In Frank We Trust

Tom Mulhern: Maybe they mistook you for Duane Allman.
Frank Zappa: Oh sure they did. People do all the time.

Ferrying Nora to the record store this afternoon I scored myself. There were times when Frank Zappa had to just torch the place, to show that he could do the straight up guitar thing. One of my favorites is the Illinois Enema Bandit, another is Muffin Man ("Good night, Austin, Texas, wherever you are."). Today, I picked up Them or Us for cheap, which includes what the Rykodisc catalog rightly characterizes as "a straight-faced cover of the Allman Brothers' `Whippin' Post.'" The story goes that Zappa was playing in Helsinki when some guy in the audience yelled out, in ragged English, "Whipping Post". Frank was disappointed at the time that the bad couldn't just rip it out, so they made a point of adding it to their repertoire. The later were, in fact, able to rip it out. Plenty of other great guitar playing on the album, and do-whop.

Posted by John Fleck at May 24, 2003 05:56 PM