Weasels Ripped My Flesh

Weasels Ripped My Flesh
Cover art by Neon Park
Live album with studio elements by The Mothers of Invention
Released	August 10, 1970
Recorded	December 1967 – August 1969
Genre	Jazz fusion, experimental rock, avant-garde
Length	43:03
Label	Bizarre/Reprise
Producer	Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa chronology
Weasels Ripped My Flesh (1970) Fillmore East – June 1971 (1971)
Alternative covers
German album cover
2 Originals of the Mothers of Invention

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
Robert Christgau	(B+)
Piero Scaruffi	(8/10)

Weasels Ripped My Flesh is a live album with studio elements by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention, released in 1970. It is the second posthumous Mothers album released after the band disbanded in 1969, preceded by Burnt Weeny Sandwich. In contrast to its predecessor, which predominately focused on studio studio recordings of tightly arranged compositions, Weasels Ripped My Flesh largely consists of live recordings, and is song-oriented.

Album information

Given Zappa's already stated penchant for expressing his music in "phases"—We're Only in It for the Money was written up as "phase one of Lumpy Gravy"—conceptually, Zappa fans occasionally label this album Phase Two of Burnt Weeny Sandwich. Both albums consist of previously unreleased Mothers tracks released after Frank Zappa disbanded the original group in 1969. Whereas all but one of the pieces on Burnt Weeny Sandwich have a more planned feel captured by quality studio equipment, five tracks from Weasels Ripped My Flesh capture the Mothers on stage, where they employ frenetic and chaotic improvisation characteristic of avant-garde free jazz. The album's much-discussed closer and title track consists of every player on stage producing as much noise and feedback as they can for two minutes. An audience member is heard yelling for more at its conclusion. The All-Music Guide concludes that the track is "perfectly logical in the album's context." The album also contains Don "Sugarcane" Harris's straight-ahead blues violin and vocal performance of "Directly From My Heart to You" (which is actually an outtake from the sessions for the Hot Rats album).

The CD version of the album features different versions of "Didja Get Any Onya?" and "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask", which featured music edited out of the LP versions. Some of this extra music was used (in a different studio recording) as the backing track for "The Blimp" on the Captain Beefheart album Trout Mask Replica, produced by Frank Zappa.

Album cover

September 1956 cover to Man's Life magazine

1953 Schick electric shaver ad

Frank Zappa recruited artist Neon Park to create a subversive image based on a cover story from the September 1956 issue of Man's Life, a Men's adventure magazine. After showing Neon a copy of the magazine, Zappa inquired, "This is it. What can you do that's worse than this?" Neon's answer was to craft a parody of an advertisement for Schick brand electric razor based on the "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" theme. The record company released the album despite its reservations about the album cover.

The Man's Life cover had been given to Zappa by a youthful acolyte, Dan O'Brien, who had acquired it from his brother, a musician and aspiring Zappa protege who had found it during his day job at a pornographic publishing house. Dan also was the originator of the term "chunga" which he had used in a song to describe mutants after the Hiroshima blast.^{[citation needed]}

German releases of the album featured an album cover showing a metal baby caught in a rat trap. This cover was not approved by Zappa.

Burnt Weeny Sandwich and Weasels Ripped My Flesh were also reissued together on vinyl as 2 Originals of the Mothers of Invention, with the original covers used as the left and right sides of the inner spread, and the front cover depicting a pistol shooting toothpaste onto a toothbrush.

Reception

Contemporary reviews of the record call it "far-out" (Billboard, August 29, 1970) and a "random collection of editing room snippets recorded at the Mothers' concerts" (Rolling Stone, October 1, 1970). Now placed in its historical context, modern reviewers tend to appreciate it more critically. A typical example of such appreciation is Christgau's Record Guide (from 1981), which grades the album a B+. In a retrospective review, Allmusic gave it 4.5 stars out of 5, calling it a "fascinating collection", and stating that "Zappa's anything-goes approach and the distance between his extremes are what make Weasels Ripped My Flesh ultimately invigorating" In his book Viva Zappa!, Dominique Chevalier wrote that the album is "one of Zappa's most aggresivley bizarre works, full of cross-references to free jazz and modern classical musicians such as Luciano Berio. He also said that the best piece was undoubtedly "Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue", calling it "the cleverest tribute that could have been paid to him".

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Frank Zappa except where noted. 

Side 1
No.	Title	Recorded	Length
1.	"Didja Get Any Onya?"	March 2 1969, Philadelphia Arena, Philadelphia	3:42
2.	"Directly From My Heart To You" (Richard Wayne Penniman)	July 1969, TTG Recording Studios, Hollywood	5:16
3.	"Prelude to the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask"	October 25 1968, Royal Festival Hall, London	3:47
4.	"Toads of the Short Forest"	August 1969, Whitney Studios, Glendale and February 7–8, 1969, Thee Image, Miami	4:47
5.	"Get a Little"	February 13 1969, The Factory, New York	2:31

Side 2
No.	Title	Recorded	Length
6.	"Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue"	June 1969, A&R Studios, New York	6:52
7.	"Dwarf Nebula Processional March & Dwarf Nebula"	December 1967-February 1968, Apostolic Studios, New York	2:12
8.	"My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama"	February 1969, Criteria Studios, Miami and August–September 1969, T.T.G. Studios, Hollywood	3:32
9.	"Oh No"	December 1967-February 1968, Apostolic Studios, New York	1:45
10.	"The Orange County Lumber Truck"	October 25 1968, Royal Festival Hall, London	3:21
11.	"Weasels Ripped My Flesh"	May 30 1969, Town Hall, Birmingham	2:08

Notes:

• "Didja Get Any Onya?" is 6:51 on the CD version and incoperates 'Charles Ives', 'The Jelly' and 'The Blimp' written by Don Van Vliet.
• "Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue" pays tribute to (and is played in the style of) Eric Dolphy, an american avant-garde jazz musician.

Personnel

• Frank Zappa – lead guitar, vocals
• Jimmy Carl Black – drums
• Ray Collins – vocals
• Roy Estrada – bass, vocals
• Bunk Gardner – tenor saxophone
• Lowell George – rhythm guitar, vocals
• Don "Sugarcane" Harris – vocals, electric violin
• Don Preston – organ, electronic effects
• Buzz Gardner – trumpet and flugel horn
• Motorhead Sherwood – baritone saxophone, snorks
• Art Tripp – drums
• Ian Underwood – alto saxophone

Production

• Producer: Frank Zappa
• Art Direction: John Williams
• Cover art: Neon Park
• Photography: John Williams
• Digital art: Bob Stone

Charts

Album - Billboard (North America)

Year	Chart	Position
1970	Pop Albums	189