When his contract with MGM finally expired and wasn’t renewed, Zappa took matters into his own hands. Joining forces with Herb Cohen they opened Bizarre Inc – a company with seven divisions, which included Bizarre Records, music publishing and management. This freedom came at a price however. Zappa had to give MGM permission to release a compilation CD and a final Mothers album: Cruising with Ruben and the Jets. The savvy business man that he was, he took the deal. Bizarre Records was rigorously and meticulously planned out and operated, just like his independent Studio Z, and Zappa secured Warner as their distributor. The only problem was that everything he was inclined to release was a guaranteed non-chart topper. Their first release in October of ’68 is a great example: “The Circle” by paranoid schizophrenic street performer Wild Man Fischer.
As for the first Mothers release on his own label, that came in April ’69 with Uncle Meat – the end of Zappa’s NY work. Some of the tracks made appearances on later albums thanks to their popularity and many have been covered and reinterpreted by everyone from Renaissance music groups to brass ensembles to rock bands. It wasn’t long before the power duo that was Zappa-Cohen decided to expand their business further. They founded a new label, Straight, and released their first album in May of ’69 by a then unknown Alice Cooper.
The way Zappa ran his businesses was quite ruthless under the surface and as Miles explains in his biography: “Frank enjoyed the rough and tumble and frankly exploitive deals of the record business. It was only when the record companies used the same techniques on him that he objected.” [p.178]
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