops The Bath Tub 9 10:16
10. Take Your Clothes Off 10 13:58
1. Very Distraughtening 00:00
--------------------
Ah, there it is again.
It's a little pig with wings.
I hear you've been having trouble with pigs and ponies!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It's very distraughtening.
# Here is what was said about LG dialogs in CPIII booklet.
#
# "Because all the dialog had been recorded in (to borrow a phrase from
# _Evelyn, A Modified Dog_) "pan-chromatic resonance and other highly
# ambient domains", it was not always possible to make certain edits
# sound convincingly, since the ambience would vanish disturbingly
# at the edit point. This severely limited my ability to creat the illusion
# that various groups of speakers, recorded on different days, were
# talking to each other. As a result, what emerged from texts was a vague
# plot regarding pigs and ponies, threatening the lives of the characters
# who inhabit a large piano.
#
#CC
# And about subjects on _This is All Wrong_ of CPIII
#
# MOON: This is all wrong. This is all wrong.
# F.Z.: The pigs run the city, the ponies run the TV station and you wanted
# to apply for a job.
Everything in the universe is, is, is made of one element,
which is a note, a single note.
Atoms are really vibrations, you know.
Which are extensions of the BIG NOTE, everything's one note.
Everything, even the ponies.
The note, however, is the ultimate power,
but see the pigs don't know that,
the ponies don't know that.
# From: s0420778@let.rug.nl (R. Bartelink)
# Date: Mon, 01 Aug 94 18:27:47 GMT
# Yesterday, I was doing a bit of channel hopping with my tv when I bumped
# into a German guy ( a doctor) named Hans Jenny (I think it was Hans
# anyway). This program amazed me, since mr. Jenny did some experiments with
# 'soundscopes' or something in his spare time. He would unleash some sound
# of a certain frequency on different kinds of material, like sand, water,
# sault, crystals or whatever. He found out some pretty amazing stuff, like
# the patterns were often 5-pointed stars (like many flowers and even cells)
# or resembled certain shells you can find at the beach, or even made
# swirling patterns that resemble galaxies! (BTW, he resented to these
# comparisances (sp.??) since they weren't really scientific, but what the
# hell). He (like Frank did) pointed out the possibility that the universe
# began with one SOUND (aka THE BIG NOTE) rather then THE BIG BANG. I wonder
# if Frank ever heard of this guy and his experiments. Anway, it made me
# realize once again that Frank was much much more than just a composer/
# musician. It's a way of live...
#
# From: erikjan@lunatix.icce.rug.nl (Erik-Jan Vens)
# Funny, I've also seen this program. But it didn't hit me at that time. Now
# it does, because I know so much more now.
# According to mystics the basic sound of the universe is denoted by /Om/,
# the first word of the Tibetan mantra: /Om Mani Padme Hum/: "the sound of
# silence, the diamond in the lotus".
# It is this sound which emerges when the energy of life is experienced. It
# is an experience which cannot be experienced by simply repeating the mantra,
# but which comes all by itself from your consciousness of the energy of
# existence.
#
# From: konradfs@netcom.com (Konrad)
# If a BIG BANG isn't a sound then i don't know what we're talking about
# here.
# And there are other mystics who believe that this basic sound is "ahh."
# (This is true)
# And then there are those who think that it was this argument between
# whether "ohh" or "ahh" is the basic sound of the Universe that actually
# caused the big bang which created the Universe.
# (This is also true, in a way)
#
# Vladimir The Editor Note :-)))
# I sincerly believe that although the absurd ideas discussed above seem
# to be just casual coincidence here they are still are part of
# intercontinental absurd project/object relations Frank tried to
# trace all his life :-)))
You mean just we know that?
RIGHT!
Merry-go-round, Merry-go-round,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
tu-tu-tu-tu tu-tu-tu tu-tu-tu
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# The CPIII edition of this cut (see below) don't seem to confirm my
# impression but this line suspectably points to Larry _Wild Man_ Fischer
# infamous classic track Merry-Go-Round from 1970 (1968) Bizarre 6332
# _An Evening with Wild Man Fischer_
# Can anyone provide lyrics of that Larry hit?
# BTW,
# May be it was just standard paste time cliche ditty in early 60th L.A.?
#
# From: bzavitz@fres2.glfc.forestry.ca (Brian Zavitz)
# I don't think that Larry's song was popular. It's probably included
# because Frank liked it. Merry-go-round is a carousel ride for children, and
# is a euphemism used by Larry to mean "the bump and grind", "the buff 'till
# ya shine", "the tube snake boogie".
And they call that doing their thing.
Oh yeah? That's what doing your thing is!
The thing is to put a motor in yourself.
#CC
# Another edition of what obviously was the same original dialog can be
# heard on _This Is Phaze III_ track of CPIII
#
# SPIDER: Right, man... and all it was like people sitting in doorways
# freakin out tourists going " Merry Go Round, Merry Go Round,
# Do-Do-Do Do-Do-Do Do-Do-Do!" and they called that "doing their
# thing."
# JOHN: Oh yeah, that's what doing your thing is!
# SPIDER: The thing is to put a motor in yourself.
2. White Ugliness 01:33
--------------
Arf arf arf!
#CC
# It seems to be first appearance of Fido :-)))
Ponies...if, if, if...
Was it white? 're you sure?...it wasn't white,
I mean uh...black, uh...
But I was too scared to notice their physical...
...gold or something...
...I was too, I was too scared to no-no-no-notice their physical,
ah, appearance, 'cause they...they...they were attackin' me!
They were?
They were attackin' me.
What were they doin' to you?
They were, they were, they were come and surrounding me
and attackin' me and I had to fight back and fight,
fight and fight back and pick up sticks.
Pick up sticks?
Yes, pick up sticks.
I used to play that game, Pick Up Sticks.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Me too, did you ever play that game?
# From: demery@natlab.research.philips.com (David Demery)
# Pick Up Sticks (or Pick-A-Stick) is a very simple game, making use of
# a number of thin wooden sticks, rather like giant cocktail sticks. You
# gather the sticks together in your hand, hold them vertically on some
# surface (floor/table), and let them go. Generally, they fall in a heap,
# with sticks overlapping other sticks. The object of the exercise is to use
# another stick (which sometimes has a small groove cut in it to aid the
# picking of sticks) to slowly, and carefully dislodge sticks from the jumbled
# pile. If you remove a stick *without* moving any other stick, you continue
# on picking sticks. As soon as you move one, it becomes your opponent's
# turn (more than 2 people can play). The person with the most sticks at the
# end is the winner.
Ha Ha Ha!
We'll hope for the best.
Ha Ha Ha!
(Alfred Motorhead).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# Seems to be just rhyming joke.
# The guy's real name is Euclid James 'Motorhead' Sherwood
#
# From: John Henley
# that isn't right, but it's hard to hear... something like "I'll pray for
# us Motorhead"
Now I lay me down to sleep.
Amen!
3. Amen 03:55
----
4. Just One More Time 05:28
------------------
I think I can explain about how the pigs music works.
Well, this should be interesting.
....
#CC
# Discussion from here to the final phrase
#
Yeah, it's a vicious circle, you got it!
#
# Reappeared with colorful details on CPIII track _How The Pig' Music Works_.
Any sort of motion has its effect on, on the pony's manes.
You know, the thing on their neck.
Hmm...
As soon as the pony's manes starts to get good in the back
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
#CC
# Really funny pan on hippies emotions expressed in WOIIFTM _Who Needs
# The Peace Corps?_
# How I love ya, How I love ya
# How I love ya, How I love ya Frisco!
# How I love ya, How I love ya
# How I love ya, How I love ya
# Oh, my hair is getting good in the back!
#
# From: demery@natlab.research.philips.com (David Demery)
# Also remember that long hair gathered at the back of the head is usually
# termed a `pony-tail.' Many hippies were wearing their hair that way in the
# Sixties.
6. King Kong 07:38
---------
#CC
# Try _Uncle Meat_ album (side 4/CD 2) for the theme full-blown.
10. Take Your Clothes Off 13:58
---------------------
#CC
# Check WOIIFTM _Take Your Clothes Off Then You Dance_ for funny and
# viciously flower-power-sucks lyrics.
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