The 1975 "Bongo Fury" tour

From April 11 to May 26

The Band
Itinerary and recordings
Tour statistics
Repertoire
Officially released recordings

Having A Good Time In America

Good evening ladies and gentlemen this is Doctor Maurice speaking to you direct from Texas's most renowned echo chamber.
Our topic for discussion tonight is Having a good time in America.
Now, what each and everyone of you right now just search deep inside of your very own heart and ask yourself this question: Am I having a good time?
Now ask yourself this question: How long will it last?
You see, the problem is that in the United States you can have a good time for a little while but you can't have a good time all the time. Now, one of the reasons for this is maybe some people don't really know how they have a good time and they keep trying to have a good time doing the wrong things. Now, what are the right things to do to have a good time?
Clue number one: many of them take place with your clothes off.
Clue number two: many of them take place not only with your clothes off but in unorthodox positions.
Clue number three: many of them involve vegetables.
Clue number four: some of them involve animals and minerals.
Clue number five: some of them involve rock'n'roll concerts and we're gonna go right on with this one...

Frank Zappa, May 23, 1975, El Paso County Coliseum, Texas

The Band

Number of band members: 8 (previous band had 6 members, following one 5)
Frank Zappa: guitar, lead vocals
Captain Beefheart: soprano saxophone, harmonica, lead vocals
Napoleon Murphy Brock: tenor saxophone, lead vocals
George Duke: keyboards, vocals
Denny Walley: slide guitar
Tom Fowler: bass
Bruce Fowler: trombone
Terry Bozzio: drums

This line-up is featured only in this tour.

For George Duke and Tom Fowler this was the last tour with Zappa.
For Cpt. Beefheart this was the only tour with Zappa.
For Terry Bozzio this was the first tour with Zappa.
Trombone player Bruce Fowler first joined the band in 1972 for the "Grand Wazoo" tour and was in Zappa's bands until the 1974 "10th Anniversary Tour". Not in the band in the last 1974 touring incarnation of the MOI, this was the last time he was on the road with Zappa until his return for the 1988 big band.
Denny Walley joined the band for this tour and then was again in the Zappa touring company during late '78 and '79 tours.
Please note that, if we exclude the "wazoo tours" and the short return of Jeff Simmons in 1974, this was the first time a Zappa combo featured a second guitar played from the time Lowell George left the original Mothers of Invention in May 1969. From the fall '76 tour every Zappa's touring band always featured at least another guitar player.
Check the line-ups of Zappa's touring bands from 1975 to 1988
Known tour guests - For this tour only one: Jimmy Carl Black, featured on vocals on You're So Fine and Those Lonely Lonely Nights (two r'n'b numbers from the '50s) in the El Paso gig. This is a one time only performance for this tour, but note that Those Lonely Lonely Nights was a quite usual number for the early 1969 Mothers.

Itinerary and recordings

The following tables list all known gigs made by this band according to the unbeatable Charles Ulrich's Frank Zappa Gig List.
Sometimes the band did two shows in the same day: they are listed as early and late.
Information about unofficial known show recordings are mainly based on FZShows.

In the "official recordings" columns are listed official released records where appear recordings from that particular date.
What do they mean those acronyms?

Same colors code is used for pro shoot video (but none seems to be available for this tour).

Information about official recordings and pro shoot video are provided by Román García Albertos in his Frank Zappa Chronology and Zappa Film and Videography

April

May

Note: Ulrich's gig list has another show in Normal on 05/12. As the one on 05/06, this is an 'unconfirmed' show: I've chosen to list just the first one.

Tour statistics

Number of states visited: 18 (USA)
Number of cities visited: 27 (USA)
Max number of cities visited in one state: 3 (NY, IN)

Real playing days: 29
Days with two shows: 5
Total number of shows: 34

Max number of shows in the same state: 4 Indiana
Max number of shows in the same city: 3 Phoenix

Number of shows recorded: 12 (1 sbd)
Number of shows with long recording: 12 (1 sbd)

Repertoire

Repertoire facts, trivia and statistics
Songs frequencies and release status
Song sequencing
Lead vocalists by song
Band/tour repertoire vs other bands/tours

Everything here is based on available unofficial recordings. For this tour are in circulation only 12 tapes of the 34 known gigs, and even if most of them contains the complete performance, i believe they are not enough to have a full satisfying view of the tour. So, if I write ...in this tour Zappa played..., you should read ...in the available tapes from this tour Zappa played...'. And so on.
Disclaimer. For some reasons I've removed all punctuation (,?!) from song titles.

Repertoire facts, trivia and statistics

Shows length

Between 90 and 120 minutes.

Number of songs played in one show

Usually no more than 12-15 regular songs were played in each show. Number of songs could change on the basis of the number and length of improvised numbers.

Songs played

In the available tapes from this tour the band play 26 different "regular" songs (even if 4 of them appear in one tape only). 14 previously released and 12 previously unreleased (see the songs frequencies and release status table). One of the song played, Orange Claw Hammer, strictly belong to Captain Beefheart's repertoire more than to Zappa's one. I don't count Uncle Remus in the number of the "regular" songs played because it's clear from the listening of the only tape where it appears that it comes out of a impromptu performance and it wasn't rehearsed by the band.
The relatively little number of songs in repertoire, compared to other tours, is balanced by the constant presence, in every show, of various improvisations (see below), sometimes performed as stand-alone numbers. Beyond this, many of the more frequently played songs (A Pound For A Brown, Advance Romance, Carolina Hard Core Ecstasy, Don't You Ever Wash That Thing, Florentine Pogen) and some of the less frequent numbers (The Torture Never Stops, Chunga's Revenge) were usually lasting about ten minutes or more.
Apart from the regular songs, as usual, Zappa included various quotes of songs and classical themes during improvisations and improvised part of regular numbers. Also note that some of the Beefheart's lyric madness, regularly performed over a variable musical background, went later fixed on the Bongo Fury album.
Finally, two songs were only played for the special appearance of Jimmy Carl Black.

Most played song of the tour

Carolina Hard Core Ecstasy. Indeed other three songs (A Pound For A Brown, Stinkfoot and Velvet Sunrise) share the same number of appearances (10) in the available tapes, but Carolina is the only one of these also released (from one of the Austin gigs) in the Bongo Fury album.

Favorite opener

The available earlier tapes of the tour open up with A Token Of My Extreme but sooner the usual opening number became an instrumental improvisation followed by A Token Of My Extreme or, in the later shows of the tour, by Apostrophe. Also Camarillo Brillo has a couple of entry as the first song played (in one case after the instrumental improvisation).

Favorite 2nd song

Stinkfoot (8 times out of 12 tapes).

Last song of regular set list

The favorite closing song before the encore(s) was Florentine Pogen (on about half of the available tapes).

Favorite closer and encore items

Willie The Pimp is present on 8 tapes, always as an encore item and seven times as the very last song of the show. The other songs more often played in encores were The Torture Never Stops and Let's Make The Water Turn Black, but these songs were also performed during the "regular" portion of set lists.

Songs in which the band would probably go on various improvisations and "quoting".

Mainly A Pound For A Brown, Echidna's Arf, Don't You Ever Wash That Thing and, of course, the various scheduled stand-alone improvisations.

Improvisation modules

Different kinds of lyrics and instrumental improvisation are very frequent in this tour, I try here a sort of catalogue, but keep in mind that often things were mixed up.
• The more frequent standard improvised number comes directly from the '73-'74 band: the George Duke's (not strictly) boogie improvisation known as The Booger Man or, when improvised lyrics turned to be more related to the band's road life, The Booger Bear. This improvisation, like in the previous tours, usually starts with nearly random sounds from Duke's synth to flow to a more or less wild full blown boogie, eventually including some solos. It includes George (and often also Beefheart, Napoleon and Frank) singing / speaking some unrepeatable words. In at least one case (El Paso, May 23) the whole thing is introduced, just like it always was in '73-'74 tours, by The Hook, a very short musical snippet that originated in the Be Bop Tango section of Farther Oblivion and before, probably, from Charlie Mingus's album The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady (more about The Hook).
Usually about 5 minutes long, the band could extend this improvisation to a full half-an-hour of well controlled madness and solos (Baltimore, May 3), in another gig (New Haven, April 18) George ended up playing and singing a very irregular version of Uncle Remus. Sometimes this improvisations include as well what I call the "Beefheart's poetry corner" (see next item).
• Some gigs have a sort of "Beefheart's poetry corner". Often, but not always, after a very short version Echidna's Arf and before Don't You Ever Wash That Thing the band cool down to a very rarefied musical background and The Captain starts reciting some of his deranged lyrics (see the official released recordings section for a couple of officially released examples). In one occasion is Zappa himself to keep the "poetry corner" (he recites some of Dylan Thomas's Under Milkwood).
• Velvet Sunrise was a frequently played "regular" song, but even if the musical theme was fixed (and quite simple and repetitive) it was a main container for improvised lyrics and stories. From Foggy G's Spring '75 tour page: "This is cheesy, keyboard-led lounge music, mainly consisting of Brock's improvised lyrics and Frank telling road stories. The tune has a relaxed feel to it, beginning with Duke and Brock singing the lyrics, The Velvet Sunrise. Brock then oversings some improvised lyrics, usually dealing with events on the road, followed by Frank narrating the latest road story. This tune essentially serves the purpose of giving Brock and Frank an opportunity to spin their ridiculous stories about life on the road, like they so frequently did on the Fall '74 tour".
In other words Velvet Sunrise takes in this tour the function that was of The Booger Man / The Booger Bear and Marty's Dance Song in the 1974 fall North American tour. Note also that Marty's Dance Song appears one time even in the tapes available from this tour (Marty Perelly was the road manager of the band, and his Dance Song, on a fixed and very dramatical musical theme, was the perfect way to sum up his "romantic" adventures during the tour and, of course, make great fun out of him).
The "Having A Good Time In America" Zappa's speech on top of this page is from the El Paso performance of Velvet Sunrise.
• Often the shows of this tour open up with a instrumental improvised intro with, at the begin, a very rarefied musical background leaded by one instrument (trombone or drums or keyboards), then joined, one by one, by the rest of the band before starting the real opener song of the show. Apart from the single musician's virtuosity, usually this intro improvisations aren't very interesting and I suspect that their main use was for a very last-minute sound check.

Zappa quoting himself

Uncle Meat and Mr Green Genes are the self-quoted themes in this tour (but we have too little tapes to say this is a complete sample). 200 Years Old lyrics appears a couple of times during "Beefheart poetry corner". Also, a very "experimental" version of Uncle Remus went out of one of the improvisations.

Preferred quoted tunes

Some of the "regular" songs more frequently played in this tour include lyrics or musical theme quotations from other songs: Dobbie Brothers' Listen to The Music in Carolina Hard Core Ecstasy, Andree Williams's Bacon Fat and John Gray's All Night long in Advance Romance and a bunch of other themes in Debra Kadabra (see the complete list at García's lyrics site). Please also note the very beatles-like sound of the end of Poofter's Froth Wyoming Plans Ahead (or is it just an impression of mine?).
Lyrics quotations from All Night Long recur not only in Advance Romance and Debra Kadabra but also in various of the Beefhearts poetry improvisations. Mention of Louie Louie could not miss in some of the improvisations and it also appears in the Bongo Fury album version of Sam With The Showing Scalp Flat Top.
The only quoted classical theme detected in the tapes available from this tour is Hall Of The Mountain King from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1.

Audience participation

I've listened nearly to all the tapes from this tour and the maximum of audience participation requested by Zappa was a poll for the encore: new or old songs? Old win.

For some different info about this tour and an account of how the band approached the featured repertoire,
check Foggy G's We're Only In It For The Touring Spring '75 tour page.

Songs frequencies and release status

This table shows the frequency that every song in the tour was performed, and if songs were, at the time of the tour, already released on official Zappa's albums.
Only "regular" songs are listed. In every single square songs are ordered from the more played to the less played.
Songs in italics appear in only one tape.

The 13 previously released Zappa songs come from 8 different albums (only the records where the songs were first released are listed ):

• 3 songs each from Roxy & Elsewhere and Over-Night Sensation;
• 2 songs from Uncle Meat;
• 1 songs each form Freak Out!, We're Only In It For The Money, Hot Rats, Chunga's Revenge and Apostrophe.

1 song was previously released on Beefheart's album Trout Mask Replica (1969).

8 songs were released on 7 albums published after the tour (are listed only the albums where the songs were first released):

• 5 songs on Bongo Fury;
• 1 song each on One Size Fits All, Zoot Allures and Joe's Garage.

4 songs still remain officially unreleased (Velvet Sunrise, Portuguese Lunar Landing, George's Boogie and Marty's Dance Song).

Song sequencing

The following table shows the main sequence structures for the more frequently performed songs in this tour. Of course it is just indicative because for this tour we have only few recordings and while most of them have a recurring structure (even with some deviations), the other ones almost completely get out of the scheme below. Songs in parentheses sometimes were omitted from the main sequence. Set list deviations mostly occur at the end of the specified blocks.

Note how in this tour the band often used the A Pound For A Brown / Sleeping In A Jar segue, known since the 1968 band as The String Quartet.
Apart the original '68-'69 MOI, this particular sequence was only performed by the Flo & Eddie line-up ('70-'71 tours).

Lead vocalists by song

The following table shows who had the lead vocals on every song played in this tour.

George Duke is not listed in this table because he has no lead vocal part on the regular songs of this tour. Nevertheless he is featured on background vocals on many songs and has relevant vocal parts in the improvised sections of every show. Also, he sings the impromptu version of Uncle Remus performed in the April 18 New Haven gig.
Captain Beefheart also has lead vocal parts on the more or less impromptu lyrics recitations over appropriate instrumental improvisations by the band.

Band/tour repertoire vs other bands/tours

Disclaimer
The tables below are provisionally based on an old and not revised work I've made on Naurin set lists. As I will complete the pages for the other tours, with the new Naurin lists and/or direct tapes analysis, data will be updated and corrected.

The following table shows which songs in the repertoire of this band (that made only this tour) had been performed for the last time or for the first time by a Zappa combo. Only 1973 - 1984 bands are considered and only regular songs are listed.

The following table shows the repertoire in common between this band and the straight previous (June - Dec. '74) and following (Sept. '75 - March '76) line-ups. Only "regular" songs are listed. Songs in italics appear in only one tape from the "Bongo Fury" tour.

Officially released recordings

Zappa released 8 tracks recorded during this tour, on 2 different albums.
These tracks are all taken from the two gigs the band did at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas, May 20 & 21. Of these two gigs is unavailable any unofficial recording, so it is impossible to exactly tell in which gig every track has been recorded.

The following tables detail for every album and every track:
album track number (in case of multiple cd releases the hundreds digit refers to disc number), track title, length, note on recording ("partial" = only part of the track is from this tour; "basic track" = track is more or less heavily over dubbed), date(s) of recording (YY/MM/DD Early/Late/Unknown), notes on track / song, if the release is the first complete official release of that song (only for "regular" song).
Information about track number, title and length refer to last Rykodisc cd release.

Bongo Fury - October 1975

You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 4 - June 1991

Probably all the Bongo Fury album live tracks are edited and over dubbed, the following are the more evident cases:

• Only the second part of Muffin Man is from a live performance and even there vocals are over dubbed.
  
• Carolina Hard Core Ecstasy is heavily edited both in vocals and instrumentals parts (the live versions available on tapes always last at least 10 minutes), also, in my opinion, the record mix has Zappa vocals in more evidence than was in the real live performances.
• Debra Kadabra has obvious vocals and instrumentals over dubs.
• Sam With The Showing Scalp Flat Top and Man With The Woman Head (both credited to Van Vliet) are two samples of Beefheart's poetry performances over a rarefied improvised musical background. In particular Man With The Woman Head sounds quite over dubbed in the album mix.
  

The Torture Never Stops in YCDTOSA4 should be without any overdub, but note that the record mix fades out just before the solo section that is available in the unofficial recordings of this song from this tour.

Disclaimer
Zappa being a great "scissor master" you can be sure that many of his official released live recordings, even if don't contain over-dubs, are heavily edited, sometimes from different performances, sometimes even from different tours and bands. Information here as accurate as possible. Let me know if you know something I don't!

The Band
Itinerary and recordings
Tour statistics
Repertoire
Officially released recordings
Unofficial recordings catalogue at Zappateers

Corrections and additions are really welcome.
This page created on April 2005 and latest revised on Jan 12, 2006

Touring Can Make You Crazy