This treasure chest was the sixth album produced by Frank Zappa, released in 1969 but recorded between October 1968 and February 1969. For this album, the Mothers of Invention were back together (they broke up and reassembled a couple of times between 1966 and 1971). The album was digitally remixed in 1987 for the CD release and about forty minutes worth of new material from the original sessions was added.

A line on the album's cover informs listeners that this album features "Most of the Music from the Mother's Movie of the Same Name which We Haven't Got Enough Money to Finish Yet." This seems to have been a bit of hyperbole on Zappa's part. The "dialog" that occasionally crops up in the album is ridiculous, though, at times, hilarious. There is more such dialog on the CD version than on the original vinyl release. Suzy Creamcheese (voice by Pamela Zarubica), a recurrent fictional character in Zappa albums, has some delicious dialog in a track called "Our Bizarre Relationship." Zappa did finally finish the movie in the eighties, though the final product was only partly a straight movie and partly a documentary about the movie.

For this edition of The Mothers, there were eleven performers and the back cover of the album features pictures of nine of them and dental X-rays for three! According to Zappa's notes, he himself provided guitar, low grade vocals, and percussion, Ray Collins provided the "swell vocals," Roy Estrada chipped in on electric bass and provided the "Pachuco falsetto," Don Preston played the electric piano, Billy Mundi the drums, Bunk Gardner an amazing variety of woodwinds, Ian Underwood the electric organ, piano, harpsichord, celeste, and various woodwinds (he was especially talented on the saxophone), Artie Tripp various percussion instruments, Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood the sax and tambourine, Ruth Komanoff performed on the marimba and vibes, and Nelcy Walker provided some soprano vocals. All but Tripp, Komanoff and Walker had been recorded previously with The Mothers, at one time or another.

The instrumentation in this album is more advanced than for any preceding Zappa album (and very nearly any pop album up to that time). The primary style here is jazz-rock. It is with this album that Zappa's compositional genius first becomes fully evident. Zappa had also acquired mastery of sound engineering by the time this album came out. As he explains, "Things that sound like a full orchestra were carefully assembled, track by track, through a procedure known as over-dubbing. The weird middle section of "Dog Breath" (after the line, "Ready to attack") has forty tracks built into it." Then he adds, "Things that sound like trumpets are actually clarinets played through an electric device made by Maestro with a setting labeled 'Oboe D'Amore' and sped up a minor third with a variable speed oscillator." Zappa had engaged in complex multi-track editing previously, but hereafter it would become a hallmark of much of his work.

The tracks added for the CD release are generally a good deal less satisfactory than the original material and, in fact, detract a bit from the coherency of the whole package. Nevertheless, there is so much to like in this release. Below is the list of tracks. I've marked the new tracks added for the CD version with an asterisk (*) and my personal favorites with a pound sign (#).

Disc 1:

1. Uncle Meat (Main Title Theme) 1:54 #
2. The Voice of Cheese 0:27
3. Nine Types of Industrial Pollution 5:56
4. Zolar Czakl 0:57
5. Dog Breath, in the Year of the Plague 5:51 #
6. The Legend of the Golden Arches 1:24
7. Louie Louie (live, At The Royal Albert Hall in London) 2:28
8. The Dog Breath Variations 1:36 #
9. Sleeping In A Jar 0:49 #
10. Our Bizarre Relationship 1:05
11. The Uncle Meat Variations 4:40 #
12. Electric Aunt Jemima 1:53 #
13. Prelude to King Kong 3:24 #
14. God Bless America (Live at he Whisky a Go Go) 1:22
15. A Pound for a Brown on the Bus 1:29
16. Ian Underwood Whips it Out 5:08 #
17. Mr. Green Genes 3:10
18. We Can Shoot You 1:48
19. "If We'd All Been Living in California . . ." 1:29
20. The Air 2:57
21 Project X 4:47
22. Cruising for Burgers 2:19

Disc 2:

1. Uncle Meat Film Excerpt Part 1 *
2. Tengo Na Minchia Tanta *
3. Uncle Meat Film Excerpt Part 2 *
4. King Kong Itself 0:53 #
5. King Kong II (it's magnificence interpreted by Do DeWild) 1:15 #
6. King Kong III (as Motorhead explains it) 1:44 #
7. King Kong IV (the Gardner Variations) 6:17 #
8. King Kong V (as played by 3 deranged Good Humor Trucks) 0:29 #
9. King Kong VI (live on a flat bed diesel in the middle of a race track at a Miami Pop Festival) 7:22 #

In the years ahead, Zappa attracted many stellar musicians into his bands, at one time or another, and one distinct appeal of live Zappa concerts was plenty of opportunities for the individual musicians to strut their stuff through extended riffs, a practice more characteristic of jazz than most rock music. Here in Uncle Meat, we hear some of the first clear evidence of that practice coming into play, in, for example, "Ian Underwood Whips it Out" and the various King Kong variations.

All in all, Uncle Meat is The Mothers and Frank Zappa in peak form. I highly recommend this album.

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You can quickly link to my other Zappa CD reviews at:

A Frank Zappa Categorical Discography & Top Choice Lists

You can check out my reviews of Zappa-related books at:

The Real Frank Zappa Book
Ben Watson: Frank Zappa – the Complete Guide to his Music
Barry Miles: Zappa – A Biography

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Listening