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 1973
April 26
No.31
Frank Zappa: The Great Southern and Western Expedition Is On!
By Arthur Levy, pp 10-11
"The first time I ever took the Mothers out on the road I approached it from a
sociological point of view. After the first tour I made a statistical analysis,
in a crude sort of way, of what had happened, trying to gauge response in
different parts of the country. The customs, the folkways, and the morality at
the time we went on the road varied widely from area to area. The first place we
go off the plane when we did our first tour was Washington, D.C. We were doing a
thing on a UHF station where a guy announced they were gonna have a freak out
party on this record hop dance show and told all the kids to wear the weirdest
clothes they could wear. And we had kids wearing two different socks and you
worked your way down from there that was a freak out party at the time."
If omens still mean anything in America, the good kind of omen, then it's time
we all congratulated Frank Zappa for keeping the Mothers of Invention alive for
the seven years since an album called Freak Out! was first unleashed. And hope
for at least another seven years of whatever it is that Frank has been doing
until now, which is, uh ... weird, y'know?
"From there we went to Detroit and did a television show there. There was no
audience to see and we played at a roller rink in some part of Detroit and the
kids were still 1950's there.
"Then we went to Dallas and worked in a shopping center at a place with a TV
show emanating from it. It was a sunken room with high windows that were at
street level so the people could look in and see a TV show going on. And the
kids were 1950's, still doing the dance where the legs go off to the side," and
Frank makes an upside-down "V" and wiggles the two fingers to show how they
danced.
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