clvii. ZAPPA, Frank: Uncle Meat: Main Title Theme

clvii. ZAPPA, Frank (1940-1993)

Uncle Meat: Main Title Theme (1969)
FZ, guitar, percussion
Jimmy Carl Black, drums
Roy Estrada, bass
Don Preston, keyboards
Billy Mundi, drums on some pieces before he quit to join RHINOCEROS
Bunk Gardner, woodwinds
Ian Underwood, keyboards, woodwinds
Art Tripp, drums, percussion
Ruth Komanoff, marimba, vibes
(1:56)

from Uncle Meat.

I was 16 years old when Uncle Meat came out and as I put it on the turntable, I was fumbling through the nice booklet -- full of pictures of teeth for some reason -- when I noticed that Frank's handwritten lead sheet for the Main Title Uncle Meat (it was supposedly the soundtrack for a movie Frank was making -- the movie was eventually released in a different form) was neatly printed on one of the last pages.

It was the first (of many) Zappa pieces I taught myself to play and the first time I understood the sus2 chord. [I mistakenly typed in sus4 below; I meant to write sus2!]

Helsinki, Finland (1974)
The Ensemble Modern (1992)
Matteo Flori (2014) [Uncle Meat Suite]