Zappostrophe' 2: Charles Ulrich, Frank Zappa and The Big Note

Despite the urgings of varied friends, and despite my having interviewed Blair Fisher of Zappostrophe' the last time they played the Fox Cabaret, I was unable to attend the show, because I had to go hold a rubber bat and make "eep eep eep" sounds in Surrey. It's a long story, but there's no better excuse for missing a performance than being a part of a different performance elsewhere.

Noting my absence at the Fox that night, Rob Frith, whom I'd previously bought some Zappa off, and who knew I was on the hunt for more, offered via text to pick me up a copy of Charles Ulrich's The Big Note: A Guide to the Recordings of Frank Zappa, a highly-recommended, impressively huge book (over 750 pages, with text small enough that I reach for my 1.5 magnification reading glasses to better peruse it). It is THE authoritative investigation into Zappa, published by Vancouver's New Star Books. Ulrich signed the book to me, and has now assented to an interview - which will also benefit attendees of the upcoming Zappostrophe' show, because Ulrich will be there once again, copies of his book in tow, more on which below, but before you go placing an Amazon order, note that he will have discounted, slightly damaged copies as well as pristine ones, if you've blown your Zappa budget for June... 

...and you may want to seize that opportunity, because The Big Note may be the only reference book on Zappa that a casual fan needs, and is probably essential for the Zappa obsessive. Besides sidebars on specific musicians, the book is organized around an alphabetical listing of one hundred of Zappa's albums - including posthumous releases, though obviously only up to a point, as the book came out in 2018, and the posthumous releases have continued since then. Each album entry has a track-by-track listing of songs, making the book an ideal reference work; if you want to read the whole thing, you can, but let's say, for instance, that you find yourself noticing for the first time (as I did, shortly after adding The Big Note to my bookshelf) that among Apostrophe(')'s songs about snow tainted with dog pee, references to then-contemporary margarine commercials, pokes at Catholicism, and politically-incorrect-but-too-silly-to-be-offensive observations about the Inuit, there is at least one very serious, potent political song, "Uncle Remus," about the co-optation and trivialization of black radicalism in America, which song you decide you want to know more about. You can flip straight to it and read very clear, highly informative, uh, information about the song. (If you don't know the song, check this extended outtake from 2016's The Crux of the Biscuit, one of the Zappa albums not given its own entry in Ulrich's book, but mentioned in the preface to the discussion of Apostrophe(')).,  Reading just the entry for that one song, you learn how the song was written (George Duke explains how he wrote the music, Zappa the lyrics), who plays what (Ike and Tina Turner and the Ikettes provide background vocals!), what overdubs were added, when and where Zappa played it live (at least once in 1973, 1975, and three times in 1988). You also learn what other recordings of it exist (on a George Duke solo album) and get conceptual continuity notes, tracing ideas that recur from one Zappa album to the next (for instance, lawn jockeys reappear in Thing-Fish and that the phrase "down in de dew" pops up on Läther). UIrich also tracks musical motifs that are repeated from album to album, though they don't apply to this song. It's all clearly presented, backed with quotes and references where possible - including directions to writing elsewhere in the book, if one wants, for example, to read more about "Farther Oblivion," a distinct piece of music tied into "Father O'Blivion." You can also learn, in the introduction to Apostrophe('), about a video discussion of the album (viewable on Tubi), about discrepancies between the stereo and quad versions of the album, including that the stereo LP has two extra measures on "Uncle Remus," and get an overall orientation to the recording, marketing, and, of course, the source of the title, that last being found in a lyric to "Stink-Foot" from which the phrase The Crux of the Biscuit also emerges (and which also references the whole concept of conceptual continuity, such that the concept of "conceptual continuity" itself has conceptual continuity in Zappa's world). 

By the way, did you notice that Fido's further observations in that song, after he declaims that the crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe, include several contractions, all with apostrophes? I sure didn't, but Ulrich does! 

Ulrich's writing, at least in the sections I've read, is almost entirely lacking in speculation, postulation, or even interpretation, all of which are subordinated to ACTUAL INFORMATION; he's put 17 years of research, cross-referencing songs, comparing versions, tracking down interview subjects, and amassing interesting details, which he provides for every song off all 100 albums covered. If you find yourself falling down the Zappa rabbithole, Ulrich is the perfect guide, and The Big Note is a lovingly prepared bible. I feel confident that if I notice some weird detail on a Zappa recording and want more information about it, Ulrich will probably have it covered. My only quibble is that the book is so thick I can only really read it at the dinner table - it's too large to hold on my lap on the couch and pet the cat at the same time, which is the optimal situation for Zappa-listening! 

If you want more by way of a sneak preview, you can read a sample chapter here, about Absolutely Free!, visit the main page of his Zappa website here, and read more about the author here, which is where I got this picture. 

Interview follows, me in italics and Ulrich not - but by the way, note that Zappostrophe' have added several songs to their set since their previous show, including "Andy," "Wind Up Working at a Gas Station," "Dupree's Paradise," "Black Napkins" and a Ruben & the Jets medley. Blair also notes, "We are also putting Waka Jawaka back into the show after not doing it for a while...along with all the Zappa faves, of course..." See you there? 

Allan: What was the first moment the Zappa hook sunk into you - the album or song that you gravitated towards (I found Joe's Garage in a garbage can when I was 13 or so and immediately fell in love with "Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?", a  perfect for a smart 13 year old kid, though my interest has ebbed and flowed at times - I am mostly a pretty casual listener, though subject to binges and plunges...

Charles: A friend advised me to buy a used copy of Absolutely Free at a swap meet in 1976. I liked it right away and proceeded to buy most of the other early albums. But it wasn't until the 1990s that I became serious about getting everything FZ ever recorded.

Do I gather that you and Zappa were both Disc Jockeys at the same radio station? Do tell! Was he a noted part of the history of that station when you began - did he leave a mark? Were you already a Zappaphile when you were there? Did you quest for rarities, recordings of him, old comrades, chairs he probably sat in, stuff he'd written on? 

FZ was a disc jockey at KSPC-FM, the radio station at Pomona College in Claremont, California, circa 1964. He lasted for a few weeks before they realized that he wasn't a student there and kicked him out. A couple of excerpts from The Uncle Frankie Show have been released, on Mystery Disc and Joe's Xmasage.

I was a disc jockey at KSPC starting in 1977. I was actually a student, so I lasted two and a half years. At the time, I never heard that FZ had been a DJ there. Mystery Disc was released in 1985, at which point I assumed that KSPC was the station on which he did The Uncle Frankie Show, and it was confirmed in 2005 when Joe's Xmasage was released. I then alerted the station manager so that they could use an excerpt from the latter album as a station ID.

Do you  have any suggestsions as to how budding Zappaphiles can best approach your book? 

Many readers have told me that they like to read a chapter while listening to the album it covers, which strikes me as an eminently sensible approach. Whether you read and listen alphabetically, chronologically, or haphazardly is up to you. The chapters are presented in alphabetical order because even I don't remember the exact order in which all the albums were released.

For anyone who has a copy of The Big Note but doesn't have all the albums, a look at the first two paragraphs of a chapter should give you some idea of whether that album is likely to be one you'd like. They give an overview of personnel and instrumentation, how many tracks are vocal vs. instrumental vs. spoken, and how many guitar solos FZ plays. Fillmore East-June 1971 will appeal to a different audience than Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar or London Symphony Orchestra--although there are also people who like all three.

Did you ever get to see Tupelo Chain Sex? I have a friend, David M. of No Fun, who has a story about performing his song "Oh to Be On Heroin" when No Fun opened for Tupelo Chain Sex - which had Zappa carpenter Stumuk and Sugarcane Harris in the band. (Do you know much about what Stumuk did for Zappa?). That song happens to namecheck "Don and Dewey," Don being Sugarcane, which David actually pointed out to Sugarcane, who was in the audience listening - the reference to him in the lyric actually has nothing to do with heroin, by the way (some potential social awkwardness there, I gather Don struggled with drugs...?). Any favourite Sugarcane Harris, Stumuk, or Tupelo Chain Sex anecdotes? 

I never saw Sugarcane Harris with Tupelo Chain Sex or any other band. I have heard both JaJazz and Spot The Difference, as well as recordings from all stages of Sugarcane's career, back to The Squires in the mid-1950s.

Bill "Stumuk" Nugent reportedly installed tile around FZ's swimming pool. He appeared in the Uncle Meat movie as Elderly Biff Debris (Don Preston's character). And he played bass saxophone on the title track of Joe's Garage.

What is your favourite and what is your least favourite Zappa album?

My favorite FZ album is Burnt Weeny Sandwich. My favorite FZ track is "Revised Music For Guitar & Low Budget Orchestra" (on Studio Tan).

I don't have a least favorite FZ album, though there are of course some that I listen to less often than others.

Do you have Zappa items you covet?

The Holy Grail is a recording that's not known to exist: of Rahsaan Roland Kirk sitting in with the Mothers Of Invention at the Boston Globe Jazz Festival on January 31, 1969--or at the Miami Jazz Festival on June 29, 1969; I'll take either.

Especially with the continued march of the Zappa Trust in releasing material is there anything you feel now that you missed in the book, stuff you would add or change in a second edition?

The Big Note covers albums through Dance Me This, which was released in June 2015. Since then, the Zappa Family Trust has released over sixty discs! Some of those provide crucial information about albums that were released in FZ's lifetime. For example, I will have to rewrite my Hot Rats chapter rather extensively in the light of the six-disc Hot Rats Sessions box.

But the second edition of The Big Note is currently on the back burner while I concentrate on my other book (tentatively titled Froze-ing By The Pies), which will look at FZ's influences, as well as his influence on others. The starting point is the list of 179 names in the gatefold of Freak Out! That was supposed to be covered in a sidebar in The Big Note. But with just birth and death years and a sentence or two about each person, the sidebar was longer than the rest of the chapter--and the book was too long anyway. So the whole sidebar was cut. In the new book, I'll be able to write as much as I want about each person. It will also cover other bands that interacted with FZ and The Mothers in Los Angeles and elsewhere, as well as musical quotations in FZ's works.

Did you ever see Zappa live? Where? How often? Did anything from that experience inform your writings in The Big Note?

I never saw FZ. But my wife did. She attended Mothers Of Invention concerts at the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Festival Hall in London in the 1960s. We've seen many Zappa alumni perform his music. One time we sat next to Ray Collins, who sang on Freak Out! and other early MOI albums, at a concert by Tuvan throat-singers Huun-Huur-Tu, some of whom sang on Civilization, Phaze III and Dance Me This, two albums that FZ completed in the last year of his life.

I gather you are now based in Vancouver. How did you come here, and what's your history here?

I came to Vancouver for a temporary job teaching linguistics at UBC. I continued to teach linguistics at UBC and SFU on a course-by-course basis until the jobs dried up, at which point I directed all my efforts into my Zappa research.

...anything you want to say about Zappostrophe' or this weekend's show? How much will the book be selling for? Are you selling anything else? Will you be signing them? Any requests of people buying merch off you? (How many books did you sell at the last show? 

If you've seen Zappostrophe' before, they have some new songs prepared for this show.

If you haven't seen them before, what are you waiting for?

I will have some books with very minor flaws (according to my publisher; I can't tell the difference myself) for $25, and some undamaged books for $40. I'm glad to sign any copies, even if you bring in one that you bought somewhere else.

Thanks, Charles! Tickets to see Zappostrophe' at the Fox Friday, June 3rd are available here. Zappostrophe' will also be performing at the Fort Langley Jazz Festival on July 21st. Also check out Zappostrophe''s Youtube channel!