Frank Zappa

OBAL PEKNY
DESKA VYBORNY STAV


A Big Swifty
Chimes – Sal Marquez
Electric Piano – George Duke
Percussion – Frank Zappa
17:46
B1 Your Mouth
Baritone Saxophone, Piccolo Flute – Mike Altschul
Piano [Tack] – George Duke
Tenor Saxophone – Joel Peskin
Vocals – Chris Peterson (2), Sal Marquez
3:11
B2 It Just Might Be A One-Shot Deal
Acoustic Guitar – Frank Zappa
Guitar [Hawaiian] – Jeff Simmons
Pedal Steel Guitar – Sneaky Pete Kleinow
Vocals – Erroneous, Janet Ferguson, Jeff Simmons, Sal Marquez, Tony Duran
Washboard, Tambourine – Aynsley Dunbar
4:17
B3 Waka / Jawaka
Bass [Fuzz] – Erroneous
Flugelhorn, Chimes – Sal Marquez
Piano, Synthesizer [Mini-moog] – Don Preston
Piccolo Flute, Flute [Bass], Clarinet [Bass], Tenor Saxophone, Baritone Saxophone – Mike Altschul
Trombone, Horn [Baritone] – Billy Byers, Kenny Shroyer
11:18
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Bass – Erroneous
Cover, Illustration – Marvin Mattelson
Drums – Aynsley Dunbar
Engineer – Kerry McNabb
Producer, Guitar, Written-By – Frank Zappa
Recorded By [Supervisor] – Marshall Brevitz
Slide Guitar – Tony Duran (tracks: A, B1, B2)
Trumpet – Sal Marquez
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An ambitious plunge into a improvised setting by the master of satire. The moments of interest here are the two long romps of big-band fireworks supporting the bluesy phrasing of Zappa himself. I don't really care for the middle section of the album too much; I've always preferred the setting where Frank shaddup's and plays his guitar, but there's nothing wrong with the non-instrumentals - they just doesn't cause any big vibrations within me.

After the Zappa-esque horn interlude at the beginning on "Big Swifty" finishes one can hear a much different Frank. More serious, and occasionally even clinical as the sombre and ominous Rhodes passages of George Duke lead you into a belligerent exchange between the muted trumpet, the instantly recognizable sharp guitar tone of Zappa and a flurry of rock based poly-rhythms supported by the bubbling Rhodes underneath the fiery surface. Seventies Miles isn't far from this heated equation. I do think that the track suffers from the usual problem of these ten plus minute improvisational cuts, which results in the musicians getting lost in the esoteric soundscapes that results in some excessive, overlong segments of bars where nothing happens besides random noodling. Having edited out some minutes could've made wonders, but it's not that huge of a deal. The title track follows similar rules with small variations in the instrumentation. My favorite parts here are the pompous horn arrangements for which Zappa always had a great ear for. He's one of these musicians who was born to compose material for the big-band setting.
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Zappa is the sort of name that sticks in the mind and I knew of Frank Zappa all through my teens, but only by name, I didn’t know his music. It was difficult to hear new things back then if they were outside of the normal radio playlists. Zappa’s core fans were older than me and while you could get to hear something new if one of your friends was a fan, I don’t think I knew anyone who listened to Zappa. But it could have been different. At some point I got a copy of John Lennon’s Some Time in New York City with its side featuring Zappa...and when I was 13 and 14 I continually almost bought the Eric Clapton album just because Clapton was on All Things Must Pass and therefore (such is teenage logic) must be good, but for some reason it didn’t occur to me to find out more about Zappa because of the John Lennon connection. And by the late 1970s I was listening to punk and new wave so as a matter of principle I wouldn’t have opened a door for Zappa. But then when I gained an interest in jazz and bought a copy of Joachim Berendt’s The Jazz Book which acted as my first guide into this new territory, I noticed he was a big Zappa fan and acclaimed Zappa’s contribution to the tradition of the jazz big band...although, of course, Zappa was always a bit down on jazz. But I remain a Zappa dilettante: for 35 years I’ve been meaning to listen to more Zappa, but this is only the third album I’ve got around to. And, overall, I like it. As you probably can guess, as a jazz fan I prefer the two long instrumental numbers to the two shorter songs. I have no great interest in Zappa as a song writer. The two long numbers work the way that might be expected of jazz influenced rock. Big rock rhythms: featured instrumentals, mostly guitar, over the top. And they change shape as they go along – I presume that’s Zappa organizing the music. And I like Zappa the guitarist. I’m not sure if I keep listening to it whether it will begin to wear thin, but for the moment I’m enjoying it.
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Zappa picks up here where Hot Rats left off but here it sounds less like a rock musician playing around with jazz-inspired instrumentals and more like Zappa is digging deep in to jazzy music.    The album is bookended with stunningly arranged and performed instrumentals.   Big Swifty, the opening track, is one of Zappa's finest instrumentals, which balances an extraordinarily complex (and brilliantly composed) rhythmic creativity with flat-out catchiness, segues in to an electric Miles Davis-soundalike jam which is gorgeous and unlike much else that Zappa ever did, and wraps things up with some incredible polyrythmic stuff.   Waka/Jawaka is a little more light-hearted and the most reminiscent of Hot Rats of anything on the album, with a moog solo guaranteed to blow your mind.   The middle two tracks, Your Mouth and One Shot Deal, are bluesy and sort of country-meets-Zappa-y, and somehow don't feel out of place sandwiched between the two jazzier tunes.   Overall a spectacular display of creativity from FZ.
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An injured and wheelchair-bound Frank returns to the extended instrumental jamming approach of Hot Rats, greatly extends the line-up of talented musicians, and introduces both the musical sneer as well as an extensive amount a jazz into his work, the latter mostly courtesy of the superbly talented George Duke. A great success and an important phase in Zappa's development; he'd almost fully realized himself at this point.
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Unable to tour due to injuries caused by a fan shoving him offstage during the ill-fated final tour with the Flo and Eddie lineup of the Mothers, Zappa spent a couple of months during his recuperation indulging a fascinating experiment in fusion - taking fusion-based compositional ideas as developed during the Hot Rats session, and applying them not to a rock group-sized band as most fusion artists were doing at a time, but to a "big band" lineup reminiscent of the larger jazz groups of bygone years.

The Grand Wazoo big band yielded two albums, of which this is one, and fans of Zappa's Hot Rats work - featuring minimal lyrics and complex, interwoven soloing between instruments - will find a lot to like here, and whilst it isn't quite the groundbreakingly innovative piece that Hot Rats was, it's certainly a great contribution to the genre. Try Hot Rats first, but give this a go if you liked it.
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Frank gave this album the working title of Hot Rats II, so this may give you an indication of how he perceived it. Goes great with The Grand Wazoo.
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Waka/Jawaka is Zappa's some kind of sequel to his 1969 masterpiece studio album Hot Rats. This one has pretty much that same kind of jazz fusion based sound but here isn't as much guitar which is a little shame I think. This record has some really awesome moments however.

This album is mostly instrumental. Just four songs here but two of them are really long. "Big Swifty" and the title track are powerful but the two shorter humouristic pieces in the middle are nice too.

Waka/Jawaka isn't Zappa at his best that's for sure. But on the other hand this is far away from being his worst album too. Four stars is my choice with this one.
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Released the same year, this album shares a lot of sonic headroom with Return to Forever's first two albums. There are keyboard parts of the title track that sound remarkably similar to Corea's playing. If you like those records, I highly recommend this one, and the inverse is true of course.

While I don't think this album is quite as strong as Light as a Feather it is still absolutely fantastic anytime Zappa sits down and just goes for it with the music. If there was a soloist as good as Chick on here, it would probably be just as good.

The end of Waka Jawaka displays some of Zappa's Stravinsky quotes, I think, or at least damn he was doing a good job of emulating Stravinsky in a jazz/pop context. It also kind of sounds like Duke Ellington, so I guess I have to give Zappa much respect for blending influences, or at least styles.
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At first sight, when you look at the cover art, this one may be a misleading album, I know cause I’ve been through that too; much more turned towards the future than the past, a normal thing coming from FZ, the only real link to “Hot Rats” being the writing on the sink taps, it’s like a bridge with a tiny pillar on “Chunga’s Revenge” related material and a huge one, or the big picture painted on the wall, proclaiming “Wazoo”.

The core band featured on every track consists of trumpeter Sal Marquez, bassist Erroneous and drummer Aynsley Dunbar and several other members are used according to the songs needs; “Big Swifty” is a two-notes with half-tone interval long improvisational sequence, bookended by an intricate theme of multiple tempo and direction changes where Sal stands out, his overdubbed trumpets with the impact of an entire horn section aided by George Duke synths and additional good use he makes of Bob Moog’s borrowed frequency-Shifter before he indulges in a sensual echoplexed-electric-piano rendition; Marquez goes into a Miles-like muted-trumpet excursion while FZ occasionally sends thunder-lights across the sky in every direction, before the roles are reverted and FZ fires-off with passion, guts(and some controlled savagery) ;Tony Duran slide then takes center stage as the locomotive restarts rolling after a brief pause to refuel, and though his vocabulary is diminutive it weaves spacious and intriguing webs with FZ’z fingered lines, before Sal reintroduces the theme for a final round of ensemble reshaping of its content;

“Your Mouth” is a well-humored, typical FZ/Mothers blues diatribe with Mike Altschul laying meaty baritone-sax lines and Chris Peterson screaming in tune whereas “It Might Just Be a One-shot Deal” is a keyboards-less Country tinged parody with avant-garde, Jazz and Blues elements and intricate vocal parts, and which most outstanding characteristic is its evolution atop a rare 4-voices guitar tapestry with FZ on acoustic, Duran on slide, Jeff Simons on Hawaiian guitar and the great, late Pete “Sneaky” Kleinow on pedal steel;
it suddenly gives place to the title track, a piece that sort of announces “Wazoo” with a four-men and multiple horns section that paints a dense arrangement , Sal on a Spanish-Fiesta influenced rendition, Don Preston expertly tweaking his mini-moog as if his live depended on it, and FZ – finally the sole responsible for guitar activities – taking us for a couple of minutes of flight acrobatics, before being first excited and then grounded by waves of horns; Dunbar then builds an irreprehensible solo bridge for a section of horns and chimes pomp that ends in a fade out with an implicit ’to be continued’ sign;

Frank & Co could not avoid losing some steam and drive on the overly ambitious “Big Swifty”, but apart from that minor complain I wouldn’t mind having my sink always filled with water of such a good quality
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Very jazz influenced. If you like jazz fusion then you should listen to this record. Side 1 is one song at all ("Big Swifty") and features a lot of horns like a big band. Reminds a little bit on Miles Davis, which is not a bad thing.
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Contrary to popular opinion, I actually can't stand the short numbers with vocals. I feel like they drag on for longer than the 10+ minute tracks. Fortunately, this record's sister LP  is overwhelmingly instrumental. I'm referring to The Grand Wazoo, not Hot Rats. Both of Zappa's 1972 jazz-rock albums are brassy and cinematic and boast less wah-wah-freak-outs and complex multitrack layering than the 1969 classic. Different, but oh-so good. Except, of course, for the out of place vocals. Be sure to get this after The Grand Wazoo, and make sure you get that one after Hot Rats.
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There's a trio of Zappa albums that are lumped together quite often.
Hot Rats
Waka/Jawaka
The Grand Wazoo

And rightly so.  Once albums get lumped together like these ones have, they get compared to each other a lot.
Hot Rats is the all time classic of the three that tends to separate itself from the group by being so..  Well anyone that knows these albums knows.  Hot Rats is the BIG TIME album of the three.  It tends to escape the comparisons a bit by being so damn known.  That album is a 5/5 for me.

So that leaves W/J and The Grand Wazoo to duke it out and be compared to each other.  TGW wins the battle a lot, probably more often than W/J.  In my eyes, Waka/Jawaka is the winner, and the overlooked lost child.

The difference is in the little songs.  I find both of them here to be fantastic.  The vocals in both Your Mouth and It Just Might Be A One Shot Deal just can't be topped.  These two offer up quite a lot.  The surrealness!  The pedal steel solo!  The brass!  You love it.

And Waka/Jawaka (song) is maybe possibly maaaayyybe my favorite FZ instrumental.  It would be [i]undoubtedly[i] the best if not for the boring, grinding halt drum solo..
But just before that, there is one section with the guitar playing along with the trumpet.  HOLY SHIT WOW.  Incredible section.

I don't feel like talking about Big Swifty, so to be continued.  But just so you know, that track is the reason it's not 5/5.
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Nary a note wasted on Waka/Jawaka, one of Frank Zappa's best albums ever. "Big Swifty" and the title track are extended (and extensive!) jazz/rock workouts with a mangerie of instruments employed, from mini-Moog to trumpet to Zappa's electric guitar. The forgotten gems of this album are the miniatures that serve as palate-cleansers between the two bookends: "Your Mouth" is a fun little blues tribute, and "It Just Might Be a One-Shot Deal" holds words of advice we can all heed. And heed this: if you call yourself a music fan, you need Waka/Jawaka in your library.
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Waka/Jawaka is oftentimes considered to be similar to Hot Rats and I don't entirely agree with that. Hot Rats is definitely more rock-oriented and contains more grit in the recordings. Waka/Jawaka is a bit more refined and geared toward jazz fusion. Of course, Hot Rats is viewed as a fusion, jazz-rock album and with songs like Little Umbrellas and It Must Be a Camel, it does deserve those descriptions. On the other hand, are songs like Willie the Pimp and The Gumbo Variations really that jazzy? The first of the two is a straight heavy rock jam and the second a gritty r&b instrumental workout. I could go on about how Hot Rats isn't as jazzy as people make it out to be, but I think I've made my point, which is that Waka/Jawaka isn't all that related to it because it's much more jazz-oriented.
Now, comparing it to The Grand Wazoo? Yes, definitely. They were recorded in the same pair of months with many of the same musicians with many of the same goals: to produce works of jazz fusion that were heavy on horns and sprawling in their instrumentation. Many regard The Grand Wazoo to be superior. I would say I agree, but not to the extent that others would say. They're pretty much in the same class in term of quality.
"Your Mouth" is pretty enjoyable and a nice breather in between the two lengthier tracks. "It Just Might Be a One-Shot Deal" is better, featuring some tasty pedal steel work from Sneaky Pete Kleinow. Country-tinged songs are a rarity in Zappa's discography and I would say that of the few, this is probably the best of those sort of songs that he did.
"Big Swifty" has a good theme which is followed by some great sprawling instrumentation that is mainly set in a Phrygian scale. The title track is also  very well done with a nice Minimoog part by Don Preston. Very tasteful triumphant ending as well.
I find that many of Zappa's records that are at least largely instrumental turn out to be the most accessible, so I would regard this album as a decent starting point, or at least one to go to after Hot Rats.
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"Big swifty" and the title track are two great, long jazz instrumentals. It's both complex jazz music that was years ahead of its time, the kind of jazz music only Zappa can make. All played by great musicians and very well recorded. The album's flaw is the 2 short songs in the middle. They're both bad songs, and the sudden change in style takes away a lot of the album's brilliance. But then the 2 songs are only 7 minutes of the total 36 minutes of the album. Fans will certainly be happy with the album, but with so many better Zappa albums available this shouldn't be too high on a casual listener's wishlist. Check out Hot rats, The grand wazoo, One size fits all, You can't do that on stage anymore vol. 2 or Make a jazz noise here first if you're interested in Zappa's jazz influenced work.
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The beginning of a new era for Zappa after scrapping Flo & Eddie following the "wheelchair incident", Waka/Jawaka starts the what I call "Prog Big Band" era of his career. If some of you want to call this a sequel to Hot Rats, then this is Hot Rats with more improvisation, less structure and a bigger band. Aynsley is still there as well. Well, Big Swifty starts the album reaching 18 minutes of dissonant jazz-rock, completely free-form for the majority of it. It's pure chill freak-out music, and you'll hear something new each time you listen, pay attention to Frank's guitar, where he twists the Swifty melody sly-like. The 2 middle songs in the album are not really like Big Swifty, more conventional songs. They're not particularly memorable, they're the (dare I say) passable parts of the album. Heading into the title track you get something like Big Swifty again, and it's just as good if not better depending on what you like. Waka is a more big-band sounding song, summarizing the album and foreshadowing the likes of The Grand Wazoo
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When Frank Zappa says "fusion", he means it!  The appeal of this album lies in the astounding variety of instruments used. I mean, who would have expect====ed a pedal steel?!  The point is, it's all music.  Everything belongs together.
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My second Zappa purchase recently and one in the same fusion vein as Hot Rats.More great jazz fusion and some poor filler.The two long instrumental tracks are long free roaming madness and highlight the wonderful talents of Zappa and his assembled band especially keys man George Duke who really manipulates all of his electronica to produce some amazing sounds during his solos.The annoyance comes from the two shorter tracks in the middle of the LP.They don't really fit in and are average at best.As a result I find I listen to Hot Rats more.
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Zappa was known for being a pioneer in a number of areas, and credit should go to his pioneering of the Jazz Fusion genre.  Thing is though, I'm pretty sure that if you had told that to Zappa himself, he would have scrunched up his face and said, "Don't blame that on me".  You see, as evidenced here on Waka/Jawaka, Zappa pioneered this genre by first pleasing himself, not by reaching out to any potential fan base.  The music presented here is many layered, with many interesting things going on at once, rather than allowing one instrument to play a real fast solo as was the case in much of the other Jazz fusion of the time.  The horn carts range from beautiful to damn near impossible, and Zappa incorporates three different types of guitar and guitar players through the course of the album.  In fact, one of the best guitar moments is supplied not by Zappa, but by Skeaky Pete Kleinow, who plays an incredible steel guitar solo on "One Shot Deal".  Zappa seems less "in charge" here than on any of his other solo projects, but the results are excellent.  If you love Frank, you need this album.
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one of zappa's beloved jazz fusion albums from the early 70s. both this and the grand wazoo are largely instrumental and feature music that's all over the map, though jazz is the main style. i actually prefer the grand wazoo over this one but listen to both about the same.
the first song, "big swifty" is an extended instrumental with some top-notch playing. this is one of zappa's best tracks and is of extreme interest to anyone into jazz in rock music. i'm not really, i must confess. but this is so musically interesting that i love just letting it play as i water the plants etc.
"your mouth" is a bluesy doo-wop number that i usually skip over. despite some talented singing(esp. the harmonies), i just don't like the song.
next is my favorite one here "it just might be a one-shot deal", a wonderful little bluesy thing with some great countryrock styled guitar playing and some insane sound effects here and there. i just love the "watching all the time" & "confusing to your mind" parts which to me are obvious hooks and that's what i like, uh-huh.
the title track is last and it's sort of a return to the first in that it is an extended jazz-rock jam. not as great as "big swifty", but pleasant enough.
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The first epic track, "Big Swifty", lasts nearly 18 minutes; the first 13 minutes consist in some kind of loaded instrumental free jazz, full of a brass sounds and guitars. A noticeable thing is the lack of melody and structure: everything seems improvised. Passed the 13th minute, there are some interesting melodic horns arrangements, but it only lasts about 2 minutes. The Side 2 is a bit better: The track "Your mouth" is as improvised as the side one. The second  part of "It Just Might Be a One-Shot Deal" is very good. The final track "Waka/jawaka", has good beginning and end, as reveal the structured & melodic horns arrangements: it gives a Latino winning ambience. But the keyboards and guitar solos in the middle are too long and seem to go nowhere.
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Waka/Jawaka was my introduction to Zappa, and until now, it's my favourite Zappa album. Usually, it's overlooked as it stands between Hot Rats and The Grand Wazoo, those other two LPs where Zappa experimented with contemporary Jazz. Obviously, Miles Davis couldn't be ignored, Bitches Brew was reaching out to the Rock scene where no other Jazz album had ever gone.

Side One is occupied by one song, Big Swifty. Here, the "Bitches Brew" influence is quite strong, even to the point that several solos happen simultaneously. Side Two starts with a Zappa-fied Blues persiflage, Your Mouth. Then, It Just Might Be A One-Shot Deal. It could almost have been "real" Pop if there weren't these Zappa-isms: a bluesy groove is interrupted by a sudden bizarre shift and there you have a lovely almost Country & Western guitar solo, which is again interrupted to bring back the bluesy groove. The instant the song comes to an end, the title song starts with a mighty groove and trumpets play the theme. The song is more than 11 minutes long. Don Preston has a strong synth solo, then Zappa makes a long and interesting solo statement, the big band takes over (great!), Aynsley Dunbar plays one of the very few drum solos I accept (the beat is carried through), and then the theme is elaborately re-stated.
And Zappa proves there were still fresh ways to write for a big band.
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It's difficult to appreciate it at its first listen, but after being in the habit with his experimental stuff, this album can be essential in every "prog collection", even though the whole material is a bit out of such "progressive genre"...I suggest you to listen to every song carefully, and then you can enter his magical world more easily!!
Recommended!!
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spectacular! this is a really fantastic jazz/rock album.  i never would have though Mr. Zappa could create music that is more than just goofy.  Bravo!