Track Listing

1. Debra Kadabra
2. Carolina Hard Core Ecstasy
3. Sam With The Showing Scalp Flat Top
4. Poofter's Froth Wyoming Plans Ahead
5. 200 Years Old
6. Cucamonga
7. Advance Romance
8. Man With The Woman Head
9. Muffin Man

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14388 in Music
• Released on: 2002-04-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Explicit Lyrics, Live, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

CD Description
Zappa and Beefheart were birds of a feather. Though each was fiercely individualistic, idiosyncratic and uncompromising, they both followed their own path of sophisticated wierdness so far that each was probably the only artist the other could relate to in terms of peerage. The pair had collaborated here and there many times, but BONGO FURY is their only album-length effort. Recorded at a 1975 Austin concert, this is essentially a Zappa program, with Beefheart sitting in (Zappa's monstrously talented mid-'70s band featuring Terry Bozzio and George Duke provides accompaniment). Beefheart is incapable of making a passive guest appearance, though, and his rugged, blues werewolf growl dominates the proceedings every time it appears. Compositionally, Beefheart contributes only a couple of brief tracks, but he meshes well with Zappa's arrangements and compositions. BONGO FURY is a classic example of succesful collaboration; Beefheart's rawness is contrasted nicely by Zappa and company's technical facility, andZappa's refined style is given some grit by the good Captain.

Customer Reviews

A wonderful album made in adversity
That this album should be so good belies the trouble that went into it's production.

Beefheart had hogtied himself with contractual problems and so Frank invited him out onto the road to perform and to earn some much needed cash.

The resulting tour became a nightmare, Beefheart baiting Frank onstage and arguing with him offstage. Just look at the cover. Frank glowers unhappily at the camera as the Captain hides his face beneath his hat.

In one of Frank's last television interviews you could see that he was still fairly upset by the affair. After all, he and the Captain had grown up together in Lancaster.

But out of such seeds of discontent grew an album of fine quality. Frank's exceptional production skills made this a thrilling and inventive live document that still sounds polished but raw, inventive and yet controlled.

Captain Beefheart's contributions are truly excellent, his prose and singing effortlessly meld with the wondrous performances of the band.

And this album contains what is arguably Frank's best live guitar performance.

The legendary 'Muffin Man'.

Buy it now.

Masterpiece
This is both one of Zappa's AND one of Capt. Beefheart's greatest albums. They both seem to inspire and discipline each other, and the resulting tension brings out the best in both of them. Beefheart's voice is kept within a kind of Tom Waits range, though the lyrics are of a dementia only psychoanalysts can be familiar with. The music is in Zappa's most restrained rock style, including the psychopathic country ballad "Poofter's Froth Wyoming Plans Ahead", a vitriolic attack on the commercial loin-girding and main chance-eyeing going on in the USA prior to the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations. The few songs without the Captain are disappointing in his absence, but don't let that stop you buying this seventies masterpiece, still just as thrilling today.

Brilliant live album
Rock's mad scientist and Dadaist extraordinaire team up for the first time since 1969's "Hot Rats" and deliver a totally manic, freeform, and above all, entertaining live record. The opening track "Debra Kedabra" hurls round so many musical hairpin bends it's hard to keep track of what's goin on. Every track on here sounds so fiendishly difficult to play one can only listen in awe of the skill of this incarnation of Zappa's band. It's mostly led by Zappa's overdriven guitar and the Captain's demonic growling, but with various flashes of horns and keyboards clashing with insane time signatures. It isn't without the humour which often comes with Zappa, such as in "200 Years Old" (a "celebration" of the USA's 200th birthday), or the gloriously bonkers Beefheart psycho-rant "Man with the Woman Head".

It's a shame then that such a great collaboration should have ended in an acrimonious split, leaving these two childhood friends barely speaking to each other. However, it is still a great record, despite the tensions, and contains the moment in which Zappa sealed his reputation as a guitar-wizard to equal Hendrix, in the sublime "Muffin Man".