01	Don't Eat The Yellow Snow						02:05
	02	Nanook Rubs It						04:37
	03	St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast						01:50
	04	Father O'Blivion						02:17
	05	Cosmik Debris						04:18
	06	Excentrifugal Forz						01:33
	07	Apostrophe'						05:50
	08	Uncle Remus						02:49
	09	Stink-Foot						06:37

Artist: FRANK ZAPPA
Title: OVER-NITE SENSATION / APOSTROPHE
Date: 1973-74
Release: Rykodisc #40025

MUSTHEAR REVIEW:

I.
The late Frank Zappa was a rock star whose fame will rise in this new century only when listeners start forgetting that he wrote lyrics. I've always suspected he only wrote provocative words for his songs so that people would listen. If he had made his strange brand of avant-guard classical-pop-jazz-rock without populating it with scatological imagery and absurdity, we might not have ever heard of this crazy genius. So his ploy worked. At his worst, Zappa was like a flasher in the park trying to shock all the old ladies. But sometimes he got it right, held his lantern through the bright of day and made some great rock and roll.

It's hard to pin Zappa down. Early on, with his band, the Mothers of Invention, he specialized in Captain Beefheart-inspired wackiness and (God forbid!) made fun of the Beatles. Later he put out a impenetrable concept album like Uncle Meat, absurdist literature for the stoner set. He gave former Turtles stars Flo and Eddie the opportunity to exhibit all the depravity they had never had a chance to indulge as pop stars. There is the vast body of social commentary that exposed the various hypocrisies of the times, songs like "Who Needs the Peace Corps?" and "Dancing Fool." He gave us crude sex jokes: on the Joe's Garage 3-LP album we get "Why Does it Hurt When I Pee?"; "Wet T-Shirt Contest," about a girl finding "home, on the bus" with his roadies; and a robot singing "fuck me, you miserable son of a bitch"--in German, no less. The highlight of the Baby Snakes album is "Titties and Beer," an epic Zappa-Went-Down-to-Georgia contest in which the protagonist defeats the Evil One with an insatiable appetite for the title items. The so-called outrages went on and on.

But the music was always good. The individual songs that stand out are instrumentals like "Watermelon in Easter Hay" from Joe's Garage and the ever-popular "Peaches en Regalia," which is now played by the organist at Mets games. In fact, one of his most excellent albums is a collection called Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar, which is just what it sounds like: the maestro on the six-string.

So on the one hand, Zappa would delight his fans with his antics, and on the other he would miscalculate with a "Jewish Princess" or a "Jumbo Go Away" that would offend non-700 Club members because those songs were, well, offensive. And on a third hand, in the middle of this 100-ring circus was the man on the high trapeze, the ringleader, Zappa, with his trademark handlebar mustache and the patch of hair on his chin, telling everyone (including Congress and Tipper Gore's PMRC) to just lighten up, that it was just rock and roll and he liked it. Oh, and don't do drugs, kids.

II.
All the dick jokes appealed to teenage boys, of course. We teenage boys found Zappa's music just as he wanted us to, through the siren call of sex and partying and life on the bus. When I was 11 or so, prepubescent and less alone than I thought, trying to find my way through a bleak suburban world filled with hypocrisy, I fell under the thrall of a group of older neighborhood kids. They were flirting with drugs, music, and the prospect of community college, and they couldn't have been cooler, or more wise. One girl on the block even had a motorcycle and took me for my first ride.

This girl's older brother was home for that summer, and I was admitted entrance to his room, which was decorated like Greg Brady's when he got his own room. I pushed aside a beaded curtain and entered that dim sanctum filled with sweet-smelling smoke coming from a bong and music coming from a top of the line hi-fi. The music was 1981's You Are What You Is, Zappa at his commercial height. And hovering above the proceedings was an enormous poster from which stared a face new to me, a man with intelligent eyes and weird facial hair. I watched these role models do hits, and when I was told,I turned over the record.

So I went out and bought my own Zappa, grabbing as much of the pottie humor and glorification of booze and life on the road as I could. But then I got a little bit older, and I went through and outgrew my Bukowski period and started looking for more substance. And I found it in--that's right, Zappa.I caught on, at long last: this clown was a great musician. Those frantic arpeggios peppering his songs were there for a reason. Here was a man who had fed me a tempting line, and, like a mud shark, finally I bit. (It's a private Zappa joke. There are many.)

I searched out the gaps in Zappa's oeuvre, and soon I found both 1973's Over-Nite Sensation and Apostrophe, released the following year. They are two half-hour-long records that have been rereleased by Rykodisc on one amazing CD. Over-Nite Sensation was Zappa's first real commercial and critical breakthrough, and although the jokey content is here ("Dirty Love" and "Dinah Moe Humm," a blow-job song) and the absurdity abounds, including a song about a naive man with pipe dreams of moving the Big-Sky country to raise dental floss ("Montana"), this is perhaps Zappa's strongest album. The songs are short and tight expositions of amazing musical ideas, almost like a sealed-off laboratory.

The perfect complement to Over-Nite Sensation is Apostrophe, which is looser musically and more engaged with the world. Again, there is absurdity and scatological humor, but for some reason it works and is almost touching. Fine, so the opening two tracks "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" and "Nanook Rubs It" are about someone who gets "doggie wee wee" in his eye, but it's also about leaving home, and the music is so good, it almost doesn't matter what they are about. The songs that cover social topics--like the economical "Uncle Remus," a song of angry joyful protest about knocking jockeys off white people's lawns--aren't as maudlin as his later songs. The comment on racial relations is actually poignant and sad. The anti-metaphysical "Cosmic Debris," a Zappa standard, never lowers itself to cheap shots, but rather is a smart and amusing (but never jokey, really) comment on our susceptibility.

Both albums stand up to repeated listens, something that is not true about all of Zappa's albums. The words will never make you lift the disc from your collection only to reconsider. I'm glad I didn't find this CD until late, because when I found it at long last, I really heard it.
--Scott Holden Smith (email)


Players:
Frank Zappa - Bass, Guitar, Vocals, Producer
Jack Bruce - Bass
George Duke - Synthesizer, Keyboards, Vocals (bckgr)
Bruce Fowler - Trombone
Jean-Luc Ponty - Violin, Baritone Violin
Sal Marquez - Trumpet, Vocals
Sue Glover - Vocals (bckgr)
Ray Collins - Vocals (bckgr)
Ricky Lancelotti - Vocals
Robert Camarena - Vocals (bckgr)
Ruben Ladron de Guevara - Vocals (bckgr)
Debbie - Vocals (bckgr)
Kin Vassy - Vocals, Voices, Speech/Speaker/Speaking Part
Lynn - Vocals (bckgr)
Kerry McNabb - Vocals (bckgr), Engineer, Remixing
Jim Gordon - Drums
Aynsley Dunbar - Drums
Tom Fowler - Bass
Napoleon Murphy Brock - Saxophone, Vocals (bckgr)
Tony Duran - Guitar, Vocals
Erroneous - Bass
John Guerin - Drums
Don "Sugarcane" Harris - Violin
Ralph Humphrey - Drums
Ian Underwood - Clarinet, Flute, Saxophone, Sax (Alto), Sax (Tenor)
Ruth Underwood - Percussion, Marimba, Vibraphone




Frank Zappa
Apostrophe'
Rykodisc (10519)
USA 1974

Frank Zappa, guitar, bass, vocals; Jim Gordon, drums; Johnny Guerin, drums; Aynsley Dunbar, drums; Ralph Humphrey, drums; Jack Bruce, bass; Erroneous, bass; Tom Fowler, bass; George Duke, keyboards, backing vocals; Sugar Can Harris, violin; Jean-Luc Ponty, violin; Ruth Underwood, percussion; Ian Underwood, saxophone; Napoleon Murphy Brock, saxophone, backing vocals; Sal Marquez, trumpet; Bruce Fowler, trombone; Ray Collins, backing vocals; Kerry McNabb, backing vocals; Susie Glover, backing vocals; Debbie, backing vocals; Lynn, backing vocals; Ruben Ladron De Guevara, backing vocals; Robert "Frog" Camarena, backing vocals

Tracklist:
1. Don't Eat The Yellow Snow — 2:07
2. Nanook Rubs It — 4:37
3. St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast — 1:50
4. Father O'Blivion — 2:18
5. Cosmik Debris — 4:14
6. Excentrifugal Forz — 1:33
7. Apostrophe' — 5:50
8. Uncle Remus — 2:44
9. Stink-Foot — 6:32

total time 31:47


matt

A companion piece of sorts to Over-nite Sensation, the incredibly short (31:47) Apostrophe' is a bit more jazzy, a bit more instrumentally-oriented and has less sexual content (though there is that part about leprechauns masturbating into a pancake batter). Several of the tracks were recorded during the sessions for previous albums and then overdubbed for Apostrophe', hence the laundry-list of personnel. Overall I like the album somewhat more than Over-nite Sensation, but not enough to put it on the level of Zappa's best Mothers-less albums.
The Conceptual Continuity is out in full on Apostrophe', as the album has numerous musical and lyrical references to previous songs. Zappa sent up concept albums in general (certainly a relevant target for 1974) with the "Yellow Snow" suite, which comprises the album's first four songs. Based on what I've read about the album, it was supposed to be a conceptual suite about nothing. But since Zappa's lyrics are viewed by his fans as always having to be about something, the meaning of the story (which concerns an Eskimo boy getting revenge upon a seal-clubbing fur trapper by blinding the trapper with a handful of crystallized dog urine) has been an ongoing topic of discussion for Zappa-philes. One notable example of over-interpretation is author Ben Watson's argument (in his book The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play) that Apostrophe' is actually an allegory to Shakespeare's King Lear. Ironically, Apostrophe's joke seems to be on Zappa's own fans as much as on bands like Yes or Genesis. The music supporting Frank's narration-style vocals is fairly sophisticated, though, and it flowered when performed onstage. Somehow "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" became a minor hit and Apostrophe' went gold, providing Zappa with the biggest selling record of his career, if my information is correct.

As for the rest of the album, I've never been much of a fan of "Cosmik Debris" — it seems like a re-write of "I'm the Slime" from Over-nite Sensation — and "Excentrifugal Forz" is over before it has a chance to get going. But, I think that "Apostrophe'," "Uncle Remus" and "Stink Foot," finish up the album very well. The instrumental title track is a classic wank-fest that involves a guest appearance by bassist Jack Bruce (Cream). "Uncle Remus" is a slow bluesy tune that comments on the state of racial inequality in America and sounds like it could have been one of the change-of-pace vocal songs on Waka/Jawaka or The Grand Wazoo (the basic tracks were recorded during those sessions, actually). "Stink Foot," despite silly lyrics purportedly inspired by an athlete's foot commercial, has a lot of great guitar playing by Zappa.

And the mystery of the album's title? "Stink Foot" tells us that the answer should be "easy to see," since "the crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe." Zappa himself never elaborated, though I have heard a theory that on a variety of Gaine's dog biscuits, the apostrophe in the brand logo is located directly at the center. Obviously, this is all very deep stuff.

review by Matt P. — 9-15-05