Jesus Christ, more Flo and Eddie?? For all the background you could ever need on these two losers, see my reviews for Zappa's previous three albums Chunga's Revenge, Fillmore East - June 1971, and 200 Motels. I'm tired of talking about them.
Guys like Zappa, I know their discographies like the back of my ugly, deformed hand. Even so, I try to make a point to re-listen to an extremely familiar album at least once more before finalizing one of these reviews. I couldn't bring myself to do it for Just Another Band from L.A.; I really hate the album that much. The whole Flo and Eddie era feels like one big weird wart in the Zappa catalog, and thank fucking Christ that around this time some lunatic had the good sense to push Frank off stage and cripple him for six months, temporarily rendering him unable to tour and forcing stupid Flo and stupid Eddie to fuck off and pursue their own stupid, unsuccessful endeavors! But I'd rather talk about that incident during the Waka/Jawaka album review when I'm in a better goddamn mood.
So Just Another Band from L.A. is another album of live material taken from a single show in 1971, two months after the set of concerts that made up the Fillmore East - June 1971 album. Once again, Flo & Eddie are at the forefront. Once again, the material puts a heavy focus on jokey goofin' antics and spoken word nonsense while the music itself is secondary. ONCE AGAIN, it blows chunks.
I'll start with a positive: "Billy the Mountain", as a concept, is among the most innovative and ballsy ideas Zappa ever had, and he had a lot of them. This live track, clocking in at nearly 25 minutes, tells the story of a mountain--a mountain named Billy--and the wacky hijinks as he travels--yes, travels--across the country with his wife Ethell--a tree growing out of Billy's shoulder. It sounds extremely stupid, because it is, and it's not the plot itself that I'm lauding here, because I'm absolutely not. What I can appreciate is the effort, especially since it's the effort itself that separates this album from its sister album Fillmore East - June 1971. I can appreciate the craft of the story, the twisted "Peter and the Wolf"-style fairy tale that it is. I can appreciate the guts to turn it into a stage show, and the decision to finally actually use Flo and Eddie in a way that makes sense. I can appreciate the flexibility of the story itself, which feels like a bare-bones framework with which to insert some musical and vocal improvisations at-will. This particular cut is taken from a single show, performed at UCLA, and the story is filled to the brim with local references that add a special touch. I mean, being from the midwest, all these local references fly right over my head (Rosamond, Gorman, Downey, the Jack-In-The-Box on Glenoaks, etc. etc. etc.), but it's clear to me that as the band was on tour they adjusted the song to pepper in local references whether they were in Los Angeles, or Dallas, or wherever. Effort. I like that.
BUT, this doesn't mean I enjoy "Billy the Mountain" on a gut level. I find the track to be exhausting, overlong, drab, and annoying. The hard-to-follow plot meanders quite a bit, and it's not obvious even after a few listens that the story itself is, like, a real story. One with a beginning, middle, and end. Hmmm, where's that effort that I was just singing all my praises about? Yeah yeah, OK, again, the story itself isn't the point, right? It's just a vehicle for the stage antics, fine, but...I don't know, if you're going to make a 25-minute stage show centered around an actual tale, I want a little more than just "the mountain gets royalty checks from posing for postcards, uses the money to travel the country, leaves a trail of destruction in its wake, and dodges the draft! This infuriates the military, who sends a guy named Studebacher Hoch to defeat the mountain! Hoch slathers syrup on himself to attract flies, the flies allow him to fly up to the mountain, Hoch tries to reason with the mountain, it doesn't work, and Hoch falls to his death! The moral of the story: 'A mountain is something you don't want to fuck with'. The end!" I wish I was exaggerating here, even a little. Because this track goes on for almost 25 minutes it's very difficult to not check your watch as it plods along, occasionally teasing you with interesting instrumental garnishes (descending arpeggios as Studebaker Hoch falls off Billy the Mountain) and musical allusions (snippets of the Tonight Show theme with Johnny Carson, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and Crosby, Stills, and Nash's "Judy Blue Eyes", among others) before quickly returning to Flo and Eddie's tuneless frat boy fuckery.
It's too bad, too, that nothing is salvaged on Side 2 of the record either. The remaining four tracks are a spiritual continuation of exactly what one gets on Fillmore East - June 1971 with the added bonus of EVEN MORE local Los Angeles references that no one outside of Orange County or born after 1956 will even understand. "Call Any Vegetable" is a dismal live version of the song (originally from Absolutely Free) which is pretty standard until THE FLO & EDDIE COMEDY TROUPE butts in with some dumb shit halfway through that sucks. AND FRANK ALLOWS IT. This, to me, is the most heinous disgrace. "Eddie, Are You Kidding?" is, supposedly, all about a local discount men's clothing store and the owner's constant television advertisements. Yeah, ok, that's a cool song for Fred from Warsaw, Indiana to listen to and appreciate. "Magdalena" is the SECOND SONG in the Zappa catalog that's about daughter-fuckin'. Fred from Warsaw, IN perked up a bit here! The album concludes with a sad rendition of Uncle Meat's "Dog Breath".
For a guy who spent so much of his energy working and creating, Just Another Band from L.A. and, really, any of the other Flo & Eddie material couldn't possibly have been something Frank was particularly proud of. All this stuff is oddly deprived of real music, it just feels empty and cold and unnecessary. Again, some guy basically crippled Frank a few months after this show and forced him to completely alter the trajectory of his career. I shudder to think how much longer the Flo & Eddie era could have really continued if this didn't happen. We could have gotten another 35 albums of this shit! We'll never know their sophisticated opinions on the 1979 gas crisis or the launch of MTV or the Iran-Contra Affair! Oh no!
Fuck Flo. Fuck Eddie. Fuck this completely inessential album.
SUCKS
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