The original "Side 1":
----------------------
WPLJ
Igor's Boogie, Phase One
Overture to 'Holiday in Berlin'
Theme From Burnt Weeny Sandwich
Igor's Boogie, Phase Two
Holiday in Berlin, Full-Blown
Aybe Sea

The original "Side 2":
----------------------
Little House I Used To Live In
Valarie


This after-the-fact collection of Mothers of Invention material, released in December of 1969 (or possibly February of 1970; sources conflict, although the original record's copyright information reads "1969") as the first of two albums to unveil unreleased pieces (Weasels Ripped My Flesh will be the second), returns in its title to the meat concept; we've tasted Lumpy Gravy and Uncle Meat, and now we have a Burnt Weeny Sandwich. Even the titles Hot Rats and Weasels Ripped My Flesh refer implicitly to meat.

By this point, listeners have gotten the idea of meat vs. vegetables ("Call Any Vegetable," "Mr. Green Genes," etc.): passive people vs. active ones, and real music vs. numb consumerism. When discussing Absolutely Free with an interviewer from the International Times in 1967, Frank said that "people, even if they are inactive, apathetic or unconcerned at this point, can be motivated toward a more useful sort of existence. I believe that if you call any vegetable, then it will respond to you." The title of the 1980s guitar solo "Things That Look Like Meat" will be just one of many future references to the subject.

The instrumental pieces on 1969's Uncle Meat were testaments to compositional wizardry; the long, often improvisational jams on Burnt Weeny Sandwich concentrate more on the momentum and climactic energy within reach of more immediately accessible music. But the transitions' aural jolts and the album's overall diversity make for just as uninhibited and groundbreaking a presentation as any earlier Mothers forays. When one hears 1993's Ahead of Their Time, a hearkening back to the Mothers' '68 stage, the vigorous, escalating rock toward the end (the long solo concluding "The Orange County Lumber Truck") glances ahead at the lively material available on Sandwich.

PLAYBOY: The titles of your records and songs are art statements, too.

FZ: Well, you have to call them something, so why not call them something amusing?

PLAYBOY: For example: Burnt Weeny Sandwich.

FZ: I still eat burnt weeny sandwiches. It's one of the great things in life; at least, it's a great lunch. You take a Hebrew National, put it on a fork, burn it on the stove, wrap two pieces of bread around it, squirt some mustard on it, eat it, and you're back to work.
(From an April 1993 interview in Playboy)

The burnt weeny sandwich is also mentioned in The Real Frank Zappa Book as a food drummed up by the composer during late-night work marathons after his kids had eaten everything else in the house.

The title refers to the sandwiched running-order of the songs: old R&B covers open and close the album. On the back cover is a picture taken by Cal Schenkel of Ian Underwood pretending to eat not a sandwich, but a shoe. Whether or not he's been known to put his foot in his mouth is a fact known only to the Mothers, but it's a likely inside joke of some sort. A thought cloud comes from his temple: "God! This is a tasty little sucker!" Most blatantly, it's a reference to "Mr. Green Genes" from Uncle Meat: "Eat your shoes." (The song's about gluttonous consumers and the worthless products they gobble up -- tasty little suckers, but not very good for you.) The picture comes from the Mothers' September-October 1968 European tour. A good portion of the album's music was recorded live during that year, actually making Ahead of Their Time a companion record to this one.

The front cover features an unsettling Cal Schenkel sculpture that demonstrates the mechanization of humanity, particularly music. A bleeding hand, nailed near the wrist (i.e. crucified on the technology; Ian's shoe-eating on the back is "extending the blasphemy by recalling communion," according to Watson), makes its final grasp out of an apparatus containing electronic tubes, transistors, gears and a broken jukebox. The person's head has been stuck into a nailed-on window of tin foil; his eyes have been replaced with two cue balls (a 7 and a 5 for some reason).

A woman's hands reach up to desperately clutch the machine-eaten hand, but they too are affected, chipping like plaster or wood. Watson observes that the hands "have the same red-varnished nails as the hand which enters the frame just below the 'M' of 'Mothers' on [the cover of] We're Only in It For the Money." From the head projects another cloud: "The MOTHERS of Invention." Frank actually chose this cover for the album long after it had been designed by Cal in early 1967; it was originally concocted in the Zappas' New York apartment on Charles Street for an Eric Dolphy album that was never released. This is an interesting little connection to Weasels Ripped My Flesh, the next posthumous Mothers album, as "Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue" appears as a nod to that brass and wind player.

The gatefold displays four large photographs. On the far left is Don Preston at Apostolic Studios in New York. According to Cal, Frank solarized and developed the picture in his own closet. Don's large thought cloud (dream?) is the next photo, a crazy, blurred shot of the Mothers onstage during the European tour. Bunk Gardner's thinking of a smaller image at the top: Jimmy Carl Black, Roy Estrada and Frank stand in either Apostolic or Frank's apartment (there's a tape machine in the background, so it could actually be most anywhere). In the CD fold-out for the album's 1991 Barking Pumpkin reissue, the photos of Don and the blurry onstage Mothers will be omitted. Seen in both tableaus is a large, angled, top-down view of the band preparing to rehearse in England, 1968. The drums look like the bubbles leading to the thought clouds. In the '91 fold-out, a ride cymbal, rather than Bunk, will be thinking up the studio/apartment photo (without Jimmy). Lastly, we see a friendly outdoor close-up of Frank with his hair tied up.

The horns and bass guitar play a spunky intro, and the album starts mirthfully with a cover of the Four Deuces' "WPLJ," probably recorded at Apostolic during the Ruben sessions. It's about white port and lemon juice, a popular old low-budget drink. Frank sings lead with Lowell George; one can imagine this tune being sped up if it were included on Ruben. The Four Deuces' B-side, "Here Lies Love," has been covered by the Mothers as well, as heard on You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 5. This was sung by Lowell as well.

After lending catchy falsetto vocals, Roy does a monologue in Spanish at the end, using his Mexican accent to its fullest to emulate a Californian Pachuco talking to his friend about the drink (and suggesting that it might make him "more attractive to fu*k"). Motorhead yells replies in the background.

The song fades out and we hear some comical marching woodwinds, with a ride cymbal keeping time. "Igor's Boogie, Phase One," named either after Stravinsky or Dr. Frankenstein's helper (or both), is very brief; the snare leads the music to freedom for a little bit, giving us a glimpse of beautiful, sustained music before a happy harpsichord lilt blares forth and we're hearing "Overture to 'A Holiday in Berlin.'" Frank has deliberately made it slightly offensive here by passing up instruments that its waltzing melody indicates; it sounds like a joke on tourism. Out-of-tune horns play a melody line that gives the little parade a rustic but deflated feel.

"I was present at T.T.G. when Ian Underwood dubbed his sax piece on the 16-track for 'Overture to A Holiday in Berlin.' Ian played facing the wall so the sound bounced off, rebounded off the ceiling and was caught by the microphone set up behind him. 'That's how they got that greasy feeling' -- Zappa. The band was playing deliberately slightly out of tune to get that '50s feeling. Zappa was in the control booth, and leading the band was Johnny Otis [who Frank had met in high school and whose mustache-and-imperial look he'd adopted], deeply tanned and looking just like his album sleeves, with jet-black, gelled hair. He was clapping his hands high in the bass player's [probably Max Bennett's] face, who didn't like it." (Writer Barry Miles)

The short overture was recorded at T.T.G. Studios in Hollywood during some of the Hot Rats sessions. This and its corresponding piece, heard a bit later on the album, hadn't been named "Holiday in Berlin" until October of 1968; Frank had written some of the music in 1961 for the movie The World's Greatest Sinner. The music made one of its first onstage appearances during the 10/28 show featured on Ahead Of Their Time; the liner notes include Frank's comment that the Mothers "had just played [in Berlin] a few weeks before and experienced a riot." They'd played there on October 16, in fact. According to Berlin-based Zappologist Johannes Labisch, the students there "wanted him to support their political ideas (which were pretty Communistic), and he refused; so they threw tomatoes and stuff at him." The word "holiday" in the name is obviously sarcastic. One thinks of the title "Would You Like a Snack?" from 1971's 200 Motels (a song that follows one called "Touring Can Make You Crazy"); a tomato snack, maybe!

Back to the overture. Don's harpsichord, Ian's sax and Art Tripp's xylophone soon introduce a different, more immediately pleasing melody. Dissonance helps make the tune lovely and engaging, but Zappa's chosen obnoxious horns. Just as we get used to the music, it's stopped short by an echoing smack (a thrown tomato?) and "Theme From Burnt Weeny Sandwich" fades in. The rock atmosphere's elating after the brass's funny attempts at festivity. The song's built around the harmonic difference between the music's two-note melody and Frank's haunting guitar solo, which is centered around one note but wanders to all the right places. The result of this experiment is fascinating to listen to; it creates a heavy atmosphere, and the attitude's beyond description and utterly unique to this song. (The title begins with "Theme From" because Zappa made a twenty-minute film called Burnt Weeny Sandwich, which he screened at San Fernando Valley State College and which starred the Mothers in Germany, 1968.)

We come to realize that the drum thumps heard before the fade-in actually contribute to a percussion track that clacks enchantingly throughout the song. Dissonant low horns grunt in the background, throwing off the pleasant harmonies just enough to tint them with mystery. The primary music fades in and out, as though Frank's becoming withdrawn and fixated on his solo. Some wondrous, sped-up, percussive free music ends it all, entitled "Igor's Boogie, Phase Two" and probably played entirely by Frank, overdubbing himself in the manner of "The Clap" on 1970's Chunga's Revenge. Stirring winds bring in the next piece, backed by funny sax squeaks.

"Holiday in Berlin, Full-Blown" kicks in, and its true incarnation's more appealing than the overture. The lazy sax gets in there eventually, however, recalling the nightclub in "America Drinks and Goes Home" on Absolutely Free. Perhaps we're in a foreign town after dark, indulging in its after-hours version of cheesy pining for tourists. The snare's still marching; another horn joins in, and the resulting harmony's rather sweet. An accelerated xylophone recalls the restless, clacking tremors in "Theme From Burnt Weeny Sandwich," and its duet with the piano is stunning. A drumless melody line and subsequent snare roll introduce the relaxed yet somehow excitable midsection; Frank waits for eight measures and then plays an outright gorgeous guitar solo, implementing the wah-wah pedal when his investigations indicate it. Some of his notes lower the blues eyebrow and actually make the pleasant music sound mean and funky. This part of the song was recorded separately from the opening melodies; it's from the July 4, 1968 concert at the Ark in Boston, toward the end of "Uncle Meat/King Kong" ("your teenage medley of two," as Frank remarked to the audience before the song).

Rearranged parts of "Holiday in Berlin, Full-Blown" will reappear on 200 Motels as "Semi-Fraudulent/Direct-From-Hollywood Overture." Words will eventually be added to the former, as can be heard on the bootleg Freaks & Motherfu*%!!@#, which features the November 5, 1970 concert at the Fillmore West in San Francisco.

With a fantastic, bluesy rainbow of notes and some conclusive fast fingering, the solo fades and leaves a drum beat with an appealing timbre. Frank tells the band to play "Aybe Sea," but the studio version cuts in. A breathtaking song with Frank on acoustic guitar, Ian on piano and (probably) Don on harpsichord, it does conjure seafaring images, but the title's a clever spelling of the first three letters of the alphabet. The piece ends with Ian's quiet piano solo, tinkering out little water ripples with high chords.

After the whole of side one, the mood's one of psychological fulfillment and a sort of peace. It prepares the ear for the high energy inherent in every instrument in the second half of the album: the consistent enthusiasm that sustains the long jam on side two and keeps it from actually seeming lengthy.

The 22-minute "Little House I Used to Live In," called "Return of the Hunchback Duke" (and sometimes "Return of the Son of the Hunchback Duke," and occasionally just "The Duke") for some of its past and future live outings, is attributed partially to Don, Ian and Sugarcane Harris; it's a number intended to set up improvisation in between its prepared themes, and designed to bring out fresh-sounding peaks and troughs from the relentless fervor of the musicians.

Ian's piano solo returns from where it has faded into the sea fog at the end of the first half; it sweeps in and then steps back in pensive, almost foreboding dances, setting up the listener for the soaring, jazzy rock coming up. The solo by itself makes up a large part of a separate 1969 ensemble piece called "Little House," which has grown from a piano exercise that Frank wrote in '62. A restructured version of the piano portion, this time featuring electric piano, will be played during the "Concerto For Mothers and Orchestra" at the University of California at Los Angeles in May of 1970 (thanks to Zappologist Michael P. Dawson).

A split second after Ian stops playing, the band springs to loud life with an instantly catching melody, defined by Frank's measured wah-wah line and then catching fire, horns blaring, staggering metallic percussion keeping time. It sounds like Ruben's "Jelly Roll Gum Drop" with extravagant creative interjection. The ending of each musical phrase is sustained past the normal four beats, shading the big-city bop with cocky comments.

A great drum fill (at 2:09 on the CD) brings in a slippery-timed segment that takes the song over the aesthetic top; it's an astounding piece of fast work. The band halts on a sustain, and we hear a beautiful new theme (at 2:50). A nice guitar line lurks hesitantly before a long sax note starts off an unexpectedly double-timed attack, the fast rendition of the slow melody we've just heard (and which will return in "Twinkle Tits," a separate song performed at least once by 1970's Hot Rats ensemble). The snare returns to a march, but it's more intriguing in this non-sardonic context; it switches to gratifying clunks in an incredible Black/Mundi/Tripp display as Frank boogies violently in this antsy step back.

Sugarcane's electric violin screams in and we're suddenly in the middle of a slow, bleeding blues song. It too switches to double-time, Ian's piano swinging joyfully and bassy drums anchoring the listener's heart. Sugarcane lets it loose. His lingering shimmy's then cleverly brought down a little in the mix to show off Don's organ; it's brought back up for a long, high note as Ian explores high blues scales. The violin/piano duet continues, the throttle pushed forward as the musicians' savagery breaks free of the slightest hint of nightclub vamping.

Sugarcane screeches into the distance as Don switches to the ivories, using the new understated backing to his advantage as he starts out furtively and then sweeps up into the high keys to offer a constantly climaxing display of inventiveness. The band thumps the violin back in; this solo's more purposely timed but somehow more brutal. Occasional breaks in the wall of swing increase the tempo drastically as Sugarcane rides a flurry of notes back and forth like he's trying to spin us around with sound waves. An incredible, rumbling stop spotlights him, and then a funky new beat carries him briefly, his bow wallowing in it. Another, more drawn-out section of dramatic halts further highlights his high-register strutting, and after the last smash he flies away on a high pair of pitches before the harpsichord and winds play a new, drumless melody that's novel in its intervals. The chromatic exploration of the composer here looks ahead at the orchestral pieces on 200 Motels.

We're suddenly presented with a tumbling piece of unbelievable music. Some of the instruments seem sped-up and some don't; it's an unreal, immensely appealing sound. The high guitar initially sneaking in from the right channel reintroduces the "Aybe Sea" theme, now heard in a position of assisted power.

The drums lie back a little, albeit still angry and impossibly rolling and stabbing, and Frank plays the organ. It's an interesting return to the carnival-like sounds from earlier on the album; here the atmosphere's of artistic exertion and aural basking, so it sounds completely different. He enjoys some rapid hammering at a high chord and then churns out some blues that could be straight from his '50s influences if this were a guitar. He comes off especially inspired and proficient, despite his remarks in interviews that he can't play keys well. The song rolls and then waltzes to a surprising stop, and we hear the audience's loud appreciation. "Thank you," Frank says. "Goodnight." (Starting with the return to "Aybe Sea," we've been hearing a performance from the Royal Albert Hall in London on 6/6/69.)

The Mothers walk back onstage for an encore and Frank says, "Thank you. If you'll sit down and be quiet, we'll make an attempt to play 'Brown Shoes Don't Make It.'" The audience cheers at this, but some guys disrupt everything by shouting about the "uniforms" (security) in the venue. Frank replies, "Everyone in this room is wearing a uniform, and don't kid yourselves." The crowd claps agreeably, but the kids keep yelling. "You'll hurt your throat," Frank quips. "Stop it!"

The studio version of "Valarie," originally by Jackie & the Starlites, concludes the album. It's a lovely song, a stimulating yet mildly awkward change of gears after the album's constant new inventions. As heard on the bootleg of the Ark show, Frank explained to the 1968 Boston audience that the Mothers

"...got desperate a few months ago, because we thought nobody liked us, and we were also pis*ed off at the fact that people [wouldn't] play our records on the radio; and we didn't know whether...it was 'cause our music was crappy, or because somebody really knew what the words to the songs meant [recalling the fictitious Suzy Creamcheese's letter on the back of Freak Out!], so they wouldn't take a chance. So we came to the conclusion that actually, all it was was a conspiracy, because we are supposedly so dirty, vile and crazy, and also a threat to our great nation, and all that it has stood for in the past, and that we hope it will not continue to stand for in the future. So what we did was, we went into a professional recording studio in New York City in the middle of the night for two nights in a row -- and also a Saturday afternoon for mixing -- and cranked out two miserable teenage-type records. We'll begin our medley with the B-side...which is a tune called 'Valarie.'"

The A-side was "My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama," the first studio version (from Criteria Studios in Miami); the second will appear on Weasels. Incidentally, Frank actually sings "Valarie" quite fervently during the show, shouting "Everybody!" in his enjoyment, and Roy provides a great harmony lead and some impressive falsetto ad-libs. "My Guitar...," also played during the concert, is used as a vehicle for a long, blistering solo and some great organ and horn punctuation. The New York studio mentioned was either Apostolic or A&R.

Burnt Weeny Sandwich never lets up; even its quiet moods are engaging as hell. Frank continues to utilize the surprise factor of previous albums, but brilliantly pulls them off in full band arrangement contexts, switching gears via fade-ins and natural-sounding splices rather than sticking in snippets of dialogue and startling electronic noises devised with studio machinery. Everything's orchestrated immaculately, measured to sustain the listener's delight throughout.


Recommended: Yes