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The guys from Steely Dan agreed - when they were inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, instead of giving a speech, they asked questions of the audience that seemed to be of importance to them, the first being, "Who was the original drummer for The Mothers of Invention?"
They got the correct answer from the crowd - the name and sobriquet of the man who played some tasty and difficult drums for Zappa at the start, keeping Zappa grounded in bar band rock while additional conservatory-trained percussionists (including Arthur Dyer Tripp and Billy Mundi) took on the more experimental parts, and who was the most iconic presence in the group apart from Zappa himself.
And now Jimmy Carl Black, The Indian of the Group, original drummer for The Mothers of Invention, has passed away on November 1.
Jimmy Carl is probably best known and loved for his portrayal of Burt, the Redneck, tormentor of The Mothers, in Zappa's film 200 Motels, from 1971. Here's his big musical number, "Lonesome Cowboy Burt," with a bit of the following scene with Theodore Bikel as Rance Muhammitz, who may or may not be The Devil (and while I thank the person who uploaded this, I can't believe they cut the scene one line short of the best punchline!):
(the next line, from Burt, is "You got many friends that call you Opal the Hot Little Bitch?")
Jimmy Carl, Indian of the Group, we will miss you.
In looking for that clip above, I found a whole bunch of excerpts from 200 Motels on YouTube (the film is long out of print on VHS and there's no DVD), so for those who haven't seen this mangled, difficult, deeply flawed, something-like-a-masterpiece, I've included the clips in the cut below. I'm glad to have them in postable form, but the quality is somewhat variable, sorry.
The film is the story of how touring in a rock and roll band can make you crazy, as The Mothers reach a new town, Centerville, just like all the other towns they've been in as they've stayed in 200 motels across America. The band is beginning to fragment - all of them beginning to hate playing Zappa's weird "comedy" music (which doesn't help them get any groupie action) and wanting to instead play some "heavy blues." They're also tired of Zappa secretly recording their conversations and then using it as material for his songs and for the movie he's writing (which is indeed where much of the dialogue comes from). Now, in Centerville, the band has reached the breaking point.
The film was shot on a large soundstage in England, on video, with a giant cartoony set representing the town and four groups of performers - The Mothers; actors; dancers; a symphony orchestra and choir - performing simultaneously in different areas of the stage.
They had less than a week and very little money to shoot it on, and only wound up filming a third of Zappa's dense script. Then, in the editing (for which two weeks were allowed), the story was made even less intelligible. There were outtakes, but the studio unfortunately decided to erase the master tapes to make a little money selling them back as blank stock(!).
However, what there is left is a collection of beautiful, bizarre parts that don't quite come together. I love it.
( 200 MOTELS - in the TOTALITY of its PAGAN SPLENDOR! )
