Thing-Fish

Thing-Fish
Studio album by Frank Zappa
Released December 21, 1984
Recorded 1980 – 1984 at UMRK
Genre Progressive rock, art rock, experimental rock, hard rock
Length 90:58
Label Barking Pumpkin
Producer Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa chronology
Them or Us
(1984)		 Thing-Fish
(1984)		 Francesco Zappa
(1984)
Professional ratings
Review scores
Source Rating
Allmusic [1]

Thing-Fish is a 1984 album by Frank Zappa. Released as an "original cast recording," it is a concept album with strange characters and a bizarre story revolving around a government plot to kill African Americans and homosexuals by way of an engineered disease. This is told to us by mutant black ex-cons who are performing a musical. All lines between performance and audience are blurred, as it is a play about a play, and about some people who go to see the play, and the story behind the play.

The album's story comprises the soundtrack to an unproduced Broadway musical and contains many references to famous plays. Originally released as a triple-vinyl box set, much of the album's material originates from heavily overdubbed versions of recordings originally released on albums like Tinsel Town Rebellion, Zoot Allures, You Are What You Is, and Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch.[2]

In promotion of the album and proposed musical, a layout was prepared for Hustler magazine in 1983. Larry Flynt paid a total of $55,000 for the spread and for the Thing-Fish mask and Ob'Dewlla 'X' doll.[3] Zappa also appeared on Late Night with David Letterman to promote the musical, showing photos of the unfinished mask and doll.[4][5]

Contents

Story

The government has experimented on inmates of "San Quentin" penitentiary turning them into strange, hideous creatures known as "Mammy-Nuns". The story is narrated by The Thing-Fish, who speaks in an exaggerated Negro patois, hence his name is meant as a pun on the Amos 'n' Andy show's "Kingfish." He is ostensibly some sort of leader amongst the Mammy Nuns. This was done using a substance known as "Galoot Cologne" (cuh-LOG-nuh) which was invented by an Evil Prince (and part-time theater critic) living underneath Virginia, to get rid of selected "highly-rhythmic individj'lls" (blacks) "an' sissy-boys" (gays). Before long, members of both groups "be droppin' off like flies". Being unable to return to their original jobs (because "they nackins growin out they bodies"), the Mutant Mammy-Nuns are forced to perform in a Broadway musical about their plight. During a stage show of the Mammy-Nuns, Harry and Rhonda (your average white, middle-class couple) are invited on stage and put in chains by Mammy-Nuns and are forced to witness and perform many twisted things. At one point, the racist evil prince performs a riveting operatic number with a group of "Broadway zombies" explaining that the Mammy Nuns ending up on Broadway is a terrible thing because "all the best music on Broadway is native". Since he is a part time theatre critic, he explains his plan to write a terrible review of the work, to ensure that only traditional Broadway entertainment remains on Broadway. In "flashback" segments, we learn that as a boy, Harry briefly became homosexual after he lost all desire for intercourse with females because of the women's liberation movement, before falling in love with a rubber sex doll called "Artificial Rhonda." Harry also suffered from an addiction to sniffing glue, and was a fan of the Grateful Dead. Rhonda is impregnated by Quentin, a service station employee, the son of Quentin Robert DeNameland, a video preacher, working out of Las Vegas, Nevada. After this occurs, she gives birth to The Crab Grass Baby, who is an apparently robotic infant with a broad vocabulary and large genitalia. As rebuke for Rhonda's cheating, Harry works a brief stint as a truck-driver, running string beans to Utah. During this time, Rhonda becomes engrossed in her career, and participates in the widespread female conspiracy known as the women's liberation movement. She becomes infatuated with her job, and seems to have a severe personality disorder which leaves her split between being a stereotype of a little girl, interested in cute flowers and potpourri, and a deranged, sex-crazed brief-case fetishist. During "Briefcase Boogie" Rhonda embarks on a 7 minutes masturbation sequence during which she has sex with her briefcase, and verbally abuses her husband for being "a cocksucker" and "a worm, a fucking worm". The bizarre conclusion occurs when The Thing-Fish meets the Evil Prince, who has taken some of the Galoot Cologne in an attempt to see if he is immune to it. He is turned into what sounds like a partial Mammy Nun, as he begins speaking "de vernacuhluh". Thing-Fish and Evil Prince chat about "tater husbandry" at their old Alma Mater, and the work ends with a public service announcement against using Galoot Cologne, and a backwards rendition of the track No Not Now.

Cultural relevance

The story of the Thing-Fish surrounds the creation, presumably by the US government, of an insidious substance, which is to be added to the water supply to kill off blacks and gays. This is a reference to the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, and also gives voice to a conspiracy theory that AIDS was engineered. Racist and homophobic sentiments were common the group subject to parody by Harry and Rhonda, during this time period, and blacks and gays were an oddity, viewed as exotic, unsettling, and dangerous. Zappa created this work to harshly satire these views, as well as to take a stab at the world of Broadway which he viewed as bland, uninspired, and formulaic. This formula is discussed during the Thing Fish -- "I want faeries on a string! I want wind rushing down the plain!" -- and then as though to deliberately unsubstantiate them, bizarre, unsettling acts occur, with the disclaimer that the Mammy Nuns will have "faeries on a string for your ass just a little later".

Track listing

On the original 1986 CD issues, the tracks "The Massive Improve'lence" and "Artificial Rhonda" were at the beginning of Disc 2, rather than the end of Disc 1. The 1995 track listing is closer to the way the songs would appear in a performance of the musical, Artificial Rhonda being the end of the first act. There were two versions of the 1986 Rykodisc CD release—later pressings fix some sound quality problems and add some additional comments by Brown Moses (Johnny "Guitar" Watson) to the song "He's So Gay." The same commentary also appears on a rare EP version of "Won Ton On." Earlier pressings feature the original vinyl mixes of three tracks ("Prologue," "Harry-As-A-Boy" and "He's So Gay"), but are otherwise identical to later pressings.

Original 1984 Vinyl Release

Side one
No. Title Length
1. "Prologue"   2:56
2. "The Mammy Nuns"   3:50
3. "Harry & Rhonda"   3:36
4. "Galoot Up-Date" (Originally "The Blue Light", from Tinsel Town Rebellion (1981) 5:29
Side two
No. Title Length
1. "The 'Torchum' Never Stops" (Originally "The Torture Never Stops", from Zoot Allures (1976) 10:32
2. "That Evil Prince"   1:17
3. "You Are What You Is" (Originally "You Are What You Is", from You Are What You Is (1981) 4:31
Side three
No. Title Length
1. "Mudd Club" (Originally "Mudd Club", from You Are What You Is (1981) 3:17
2. "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing" (Originally "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing", from You Are What You Is (1981) 3:14
3. "Clowns On Velvet"   1:38
4. "Harry-As-A-Boy"   2:51
5. "He's So Gay"   2:48
Side four
No. Title Length
1. "The Massive Improve'lence"   5:07
2. "Artificial Rhonda" (Originally "Ms Pinky", from Zoot Allures (1976) 3:30
3. "The Crab-Grass Baby"   3:48
4. "The White Boy Troubles"   3:35
Side five
No. Title Length
1. "No Not Now" (Originally "No Not Now", from Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch (1982) 5:50
2. "Briefcase Boogie"   4:10
3. "Brown Moses"   3:02
Side six
No. Title Length
1. "Wistful Wit a Fist-Full"   3:53
2. "Drop Dead"   7:56
3. "Won Ton On" (Backwards version of "No Not Now", from Ship Arriving Too Late To Save a Drowning Witch (1982) 4:20

1995 Rykodisc CD Release

Personnel

Cast

Musicians

Production staff

References

  1. ^ "allmusic ((( Thing-Fish > Overview )))". www.allmusic.com. http://www.allmusic.com/album/r53174. Retrieved 2009-12-23. 
  2. ^ "Thing-Fish lyrics.". Information Is Not Knowledge. http://globalia.net/donlope/fz/lyrics/Thing-Fish.html. Retrieved 2007-11-02. 
  3. ^ "THING-FISH Online!". The First Church of APPLIANTOLOGY. http://home.online.no/~corneliu/thingfish2.html. Retrieved 2007-11-02. 
  4. ^ The David Letterman interview can be viewed on YouTube
  5. ^ Frank Zappa Videography

External links

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Tinseltown Rebellion · Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar · Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar Some More · Return of the Son of Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar · You Are What You Is · Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch · The Man from Utopia · Baby Snakes · London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. I · Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger · Them or Us · Thing-Fish · Francesco Zappa · The Old Masters, Box I · Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention · Does Humor Belong in Music? · The Old Masters, Box II · Jazz from Hell · London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. II · The Old Masters, Box III · Guitar · You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 1 · You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 2 - The Helsinki Concert · Broadway the Hard Way · You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 3
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