`The Mothers Fillmore East - June 1971' starring Frank Zappa, selected `Mothers', Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman of `The Turtles', and blues drummer extraordinare, Ansley Dunbar is certainly one of Zappa / The Mothers of Invention's best albums, especially when you look at the glut of re-released and re-re-released material from Zappa. It may even rank (pun intended) as one of the best live rock performances on CD. I was lucky enough to see Zappa and the Mothers Live in 1969 and this recorded performance is much, much better.

Zappa's live performance is less about music than it is about crude, satiric storytelling, enhanced with music. Even better, the storytelling has a great sense of truth about it. It is totally believable that, some time before this album was made, Mother Don Preston runs into the touring group Vanilla Fudge who tells him the story of `The Mud Shark'.

Among the many things accomplished by this album was the resurrection of the careers of Turtles Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan. This and other appearances with Zappa (I believe they are in `Uncle Meat') made enough of an impression that I saw them touring with as a Turtles nostalgia act in the mid-1980s.

Not only do our two lads do vocals, they are also principle characters in some of the autobiographical songs such as `What Kind of Girl do you Think We Are?' The highlight of their performance comes when they do the Turtles one major hit, `Happy Together'.

One thing which makes this a great live album is the fact that all the tracks effortlessly flow from one to the next with practically no interruption. You practically have to look at the track counter to see that you have gone from `Bwana DIK' (sic) to `Latex Solar Beef', which, by the way, has almost all the chops of a better Pete Townsend minidrama. I can almost imagine the spin put onto this album by the `Rolling Stone' and `Crawdaddy' of 1971, claiming as much coup for Zappa on this work as has been heaped on Townsend for `Tommy'. Well, maybe that's taking it just a bit too far, as `Tommy' is an epic story of mystical loss and recovery while `The Mud Shark' is simply a collection of songs and stories about unbridled rock star libido.

In comparison to some of Zappa's more distinctly instrumental albums such as `Hot Rats' or the very late `The Yellow Shark', it may be easy to minimize the value of the instrumental performances on this album. While they mostly create bridges between the storytelling, they are not to be dismissed. `Willie The Pimp Part One' nicely elides between `Latex Solar Beef' and `Do You Like My New Car'. With all the vocals and storytelling, Zappa doesn't have much room for some of his more arcane musical inventions. This is, after all, Fillmore East, although he does squeeze one in with `Lonesome Electric Turkey' just before his classic `Peaches En Regalia'.

While this album may not be quite as transcendent as `The Who Live at Leeds', it is richly textured with just about every flavor of bizarre performance popularized by Zappa and the Mothers up to that point. The final selling point is that I wish I had seen this performance rather than the rote exercize I saw in Baltimore.

Very Highly Recommended!

This contains what is arguably the single most jaw-dropping, blistering guitar solo I've ever heard in my life. Without getting into more than a little posturing about what guitar I've heard, I've seen Zappa and Thackery and Buchanan and Santana and McLaughlin and many others live and trust me, if you haven't heard Zappa's version of Willie the Pimp on this disc, you are in for a treat and let's leave it at that. Anyone says "Zappa? His guitar was good, but he was no [blank]," you play him this solo and that will shut him up toot sweet, I guarantee you. (Please come back and let me know whether you agree!)

Unfortunately, most of the rest of the album is somewhat dated funny-Zappa material, with Flo and Eddie hi-jinks, punctuated with flashes of music. So, if you love Zappa's guitar and want to hear one of his moments of sheer brilliant virtuosity, by all means pick this up; then go get Shut Up and Play Your Guitar. If you're new to Zappa, or interested only in his best albums, there are many better options.

I recently bought this record for the second time. First of all though, I bought the japonese re-issue. These come in a exact replica of the original album art all the way down to the record jacket. The japonese version sounds ten million times clearer than my american re-master. This was the first Zappa Record I bought, and it is still my favorite just for the jam into Willie the Pimp after Solar Beef. If your looking for a good starter record for Frank Zappa I recomend this one because it has everything his sense of humor, his unique arrangements, and his killer guitar style.

This record highlights the most noteworthy tendencies of the Mothers from the late 60's/ early 70's, including blue vaudeville dialogue, heavily amplified/maximum distortion guitar, Stravinskyesque harmonic and rhythmic innovation, and heavy rock and roll improvisations. This was a wonderful period in Zappa's output, and represents the last vestiges of the raw energy of the 60's Mother's style, which was soon to be replaced by the more overtly sarcastic and polished albums like Apostrophe. In Fillmore the musical materials are strong and original, the humor is bawdy and fresh, the band, though firmly rooted in an early 70's hard rock sound world, is as tight as any Zappa had. This is a great record, with wonderful versions of Willie the Pimp and Peaches en Regalia. The CD is inferior to the LP in one crucial respect: While the LP ended side one with Willie the Pimp part 1 and began side two with Willie...part 2, the CD omits Willie...part 2 altogether. This is a terrible decision on Zappa's part, as Willie..part 2 has one of the greatest guitar solos Zappa ever played. The CD is much the worse off without the song. This is not unlike the decision Zappa made when releasing a CD version of "We're Only in it for the Money," in which the original drums and bass were replaced with synthesizer tracks--a disastrous idea. So, if one can live without the missing track, Fillmore East is an absolute must-have.

Actually, this is a very good performance from probably the most maligned phase of The Mothers, and particularly, Frank Zappa's, career. The 1970-71 tours and records, were actually, very funny, and full of a hidden virtuosity, hidden by the antics of Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan (Flo & Eddie). Their voices can be shrill, and grating to people with more middle-of-the-road tastes, but that's the irony and beauty of it all. Those voices once fronted a very popular "pop" group, The Turtles, and the sleeve notes from The Mother's "Freak Out," from 1966, had a quote from an A&R man, saying he could clean them up a little, and make them as big as The Turtles. So, when the original band broke up and a new, revamped line-up appeared and they were hired, it kind of showed them who knew what.

Right away, the sound quality becomes an obvious issue. It's got a low fidelity, like it was recorded on cheap equipment, and it probably was. It opens with a reworked "Little House I used To Live In," but the melody isn't recognizable until about halfway into it. No disrespect to this phase of the band, but the original release is far superior. This segues into "The Mud Shark." A simple vamp with Zappa telling a story of Don Preston's meeting with the members of another band, The Vanilla Fudge, and what was done with some mud sharks that were caught while fishing from a window in the Edgewater Inn.

"What Kind Of Girl Do You Think We Are?" begins the groupie motif of this record. Mark Volman is singing the part of a teenage groupie, and Howard Kaylan is doing the part of an out-of-town touring musician, and even though it is misogenistic and of questionable taste, it is a good blues song, and it tells of the relationship between groupie and "rock star." "Bwana Dik" and "Latex Solar Beef" are just weird and smutty. Juvenile, phallic, locker-room humor is the theme this performance takes on, but it is done with such conviction, you have to appreciate it, however tasteless. It is, however, life on the road, with groupies who will tolerate almost anything to get into a popular musician's pants. Keep this in mind.

There is a lot of controversy and speculation over the instrumental version of "Willie The Pimp" included here, as the original vinyl release fades the first half out at the end of Side One, for the listener to flip the record over and listen to the second half at the beginning of Side Two. Here, there is no second half, "Part One" fades out, per the original record, and a substantial part of a very good guitar solo is lost. Maybe a later release will include the whole piece. Let's hope. The CD has a moment of silence here, but the LP cuts from "Willie," right into "Do You Like My New Car?," also known as "The Groupie Routine." This takes the idea of "What Kind Of Girl..." to its extreme, Volman as the teenage groupie and Kaylan as the touring musician again, and it is one of the smuttiest things I've ever heard, apart from "Joe's Garage" and "Thingfish." But, to its credit, it's side-splittingly funny. Zappa got the writing credit, but anyone can see where the material came from; Flo & Eddie are two of the biggest cut-ups out there. It's crude, and downright crass, but, especially for its time, a laugh riot. Here, we get to see who the out-of-town rock star is, because when he promises to sing his hit "with a bullet," the mothers launch into a rendition of The Turtles' "Happy Together." Self-parody at its finest.

The Encore section is where they show you what they're made of. Original band member Don Preston joins the current band onstage for a blistering "Lonesome Electric Turkey," a workout on the moog synthesizer with the band just tearing it up in the background. They shape this into "Peaches En Regalia" from Zappa's "Hot Rats" record, and they play it well. The disc closes with "Tears Began To Fall," and there's a side of me that believes there is a slower, quieter version of this out there, somewhere. It's that kind of song, but the band has fun with it through the fade out.

Not the whole concert, but a pretty good taste of a very raunchy, very funny, and very good show. So many people have missed the boat, to not even be aware of those days.