The Performer / Social Critic: New York City (’66 – ’68)

In November of ’66 The Mothers of Invention played their first week long stint in New York City. They rocked the Balloon Farm in the city’s East Village and garnered some rave reviews. Village Voice magazine said The Mothers are a band to look out for and the New York Times called them “the most original new group ... [who] successfully fuse rock and serious music.” [Miles p. 137] The reception was so overwhelming that their run was extended for two extra weeks.
Perhaps their popularity was due to the fact that not only was the music ‘different,’ but so were their stage antics.

In the spring of ’67 The Mothers returned to New York City and this time around they booked the Garrick Theatre for the entire summer. The show was officially entitled Absolutely Free but its subtitle was Pig and Repugnant and Zappa often began the show by calling the audience ‘pigs.’ Their goal throughout the performance was basically to push the audience to their limits. They brought people on stage and forced them to speak and sing, they brought up girls and manhandled them, and there were even two weddings on stage. Other antics included placing a wire that ran from the lighting booth to the stage and asking the light man to send down objects which were often very messy, like eggs. One of their favorite props though was a stuffed giraffe. The Mothers wired a plastic tube to its leg and squirted whipped cream through it, often covering as much as the first three rows of the audience.

What’s most interesting is that this wild onstage behavior started by fluke. One night marines came to see a show and Zappa invited them on stage and asked them to do such things as yell ‘Kill!’ and mutilate a baby doll. The act was extremely moving and one man in the front row was said to be crying. Surely the rest of the audience didn’t feel much better about witnessing such a horrible act.

Zappa’s response was simple: “Music always is a commentary on society and certainly the atrocities on stage are quite mild compared to those conducted in our behalf by our government. You can’t write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream. Also, they didn’t know how to listen. Interest spans wane and they need something to help them re-focus.” [Miles p. 145]

Many speculate that Zappa had no respect for his audiences and the above statement certainly helps to back-up that viewpoint. As does his somewhat resentful explanation of why audiences came to the Garrick: “They came to see our show because we were something weird that was on that street and we were a sort of specialized recreational facility.” [Miles p. 146]

However, once one looked past all of these bizarre antics The Mothers it became evident that The Mothers were a group of musicians of the highest caliber who surely delivered a high level of musicality at every show: “Music for the show was built around a series of well-rehearsed musical blocks that could be improvised upon and played in any order, according to Zappa’s famous hand-signals. Anything could be dropped into this: the band was so tight, they could turn on a dime.” [Miles p.147] Perhaps, even if subconsciously, this high level of musicianship was just as big an attraction as the stuffed giraffe.