VINIL Universal Records Frank Zappa - Joe s Garage Act 1, 2, 3

1979


Lead Guitar, Vocals, Arranged By, Conductor – Frank Zappa
Lead Vocals – Ike Willis
Percussion – Ed Mann
Rhythm Guitar, Vocals – Warren Cuccurullo
Slide Guitar, Vocals – Denny Walley
Tenor Saxophone – Jeff* (tracks: A1 to B4)
Baritone Saxophone – Marginal Chagrin (tracks: A1 to B4)
Bass Saxophone – Stumuk (tracks: A1 to B4)
Bass, Vocals – Arthur Barrow
Drums – Vinnie Colaiuta
Harmonica – Craig Steward (tracks: A1 to B4)
Keyboards – Peter Wolf (3), Tommy Mars (tracks: A1 to B4)
Vocals – Al Malkin (tracks: A1 to B4), Dale Bozzio (tracks: A1 to B4), Ed Mann (tracks: C1 to F2)

Mastered By – Bernie Grundman

Rolling Stones : "Frank Zappa’s satirical rock opera, Joe’s Garage, is ambitious and mad, brilliant, peculiar and incoherent — epithets that have also been applied to German expressionist Georg Buchner’s unfinished play, Woyzeck. This may seem like a ludicrously lofty cross-cultural reference to attach to an album most notorious for a song about Catholic girls’ aptitude for fellatio, but there you have it. As a music maker and recording artist, Zappa has always cultivated two warring images — the serious composer with a social satirist’s sense of irony versus the smutty crowd pleaser with a puerile sense of humor. No matter how much fans of Hot Rats complain that their hero’s “seriousness” is compromised by the “frivolousness” of “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” (or vice versa), Zappa remains true to himself: the mensch with a dirty mind.

Written in three acts and released by Zappa’s custom label in two packages (one single LP, one double), Joe’s Garage ties the dual extremes of Frank Zappa’s sensibility closer together than ever. An attack on authoritarianism in which fascist governments, self-help pseudoreligions and the music industry are inextricably linked, the opera simultaneously tells the tale of a boy and girl. The boy, Joe, sings the title tune about his humble rock & roll band whose day of fame came and quickly went. Most of Act I is given over to the saga of Joe’s girlfriend, Mary, who moves from blowing Catholic boys in the church basement (having been tutored by the parish’s resident expert, Father Riley) to being “Crew Slut” for a touring rock group to competing in a “Wet T-Shirt Nite” contest for bus fare home, where she arrives wrecked for good. Hearing of her exploits, Joe seeks consolation from a taco-stand waitress, who gives him VD.

[...] If the surface of this opera is cluttered with cheap gags and musical mishmash, its soul is located in profound existential sorrow. The guitar solos that Zappa plays in Joe’s imagination burn with a desolate, devastating beauty. Flaws and all, Joe’s Garage is Frank Zappa’s Apocalypse Now."