Sunday, December 27, 2020

The Mothers Of Invention - Red Tubular Lighter (1970)

The 1970 line-up of the Mother Of Invention is rightly regarded as one of the best there has been, consisting as it did of Aynsley Dunbar (drums), George Duke (piano/keys/trombone), Ian Underwood (organ/keys/guitar), Jeff Simmons (bass/vocals) and Flo & Eddie aka Howard Kaylan (vocals), and Mark Volman (vocals/percussion). Flo & Eddie were still part of The Turtles, and so performed under aliases to skirt contractual limitations of performing under their own names. This version of The Mothers came to an end in January 1971 when Simmons quit the band during the making of the '200 Motels' movie. While this line-up toured extensively, they only recorded one album, 'Chunga's Revenge', although they did visit London-based Trident Studios on June 21-22 1970 with a young, unknown engineer by the name of Roy Thomas Baker, several years before he’d go on to have massive success working with Queen, The Cars and Alice Cooper. Here they recorded a number of mostly instrumental pieces, some of which were later used on other albums, but most of which have remained unreleased until they surfaced on the recent 'Mothers 1970' archive release. Two months later they reconvened at Whitney Studios in Glendale, and laid down some vocals tracks, which would later be used as part of their live shows under the collective name of 'The Opera', with Flo & Eddie performing skits as well as singing (three of these later turned up on the '200 Motels' soundtrack album). By taking  the best of both recording sessions we can make up an album of great music recorded by this stellar line-up of the band in 1970. I've made a few edits, such as combining 'Lola Steponsky' and 'Giraffe', as they both used the same melody, and trimming some of the longer tracks which went on a bit too long, as I felt that there was an overabundance of drum solos on the London recordings. These instrumental pieces now slot very nicely between the 'Opera' tracks from Glendale, making a remarkably cohesive album considering the different style of music recorded at each studio.    



Track listing

01 What Will This Morning Bring Me This Evening?
02 Red Tubular Lighter
03 What Kind Of Girl Do You Think We Are?
04 B'Wana Dik
05 Item 1
06 Envelopes
07 Latex Solar Beef
08 Daddy, Daddy, Daddy    
09 Lola Steponsky's Giraffe
10 Magic Fingers               
11 Wonderful Wino
12 What Will This Evening Bring Me This Morning?       


For anyone who wants to burn this collection to a CD, SmithWorksGrafx has designed some groovy artwork for the back cover. 


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