Mothers

By Harry Jackson

Zygote, Vol.1 No.3 1970

The Mothers first surfaced in New York during the summer of 1967 when they assaulted audiences nightly in the Garrick Theatre. The assault was total. First, there was Zappa shitting all over the audience while the band tuned up, then one of those unique songs, and from there, into the stage show.

You wandered in out of the village-teenage-tourist mob and watched these absolute freaks dismember dolls, squeeze lemon halves in their armpits, throw fruit at you, and play this incredible music. Initial shock was soon replaced by fear. Zappa had the unnerving habit of picking people at random from the audience and bringing them up on stage to join in the little games. God, what do I do if he asks me to break a watermelon slice over his head?

So we packed the Garrick for the freak show – encounter-group experience and incidently listened to Zappa's satiric songs. And a very few people began to notice that they were playing some very serious modern music under this facade.

Then in the fall, the Mothers returned to Los Angeles and eventually went on a European tour. They returned to New York with a Town Hall concert in early 1968. Again Zappa presented a unique experience. While the Mothers set up their equipment and then tuned up, a middle-aged, third-rate night club band played out of tune, and clowns and jugglers wandered around the stage. Then this was swept aside, and the Mothers played the American premiere of "King Kong."

By intermission, the audience was restless. They could respect Zappa's electronic music, but they had come to enjoy the freak show. So, when the Mothers returned for the second half of the concert with the old blend of visual and musical satire, people left satisfied.

This concert set the form for the Mothers' tours which followed – the traditional performance to bring the kids in, and one or two of Zappa's "serious" electronic pieces to educate them. It didn't work.

From the beginning, Zappa had broken down the audience-performer relationship. At the Garrick, he had been so completely beyond his audience, attacking them so powerfully, they fell back in awe. With repeated exposure, people adjusted to Zappa and began to goad him back. He was ready to perform "King Kong" and they demanded "Brown Shoes Don't Make It."

So last year, the strain was too much and Zappa disbanded the Mothers to devote himself to composing, producing, and playing seriously. But recently, he reconstituted the group for a new tour to coincide with Mother's Day. I hoped it was the premiere of a new stage in the Zappa saga.

Saturday was Mothers' night at the Fillmore ^[1]. It was the first really hot day of the year, so the crowd that usually hangs around in front went directly in to take advantage of Bill Graham's promised air-conditioning. It didn't appear to be working.

The first group was Insect Trust, seven people who took longer to tune up than The Philadelphia Philharmonic. They started out in Memphis and then got it all together in Hoboken, New Jersey. Heard enough?

Sea Train followed, a solid band that started in New York two years ago and then made the migration to California. They returned with a light C&W-influenced sound, accented by Richard Green's violin. If anything, the jump from the Kweskin Jug Band into electricity has improved his sound. The set climaxed in Roy Blumfeld's incredible up-date of his Blues Project classic, ' 'Flute Thing."

Then Bill Graham was up there reading the threats he received after his Kent State ad. Everybody really cared had gone to Washington. He ended it quickly, the spot moved over, and there they were, the Mothers.

They weren't quite the original Mothers. Roy Estrada and Jinnny Carl Black, the "Indian of the group, " were missing, but Ray Collins and Billy Mundi, who left before the breakup, were back.

While the band tuned up, the nuts in the audience began the traditional game of goading Zappa into classic putdowns. Saturday, it centered on some jerk on the right who kept yelling for "Louie, Louie."

"Listen, the next time somebody famous like Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton plays here, why don't you ask them to play 'Louie, Louie.'"

It wasn't the beginning of a new stage for the Mothers. If anything, it was a retrospective, cursory treatment of past history. They did one or two new songs and a long instrumental based on themes from We're Only in it for the Money, but the rest of the set was the traditional mixture of satiric words and electronic music with a few rock and roll parodies thrown in for good measure. They even did a few bars of "Louie, Louie" for the nut.

The set came across like a greatest hits album, the numbers were all there, and they were performed well, but it had all happened too many times before. Ray Collins was back and that helped. During the instrumentals, he played obscene games with a dismembered doll and a stuffed giraffe, and his falsetto made the rock and roll parody ("My Boy Friend's Back") possible. Still, it just up to the Garrick when Zappa, Collins and Black used to do the perfect Supremes parody with "Baby Love."

The entire group went through the motions – at one point they all went into a well-choreographed soft-shoe routine, somebody jerked off the microphone, and so on. But they were just motions, the audience had already seen it all. The visuals just weren't powerful enough to hold the less-serious viewers through the instrumentals.

So Zappa stood up there between the numbers parrying with the people who wanted "Brown Shoes Don't Make It," but he seemed trapped. He had started this shit three years ago and now he was bored with it, but the whole thing was beyond his control. He obviously wanted them to demand the serious music, but nobody did.

And that was the final image – Zappa trapped. As long as he tours with the Mothers, he'll have full houses and he'll hate it. If he abandons the side show and presents his serious stuff without diversions, the audiences will rapidly dwindle to the hard-core
aficionados. At the Garrick he was willing to put on a freak show and put himself into it. Saturday, he just compromised himself and blew it.

1. Zappa gave concerts in New York on May 8-9, 1970, two concerts on each day. The review describes one concert on May 9.