Weasels Ripped My Flesh

Released: August 1970

Tracklist

  1. Didja Get Any Onya?
  2. Directly From My Heart To You
  3. Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Sexually Aroused Gas Mask
  4. Toads Of The Short Forest
  5. Get A Little
  6. The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue
  7. Dwarf Nebula Processional March & Dwarf nebula
  8. My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mamma
  9. Oh No
  10. The Orange County Lumber Truck
  11. Weasels Ripped My Flesh

Line-up
Frank Zappa (lead guitar, vocals), Ian Underwood (alto sax), Bunk Gardner (tenor sax), Motorhead Sherwood (baritone sax and snorks), Buzz Gardner (trumpet, flugel horn), Roy Estrada (bass and vocal), Jimmy Carl Black (drums), Art Tripp (drums), Don Preston (piano, organ, electronic effects), Ray Collins (vocals on ‘Oh No’), Don “Sugar Cane” Harris (electric violin and vocal on ‘Directly from my heart to you’), Lowell George (rhythm guitar and vocal on ‘Didja Get Any Onya?’)

17 thoughts on “Weasels Ripped My Flesh”

  1. when i first got this album, i didn’t really like it. years and an ever-growing zappa collection later, i am still not a big fan. sadly, only a fair rating.

  2. The album’s great! Great melodies, great guitar solos and great old Mothers improv/compositions.

  3. How can this disc lose? A great blues classic, the best version of Oh No, Dwarf Nebula and an explanation of xenochrony!

  4. I’ve always loved Suger Cane Harris’ violin work on “Directly…” and the instrumental arrangements in “Oh No.” Great Mothers’ Album.

  6. Great album. Love “My Guitar” & “Directly” and Sugar Cane Harris. And as usual, the rest ain’t bad either!

  7. Frustrating release. Very far from Burnt Weeny Sandwich’s standards : too few melodies and too many half-baked ideas. The impro/comedy of our beloved 60’s Mothers is better documented on Ahead of Their Time. Still, I guess it’s worth the buy as nowhere else do we find them playing those Stravinsky-like patterns many would mistake for latter-day Mothers.

  8. Extracted from an unreleased ten (or 12 or whatever) record set, this album is really a compilation of live and studio material by the late 1960s Mothers. It is an eclectic collection of Avant garde jazz, noise, R&B covers and straight ahead guitar rock jamming that I find very entertaining and is one of my favorites.

  9. For me this album signifies my rebelious youth. When I first heard peices from the LP I was not impressed, but I persevered, after hearing Rat Tomago I was craving more (little did I know that there WAS more, MUCH more..) My favarites are The Toads…and Orange County Lumbar Truck, of which I was deighted to hear the full version on “Ahead of Their Time” (which indeed they were!!) To sum up, this is a technicaly superb and innovative album with some incredible harmonies and a sence of humour that will have you in stitches. Heeeeeeeeeeeyy!!

  11. “Weasels…” is always lumped in (without any “gravy”, heh heh) with “Burnt Weeny…” as the only two legitimate post-early Mothers compilation albums, which it is, although “Weasels…” is much more all-over-the-place, while “Burnt Weeny…” is much more of a stretch-out and settle-in kind of extended collection. The average length of the pieces on “Weasels…” is much shorter than on “Burnt Weeny…”, but the stylistic variation is far greater and more impressive, with oodles of musical “left turns” that can either completely baffle the listener, or completely engage and fascinate. Being a Zappa nut, I found myself immediately in the latter category. Some of the pieces harken back to the “Uncle Meat”/electric chamber group approach, like “Toads of the Short Forest”, etc….Frank’s remarkable ability to write lyrically insightful and yet musically fascinating pieces are extremely well represented by the coupling of “Oh No” and “The Orange County Lumber Truck”, which can cause me goosepimples in its expansive, rich beauty (particularly Roy Estrada’s full, rich bass part). The original, early Mothers were truly a formidable group that covered so many multi-levels (dadist presentation, 20th century compositions, doo-wop pastiches, political commentary, smokin’ improvisations, Cage-like instant composition at-the-moment), it is quite easy for the casual listener to fail to “get” any or all of the above at any one listen. Like all great art (and artists, make no mistake, the members of the original Mothers were just as much artists as Frank’s ideas, compositions and leadership), this kind of primitive “multi-media/working-on-several-levels” presentation stands up to hundreds of listens, even if no one can ever go back to the Garrick Theater in New York in this day and age to witness “Pigs and Repugnants” anymore. Suffice to say, “Weasels…” is a fitting and wonderful audio document of what was one of the most innovative, powerful and important musical groups of all time. To quote the cover, “GRRRRRRRRRR!!”

  12. “Weasels” was one of the first Zappa albums I bought. “Get A Little” has to be one of the all time greats!

  13. Perhaps the most striking thing about this album is how shows how “experimental” the original Mothers could be in concert. “Didja Get Any Onya?,” “Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Sexually Aroused Gas Mask,” the second half of “Toads of the Short Forest,” “The Orange County Lumber Truck” and the title track are decidedly ODD works, and it’s hard to imagine another Rock Band who could pull of such madness on stage.

    Let me not forget the extraordinary vocals by Sugarcane Harris on “Directly From My Heart to You.” It’s a stunner! And “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama” is one of Frank’s best singing efforts.

    I’m very fond of this one.

  14. my first fz album…still one of my favorites…worth it just for the great lowell george guitar work on did ya get any onya…

  15. This was my very first Zappa/Mothers album.
    I got it from one of my High School teachers. He had copied a bunch of music he thought I would like. This was one of them. When I first heard it in 1991 I was like eh, what is this?
    I couldn’t, at the time get my mind around it.
    I went back to my crappy hair metal bands.
    A few months later, I picked it up again because I loved the song titles, and thought I’d give it another go. Still didn’t exactly click, but I liked it enough to buy some other albums.
    Today, 15 years later, I can say I do love this album, though it is not in my top ten.
    Great Mothers disc, to be sure. Especially this run of songs
    Toads Of The Short Forest
    Get A Little
    The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue
    Dwarf Nebula Processional March & Dwarf nebula

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