All you weirdos commenting on a 50+ year old Avant Garde piece. Where have yall been all my life? I was ostracized for listening to this in Texas in the 70's.
I loved this all the way through. Somehow though some of us that snuck into an Amarillo drive-in 3 in the trunk of a 61 Cheby nearly dragging the rear bumper took a real liking to Jimmy Carl Black in 200 Motels. Had to see that part twice. . . . Texas you know.. . . Comancheria
There's more music easily available than ever and a large number of young music geeks that love to branch out, find roots and share stuff. I always say we're in the best era for music because it's _every era combined!_
Funny story. I listened to this record, and this song, about a billion times when I was age 13. Changed my life. Not quite twenty years later, I was working for a music software company. A guy calls in asking for tech support. Me: "Can I have your name please? Musician: "Ian Underwood." Me: "Oh my, are you THE IAN UNDERWOOD?" Musician: "um, yeah?" I think I freaked him out a bit, because there are only a handful of us who spent an adolescence listening to him whip it out, over and over, and thus regard him as a lesser deity. Thanks to all my Mothers.
This song changed my life when I first heard it in early 1970 when I was 15 and is my favorite version. Don Preston's wonderful Rhodes solo was an inspiration for me to become a keyboard player and King Kong was the first song I learned because the music score was in the nifty 12 page book. Uncle Meat was the next one. Zappa's guitar comping is superb throughout. I had for years wondered who played drums on the first part played by the Mothers in a studio and suspected it was Billy Mundi playing that wonderful 6/8 jazz rhythm because the live version didn't have that nice drum groove going. I checked with Art Tripp about this after I emailed him in 2004 and he said it was indeed Mundi. Who better to ask? Ansley Dunbar would go on to play that jazzy style too when he played with The Mothers.
wonderful information there, Zappa and Beefheart fans are always on the neck of the musicians about their past music and it is doing us so much good! :D
I was a young sax player who decided to play keyboards after hearing Ian Underwood's solo in "Burnt Weeny Sandwich". Guess a lot of Zappa's music could be called inspiring. I first hear an embryonic version of "King Kong" when the original Mothers played a concert at the University Union building @1966. That concert ( where they played stuff from Absolutely Free pre-release) and the Freak Out list changed my life and musical interests.
@@Chromexus Damn. Now I'm going to have to get a copy of "Burnt Weeny Sandwich" on vinyl through Amazon. While I have over 50 Zappa vinyls, BWS isn't (yet) in my collection; further, I won't listen to it on RU-vid because I'm quirky like that. I refuse to listen to any FZ/Mothers cuts I don't already own on vinyl. That's why I've never (ever!) heard Lumpy Gravy, either. My goal is to have a "completist" set of original FZ/Mothers vinyl, and I'm getting close!
Best version of this song is on Babe Ruth's First Base LP. The worst version is the one John Lennon and Yoko Ono took credit for as "Jam Rag" on the live plastic ono LP.
How can one take credit for playing when they are clearly improv singing...i think the world then would know...and lennon assumed the world knew who frank was and that Yoko "sang" like that. They had an agreement john would use it for what he wanted. I bet the label made the credits not john. This is just a misunderstanding zappa liked drama he's kind of a dick too. Saying that after lennon was dead and not able to defend it.
@@Halliday7895 Dunno. Zappa was pissed enough to where he eventually sued and, if I remember correctly, received partial songwriting credit. Did Yoko ever truly sing or has she always "sung" as a form of performance art?
@@richardzowie1984 What's the distinction between "truly singing" and "performance art"? If Zappa's music tells us anything, it's that there is no meaningful distinction. Music is "organised sound" as Varese said, not "organised nice sounds". Was Roy Estrada's "high weaselling" "truly singing" or just "performance art"? Dissolve the categories!
While I believe that Zappa was in the right, due to the composition itself clearly being King Kong; I see no problem in Lennon using it on his live album considering their agreement. But to not credit the man for a piece he clearly composed is a slap in the face. Could have been the company Lennon was with at the time, but the man was John Lennon. They would practically do anything he says because of his standing in the industry. I mostly think there was a severe miscommunication.
0:00 itself (as played by the mothers in a studio) 0:52 (it's magnificence as interpreted by Dom DeWild) 2:12 (as Motorhead explains it) 3:58 (the Gardner varieties) 10:19 (as played by 3 deranged Good Humor trucks) 10:51 (live on a Flat Bed Diesel in the Middle of a Race Track at a Miami Pop Festival..... The Underwood Ramifications)
From 1969, and, according to Wikipedia: "The album concludes with "King Kong", a piece in 3/8,[4] although the instrumental's prelude, a free jazz improvisation over a rhythm section playing in a 5/8 time signature, occurs much earlier in the album. Six variations of the melody appear as the album's finale, with the first establishing its simple melody, the second being a Fender Rhodes Electric Piano solo by (Don) Preston, the third showcasing a saxophone solo by Motorhead Sherwood, and the fourth featuring Bunk Gardner playing a soprano saxophone through various electronic effects that emulate the sound of a contrabassoon doubling his solo lines. Two more variations conclude the piece, which include a live recorded performance featuring a saxophone solo by Ian Underwood and then finally ending with a version with sped up gongs, overblown saxophones and other instruments." Miles and 'Trane had been coming at this from one direction, FZ from the other, and just imagine: In 1969, stoners who had been avoiding Jazz like the plague sat down, and expecting to hear Suzy Creamcheese and "Hungry Freaks, Daddy," instead, heard this...
did stoners really listen to the mothers? "every town must have a place where phony hippies meet" and all that, it seems like, to frank, if you were a stoner that automatically made you a "phony"
I'll always remember listening to Zappa when I had my heart operation in 2004 haha🤣 I had my own personal button pusher changing my cd's and dosing me on drugs... Good times!
I think I hear some real-life sounds mixed into to muddle up the clean studio stuff and I'm a fan of all that inclusivity..sound is all around us & discriminating against those sounds is probably what causes artists to lose inspo & simply SAMPLE SAMPLE SAMPLE as opposed to starting from scratch... nothing against sampling either, but the originators & jazzy groovers are always our best teachers. Frank for example is continuing to influence artist, even me in this moment, and that's speaks VOLUMES to keeping an open-mind and those "dirty" or "inconsistent" sounds that some may consider weird are really the most beautiful ebbs and flows imitating life thru frequency and acoustic. I appreciate this piece on very deep level. Thank you FrankyZ, you are a true creative and I admire your vision and work. XO TakeXare 💋👌
This great I have listened to it many times through the decades and think it is one of the greatest compositions ever . I know of nothing that can match it.
As a running gag I throw the main melody of this or Big Swifty into songs I'm playing (where it fits) and without exception someone approaches me and asks "We're you throwing Kong and/or Swifty" into that song? It's actually a pretty great feeling to find all y'all that way.
Thank John and Yoko...I discover this great song...but this one is better than the copy one...Frank is so talented...no one can copy him...even Lennon 🤣
After numerous labored attempts for me to grasp and appreciate this, I reached a point of semi-awareness and felt that I felt and connected with at least a small portion of the song. And then so help me God Frank changed the song. That's right, 30 years after his ascension, he reached out and changed it. Clearly the obsession for perfection truly has no bounds.
Certainly one of my favorite Zappa/MOI tunes. This is band and "Traffic" got me into Jazz at very young age. I could only listen to so much "guitar rock" back then.
Information is Not Knowledge Knowledge is Not Wisdom wisdom is Not truth truth is Not Beauty Beauty is Not Love Love is Not Music Music is The best...? F.Z.
beim ersten hören war ich nach ca. 3min bedient..dann nach 5min und dann verstand ich es und .."it blow my mind" . komisch das einem musik die sich einem erst mit der zeit erschliesst, wirklich ein lebenlang nicht mehr loslässt....
I get so confused by this Yoko-hate. She makes the same kinds of unpleasant sound that the Mothers make! You've heard Weasels Ripped My Flesh, right? You've heard Estrada's nerve-jangling falsetto. Yoko's screaming makes total sense in that context. If Motorhead Sherwood was making that Yoko-sound on his sax (as he sometimes did!) the fans would be like "Classic Motorhead, he's so unpredictable and absolutely free".
Some call this tune a song, I don't see why!=, though it has this recurrent theme as a melody..It's a musical and rythm expansion, explanation, developpement and conclusion , and above all in the key of E flat, like Take five, Sir Duke, Misty , Round midnight, Ain't misbehavin', and others ; great stuff. For keyboard users
@@writer125 And they played it a week later at The Rainbow in London just before FZ was pushed into the orchestra pit by some maniac. Ironically just before they play it you can hear Mark Volman saying to Frank "Remember what happened last time we played this"? You can find the full track up on RU-vid. That quote is in a separate RU-vid video.
WHAT is the solo from 3.55 to circa 10.20? Is it a sax through som electronic octave-device? Did such a thing exist in the late sixties? I know Hendrix used a octave/fuzz-pedal on Purple Haze, but this is much different.
I am also wondering this! I could be wrong, but it sounds like a muted trumpet that was put into an octave down pedal of some kind. I believe this tech existed at the time. I read that Zappa was at the forefront of this kind of electrical wizardry. I believe he had custom circuits designed for his myriad of purposes.
wow that is something Ron Burgandy would play with his jazz flute. a mish mosh of Casio keyboards and drums that belongs in a drive inn B movie cop chase
Ha an Lennon an Yoko stole this fucking song and renamed it. Jokes shout out to the man Zappa who had a fucking 170 IQ higher than any average person let alone presidents. He was such a genius who shoulda lived on over 100+ years. RIP Frank you will NEVER be forgotten for the impact you made.
The entirety of Uncle Meat sounds like a big ugly industrial music machine that's about to fall apart at all times. In between excerpts getting to know the band. It's easily my favorite.
I think the 2 versions sound drastically different. Kinda prefer the Lennon one....Idk...Who exactly was playing on the Live Lennone one, and on this one? Idk. Controversial opinion maybe. This one is really fucking good though.
@@PollisDrake when the jam has no shape, yes it is. Actually it always is. But Zappa's jams are particularly weak and shapeless. I know you love the guy. A lot of rock fans do. Not my fault.
@@ernestogasulla7763 But it does have a quite obvious shape. Its shape is an opening head section, then a sequence of solos, then a longer live version of the head section again. It's a typical jazz-type A-B-A structure. If you don't *like* the shape, fair enough, but to say it doesn't have a shape is just wrong.