Notes & Comments - Over-Nite Sensation
7 September 1973, 34:34 min
Discography
| Notes & Comments
OVERNITE SENSATION
Notes & Comments
ver.12-Jun-1996
put together by
Vladimir Sovetov (sova@bank.kemerovo.su)
lyrics from CD booklet
Camarillo Brillo
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She had that
Camarillo brillo
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# From: mccluerj@agcs.com (John McCluer)
# There is a place in California called Camarillo. There used to be
# some sort of a mental hospital there. Charlie Parker once was
# committed there, and he wrote a tune called "Relaxin' At Camarillo".
# Brillo is the brand name for a sort of steel wool pad (i.e., curly
# steel fibers). White people with curly hair are often called
# 'Brillo-head' in the USA (or, at least, I have called them that- but
# I'm pretty crude).
# I have always imagined that Camarillo Brillo referred to the wild, curly
# hair that the woman had; looking like she had just escaped from a mental
# hospital.
#
# From: joe@cs.tu-berlin.de (Johannes Labisch)
# As I know, Camarillo is a place where mentally disordered people are kept in.
# Brillo (you know the Andy Warhol pictore of Brillo Boxes?) is something to
# clean with. Metal wool pads, I think.
#
# From: Floris van der Tak
# Mendocino is (also?) a town in NORTHERN California, famous because there's
# a lot of marijuana grown over there. Might well have to do with the
# "esoteric" picture FZ is sketching of this lady ...
#
#
# From: fnord@panix.com (Cliff Heller)
# Camarillo is (I think) a town.
# More likely this is a play on Amarillo, the Spanish word for Yellow.
# Brillo is a brand name for a steel-wool type soap pad for washing dishes.
# "Flamin out along her head" helps us to realize that he is metaphorically
# desribing this woman's brittle, wiry, blond hair.
#
# From: Robert Moore
# Actually, I think that another very important interpretation of "Camarillo
# Brillo" is the fact that it's additionally a reference to the pubic hair of
# the female person in this tune. I say this despite the fact that this
# reference is followed by "flamin' out along her head". A common American
# slang word word for female pubic hair is "Brillo". I say this also because
# of the following reference to "Mendocino Beano-o" (See Below).
Flamin' out along her head,
I mean her Mendocino bean-o
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# From: fnord@panix.com (Cliff Heller)
# Mendocino is a town in southern california. Beans are popular food, but
# bean (or beano) can also refer to a hat or one's head. I believe the
# opening verse describes her head in all it's glory. (right where some bugs
# had made it red).
# Please don't try to read deep meaning into these words, a lot of it is
# nonsense.
#
# From: Robert Moore
# As to what a "Bean-o" is, I believe it actually refers to a tampon. Among
# Americans of Frank's (and my dad's) generation "Bean-o" is slang for a
# tampon and accompanies the female state of being "on the rag" - as in the
# phrase "Don't ask [for sex tonight], 'cause the answer be no". As for the
# "bugs" which "made it red", this I believe refers to pubic lice (aka
# "Crabs") which hold some place of significant insignificance in the
# "PROJECT-OBJECT".
She ruled the Toads
of the Short Forest
^^^^^^^^^^^^
#CC
# From: fnord@panix.com (Cliff Heller)
# One of the instrumental songs on Weasels Ripped My Flesh is called Toads
# of the Short Forest. I'm not sure where there are other references to this.
#
# From: sova@kpbank.kemerovo.su
# The other reference (if not for fauna than for floura :-))) is of course in
# The Adventures of Greggery Peccary
#
# GREGGERY takes a bumpy trail
# off the main SHORT FOREST ROAD,
# which leads him up the side
# of a FAMOUS (and convenientlv
# placed) MOUNTAIN, and into a strange
# cave on the edge of a cliff, not far
# from a LITTLE TWISTED TREE. . .with
# eyes on it.
She said she was
A Magic Mama
And she could throw a mean Tarot
^^^^^^^^^^^^
# Does it mean "to throw a bad spell"? Anyway for CC and complete
# explanation of Tarot card mumbo-jumbo see Joe's Garage N&C.
She had gray-green skin
A doll with a pin
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# From: fnord@panix.com (Cliff Heller)
# The doll with a pin is a reference to voodoo. In this black macickal
# practice of the caribbean, often a doll is made that represents a human
# being (I think it is necessary to have a piece of the persons hair or
# clothing). Sticking pins into this doll would supposedly cause great pain
# to befall the person. There's no doubt that Frank was referring to this
# among all her other witchcraft type mumbo jumbo.
And so she wandered
Trough the door-way
Just like a shadow from the tomb
She said her stereo was four-way
^^^^^^^^
# From: mccluerj@agcs.com (John McCluer)
# In the '70's quadraphonic (four-channel) Stereo was supposed to be
# the next big thing. It never caught on.
#
# From: joe@cs.tu-berlin.de (Johannes Labisch)
# Quadrophonic. (Left, right, back, forth.. :-) )
#
# From: jmiller@terra.colostate.edu (Jeff Miller)
# For awhile in the '70s it was the "in thing" to have a quadraphonic (4
# speaker) stereo system. This was poorly implemented, and until wasn't until
# the recent advent of Surround sound systems that four speaker ("four-way")
# stereos were respected.
#
# From: vgy@dorado.hit.bme.hu (Varga Gyorgy)
# I think the four-way stereo has nothing to do with quadro systems.
# Actually there are 3-way systems, in which you have 3 speakers on the
# two sides, one for the lower, one for the middle and one for the higher
# frequencies. So in a 4-way system there are 4 speakers on each side.
#
# From: sova@kpbank.kemerovo.su
# At least in Pioneer speaker's User Manuals the meaning of the term
# is defenitely as it was put in the last opinion above.
(Is that a real poncho...I mean
Is that a Mexican poncho
or is that a Sears poncho?
Hmmm...no foolin' ...)
#CC
# From: Vladimir Sovetov (sova@bank.kemerovo.su)
# This rancid poncho of dubious origin Camarillo-Brillo-Magic-Mama
# ( been un-concho no doubt :-) bequeathed generously to APOSTROPHE
# Cosmic-Debris-Mistery Man ( who later in his turn been un-concho :-)
# OBAGANZA! Does Humour Belong In Music? joined the navy.
#
Dirty Love
~~~~~~~~~~
Give me
Your dirty love
Just like your mama
Make her fuzzy poodle do
^^^^^^^^^^^
#CC
# From: fnord@panix.com (Cliff Heller)
# Shit there's way more than that. Check out Babette from YCDTOSA 1.
# The "poodle" rap from many live performances. I forget exactly which Stage
# Volume has a version of this.
# "The woo-man looked at the poodle with lust in her heart"
# And that's phydeaux.
# Little known cc: during the guitar solo for "Nanook rubs it" you can hear
# a very faint voice calling "here phydeaux" twice.
#
# From: Vladimir Sovetov
# Yeah! And there are not only CC, but also a great example of Frank
# "time reverse engineering", because after a while Dirty Love became
# part 3 of a StinkFoot-The Poodle Lecture-Dirty Love zoophiliac concert suit.
# The YCDTOSA Volume Cliff forgot is VI, track is The Poodle Lecture. But
# I for reproduction of the missing daisy-chain :-) part choose Eyse Of
# Osaka 1976 bootleg version where it was segue of Stinkfoot. Here is it
# as was transcribed by hhf@euronet.nl (Anzoh Hay )
#
# "No shit.
# Yes, Fido, I must punish you.
# Oh, hurt me, hurt me, hurt me, hurt...
#
# And to continue now!
#
# In the beginning God made the light. Shortly thereafter God made the
# poodle. When the poodle was first constructed it was a normal kind of a
# dog. It had hair evenly distributed all over its tastefull discreet
# compact dog type body. His hair was even in light. I repeat: Even In
# Light. The poodle at that time was respected by other dogs, even
# admired in some cases, because he was just like the rest of the gang.
# Then God made two big mistakes. The first one was man, and the second
# was wo-man. Actually he made a third mistake which was American man,
# but we won't discuss that now.
# Now woman looketh upon the poodle in its natural state with hair
# evenly distributed all over his charming body. And said to herself:
# This dog could really get me hot or (?) my peaches, as they say in the
# trade. But in order to do that the dog had to be modified so the wo-man
# turned to the man and said: Suck him, go get a job. And the man went
# out and got a job, and the man got a paycheck, and the man brought the
# paycheck back to the cave. And the man gave the paycheck to the wo-man.
# And the wo-man went out with the paycheck, and the wo-man bought a pair
# of scissors, and the wo-man came back to the cave and she took the
$ scissors and she clippeth upon the poodle in these important areas that
# I will demonstrate.
# The thorax, the meduha(?) the iggy ban tabadachi & the Managua. Leaving
# a little bit on the leggins and a little ball right here for some
# peculiar mysterious (?) erotic purpose which we will probably not
# discuss this evening. Then the wo-man put the dog on the floor and
# made him do like this. For those of you who cannot see the make believe
# dog is going like this. And then the wo-man put her legs up in the air
# like this and looked deep into the eyes of the dog and said these words
# which you can share: (followed by Dirty Love)"
#
Give me
Your dirty love
Like some tacky little pamphlet
In your daddy's bottom drawer
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# From: Robert Moore
# It is perhaps not so true anymore, but in days past many American fathers
# used to have a secret cache of "dirty" books which, more often than not
# used to be hidden in the bottom of an otherwise harmless-looking drawer of
# socks and underwear. Nowadays, fathers probably still have the smut
# collection - they're just not as secretive as they used to be. Many's the
# young lad (myself included) who one day discovered this secret pornographic
# treasure and were thereby "educated" to a side of life of which they were
# hitherto completely ignorant.
I'll ignore your cheap aroma
And your little-bo-peep diploma
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# From: fnord@panix.com (Cliff Heller)
# Little-bo-peep is a nursery rhyme. She had some sheep.
# Frank is down playing the education of the person he wishes to make
# "dirty-love" to.
THE POODLE BITES!
(Come on, Frenchie)
THE POODLE CHEWS IT!
(Snap it!)
#CC
# From: Vladimir Sovetov ( sova@bank.kemerovo.su )
# Funny, but that glorious Phydeaux of (') here just one year before
# appeared only as a humble little Frenchie.
#
# From: Chris J. Ullsperger
# Don't forget:
# (Not a speck of cereal!)
# and
# (Nothin' but the best for my puppy!)
# and, in the fadeout something like
# (cute little dog! furry little head!)
#
# The first lines refer, I think, to dog food commercials. The "not a speck
# of cereal" line implies a bowl licked perfectly clean, or describes a
# brand of dog food that is pure meat.
# I guess you can pick and choose from those options. The image in my mind,
# of course, is that the poodle is going to town on the twat of the mother
# of the woman to whom the song is being sung.
#
# From: Jack Fleming
# "Not a speck of cereal" is a phrase from dog food advertising, meaning that
# it is all meat. Cereal (derived from grains) is often added during the
# manufacturing of dog food to reduce the cost. I have never heard this
# phrase used to mean "a bowl licked clean".
#
# From: s0420778@let.rug.nl (R. Bartelink)
# and, in the fadeout something like
# (cute little dog! furry little head!)
# No no, it's:
# Little paws sticking up!
# Little curly hairs!
#
# From: chan@fc.hp.com (Chan Benson)
# More specifically, it's a line from a dog food commercial, along the
# lines of "add water, makes its own sauce".
#
# From: gowens@julian.uwo.ca (Gary Owens)
# The phrase is taken from a long-running Alpo dog food commercial of the
# 1970s.
#
# From: "L. Hirsch"
# Also, many petfood commercials used that line as a selling point.
#
# From: Robert Moore
# Yes, in fact that's right! BUT to be even more complete and
# descriptive: the phrase "not a speck of cereal" is from a popular
# long-running Alpo commercial of the very early 70s (I'm pretty sure it
# was an Alpo commercial - but it might have been for "Mighty Dog" or
# "Purina" brand). In it this geezer (it might have been Lloyd Bridges of
# "Sea-Hunt" fame) is spooning out dog food for his German Shepherd and
# marveling at its high meat content - he sez "Not a speck of cereal - nuthin'
# but the best fer my dog".
# This plays into the "gutter humor" thing again. As the dog is
# most definitely providing the Dirty Love by lappin' the Brillo of the
# female in the song, the contents of the dog's meal contains "not a speck of
# cereal", truly "nuthin' but the best fer my dog."
# Furthermore, one can also take this phrase another way due to some other
# American slang; referring to a female as a "dog" (in both the sense of an
# insult delivered to an ugly woman [who is so ugly she can only get sex from
# a dog and/or is as ugly as a dog], and a reference to a woman who has the
# general morals and hygiene of a dog) one can take this to mean that the DOG
# contains "not a speck of cereal". And to provide this dog's tongue as
# Dirty Love for the benefit of the female is to give "nuthin' but the best
# fer my dog." (the woman).
# I do not believe that I'm reading too much into these lyrics. Despite the
# fact that they are essentially disposable merchandise, they were
# nonetheless chosen with a good deal of craft and a keen insight into not
# only the English language (as practised and/or modified/destroyed by
# Americans), but the high points of American pop "culture" over the last
# 30-40 years.
# I have a deep interest in slang and ways to spin American English via
# semi-obscure cultural guideposts and this is one of the reasons that I love
# the layers of FZ's lyrics - layers he deliberately put there. Sure all
# these layers came off the top of Frank's head - but what a head!
Zomby Woof
~~~~~~~~~~
Reety-awrighty, he da ZOMBY WOOF
^^^^^
# From: mccluerj@agcs.com (John McCluer)
# Sort of hipster lingo for All-Right!
#
# From: fnord@panix.com (Cliff Heller)
# Pure nonsense. Allreety, allrighty. Some people do actually say
# "allrighty". I have to suppress a giggle every time they do.
# But recall the song Cleetus Awreetus Awrightus from Grand Wazoo (or is it
# Waka Jawaka?)
#
# From: Vladimir Sovetov (sova@bank.kemerovo.su)
# Grand Wazoo.
Reety-awrighty, he da ZOMBY WOOF
^^^^
# From: joe@cs.tu-berlin.de (Johannes Labisch)
# Wolf. This would make it a Werewolf.
#
# From: fnord@panix.com (Cliff Heller)
# Woof is the sound that a dog makes. Zomby Woof is about a Zomby/WereWolf.
I got a great big pointed fang
Which is my Zomby Toof
My right foot is bigger than my other one is
#CC
# Form: Vladimir Sovetov (sova@bank.kemerovo.su)
# For relation of resulting physical unsteadiness to mental disorder and
# instability check Dancing Fool of Sheik Yerbouti :-)))
#
# From: s0420778@let.rug.nl (R. Bartelink)
# Could this possibly have something to do with Frank himself? As we all know,
# when he fell off the stage in 1971, and spent some time in a wheelchair, his
# legs turned out to be not evenly long. (One of my legs is shorter than the
# other and both of my feet 's too long... this is the more obvious one. Why,
# in case with the Zomby Woof, his right FOOT is bigger than the other one is
# the tricky bit. Maybe just because it sounds better (toof, foot, hoof,
# woof ???).
# Who do tell?
I am about as evil as a Boogie Man can be!
^^^^^^^^^^
# From: joe@cs.tu-berlin.de (Johannes Labisch)
# I think it's one of those guys our parents wanted us to be afraid of. In
# germany, it was "Der Schwarze Mann" (The Black Man, pretty racistic, huh?).
#
# From: fnord@panix.com (Cliff Heller)
# Boogie Man is a classic spooky thing from Childhood. No one is sure
# exactly what one is or how it originated. Could be a Monster, could be a
# murderer.
# The recently made a pathetic horror film called The Boogie Man, but it
# was just stupid.
Dinah-Moe Humm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I couldn't say where she's coming' from,
But I just met a lady named Dinah-Moe Humm
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# From: fnord@panix.com (Cliff Heller)
# Play on words:
# Dynamo is an electric generator. When working they make a humming sound.
# Dinah is a woman's name.
# Dinah Moe Humm is a reference to Dinah's Moaning and Humming when she has
# an orgasm.
#
# From: Brian Zavitz (bzavitz@fres2.glfc.forestry.ca) wrote:
# It was probably dynamo hum that was the inspiration. Frank had probably
# been to hydro-electric plants before, but I doubt that he knew an actual
# woman named Dinah......Moe......Hum.
#
#CC
# From: spb0377@ocvaxa.cc.oberlin.edu (Pat Buzby)
# Note that the phrase "dynamo hum" appears in the plot summary from the
# Uncle Meat booklet, a few years before the song was written. One of the
# stranger instances of conceptual continuity.
#
# From: Vladimir Sovetov
# Applause Pat! Here is the quote itself
#
# "It's quiet except for a little light wind. We are traveling across
# the wasteland toward a huge hydro-electric dam. Dynamo hum increase as
# we near it."
Got her legs in the air
An' asked if she had any cooties on there
(Whaddya mean cooties! No cooties on me!)
^^^^^^^
# From: jerry@MicroUnity.com (Jerry Kreuscher)
#
# An earlier use of the term in American English was for the body lice
# common to soldiers in the trenches in France during The Great War.
# There used to be, perhaps there still is, a fraternal order of WWI
# veterans who called themselves "Cooties".
#
# From: hackbod@storm.cs.orst.edu (Dianne Hackborn)
# Maybe this is a purely American phenomenon, but I assume it's a reference
# to that grade-school playground scourge which Members Of The Opposite Sex
# always seemed to have.
# You know, "Mary's got cooties, ewwwwww!! Watch out, she'll touch you and
# give them to you!!!"
#
# From: kerryy@bnr.ca (Kerry Yackoboski)
# Cooties. The mythical insect that terrorizes small North American children.
# "I don't want to sit by her, she has cooties!"
# "Nya nya, you have cooties!"
# Of course, the line in Dyna-Moe Humm alludes to other little bugs...
#
# From: db832@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Phillip A. Freshour)
# I recall a toddler's game in the 1960's (maybe it's still around) called
# "Cootie". The object was to accumulate the pieces to assemble a large,
# plastic insect, resembling an ant. I don't know if the term preceded the
# game or vice-versa. I assume it was the former, thus "cootie" has been
# used for a long time to refer to any non-specific bug.
Kiss my aura...Dora...
^^^^ ^^^^^
M-M-M...it's real angora
^^^^^^
# From: fnord@panix.com (Cliff Heller)
# Angora might refer to wool, but more likely to marijuana or hashish.
#
# From: Jack Fleming
# Angora is a special kind of wool (I can't remember if it comes from sheep
# or llamas). It is very soft and expensive. During the sixties, Angora
# sweaters were status symbols among females.
#
She was buns-up kneelin'
BUNS UP
# No doubt, simply with her ASS UP.
MMM, sure...listen
D'you think I could interest you
In a pair of zircon-encrusted tweezers?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# From: james@hermes.cybernetics.net (James Robinson)
# Having just read URL: http://www.catalog.com/mrm/zircon.html, which is an
# archive of rabin-dan@cs.yale.edu's 1 Apr 92 17:26:57 GMT post on the above
# mentioned subject, I feel that I need to set some records straight.
# For the first time, I am happy to say that I grew up in a town called
# Zirconia, North Carolina (USA -- sortof). For those who want to verify its
# existence, look south of Hendersonville (itself south of Asheville). You
# should see Flat Rock and Tuxedo. If you have a _really_good_ map, you will
# see Lake Summit and Zirconia situated very close to Tuxedo.
# Anyway, this lovely jewel of the south is named because there was a zircon
# mine there. In fact, the mine is still there -- just not 'operational'.
# There is not much to it, merely a hill that is obviously missing a good
# sized chunk.
# As a child, some friends and I would go to the mine and partake in zircon
# hunts.
# Now, a zircon is not what one would normally think. It is a hard black
# little thing that looks like two pyramids stuck to one another. I was told
# that they were so hard that they were melted down (or something like that)
# and forged into tools.
# They are certainly not the ever so rampant disco-craze jewlery items with
# similar names -- cubic zirconia and the like. At least not in their natural
# form.
# So, was I lied to as a child (well, on this particular occasion)? What are
# zircons really used for?
#
# From: ljh@teleport.com (Larry Huntley)
# Sounds like just the thing for plucking the floss off the dental floss
# bush. Can it be used to make sequins? For encrusting whatchamacallits?
#
#CC :-)))
# From: Vladimir Sovetov (sova@bank.kemerovo.su)
# Please, don't confuse this gentle amatuer obstetrician thingy with heavy
# duty cowboy gear for pickin' up full-blown Dental Floss of _Montana_ :-))
Montana
~~~~~~~
I might be movin' to Montana soon
Just to raise me up a crop of
Dental Floss
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# From: Vladimir Sovetov (sova@bank.kemerovo.su)
# .... - threads of floss silk etc. used to clean between teeth.
# The Oxford Concise Dict. of Current English
An' it'd be on top (that's why I'm movin' to Montana)
Movin' to Montana soon
Gonna be a Dental Floss tycoon (yes I am)
Movin' to Montana soon
Gonna be a mennil-toss flykune
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# From: joe@cs.tu-berlin.de (Johannes Labisch)
# On the somewhere mentioned video "A Token Of His Extreme", Zappa adds
# "I wonder what that means" to this line... :-)
#
# From: "Tony Pfarrer"
# In English, it's called a "spoonerism" when you mix up consonants in a
# group of words, either consiously or unconsciously.
#
# From: maniaman@aol.com (ManiaMan)
# The "mennil" is a Bald-headed John way of saying Dental.
# The "toss flycoon" is a "Spoonerised" version of Floss Tycoon. A
# spoonerism is group of words whose initial consonants have been
# transposed.
# In the book, Frank Zappa - A Visual Documentary by Miles. Omnibus
# Press ISBN 0-7119-3099-6
# Zappa is quoted on page 60 concerning the writing of Montana.
# " Sometimes I show the lyrics to my wife, or after a while I'll get
# her to read them to me so I can see what the sounds are like, because
# part of the texts are put together phonetically as well as what the
# information is supposed to be. I change the lyrics all the time. A
# lot of them get changed by accident. Somebody will read them wrong
# and it'll sound so funny I'll leave it wrong.
# (Zappa:1974)
# This sounds to me like a reference to "mennil-toss flykune"
Get a cuppa cawfee
N' give my foot a push...
Just me 'n the pymgy pony
Over the Dennil Floss Bush
^^^^^^
# From: fnord@panix.com (Cliff Heller)
# Dental! Like Teeth.
# Frank is implying that it grows on bushes. This is surrealism.
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