A1 For Calvin (And His Next Two Hitch-Hikers) 7:15
A2 The Grand Wazoo 13:24
B1 Cletus Awreetus - Awrightus 2:55
B2 Eat That Question 6:41
B3 Blessed Relief 8:00
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Bass – Erroneous
Brass – Ernie Tack (tracks: A1, A2), Malcolm McNabb* (tracks: A1, A2), Sal Marquez
Drums – Aynsley Dunbar
Gong – Lee Clement (tracks: B2)
Guitar – Tony Duran (tracks: A1, A2, B3)
Guitar, Producer, Composed By, Arranged By – Frank Zappa
Keyboards – George Duke (tracks: B1 to B3)
Percussion – Alan Estes (tracks: A1, A2), Bob Zimmitti (tracks: A1, A2), Frank Zappa (tracks: B2)
Saxophone – Ernie Watts (tracks: B1)
Synthesizer [Mini Moog] – Don Preston (tracks: A1, A2)
Trombone – Bill Byers (tracks: A1, A2), Ken Shroyer (tracks: B1)
Vocals – Chunky (tracks: B1), Frank Zappa (tracks: B1), George Duke (tracks: B1), Janet Neville-Ferguson (tracks: A1, A2), Sal Marquez (tracks: A1, A2)
Woodwind – Tony "Bat Man" Ortega (tracks: A1, A2), Earl Dumler (tracks: A1, A2), Fred Jackson (tracks: A1, A2), Joanne Caldwell McNabb (tracks: A1, A2), Joel Peskin (tracks: B2, B3), Johnny Rotella (tracks: A1, A2), Mike Altschul
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A rock big band? Back in 1972 I thought of big bands as things my parents’ generation listened and danced to, or the things that backed singers on light entertainment TV shows: big bands and rock were mutually exclusive categories. But listen to the title track, it’s all set out like a big band: rhythm section, horn sections, solos. And like a jazz big band part of the interest comes through the tension between the unit and the individual musicians: on the one hand the organization, the Zappa-ness, and on the other the individual musicians stepping forward and expressing themselves in a feature. And it often sounds like jazz because there are jazz instruments: trumpets, trombones, all the old fashioned things. Listen to Bill Byers trombone feature on the title track: that’s jazz...but without any great finesse...it has the finesse of a man dancing in a muddy field wearing flippers...it might be fun, but it ain’t got finesse. But on a sliding scale from jazz to rock this is way over on the rock side. The rhythm section is a big in your face rock rhythm section (although in the 1970s a lot of jazz bands were sounding rockier and rockier). The most notable sound, however, is Zappa’s guitar and that is pure rock. On Eat the Question the big band sound is reduced and it sounds like an early ’70s rock number...a very good one. I found the Zappa-ness of the music most immediately noticeable in the humour: on first hearing Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus is very funny in its silliness...but, after a while, it begins to wear a bit thin. But the big question is whether the Zappa-ness of the music is astonishing: I like it, I like the way the music is organized, and it does bring elements of jazz into rock in a totally successful way, but it never really makes me gasp at its brilliance. Several years ago I listened to this album over and over for a couple of months, and then I stopped: I wasn’t getting anything more out of it...and I hadn’t been drawn back to it until a few weeks ago when I was listening to some other Zappa and it seemed fresh again...but I don’t know for how long: the Zappa-ness of the album is good, but it doesn’t amaze; with the exception of Zappa’s guitar, the musicians, when they step into the limelight, are not that memorable. And Zappa has a reputation of being ‘Way out there, man’, but, once you get used to the mix of rock and jazz and the daft humour, it is energetic but almost staid. Compare it to Sun Ra’s big band sound: that is ‘Way out there, man.’
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According to Urban Dictionary.com, a 'Wazoo' is an anus. I have a feeling that when Frank Zappa decided to name his record "The Grand Wazoo" that was not what he had in mind. But then again this is Zappa we are talking about, and we all know that he was a man who revelled in telling dirty jokes. Not that there is any time for that stuff here - "The Grand Wazoo" is a second foray into 'serious' Big Band Jazz - and all in all a much more engaging flirtation with the genre than "Waka/Jawaka". In fact, out of all of Zappa's 'Jazz' albums, this is the best - even better than "Hot Rats", and that's saying something.
The title track is an undeniable work of genius. The track opens with a eccentric, twangy guitar solo from Zappa before launching into a bombastic brass assault. Midway the track musically shifts yet again, showcasing solos from the band members over quasi-tribal drumming and elastic fuzz bass. While "Big Swifty", the opening track of "Waka/Jawaka", was great it seems worthless compared to "The Grand Wazoo". "Big Swifty" meanders at times, whilst "The Grand Wazoo" is engaging throughout, featuring a memorable head section and creative, focused improvisation that doesn't outstay it's welcome.
"For Calvin (And His Next Two Hitch-Hikers)" tells the story of when Zappa's artist Calvin Schenkel (who contributed this album's glorious cover illustration) picked up a mysterious Hippie couple. The song has a very dense texture to it, a mass of instruments swirling around in the mix, creating an almost Jungle-esque atmosphere. Halfway though, a trombone begins to play a section of "Greggary Peccary" - it's little touches like this make this album so enjoyable. "Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus" is a pompous romp, not dissimilar to "Peaches En Regalia". It is one of the most fun instrumentals Zappa ever wrote - highlights include a frantic piano solo and respected Jazzman Ernie Watts blowing some skronk on the 'Mystery Horn'.
"Eat that Question" is an intense, Hard Rockin' keyboard workout, displaying the ivory-tickling theatrics of George Duke, whilst "Blessed Relief" seems to be the exact opposite - a gentle (and also genteel!) blowin' session boasting a gorgeous solo from trumpeter Sal Marquez.
I'd highly recommend this album - I keep coming back to it for more. Every track is a masterpeice! Just a pity about the name really - naming such a wonderful album after an anus is something of an injustice...
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Arguably a climactic moment of Zappa's exploration of a jazzier sound and one of Zappa's greatest albums. Here Zappa brings in a massive, brassy band, and puts it to incredible use. The album is stuffed with gorgeous solos, fantastic arrangements, complex composition, and a solid dose of dissonant blasts and other weirdness. Blessed Relief is perhaps my favorite Frank Zappa song with a gorgeous arrangement for horns and some of the most beautiful and melodic solos to be heard in Zappa's discography. Similarly wonderful moments are scattered throughout the album, including the experimental oddness of 'For Calvin' and the dizzying romp 'Cleetus Awreetus-Awrightus.'
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Follow-up to Waka/Jawaka continues the large line-up of great musicians and the jazz influence, while tightening the performances. While there are no developmental breakthroughs on hand, he's coasting at an extremely high level of proficiency.
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Best fusion album ever.
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The promise of the big band jazz fusion lineup that Zappa experimented with on Waka/Jawaka sees its fullest expression on The Grand Wazoo, which I think is a bit more successful than its sister album. The sound of the big band is fuller and stronger here, the compositions are stronger, and the performances are technically dazzling whilst at the same time full of life. Zappa contributes some excellent guitar soloing too, and as a whole the album is a more than worthy successor to Hot Rats. In fact, I'd say both this and Waka/Jawaka represent a welcome return to form after the much more inconsistent Flo and Eddie period, and the two albums represent Zappa's strongest work since Hot Rats; not all Zappa fans will agree, but I think it's fair to say that The Grand Wazoo and Waka/Jawaka have broader appeal (particularly to jazz fans) than the Flo and Eddie material.
Either way, this album represents an excellent return to form for Zappa, as well as providing a firm new foundation for the next version of the Mothers to build on.
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To my ears, along with Waka Jawaka, this is the ultimate Zappa album. Adventurous, funny, epic, daring, full of odd time signatures and odd changes, but hey, this is Zappa, you wouldn't expect anything else. Although i think he could have omited some (Broadway the hard way). His instrumentals are always "visual", telling unique, never boring stories in ... well ... "Zappaïan" style. Anyway, in his "fusion" era, he contracted the best session musicians available. Amongst who: George Duke (who was already prominent on earlier albums), … The cover (a real gem) by steady cartoonist Cal Schenkel shows perfectly where it's at : A war of notes! The album title is a funny translation from a french line: "Le Grand Oiseau", which simply means: "The Big Bird". Well, The Grand Wazoo was also the name of the band or the gathering of these group of musicians. At that time, he took a selection of these musicians on the road and called it "Petit Wazoo" (there's well known footage from Stockholm). It starts off with:
"The Grand Wazoo"
Takes off with a funky/pop theme and then he arranges it so, it turns into this dark-heavy bigband Jazz-like soup. Marvelous introduction.
"for calvin (and his next two hitch-hikers)",
a waltz with funny, meaningless (probably inside information) vocals by Sal Marquez & Janet Neville-Ferguson:
"Where did they go, when did they come from, what has become of them now?
How much was the leakage from the drain in the night, 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 a sandwich and eat in the dark?"
Your typical Zappa: take a banal text and lift it up, make an abstraction of it.
And from then on, it's instrumental: fragmentation of tones, color and notes, odd time changes and complicated textures. Sometimes even using a few Hollywoodian clichés, fireworks, in short, the alchemist-genius that was Zappa.
"(The Legend of) Cletus Awreetus Awrightus"
(Title reminds me of a black anorexic trainer with thick eye glasses that made years of indentation into his nose, wearing shockingly white athletic shoes that look like headlights as flits to and fro like a feather stuck in a styrofoam cup blowing in the wind) But that's just me, lol
I would like to hear this played by a fanfare brass band one day. This is a fun song.
Again leaning to Jazz, but too Zappa-esque to "be" Jazz. I'm not a real Jazz lover, because most of the times I find it boring, it has its own clichés, but I'll melt for these mixes of Rock, Jazz, Pop & Avant Garde, they're so fascinating. And the use of voices is so cute here, taking over the brass section at the end to create that "munchkin" opera music that is so typical FZ. Over decades, these kind of songs have been educating me, showing there are no limits to how far you can go in music, as long as you keep your identity, and walk away from obligatory standards. Be progressive/deviant or don't be at all.
"Eat That Question"
Great start by George Duke on the Wurlitzer, and when the band comes in, it's Jazz-Rock all over.
Amazing song, musical violence !!!
"Blessed Relief"
Another Waltz, according to Zappa norms - as an instrumental - more mainstream than the rest, but inducted in the Jazz "Real Book" (just imagine "For Calvin" was, hey?). Anyway, a bit less to my ears, I just adore the constant interaction between harmony and dissonnance (less harmony, more dissonnance). But it still is a great instrumental and a great calm finale of the album.
If you're beginning to explore Zappa, I would stall it for a while untill you "get" into his styles,
but EVERY genuine Zappa freak should own this
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Frank Zappa's instrumental work is easy to like and hard to love. There is no doubt that the man was a great composer of modern jazz/classical suites with hard avant-garde edges and a very distinctive personal stamp on all of it, and his fusion work is incontrovertibly definitive of the genre and the era. He put together bands of like-minded, able, and excitingly bizarre musicians and they played his music inside-out. A Frank Zappa instrumental from this period is a recognizable and frightening beast, and it found its ideal visual representation in The Grand Wazoo's cover art of a cartoon Roman gladiatorial battle with musical instruments as weapons.
There is something highly cartoonish in this music. It reminds me in some ways of a 70s rock update of what Raymond Scott did with his highly mechanized, complex, and thoroughly gonzo jazz. Tightly controlled mayhem that brings to mind (and can perfectly score) excess comic violence. The one vocal track on The Grand Wazoo ("For Calvin") is nothing terribly special musically or in terms of Zappa's humour, although it does introduce the sound of this album which is rather more expansive and spacey than those that came before, with more use of open spaces. As well, guitar really takes up a background position in favour of horns, and the music is never quite so frantic (nor so instantly gratifying) as Hot Rats was with its similar formula, although this album features a larger band setup. Actually, Wazoo is about as straight ahead of a jazz album as Zappa ever made, or perhaps more specifically, the least hybridized. It's not far afield from what the more adventurous jazz composers were doing at the time, although in its free excursions it is never quite as deconstructionist as Albert Ayler or Ornette Coleman.
However, it is certainly a great distance from the psychedelic/doo-wop parodies and poop jokes that Frank Zappa was still best known for, and a pretty excellent jazz album in its own right. George Duke's keyboard playing on "Eat That Question" is funk-fusion of the highest order, and then Zappa lets loose on guitar, and the track just sears, easily the album's apex. The relaxed finale (knowingly titled "Blessed Relief") is a bit of a buzzkill in comparison. Not one of the most essential Zappa albums, but certainly an interesting one.
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All right, so I admit that I have in the past, judged this record rather harshly. After hearing it once and damn near despising it, I decided to put it on again, since everyone else seems to love it and all.
And you can imagine my surprise when I discovered I liked it! Well, I think "For Calvin (And His Next Two-Hitchhikers)" is lame, and I'll stand by the statement I made in my Hot Rats review that I'll take a Charles Mingus (or Miles Davis, seeing this thing definitely leans towards fusion and often in fact quotes from "So What") album over this any day. But hey, it's a lot better than I initially thought.
I dig the title track especially. It takes a while to get going, but once it starts, it's pretty awesome. Yeah, it's derivative of Miles Davis circa A Tribute to Jack Johnson and Mingus' The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady period, but he gets credit for mixing two disparate styles, and for doing some kick-ass wah-wah playing. Plus moments of it are gorgeous. Speaking of gorgeous "Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus" is real pretty! Kinda like "Peaches en Regalia," only with an amusing bit of scatting. "Eat That Question" has a solid groove though that's eventually overcome by obnoxious gloppy woodwind pompousness, and while "Blessed Relief" is a bit of a Miles Davis rip-off, it's a good one.
So yeah, I still don't LOVE this album, but it grew on me in an unbelievably big way. "For Calvin" does suck, but the rest is pretty good! Nice fusion groove tastiness, excellent guitar playing (Zappa's solos all kick ass), interesting big-band horn arrangements and a lack of the obnoxious, not-at-all-funny "humor" that's all over this guy's career. So if you've read my Hot Rats review, disregard what I said about not liking Zappa's jazz side. I may even come around to Weasels Ripped My Flesh! God, I hope I do. That album's cover KICKS ASS, my friend.
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Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention-The Grand Wazoo ****1/2
A previous reviews have stated Frank Zappa belongs to a select few composers of jazz that surpass all the rest and are among some of the most talented musicians ever, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Frank Zappa. Now, and really even during his career Frank Zappa was mostly known for his satirical comedy in his lyrics and his virtuosic guitar playing which is fine and good because he was amazing at both, however Zappa was also one of the greatest arrangers of classical and jazz that the world has ever known, as well as one of the most inventive and innovative, and that is often discarded and overlooked, and The Grand Wazoo does a wonderful job of showing all of showing all of Zappa strong suits.
The Grand Wazoo was released in 1973 as part of the trilogy of albums beginning with the legendary classic Hot Rats, continuing with the brilliant Waka/Jawaka, and concluding here with The Grand Wazoo. While not the overwhelming classic that Hot Rats is this is far superior in composition and form. More mature and thought out even though most of this is 'free form/improv' though not much was ever improv with Zappa other then guitar solos. While this is more orchestral then Hot Rats it is more like Waka/Jawaka, and once again this album is superior in all the technical ways of playing and composition and form, however the other two albums in the genre are favorites above this one. Doesn't make since does it. See while this one is most innovative and revolutionary it does not compare to the other albums as a whole.
Zappa's playing as far as guitar playing goes is nothing short of breath taking here, not that it ever is, but this album shows a more adventurous nature to Zappa's playing one that had not been heard by him before and he had tried after The Grand Wazoo but was never able to reach this level of experimentation with such success again.
As composing goes this is possibly his strongest album in that area. The songs, well pieces of music rather are so of his most original and interesting. The time signatures and melodic lines and harmonies are out of this world. Zappa was really on a role with The Grand Wazoo.
Aside from Zappa himself Sal Marquez owns the trumpet here and shines like never before or since. This album may contain the most talented and cohesive group of musicians ever assembled together to play on a Zappa album, which explains the incredible results. Aynsley Dunbar, Don Preston and George Duke all in the same room playing together...are you kidding, there is no way this album would be anything short of phenonominal!
For jazz fans and Zappa fans alike this is an album not to pass up. This is the album Miles Davis wishes he would have made with Bitches Brew!