THE MYSTERY DISC #2: PROJECTS

In the summer of 1964 Zappa received the fee for his scores for the Run Home Slow movie and got some financial capacity. He took over Studio Z from Paul Buff, achieved second hand filmmaking equipment and bought a pick-up truck (he had a drivers license for a short while before he let it expire). He now set for bigger projects than releasing singles.
The first idea was to write the music and script for an album featuring a teenage opera, called "I was a teenage maltshop". In December 1964 a demo was turned down by the record company he had contacted earlier, so the project didn't get completed. Nevertheless it can be reconstructed to a degree from the "Mystery disc" and later albums by Zappa himself, "Joe's XMasage" by the ZFT and bootleggers, who apparently got a hand on copies of the demo. I don't have a copy of these bootlegs, but biographer Neil Slaven describes the demo in his book. The pieces that are part of it or related to it are:

- Joe's Xmasage: The uncle Frankie show. This is a local radio presentation by Zappa about the story of the opera and various alternative plots.
- Mystery disc: I was a teenage maltshop. This would have been the intro for the opera, an easy going piece for piano with some guitar and drum accompaniment. When he started with following the harmony classes at his high school he first only had the school's piano available to check out how the notes on paper sounded. He never became a good keyboard player, but this type of playing he could do himself. "Zoot allures" is another album with him playing keyboard parts. There was a piano present at Studio Z and later on in the sixties he would buy a Bösendorfer.
His compositions specifically for piano are few. The specific purpose of the Bösendorfer was to try out orchestral scores, as you can see him doing with Ian Underwood in a 1971 VPRO documentary about the making of "200 Motels". This one you can try as an untalented player. A lot further go the two piano pieces from "Burnt weeny sandwich" (1970) and the piano duet "Ruth is sleeping" from "The yellow shark" (1993). Examples are included in this study.

I was a teenage maltshop (midi file)

I was a teenage maltshop (transcription)

- Mystery disc: The birth of Captain Beefheart.
- Absolutely free/Bootleg copies of the demo: Status back baby. A regular popsong in 12/8. I don't know how the demo version goes; on "Absolutely free" there are several interrupting bars, of which a quote from Strawinsky has drawn the most attention.

Status back baby, theme (midi file)

Status back baby, theme (transcription)

- Bootleg copies of the demo: Ned the mumbler.
- Weasels ripped my flesh/Bootleg copies of the demo: Ned has a brainstorm, inclu. Toads of the short forest.
- Mystery disc: Charva. Announced in the Uncle Frankie show as a song to be included.

The next project became the shooting of a science fiction film called "Captain Beefheart vs. the Grunt People". The Captain Beefheart character from the little piece above (to be played by Don Van Vliet), went straight over into this movie, thus Zappa took the liberty to present it as a dialog sample from this film on the "Mystery disc". There are some photos of backdrops Zappa painted on the cardboards he had bought as the one to be found in the Real FZ book. The text appears to have been fully typed out in 1969 as an unpublished 100 page script. It was this project that got him into trouble. An article about the movie appeared in a Pamona newspaper (photo to the right as reproduced in the "Joe's XMasage" leaflet) and a local officer of the law came to see Zappa's presence as a threat to the piece and quiet in his small town. A set up was constructed to arrest Zappa for producing pornographic material, at that time a minor felony in this state. Zappa got convicted to 10 days imprisonment and a year on probation. It was enough to halt his career in Cucamonga. When he was released he had no money and had to look for a regular job in L.A. Unable to pay the rent he got barred out from Studio Z. It got demolished some months later in order to broaden the main road.

The last song recorded in Studio Z was a trio jam, called "Bossa Nova Pervertamento". It must have lasted at least 13 minutes. The ZFT has released its opening on "Joe's XMasage" as the "GTR Trio", Zappa himself released a section on the "Mystery disc". These pieces don't overlap. At the beginning everybody is playing strictly over the bass riff, but after playing 11 minutes or more the solo is getting quite loose with off beat figures as in the second part below. On paper such figures look horrible.

Bossa Nova/GTR trio, opening (midi file)
Bossa Nova, section (midi file)

Bossa Nova, sections (transcription)

In L.A. Zappa got called by Ray Collins to join a band called The Soul Giants. This band included Roy Estrada on bass and Jimmy Carl Black on drums. It became Zappa's next project to lead this band to a record contract for playing his music instead of covers. It took a year but this one did become a success. He renamed the band to The Mothers, later on with "Of Invention" added to it because MGM records required this. With MGM a deal was made to release five records, to start with "Freak out!". Recordings from 1965 prior to the "Freak out!" sessions in March 1966 are rare. Zappa himself has released some tracks on the "Mystery disc", taken over from tapes in a poor condition. The demos the ZFT included on "Joe's Corsage" and "MOFO" are of a relatively good quality, but these have as disadvantage that they go about the same as on the later album recordings. Next is a section from the Mothers' guest appearance in the Mondo Hollywood movie, filmed in the summer of 1965. Because too much crowd noise went into the mikes, the director, according to his own saying, could only use a split second for the movie showing the Mothers on stage and none of the music. The track on the "Mystery disc" stems from Zappa's own tape archive, containing a guitar solo in D Dorian over a bass riff.

Mondo Hollywood, opening (midi file)

Mondo Hollywood, opening (transcription)