Mystery Disc 1987
Bleeding Romeo, RTC and
Yamaha Hurricane
Tracklisting:
A-side
Bleeding
Romeo
1: Zoot Allures
2: R.R. (Improvisation Montana)
3: King Kong
4: Trouble everyday
5: Strickly Genteel
Yamaha
Hurricane
6: Little House I used to live in
B-side
R.T.C.
1: Brown shoes don't make it
2: Revised music for low budget studio
3: Uncle meat variations
4: Let's make the water turn black
5: King Kong
Yamaha
Hurricane
6: Absolutely free
Dear visitors, here is the story behind
the album.
For years and years I organized Zappa convention
days in Eindhoven and later in Europe.
When I started this in 1983 it was as a protest because
you hardly could hear Zappa music on the radio
and even less in concerts or in bars.
The fist time I called the 12 hour
show
"Let's drink some beer and hear......FZ"
And more then 400 people showed up.
Great start and the following years it became
bigger and bigger and more difficult to find
interesting stuff, good bands or video's.
Also there came only few reactions
for help
to run the show or material to show in the shows
and the people became only interested in the market.
The last thing that happened and made me stop
doing the shows was the fact that the fans became
older and boring and many of them lost their R & R soul.
In every show I added new elements
and beside the
normal performances, sideshows and video's, I tried
different musicians and other experiments in the Zappa field.
OK, now the album. I made 1200 pieces and 800 were
enclosed with the entrance ticket for the show. 200 for the
press and 200 for the people who played and helped with it.
I paid the album with putting advertisement
on the back and
some money from the entrance ticket which was about 6 dollars.
On the black market I saw prices already above 20 dollars.
The cover:
Was made by a guy I met in a pub. He just made the drawing
the rest like lay out etc, I did myself.
Drawing by: Herman van Ven
Backside:
To finance the album I asked a lot of organizations and
cofeeshops and others to advertise on the back cover.
A little bit strange that softdrugs paid for this, knowing
that Zappa didn't like it. Also the BUMA charged you
different if you use advertising, so for the promo's I gave
to Zappa and the BUMA a special prepared cover without
the advertising. Everybody was happy with this solution.
Label:
The organization where the event found place didn't
want to use their name on the label, so I put some of
my kids on the label and called it GUS records.
My 2 daughters above
My son and his halfbrother.
Info sheet:
Included in the album was a n info sheet but only in Dutch.
I'm to lazy to translate it but I'll put some pictures of it below.
First a picture of
Bleeding Romeo
Bleeding Romeo was mostly the main attraction of the Zappa
days.
A band formed by Marko Witte with many different members and
with me mostly as light man, sound man, road manager and roadie.
I still have hours and hours of live recordings from them, because
they played mostly 2 hours shows or even 3 hours or longer.
It was the Zappaband for rockers and freaks. You had to drink
and/or smoke to get in the mood, like the band did. They use
nearly the first side of the album and it is rocking' and roiling'.
Trouble every day is one of the songs that we thought it was
the worst. All instruments played by Marko and sung by Marianne.
The rest is by the band showed on the picture above.
Yamaha Hurricane
No picture of this man. No other information is there
to find.
The first year he played 10 songs and the public was like in
a concert building, you could hear a mouse walking.
The second year he played 14 songs and he was sitting
behind a big video screen on which I showed animation
pieces from 200 motels and some clay animation.
The third year he only played 1 number of 30 minutes.
The piano was connected with the light show and Yamaha
mixed all the numbers together like Zappa did.
RTC
Their music is not my cup of beer, but there also pieces
of Zappa I'm not really crazy about. Niek, a member of the
band started with others, also the one and only great fan magazine
The Black Page.