Uncle Meat
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Track listing
Show track credits
- A1 Uncle Meat: Main Title Theme 1:54
- A2 The Voice of Cheese 0:27
- A3 400 Days of the Year 5:56
- A4 Zolar Czakl 0:57
- A5 Dog Breath, in the Year of the Plague 5:51
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Nelcy Walkervocals
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- A6 The Legend of the Golden Arches 1:24
- A7 Louie Louie (At the Royal Albert Hall in London) 2:28
- A8 The Dog Breath Variations 1:36
- B1 Sleeping in a Jar 0:49
- B2 Our Bizarre Relationship 1:05
- B3 The Uncle Meat Variations 4:40
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Nelcy Walkervocals
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- B4 Electric Aunt Jemima 1:53
- B5 Prelude to King Kong 3:24
- B6 God Bless America (Live at the Whisky A Go Go) 1:22
- B7 A Pound for a Brown on the Bus 1:29
- B8 Ian Underwood Whips It Out (Live on Stage in Copenhagen) 5:08
- C1 Mr. Green Genes 3:10
- C2 We Can Shoot You 1:48
- C3 "If We'd All Been Living in California..." 1:29
- C4 The Air 2:57
- C5 Project X 4:47
- C6 Cruising for Burgers 2:19
- D1 King Kong Itself (As Played by The Mothers in a Studio) 0:53
- D2 King Kong (It's Magnificence as Interpreted by Dom DeWild) 1:15
- D3 King Kong (As Motorhead Explains It) 1:44
- D4 King Kong (The Gardner Varieties) 6:17
- D5 King Kong (As Played by 3 Deranged Good Humor Trucks) 0:29
- D6 King Kong (Live on a Flat Bed Diesel in the Middle of a Race Track at a Miami Festival... The Underwood Ramifications) 7:22
- Total length: 74:53
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40 Issues
- Release view [combined information for all issues]
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Uncle Meat [p] 33 rpm, Gatefold
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Uncle Meat 33 rpm, Gatefold
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Uncle Meat Gatefold, Promo
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Uncle Meat 33 rpm
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Uncle Meat 33 rpm
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Uncle Meat 33 rpm, Gatefold, Promo
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Uncle Meat Gatefold
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Uncle Meat Gatefold
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Uncle Meat Censored
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Uncle Meat Censored, Gatefold
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Uncle Meat Gatefold
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Uncle Meat 33 rpm, Gatefold
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Uncle Meat 33 rpm, Box Set, Gatefold, Remastered
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Uncle Meat Bonus Tracks
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Uncle Meat Bonus Tracks, Remastered
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Uncle Meat CD Sized Album Replica, Gatefold, Limited Edition, Remastered
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Uncle Meat CD Sized Album Replica, Film Score, Gatefold, Limited Edition, Motion Picture Soundtrack, Remastered
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Uncle Meat Bonus Tracks, Remastered
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Uncle Meat Bonus Tracks, Remastered
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Uncle Meat Bonus Tracks, Remastered
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Uncle Meat 33 rpm, Gatefold, Remastered
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Uncle Meat 180 gram, Gatefold, Remastered
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Meat Light: The Uncle Meat Project / Object Bonus Tracks, Remastered
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Uncle Meat 33 rpm, Gatefold
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Uncle Meat Bonus Tracks, Digital file, Streaming
169 Reviews
Note: as I suspect other reviewers will want to do, I'm reviewing the album as it was originally released - without the 40 minutes of "penalty tracks" tagged on to the front of disc 2 as excerpts from the never-finished Uncle Meat movie and Tengo Na Minchia Tanta, a daft Zappa composition from the 1980s which has nothing to do with this album.
Uncle Meat represents the start of the final phase of the original Mothers of Invention - as also documented on Burnt Weeny Sandwich and Weasels Ripped My Flesh. Having got their commercial urges out of their system on Cruising With Ruben and the Jets, the group threw themselves into performing Zappa's challenging and increasingly jazz- and classical-influenced works, forming the missing link between the early Mothers albums and Zappa's later solo career. (Indeed, one song on here, Mr Green Genes, would lose its quasi-operatic vocal and get a big shot of fusion before being rolled out on Hot Rats as Son of Mr Green Genes).
That isn't to say the occasional parody of more commercial pop idioms is absent - The Air and Cruising for Burgers are some of the best Mothers songs in that style, as is the first part of Dog Breath In the Year of the Plague before it takes a left turn into driving proto-fusion and jazz-classical third stream experimentation - but the group no longer makes any pretense of hoping to attain commercial appeal - as the occasional spoken word interjection from "Suzy Creamcheese", returning from Freak Out!, attests to. To be fair, they didn't necessarily mean to - whilst not seeing much popular success in the States, they did at least have a loyal following in the UK at the time, as the extracts from a performance at the Royal Albert Hall on Louie Louie attest.
Aside from Zappa, the band member most worthy of note here is Ian Underwood, whose woodwind and sax playing is key to the band's new sound (having been a presence since We're Only In It For the Money), and gets to showcase his playing on Ian Underwood Whips It Out. Also notable is the fact that this is the first Zappa album to feature the marimba and vibes stylings of Ruth Komanoff (who would become Ruth Underwood on marrying Ian the following year), which would be a key part of Zappa's sound for much of the 1970s. The band as a whole shines on the album's closer, the sidelong epic King Kong, which fusion fans in particular should pay particular attention to since in style it seems to be a seminal work of that particular type - the likes of Weather Report and the Mahavishnu Orchestra would only catch up to this sort of pounding, furious, volcanic playing in the 1970s, whereas this was recorded in 1968!
To my mind, there's not a bad track on the album ("penalty tracks" excluded), though admittedly there's a wide range of musical styles on offer and if you don't like them all you might find some parts of the album drag. But if you can stomach avant-classical, jazz, bubblegum doo-wop and proto-fusion all coming together in Zappa's creative blender, you can't go wrong.
Uncle Meat represents the start of the final phase of the original Mothers of Invention - as also documented on Burnt Weeny Sandwich and Weasels Ripped My Flesh. Having got their commercial urges out of their system on Cruising With Ruben and the Jets, the group threw themselves into performing Zappa's challenging and increasingly jazz- and classical-influenced works, forming the missing link between the early Mothers albums and Zappa's later solo career. (Indeed, one song on here, Mr Green Genes, would lose its quasi-operatic vocal and get a big shot of fusion before being rolled out on Hot Rats as Son of Mr Green Genes).
That isn't to say the occasional parody of more commercial pop idioms is absent - The Air and Cruising for Burgers are some of the best Mothers songs in that style, as is the first part of Dog Breath In the Year of the Plague before it takes a left turn into driving proto-fusion and jazz-classical third stream experimentation - but the group no longer makes any pretense of hoping to attain commercial appeal - as the occasional spoken word interjection from "Suzy Creamcheese", returning from Freak Out!, attests to. To be fair, they didn't necessarily mean to - whilst not seeing much popular success in the States, they did at least have a loyal following in the UK at the time, as the extracts from a performance at the Royal Albert Hall on Louie Louie attest.
Aside from Zappa, the band member most worthy of note here is Ian Underwood, whose woodwind and sax playing is key to the band's new sound (having been a presence since We're Only In It For the Money), and gets to showcase his playing on Ian Underwood Whips It Out. Also notable is the fact that this is the first Zappa album to feature the marimba and vibes stylings of Ruth Komanoff (who would become Ruth Underwood on marrying Ian the following year), which would be a key part of Zappa's sound for much of the 1970s. The band as a whole shines on the album's closer, the sidelong epic King Kong, which fusion fans in particular should pay particular attention to since in style it seems to be a seminal work of that particular type - the likes of Weather Report and the Mahavishnu Orchestra would only catch up to this sort of pounding, furious, volcanic playing in the 1970s, whereas this was recorded in 1968!
To my mind, there's not a bad track on the album ("penalty tracks" excluded), though admittedly there's a wide range of musical styles on offer and if you don't like them all you might find some parts of the album drag. But if you can stomach avant-classical, jazz, bubblegum doo-wop and proto-fusion all coming together in Zappa's creative blender, you can't go wrong.
Published
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Should have been called The Wonderful and Frightening World of Frank Zappa. Already his second double album in only three years, Uncle Meat is all over the place musically, consisting of tracks recorded from October 1967 to February 1968. Zappa fans that obsess over all the conceptual album-to-album references will find tons of amusing things on here, like Suzy Creamcheese describing her 'bizarre relationship', another warped take on "Louie Louie" (culminating in the destruction of an organ at the Royal Albert Hall), more pitch-shifted vocals in the WOIIFTM-style (these actually still really annoy me a lot, they make "Electric Aunt Jemima" almost unlistenable), and an early, slow version of "Mr. Green Genes" which later got jazzed up for Hot Rats.
The Dolphy influence is unmistakable on tracks like "Ian Underwood Whips it Out" and the "Prelude to King Kong" - the latter track has a totally crazy arrangement with drums banging away in 5/16 while the melody stays in 3/4. The doo-wop shows up too, on "The Air", as does some musique concrete, and even the random bits of dialogue are interesting this time around, particularly Jimmy Carl Black giving us insight on how broke the band was in this period.
The ugly and bizarre woodwind and harpsichord and vibraphone arrangements that are all over tracks like "A Pound for a Brown on the Bus," "Project X" and all the variations of the title track really do point the way toward RIO and avant-prog acts like Henry Cow, and the album ends with "King Kong," the best example of Zappa's modal jazz skills, separated into six 'tracks' which basically just separate the solos, and my god are the Bunk Gardner and Motorhead solos amazing or what? This covers so many of Zappa's main bases (at least the ones that I like) that it should probably be one of the first things to check out.
The Dolphy influence is unmistakable on tracks like "Ian Underwood Whips it Out" and the "Prelude to King Kong" - the latter track has a totally crazy arrangement with drums banging away in 5/16 while the melody stays in 3/4. The doo-wop shows up too, on "The Air", as does some musique concrete, and even the random bits of dialogue are interesting this time around, particularly Jimmy Carl Black giving us insight on how broke the band was in this period.
The ugly and bizarre woodwind and harpsichord and vibraphone arrangements that are all over tracks like "A Pound for a Brown on the Bus," "Project X" and all the variations of the title track really do point the way toward RIO and avant-prog acts like Henry Cow, and the album ends with "King Kong," the best example of Zappa's modal jazz skills, separated into six 'tracks' which basically just separate the solos, and my god are the Bunk Gardner and Motorhead solos amazing or what? This covers so many of Zappa's main bases (at least the ones that I like) that it should probably be one of the first things to check out.
Published
If you think what's happening on the front cover looks painful you haven't heard its contents.
Published
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A1
Uncle Meat: Main Title Theme
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A2 The Voice of Cheese
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A3
400 Days of the Year
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A4
Zolar Czakl
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A5
Dog Breath, in the Year of the Plague
-
A6
The Legend of the Golden Arches
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A7
Louie Louie (At the Royal Albert Hall in London)
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A8
The Dog Breath Variations
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B1
Sleeping in a Jar
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B2 Our Bizarre Relationship
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B3
The Uncle Meat Variations
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B4
Electric Aunt Jemima
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B5
Prelude to King Kong
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B6
God Bless America (Live at the Whisky A Go Go)
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B7
A Pound for a Brown on the Bus
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B8
Ian Underwood Whips It Out (Live on Stage in Copenhagen)
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C1
Mr. Green Genes
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C2
We Can Shoot You
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C3 "If We'd All Been Living in California..."
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C4
The Air
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C5
Project X
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C6
Cruising for Burgers
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D1
King Kong Itself (As Played by The Mothers in a Studio)
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D2
King Kong (It's Magnificence as Interpreted by Dom DeWild)
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D3
King Kong (As Motorhead Explains It)
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D4
King Kong (The Gardner Varieties)
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D5
King Kong (As Played by 3 Deranged Good Humor Trucks)
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D6
King Kong (Live on a Flat Bed Diesel in the Middle of a Race Track at a Miami Festival... The Underwood Ramifications)
MF DOOM Reference
Frank Zappa snorts comedy powder and creates an incredibly odd and eclectic double LP, ranging from doo wop to classical. While at times it makes me want to smash his instruments, it´s great most of the time.
94/100
Published
King Kong (6 times)
Frank Zapper -- or Zappa, as the kids call him -- is a very odd dude. But is that a bad thing? Of course not. He's exceptional. A prime musician in every way. He is that guy. He takes prog and jazz and mixes it up in a bottle, pours it into a blender, then blends it all up. Then microwaves it. Then it's done. That's Zappa for you.
Also... OMG..... WAS THAT A MADVILLAIN SAMPLE??!
Favorite track: King Kong (Live on a Flat Bed Diesel in the Middle of a Race Track at a Miami Festival... The Underwood Ramifications)
Published
Woke up after the sun went down, poured a cup of tea, smoked weed until I entered a gnostic state between the realms of dream and reality, and put on a Zappa record I hadn't heard before.
First thing's first: digital listeners, go ahead and remove those three pesky songs from a reissue something or other that come right before the King Kong Suite. I struggle to imagine the marketing decision behind throwing these things smack dab in the middle of this record, but you gotta get butts in the seats for Uncle Meat: The Movie I guess.
Now that that's done, one can enjoy the wild and joyous ride this record brings you on. Everybody already knows Zappa is a madman behind the composition page, and on the guitar, and he brings his A-Game across every track here. This being a double record, and featuring largely shorter compositions (relative to Zappa standards) lets the exploratory nature of his style really shine, as he picks up new little songwriting tools, creates whimsical little worlds for them to live in, invites you in, before unceremoniously kicking you out and directing you towards the next whimsical little world. Sleeping in a Jar, the shortest (non spoken-word) track here, holds a special place in my heart in this regard. Akin to The Residents Commercial Album, if Zappa had stacked Sleeping in a Jar on itself 3 times he'd would be on the fast track to the Billboard Top 100 with it, I imagine. A wonderfully soulful and strange number which fills my heart with some sort of lovely sense of dread. Also, obligatory mention of its sampling on Madvillain's "Meat Grinder". That's a great tune.
Another favourite on here is the instrumental Ian Underwood Whips It Out. Perhaps the most endearing ode to musicality and the playing of music, this showcase of Ian Underwood's remarkable free jazz sax stylings plays out like an entire Lifetime movie about a smalltown kid whose natural musical abilities found him a home playing music with the most talented bunch of weirdos this world has ever seen. It's really quite sweet :)
I'm sure everyone has their own Uncle Meat favourite tracks, but what endears me to this album so wholly is that I also imagine these hypothetical Uncle Meat listeners feel the same sort of sentimentality to those as I do my favourites. Moreover, this is a record I am excited to revisit endlessly such that I become endeared to an endlessly changing set of tracks with a whole new set of connotations and resonances.
Anyways, Deleuzian conception of the crystalline. Cheers.
First thing's first: digital listeners, go ahead and remove those three pesky songs from a reissue something or other that come right before the King Kong Suite. I struggle to imagine the marketing decision behind throwing these things smack dab in the middle of this record, but you gotta get butts in the seats for Uncle Meat: The Movie I guess.
Now that that's done, one can enjoy the wild and joyous ride this record brings you on. Everybody already knows Zappa is a madman behind the composition page, and on the guitar, and he brings his A-Game across every track here. This being a double record, and featuring largely shorter compositions (relative to Zappa standards) lets the exploratory nature of his style really shine, as he picks up new little songwriting tools, creates whimsical little worlds for them to live in, invites you in, before unceremoniously kicking you out and directing you towards the next whimsical little world. Sleeping in a Jar, the shortest (non spoken-word) track here, holds a special place in my heart in this regard. Akin to The Residents Commercial Album, if Zappa had stacked Sleeping in a Jar on itself 3 times he'd would be on the fast track to the Billboard Top 100 with it, I imagine. A wonderfully soulful and strange number which fills my heart with some sort of lovely sense of dread. Also, obligatory mention of its sampling on Madvillain's "Meat Grinder". That's a great tune.
Another favourite on here is the instrumental Ian Underwood Whips It Out. Perhaps the most endearing ode to musicality and the playing of music, this showcase of Ian Underwood's remarkable free jazz sax stylings plays out like an entire Lifetime movie about a smalltown kid whose natural musical abilities found him a home playing music with the most talented bunch of weirdos this world has ever seen. It's really quite sweet :)
I'm sure everyone has their own Uncle Meat favourite tracks, but what endears me to this album so wholly is that I also imagine these hypothetical Uncle Meat listeners feel the same sort of sentimentality to those as I do my favourites. Moreover, this is a record I am excited to revisit endlessly such that I become endeared to an endlessly changing set of tracks with a whole new set of connotations and resonances.
Anyways, Deleuzian conception of the crystalline. Cheers.
Published
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Delirium
A cult to bizarreness.
Incredible instrumental jazz-rock songs and the weirdest tracks i have ever heard, they are absolute incredible. Indescriptible. Terrific album, every body who really likes music should to listen it.
Published
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A1
Uncle Meat: Main Title Theme
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A2 The Voice of Cheese
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A3
400 Days of the Year
-
A4
Zolar Czakl
-
A5
Dog Breath, in the Year of the Plague
-
A6
The Legend of the Golden Arches
-
A7
Louie Louie (At the Royal Albert Hall in London)
-
A8
The Dog Breath Variations
-
B1
Sleeping in a Jar
-
B2 Our Bizarre Relationship
-
B3
The Uncle Meat Variations
-
B4
Electric Aunt Jemima
-
B5
Prelude to King Kong
-
B6
God Bless America (Live at the Whisky A Go Go)
-
B7
A Pound for a Brown on the Bus
-
B8
Ian Underwood Whips It Out (Live on Stage in Copenhagen)
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C1
Mr. Green Genes
-
C2
We Can Shoot You
-
C3 "If We'd All Been Living in California..."
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C4
The Air
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C5
Project X
-
C6
Cruising for Burgers
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D1
King Kong Itself (As Played by The Mothers in a Studio)
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D2
King Kong (It's Magnificence as Interpreted by Dom DeWild)
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D3
King Kong (As Motorhead Explains It)
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D4
King Kong (The Gardner Varieties)
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D5
King Kong (As Played by 3 Deranged Good Humor Trucks)
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D6
King Kong (Live on a Flat Bed Diesel in the Middle of a Race Track at a Miami Festival... The Underwood Ramifications)
Uncle Meat
Uncle Meat is a behemoth of an album. It fuses progressive rock elements with third-stream influences and dashes in some experimentation not yet heard off for the times of the 60s. The Mothers Of Invention were very original for their era and this record proves my point heavily, this and We're Only in It for the Money are two of the more unique and authentic of the 60s American rock scene. The Mothers loved nothing more than to poke fun at the music industry and add some quirkiness into their style. So yes, this record may be a lot to swallow, but I promise you'll get a kick out of it here and there. This did give me a headache though, so that's a few points off...Published
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Catalog
10 Apr 2024
10 Apr 2024
9 Apr 2024
9 Apr 2024
8 Apr 2024
8 Apr 2024
7 Apr 2024
7 Apr 2024
7 Apr 2024
6 Apr 2024
6 Apr 2024
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A1
Uncle Meat: Main Title Theme
-
A2 The Voice of Cheese
-
A3 400 Days of the Year
-
A4
Zolar Czakl
-
A5
Dog Breath, in the Year of the Plague
-
A6
The Legend of the Golden Arches
-
A7
Louie Louie (At the Royal Albert Hall in London)
-
A8
The Dog Breath Variations
-
B1
Sleeping in a Jar
-
B2 Our Bizarre Relationship
-
B3
The Uncle Meat Variations
-
B4
Electric Aunt Jemima
-
B5
Prelude to King Kong
-
B6
God Bless America (Live at the Whisky A Go Go)
-
B7
A Pound for a Brown on the Bus
-
B8
Ian Underwood Whips It Out (Live on Stage in Copenhagen)
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C1
Mr. Green Genes
-
C2
We Can Shoot You
-
C3 "If We'd All Been Living in California..."
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C4
The Air
-
C5
Project X
-
C6
Cruising for Burgers
-
D1
King Kong Itself (As Played by The Mothers in a Studio)
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D2
King Kong (It's Magnificence as Interpreted by Dom DeWild)
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D3
King Kong (As Motorhead Explains It)
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D4
King Kong (The Gardner Varieties)
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D5 King Kong (As Played by 3 Deranged Good Humor Trucks)
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D6
King Kong (Live on a Flat Bed Diesel in the Middle of a Race Track at a Miami Festival... The Underwood Ramifications)
5 Apr 2024
4 Apr 2024
4 Apr 2024
4 Apr 2024
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