An unforgettable experience

Here’s a partial transcription of an article published almost 50 years after The Mothers of Invention concerts at The New Penelope, in January 1967. Juan Rodriguez, Rock journalist and editor of Pop-See-Cul music magazine, recounts his first encounter with the band. The article was published in Montreal Gazette newspaper, on January 19, 2013:

Frank Zappa brought the Mothers of Invention to the New Penelope Club, at the corner of Sherbrooke and Bleury St., in January 1967, for a two-week stand, the likes of which the town had never seen. Dada theatre and musique concrète tossed in with greasy R&B and rock and jazz. They threw stuff, rubber chickens, food, at themselves and the audience, and lasciviously pawed an inflatable doll. Zappa not only played guitar, sang and acted as master of bizarre ceremonies, but he conducted his motley Mothers orchestra-style, with swift assured arm waving, sudden stabs of a finger, the curl of a pinkie: this just wasn’t done in rock music at the time. (I was fascinated, hooked; others are turned off by his “arrogance.”) (…)

His grim ambivalence towards the ‘60s generation, and the hype behind “hip” in general, marked his entire career. Frank had ferocious deep brown eyes that could bore a hole through yours like lasers. You were supposed to tremble in fear of his legendary “put-down” – a big concept in alt circles in the 60s – but I found him exceedingly polite. He wore construction boots and marched like a man on a mission, or at least a little like Groucho Marx. (…)

I listened with rapt attention as they spritzed cool L.A. buckshot cultural eclecticism – about Stravinsky, about how Freak Out (rock’s first double-album and “concept” work) was the first underground record sold in Los Angeles supermarkets (“right near the check-out”), about outlasting the Beatles, about Edgar Varèse, the neglected French-American inventor of musique concrète whom Zappa quoted on album covers (“The present day artist refuses to die!”), about how damned cold it was, about wishing they were in L.A. I summoned up the nerve to show him some of my scribblings, and he dutifully said, ‘Keep up the good work.’ Made my day, never forgot it. (And I have remained an unrepentant Zappa-phile ever since.)