CHUNGA'S REVENGE: MAINSTREAM POP

Incidently Zappa met the former singing duo of The Turtles, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan. They had visited the Zappa concert in the L.A. Pauley Pavillon with Zubin Metha conducting the L.A. philharmonic. They were in legal conflicts with their manager and other band members and in a difficult working position. The contracts ruled out that they could perform as The Turtles, they even weren't allowed to use their own names as name for a duo. Zappa offered them an opportunity to work with him and they chose to call themselves the Phlorescent Leech and Eddie, mostly shortened up as Flo and Eddie. They made their first appearence on "Chunga's Revenge" (1970).

Right: FZ, ca. 1970 (source unknown).

In 1970 Zappa was busy forming the second line up of the Mothers of Invention and restarted touring. To give this band some new material of its own "Chunga's Revenge" was released with a mixture of studio and live music. The album contains some more accessable material with for instance a traditional blues piece "Road ladies", the relaxed "Sharleena" and a riff based song called "Tell me you love". The last one has been transcribed below. It's a catching guitar riff in F sharp Dorian that by itself, I think, has some "hit potential", but Zappa is using too many themes and variations in "Tell me you love me" to turn this song into a hit.

Tell me you love me, opening (midi file)

Tell me you love me, opening (transcription)

The following example is a Zappa mainstream piece, the ballad "Sharleena" in G Minor (bars 1-4) and Myxolydian (other bars of the transcribed part). It first appeared on "Chunga's revenge" and was recorded again for "Them or us", where Zappa's son Dweezil contributed with a guitar solo. Transcribed here is the "Chunga's revenge" version. The opening theme moves over a downward going bass progression, the chords formed being subsequently Gm, F, Ebmaj7, Am7-5, Dm7 and G. The second transcribed theme below is made up of syncopic bars over G pedal. "Sharleena" and "Tell me you love me" indicate the various ways Flo and Eddie can sing in parallels in Zappa's songs. You can see thirds, fourths, sixths and larger intervals going over an octave as a tenth in bar 5 of "Tell me you love me". Fifths turn up in the "Call any vegetable" transcription from the Just another band from L.A. section. In "Latex solar beef" ("Fillmore East section) they are sometimes alternating each other, sometimes singing unisono. In the atonal part of "Billy the mountain" in this study they follow their own way. So the overall picture you get is that Zappa liked to employ the duet as really two singers.

Sharleena, melody sections (midi file)

Sharleena, melody sections (transcription).

The bass riff from "Chunga's revenge" was used for soloing during jam sessions with the new band in the studio. The album has Ian Underwood on distorted electric alto sax and Zappa on guitar. One of the recordings was used for experimenting with four track surround audio, today much used in cinemas. Several other of such mixes were done in the seventies and the Zappa Family Trust (Dweezil in this case) released them as the "Quaudiophiliac" DVD of 2004. Zappa referred to this technique with his line from "Camarillo Brillo": "she said her stereo was four way". The relatively short theme from "Chunga's revenge" was used in the eighties for introducing a longer guitar solo as present on "Buffalo" and "Trance-Fusion".

Chunga's revenge, theme (midi file)

Chunga's revenge, theme (transcription).