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View Poll Results: This group is a little more abstract
Lumpy Gravy 1 6.67%
Weasels Ripped My Flesh 2 13.33%
Uncle Meat 4 26.67%
Waka/Jawaka - Hot Rats 3 20.00%
Apostrophe 2 13.33%
Over-Nite Sensation 0 0%
Bongo Fury 2 13.33%
Sheik Yerbuti 0 0%
Lather (incl. Studio Tan, Sleep Dirt, Orchestral Favorites) 1 6.67%
Yellow Shark 0 0%
Voters: 15. You may not vote on this poll

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Old April-27th-2003, 09:39 PM   #1
BFrank
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FZ Poll - Round 2

One more time!
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Old April-27th-2003, 09:52 PM   #2
john williams
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Weasels...
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Old April-28th-2003, 02:51 PM   #3
Brian Olewnick
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Why are Waka-Jawaka and Hot Rats listed as one and the same? What happened to Burnt Weenie? This smacks of some kind of LA Dodger conspiracy.....
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Old April-28th-2003, 10:35 PM   #4
BFrank
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Brian, Brian, Brian, Brian, Brian.....sheesh.

"Burnt Weeny" was in the first poll.
"Waka/Jawaka - Hot Rats" is a totally different album altogether. That's the title.
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Old April-28th-2003, 11:57 PM   #5
Jazzooo
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Quote:
Originally posted by BFrank
"Waka/Jawaka - Hot Rats" is a totally different album altogether. That's the title.
huh? Yes, they are now selling as a two-for-the-price-of-one package, but they are independent albums.
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Old April-29th-2003, 12:04 AM   #6
BFrank
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It's just one album. The name is "Waka/Jawaka - Hot Rats"

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Old April-29th-2003, 12:44 AM   #7
john williams
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Yes Waka/Jawaka is Hot Rats II (unofficially)

And The Grand Wazoo is Hot Rats III

Some say Sleep Dirt is HR III but I am not so sure about that.

Last edited by john williams; April-29th-2003 at 01:46 AM.
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Old April-29th-2003, 01:01 AM   #8
Ron Thorne
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Zappa would love this shit! We're debating album titles and the origins and merits of various albums.

Everyone is correct to some degree with respect to "Hot Rats".

Here's the "poop" ... excerpts from Rolling Stone magazine:

"Waka/Jawaka—Hot Rats, while little more than a long delayed extension of the original Hot Rats album, is one of Zappa's most enjoyable, less hypertense efforts, and while it may lack the tightness, the rock-based energy of its predecessor, it contains some of the best material he's done in years. Waka/Jawaka may well be something of a fence- mending job by Zappa after his execrable work on 200 Motels, which has got to be one of the all- time attempts by a musician and composer to discredit himself.

The musicians brought in for Waka/Jawaka are not the stellar personalities that graced Hot Rats. Captain Beefheart and Sugarcane Harris are gone, replaced by newer faces that include Tony Duran on slide guitar, Sal Marquez on trumpets, and Don Preston on Moog and piano. They comprise a tight, disciplined group.

The first song is a 17-minute extravaganza called "Big Swifty," which moves on the strength of Zappa's guitar and Marquez' horns through enough changes to add up to a solid modern jazz suite. It is something to appreciate, even though it could well be called second-rate Miles Davis, and is even leagues behind Weather Report's recent I Sing the Body Electric in inventiveness and power. And at only 17 minutes in length, "Big Swifty" seems rather light-weight for a full side piece. But that's just quibbling. It's good, it stands up to repeated listenings, and is, along with the title cut, one of the best things on the album.

Side two has "Your Mouth," a lapse back into Zappa's patented spitefulness. It's vapid and trite, a puerile exercise in sluggish swing. "It Just Might Be a One Shot Deal," is good old Mothers' music, a chaotic arrangement of acoustic, slide, Hawaiian, and pedal steel guitars, "Waka/Jawaka" rounds out the album with an 11-minute jazz improvisation.

Maybe Frank Zappa is just getting mellow for the first time in his career. Or maybe it's just a phase. Either way, while Waka/Jawaka may lack the brilliance of Hot Rats, or the capacity for irritation that existed on some of the Mothers' material, it's a distinctive album. Which, in his case, is either a sign of maturity, or evidence of exhaustion."(RS 119)

ROB HOUGHTON

The following seems to pretty much sum things up for this period in Zappa's output:

"Originally released in 1972, this might be considered the middle installment of a mostly-instrumental jazz-rock trilogy, with HOT RATS and THE GRAND WAZOO."

Last edited by Ron Thorne; April-29th-2003 at 01:05 AM.
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Old April-29th-2003, 03:19 AM   #9
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Zappa Quotes

Jazz is not dead...it just smells funny.

The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.

Let's not be too tough on our own ignorance. It's the thing that makes America great. If America weren't incomparably ignorant, how could we have tolerated the last eight years? (During Reagan Years)

Interviewer: -"So Frank, you have long hair. Does that make you a woman?"
FZ: "You have a wooden leg. Does that make you a table?"

"Conducting'' is when you draw "designs'' in the nowhere -- with your stick, or with your hands -- which are interpreted as
"instructional messages'' by guys wearing bow ties who wish they were fishing.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

A world of sexual incompetents, encountering each other, under disco circumstances... Now can't you do songs about that?

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on
unsuspecting air molecules,often with the assistence of
unsuspecting musicians.

Reporter - This is a personal thing, I think that if you wanted to make top ten hits and sell millions of records, you could. Frank Zappa - Yeah, but who wants to go through life with a tiny nose and one glove on?

For my taste, these solos (of some 50s blues guitarists) are exemplary because what is being played seems honest and, in a
musical way, a direct extension of the personality of the men who played them.

In an interview with Joan Rivers who had just asked him why he gave his
children such odd names, Frank gave the reply- 'Consider for a moment any beauty in the name Ralph.'

Government is the Entertainment Division of the military-industrial complex.

All right, Zubin, hit it!
--
Frank's onstage cue to conductor Zubin Mehta during their collaborative
effort with the L.A. Philharmonic orchestra in 1970

For some real personal satisfaction, try yelling out your own names.
--
At a concert in Boston, Massachusetts to some fans (my friends) who kept yelling out Frank's name.

I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?
--
In response to Tipper Gore's allegations that music incites people towards deviant behavior, or influences their behavior in general.


The concept of the rock-guitar solo in the eightees has
pretty much been reduced to: Weedly-weedly-wee, make a face,
hold your guitar like it's your weenie, point it heavenward,
and look like you're really doing something. Then, you get
a big ovation while the the smoke bombs go off, and the
motorized lights in your truss twirl around!




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Old April-29th-2003, 09:35 AM   #10
Brian Olewnick
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Ah, understood. I've long since traded in my vinyl of Waka-Jawaka, but at the time, I don't recall anyone ever referring to it as anything but 'Waka-Jawaka', never affixing Hot Rats to the title. I always thought the cover inclusion was just a clever joke that also provided a link to the prospective buyer, alerting him to the fact the the music contained herein bears some relationship to the Hot Rats album. Personally, I think it's way weaker.

Given that, of those listed above, I gotta go with Uncle Meat, which holds up extremely well (although the disc version is padded out with movie commentary and a truly awful song).
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Old April-29th-2003, 10:39 AM   #11
Jazzooo
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Brian said:

"I've long since traded in my vinyl of Waka-Jawaka, but at the time, I don't recall anyone ever referring to it as anything but 'Waka-Jawaka', never affixing Hot Rats to the title. I always thought the cover inclusion was just a clever joke that also provided a link to the prospective buyer, alerting him to the fact the the music contained herein bears some relationship to the Hot Rats album."

I believe that you are correct in this, and that the reviewer quoted here made an error. I'll check Zappa's own site and see how he has the album listed. Not everything appearing on an album cover is included in the album title....

(after checking) yep, I'm right. The name of the album, according to Frank Zappa's official website (www.zappa.com) is Waka/Jawaka. What do I win?

By the way, it's a pretty creative site with lots of flurries of attitude, quotes, etc. The only things missing are audio clips, or at least i couldn't find any.

Last edited by Jazzooo; April-29th-2003 at 10:48 AM.
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Old April-29th-2003, 03:50 PM   #12
BFrank
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Question

Well, maybe we're ALL right on this controversy. Here's some discussion on the name from Zappa Patio:

Vinyl/Cassette
From Juha Sarkkinen:
On the original LP, the title on the label and back read Hot Rats - Waka/Jawaka.

From Dan Buxbaum:
I was perusing the wares in a local used record store and made the brave journey to the back of the shop where the used cassettes are ("the bottom of the barrel"). I saw this tape which was printed "Waka/Jawaka Hot Rats" on the side. Turned out to be just the regular old-time Reprise cassette of Waka/Jawaka. I found it interesting that the tape actually had "Hot Rats" in the title printed on it (not just on the painting faucets as on the CD), and that "Big Swifty" was the cassette Side 2 selection.

From Chris Roe:
I had an old 1980s rock LP price guide that actually said there was a 2-LP set of Waka Jawaka/Hot Rats but have never seen any proof that it existed.


+++

I have the vinyl - both the spine and label sez: "Waka/Jawaka - Hot Rats". Go figger ...

Last edited by BFrank; May-1st-2003 at 02:33 AM.
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Old May-6th-2003, 01:57 AM   #13
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Lightbulb

"Uncle Meat" is the winner. That's a surprise.
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