Notes & Comments - The Grand Wazoo

November 1972, 37:10 min

GRAND WAZOO
           Notes & Comments
          ver.05-April-1996

          put together by
 Vladimir Sovetov 

         special thanks to
    jjr@panini.att.com (Jeff Rocca)


  For Calvin (And His Next Two Hitchhikers)
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 And who are those dudes in the
 Back seat of Calvin's car?

 Where did they go?
 When they got off the car?
 Did they go get sandwwich
 And eat in the dark?


#           From: rraallff@aol.com (RRAALLFF)
#
#  The True Story of Calvin & His Hitch-hikers.
#  by Cal Schenkel
#
#  My 39 Pontiac was in the shop & so I had borrowed a car from Frank. It was
# this 1959 white Mark VIIII Jaguar that used to belong to Captain Beefheart
# that Janet was using at the time. When it worked. You know, the one they
# slashed the seats in (but I don't remember that). I just left Frank's
# house & I'm stopped at the corner of Mulholland & Laurel Canyon Blvd
# waiting for a red light to change, when I notice these 2 hitch-hikers, a
# hippie couple standing there waiting for a ride. The next thing I know
# they are getting in the back of the car. I guess they must have thought I
# offered them a ride (I didn't tell them to come into my car or motion them
# or anything-- I wasn't even thinking of it), so I ask them where they are
# going & they didn't say ANYTHING! I drive down Laurel Canyon Blvd past the
# Log Cabin, past Harry Houdini's, past the country store & into Hollywood.
# (I'm with Sherri at the time, but I forgot that until she told me a couple
# of months ago-- & she remembers all this too!) I get to the bottom of the
# hill, I was going to turn right. I kind of asked them "look I'm turning
# right, do you want to get out here?" They didn't say anything. They were
# just blank. I figured they were on acid or something. I just couldn't
# communicate with them. I wasn't sure what to do, so I just continued on to
# my destination. When I get there I said, "OK, this is where I'm going.
# Good-bye!" They just stayed in the car & didn't get out. So I parked the
# car, got out & went up to my studio & started to work. I was working on
# the album cover for Uncle Meat. This is in my studio that was a dentist's
# office over a hotdog joint on Melrose. Every once in a while I'd look out
# of the window to see if they were gone but they were still sitting in the
# back seat of the car. An hour or two later, I looked out the window & I
# noticed they were gone. I thought, "finally!" Then shortly afterwards, I
# saw that they were back! They went to the supermarket for a loaf of bread
# & lunchmeat & started making sandwiches in the back of the car. They were
# eating their lunch! Then they left.
#
#  (partially extracted from a 1984 interview--mixed tenses intentionall)
#  (c)1995 Cal Schenkel
#
#  ...more on the car-- from Janet Neville-Ferguson Hof, whose car it
# actually was at the time:
#
#  Calvin....Frank gave me that car for my birthday that year. [1969] Gawd.
# They bought the car from CB and then they put it in for repair at Holiday
# Motors, Van Nuys Blvd. (several times). I remember once we went to pick it
# up with [deleted]'s boyfriend and he backed into some kind of fabulous car
# there in the lot and totally dented it. It was a foreign car repair place.
# I think he backed into a Lamborgini or something. That car was always in
# the shop. It had been a stick shift made into automatic and when we picked
# it up for the last time I just drove it from [Frank's] to the Whisky and
# all this smoke was coming out of the back. I stopped in a gas station (the
# one on Sunset & Laurel) and the guy said "Oh nothing to worry about, it is
# just burning rich" and then, low and behold, flames shot up through the
# hole on the floor where the stick shift used to be. How embarrasing. Lucy
# put the fire out with my coat. Motorhead lived down the street at the
# time. Anyway, that car caught on fire in front of the Whiskey and then one
# of Motorhead's friends took it to fix it and I never saw it again. That
# car. Huh.
#
#  (c)1995 maxmommy, reprinted by permission


  Eat That Question
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#           From: John Henley 
#From the interview printed in the booklet for Apocrypha:
#
#  Q. ....in the liner notes on the GRAND WAZOO album, you talk about the
# "Questions" who come out and get checked for musical talent, and then if
# they pass, they can go do a couple of simple musical exercises giving some
# rudimentary entertainment skill. But the ones that do not pass get dumped
# or drowned in the "UnDifferentiated Tissue."
#  A [FZ].  The word "Questions" used in that story was instead of
# "Christians."  The original name of that song was "Eat That Christian."
#  Q.  Why did you change it?
#  A.  I thought "Question" was better.
#  Q.  Because it applies to other points, too?
#  A.  Yeah, it's a more twisted concept - "Eat That Question."