Studio Tan    Part 2
These three albums were released all at once, with out Zappa's permission, by his ex-manager and Warner Brothers soon after Frank split with this manager. They did not have the seqencing, artwork or any of the credits or liner notes Frank would have had. This led to the big lawsuit that was finally decided in Frank's favor with a major cash settlement over 10 years later. It also stressed and depressed Frank both emotionally and financially, to say nothing of the time it wasted with lawyers that he could have spent doing what he loved: writing and playing music!

I remember being in his basement with Pat O'hearn and Eddie Jobson when things were really tough. His manager had miss-appropriated something like $40,000 and some parts of Franks personal P.A. system into a sound and lights/bus and truck company with out consulting him, and he said he didn't know if he could pay us that week. I recall saying that I had enough to last a month or so and not to worry about it, I wasn't going to leave or stop rehearsing, which he appreciated. Thanks to his creative financing it never came to that.

But the records, I'll have to just take the tracks that are memorable ( and that I played on ) on a track by track basis because I don't remember which were on what record.

Gregory Peccary
This track I consider to be Frank's masterpiece ( or one of them ). I was so dissapointed when it was sneaked out with the other two discs with no promotion or even any fanfare at all. This track I only play on the end of, Chester Thompson is the master who played on most of it in the studio. You can kind of hear where I come in at the end where the trumpets play a Varese-like "scary movie" type of motif, and the ambience is distinctly different from the rest of the studio recorded track. This is because it was recorded at Royce Hall with the 40 piece orchestra ( see Orchestral Favorites ). We played a large section of this hard piece live and the section used was edited in by Zappa. ( I remember recording this in the afternoon at the hall and being only 4 bars from the end of this 15 minute long, difficult composition, and the Union guy stood up and stopped everyone telling us we HAD to take a 10 minute coffee break - Union Rules! Frank and a lot of us musicians were furious!! ).

Frank originally played this piece to me at The Record Plant, after taking me to a Chinese food meal, on the evening of the afternoon that I auditioned for him and got the gig with his band! I had only heard 2 of his records for the first time 3 days before the audition and it scared me sleepless! When he played me this it impressed me beyond words!

It was a mini-oratorio with complex classical music, amazing percussion by Ruth Underwood, and an incredibly funny plot and story line with several voice characters. It was arranged in a musical "collage" style, inundated with sound effects, movie score/Broadway show type incidental music and narration, edited together in a machine gun rapidity that only Frank could achieve. The results were literally mind blowing! You could imagine how I felt when I asked him if he planned on playing that live!! And he said "Yes!", and sections of it they had already performed live as well as doing the studio version!

Part 2