Like Ronny's Noomies, I like the solos and some of the tunes (and that does include Billy the Mountain), but two factors made this band sound hysterically lightweight: a) Mark Volman's alto voice and thus lots of screeching and b) the conspicuous near-absence of any horns*, except when George Duke was there to provide some trombone and thus more emphasis on double keyboards: which meant, in the pre-synthesizer days, vibrato-heavy Hammond coupled with slick jazz Rhodes piano. The result sounds like a lightly psychedelic circus music with certain blues/jazz shadings.
The keyboard arrangements improved somewhat once Don Preston joined with his Minimoog. I think by the Fall 71 tour both Don and Ian were using Minimoogs. Billy The Mountain's intro was originally on clarinet, but on JABFLA it sounds like played on a synthesizer. I think this is still Ian that plays the melody, just on a different instrument. I also believe that Ian in fact does the synth-imitation of the "clarinet" for "Sofa No. 1" on YCDTOSA1, rather than really playing the electrified clarinet.
My favorite sequence of music from the F&E band can be heard on Playground Psychotics:
Status Back Baby
Concentration Moon (okay, that Sanzini Bros crap is too much, but I love the new variation added, very Hatfield & The North esque)
Mom & Dad
Intro to Music for Low Budget Orchestra (I guess this was dropped later because Bob Harris must've been a reader, unlike Preston)
Billy The Mountain
*In the summer of 1970 Ian played tenor sax for his "King Kong" solos, then in Aug/Sep he didn't play any sax solos, but by Nov 1970 he had switched over to the soprano saxophone for that one solo per night he would toss as a bone to those freaks hungry for Ian's whip-outs. 1970 was possibly also the last year he used the Maestro Woodwind effects unit, as none of his 1971 solos feature the crazy octave effects. Apparently Ian lost the soprano to the Montreux fire, as his King Kong solo on YCDTOSA3 is on the alto again. As I said, I don't think Ian used the clarinet in the Sofa Suite, but he did for the Low Budget/BTM Intro sequence in May-July 1971.
There's also
a revealing comment from FZ himself why he changed the arrangements in 1970:
Quote:
George (Duke) plays trombone on 30 or 40 per cent of the material, and I was never really satisfied with the old horns anyway. They had positive elements, but lacked good intonation within the section. They could read and feel the music, and the solos were generally good, but the ensemble sound was harsh – the ‘bugs’ were put through acoustic amps so it was always a little brash. Amps can alter the feeling so much: if we’d put the horns through Marshalls, it would have been completely different.
So basically FZ wasn't happy with the Gardners/Underwood horn section. Which of course, to some, basically defines the 1968-69 Mothers. I certainly quite dig that "abrasive" horn sound, Soft Machine's "Noisette" CD also featured similar fuzzy sax texture. But I can realize why both Zappa as well as Soft Machine saxophonist Elton Dean must've hated the results of "bugging" the saxes up. By 1973 FZ was capable of amplifying the band's horns better via Barcus Berry pick-up systems. I also wonder if FZ thought that Ian was more reliable as a pianist and an occasional sax soloist rather than as an ensemble horn player.
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