And for today's episode of "Waiting for the return of Zappateers" we present you a recently surfaced vintage recording. It's always amazing when something previously unknown surfaces, especially when it's something so rare and vintage. Unfortunately it proved to be a bit of a mess and there was a two years gap between the surfacing and the public circulation of this recording. The original info file contained some of that information but thanks to some other Zappateers more came to the surface. I'd like to thank them all for contributing but with the website unavailable and the page not archived on Web Archive I can't remember who posted what. I'm sorry. If you read this speak out.

- The tape itself is either a stage recording or a Dick Kunc two-track mix tape. The way the tape sounds is similar to the Stage recordings but the vocals are audibile and so is the audience and they are poisitioned in a way that's similar to the official releases;

- Whoever copied this sometimes pressed the fastforward button with the results you can imagine. The tape used also seems to be rather damaged: one of the channels is more muffled during parts of the recordings and side B (starting from the tape flip in the middle of "Some Ballet Music") has tape bleed from a previous recording at double speed. If not for these nuances, this tape would sound great;

- This recording is very likely a combination of various recordings but it's now impossible to tell which is which and how much from this actually comes from Birmingham. The first four tracks sound different than the rest of the recordings. Track #1 and track #2 match with fragments from "King Kong" and "Sleeping in A Jar" on the so called 1969 08 08 Framingham tape. However, that tape too is likely a mixture of two different shows and the reel of it that was ripped and seeded to Zappateers had the words "Town Hall" written on it. To make things more complicated, this is apparently a different mix of that material. Tracks 4-6 match with a section of the 1969 08 02 Highland Park audience tape, which contains "Redneck Eats", "Passacaglia Medley" (the one from which "Sunshine of Your Love" comes from and "The Orange County Lumber Truck" medley. Of course that audience tape sounds very poor and here it's from the stage but both sources contain material exclusive to each other. Another clue that most of this recording is from August is the presence of "Status Back Baby": on the 1969 07 08 Boston tape Frank mentions that the last time they had played that song was in Boston a year before. There aren't any other known recordings of that song between March 1968 and July 1969.

- The title-track from "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" is credited to be recorded in Birmingham at this date but it's not present here. None of what's here matches with anything officially released either on the discography or on "Beat the Boots".

So, as you can see, this one is a big giant mess that can't be completely sorted for now. In the meantime, enjoy it: aside from the weird tape speed crap going on, this recording has a lot to offer. Who knew the music for "Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up" had been around since at least 1969?

- Galeans/JacoZappa on dimeadozen,
October 2020