With time Zappa began to love more and more recording his live shows and later using the tapes on albums, whether in full or partially. His bands were so well rehearsed that they always sounded great and all he had to do was head into the studio for some overdubbing, where needed. Zoot Allures came out in October 1976 and was originally titled Night of the Iron Sausage. It sold 110,000 copies in its first week, with almost no promo at all, which was quite a feat. Putting the album together was a slow and tedious process as Zappa couldn’t use his master tapes which were frozen at DiscReet (Zappa was suing Cohen and hoping to dissolve the company. More on this in the next post.) So, Zappa made due with the safety copies he had. Whenever Zappa left the studio he took a safety copy of his work with him because as he explained: “When I go home after 20 hours in the studio, what am I gonna listen to? Bob Dylan records?" [Miles p. 254]
Discreet wasn't the only company Zappa was not happy with. He was almost utterly infuriated with Warners, and would soon become even angrier when they'd begin withholding royalties from him. (More in upcoming posts.) As always, Zappa was not shy about speaking his mind and began hanging a banner proclaiming “Warners sucks!” on stage at his shows. He justified it by saying,“This is my first release for Warners, not DiscReet; it’s not subsidiary, it’s not a little independent record company. It’s “Hey I’m on your mainline label, now what are ya gonna do about it? So far they’ve done diddly shit.” [p. 257]
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