Chunga's Revenge
| Chunga's Revenge | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
||||
| Studio album by Frank Zappa | ||||
| Released | October 23, 1970 | |||
| Recorded | July 5, 1969 - August 29, 1970 at TTG Studios, Los Angeles; Trident Studios, London; The Record Plant, Los Angeles; Whitney Recording Studios, Glendale, California; The Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis | |||
| Genre | Progressive rock, jazz fusion, comedy rock, hard rock | |||
| Length | 40:22 | |||
| Label | Bizarre/Reprise | |||
| Producer | Frank Zappa | |||
| Frank Zappa chronology | ||||
|
||||
| Singles from Chunga's Revenge | ||||
|
||||
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| Robert Christgau | C+ |
| Rolling Stone | (unfavorable) |
Chunga's Revenge is the third solo album by Frank Zappa, released on October 23, 1970. Zappa's first effort of the 1970s marks the first appearance of former Turtles members Flo & Eddie on a Zappa record, and signals the dawn of a controversial epoch in Zappa's history. Chunga's Revenge represents a shift from both the satirical political commentary of his 1960s work with The Mothers of Invention, and the jazz fusion of Hot Rats.
The title is based on a small, industrial Gypsy vacuum cleaner. A "chunga" was a mutated individual of the sort Zappa depicted in such songs as "the Idiot Bastard Son." The term was coined by Dan O'Brien, a teenaged Zappa admirer, for the effects of the Hiroshima atomic bomb on later generations.
The material presented on Chunga's Revenge is eclectic: side one includes a guitar jam ("Transylvania Boogie"), a bluesy amble ("Road Ladies"), a jazz interlude ("Twenty Small Cigars") and an avant garde live improvisation ("The Nancy and Mary Music") drawn from "King Kong" and other songs from a July 1970 Mothers performance. Several poppy numbers ("Tell Me You Love Me", "Would You Go All the Way?", "Rudy Wants to Buy Yez a Drink", "Sharleena") appear on the second side along with the improvisational title track.
"Twenty Small Cigars" was drawn from the Hot Rats sessions from summer 1969. "Transylvania Boogie" and "Chunga's Revenge" come from the early 1970 period where Zappa performed with a band informally known as "Hot Rats," including Ian Underwood, Don "Sugarcane" Harris, Max Bennett and Aynsley Dunbar. Also from this period is "The Clap," a short multitracked percussion piece with Zappa as the only musician. The vocal tracks all deal with the subject of sex and/or groupie encounters and as Zappa notes on the sleeve of both the vinyl and CD, are a preview of the then forthcoming 200 Motels film/album, and date from the summer of 1970 after the formation of the new Mothers of Invention lineup.
...
Wikipedia