Ian Underwood Whipt It Out

Ian Underwood Whipt It Out

Ian Underwood Whipt It Out (Live on stage in Copenhagen) (5:08) Underwood is a very good free alto sax player. He whips it out, with, against, around, and under the strict laborious drum beat. Strong Ornette Coleman influence -doesn’t play long enough to really get into anything - but it’s a sweet sound (doesn’t it sound like fuzzy dice and bongos-spaced free variations?)

Side 3

Mr. Green Genes (3:10) A Frankenstein entrance (that’s right -listen) leads into another Zappa specialty - a mode of musical expression he originated on “Absolutely Free” - one of the startling new concepts to evolve during the recent history of Western Civilization - the All-American Rock ‘n Roll Vegetable Song (a dey to all this vegetable nonsense can be found in the nifty 12 page book that accompanies the album - and i quote - “Certain sounds at certain intensities have amazing effects on •plants and vegetables.” (Gosh!)

We Can Shoot You (1:48) This is a delicate avant-garde call and response piece - response to totalitarian demands of the song’s title and/or display of alternate power.

“If we’d all been living in California... (1:29) Inside the Mothers of Invention (they’re really very poor).

The Air (2:57) Acid Rhythm and blues or acid schlock rock or acid candy rock or acid rock candy . . . (this could be the best cut on the album if you were me).

Project X (4:47) Zappa’s compositional genius spews forth Southern California soul (variations on the theme from “Little Shop of Horrors”).

Cruising for Burgers (2:19) This one doesn’t make it - they’ve done it better on this and other albums -the melody isn’t sympathetic to the funky lyrics.

Side 4

This is the jazz side with all the highs and lows as the Mothers display their sometimes dubious but always sincere improvisational talents.

King Kong Itself (as played by the Mothers in a studio) (0:53) The main theme, nothing exceptional, sounds like they’re playing a transcribed Steve Marcus solo.

King Kong (its magnificence as interpreted by Dan De Wild) (1:15) This is an electric piano solo and it’s good, it swings.

King Kong (as Motorhead explains it) (1:44) Motorhead plays a beautifully wild tenor sax and really sets it free but only for a - minute and forty-four seconds. It this had been extended we could have really freaked.

King Kong (The Garden Varieties) (6:17) Bunk Gardner takes what sounds like an electric tenor sax solo - much too long. Pre-Coltrane electric sax (a contradiction). Doesn’t build very well and though it has its moments, at times it seems endless.

King Kong (as played by 3 deranged Good Humor Trucks)

(0:29) Honest!

King Kong (live on a flatbed diesel in the middle of a race track at a Miami Pop Festival . . . the Underwood ramifications) (7:22) Underwood is good but the whole cut is very poorly recorded. The variety of the Mothers’ accompaniment during his solo helps sustain interest (sounds like “Downbeat”, don’t it?). Song and album end with well orchestrated insanity, i.e., vibes to warm the cockles of your vision.

Vague Comments on the Record The Mothers are tuned in to the heaviest sounds existing.

“Say the first thing that comes into your mind “--“Ahhhh . . . Uncle Meat!”-“Good!”

The Mothers are stone musicians, open to all sounds, transmutating (my favorite word) all feelings, nuances of feeling, denial of feeling into purity. Vibrations, variations and fuzzy dice.

“Uncle Meat” is a collage, devoid of logic or even free associations in the order of the different “songs”. And it is perfect (protean non-structure at its zenith).

Richard C. Walls