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Not too long after the concert captured on the Swiss Cheese/Fire boot, the Flo and Eddie version of the Mothers played a show in London that would turn out to be that line-up's last. An idiot in the audience thought Frank was "making eyes" at his girlfriend, so he climbed up onto the stage and pushed Zappa into the orchestra pit. Frank spent several months in a wheelchair, and the Mothers were effectively disbanded. The setback didn't stop Zappa from composing though. During this time he created two big-band jazz albums that are favorites of many fans. The first to be released was Waka/Jawaka, which features the usual rock band line-up enhanced by trumpet, piccolo, flute, clarinet, sax and other instruments. There weren't as many players on this album as there would be on The Grand Wazoo, but Zappa still managed to get a big band sound from them. The album begins with the massive piece "Big Swifty", a beautiful, flowing instrumental track of fusionish jazz. I have to admit that the first time I heard the song, having next to no exposure to fusion, I though it sounded like a high school marching band gone berserk. But it grew on me quickly. Next comes "Your Mouth", a sort of offbeat blues tune, with lyrics about a guy who wants to shoot his old lady down for cheating and lying. Some people find the lyrics offensive, but they just seem like typical blues lyrics taken to an extreme. "It Just Might Be a One Shot Deal" is another vocal track with lyrics about how you should have fun while you can, because you never know when your time is going to run out. I once described the music as bluegrass, and ended up getting an angry email from a guy who informed me that my comparison of the song to bluegrass was "a very poor analogy". At any rate, the song has a country flavor and even includes a pedal-steel guitar solo. Listen closely to see if you can figure out why Zappa is credited with playing "electric springs" on this track (they're the weird little "boing" noise you can hear at two spots during the song). The CD concludes with the title track, another beautiful, lengthy jazz instrumental. Both this track and "Big Swifty" are worth the price of admission. My only complaint about the album is that it's so short - Ryko could have paired this one with the thematically similar Grand Wazoo and released them as one CD like they did with the Money/Lumpy and Apostrophe/Overnight two-fer CDs. Then again, considering how many complaints they've gotten about how those two-fers sounded, maybe it's a good thing these discs remained as separate releases. Anyway, if you're a fan of big band jazz fusion, you should definitely check out both this and The Grand Wazoo. review by Bob Eichler — 5-6-05 —

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In December of 1971, Frank Zappa was injured when he was pushed offstage during a show, causing him to be confined to a wheelchair for most of 1972. This effectively ended the "Flo and Eddie" version of Zappa's band, and briefly put on hold his interest in making jokey rock songs. Zappa spent the next year in the studio recording two albums worth of mostly-instrumental, fusion styled music that work as extensions of the ideas that Zappa explored on 1969's Hot Rats (Waka/Jawaka is sometimes even referred to as Hot Rats II, although this may have as much to do with the album cover art than anything else). Waka/Jawaka, the first of these, has four tracks, but the great majority of it is taken up by the two instrumentals "Big Swifty" and "Waka/Jawaka." I think it is an excellent album and it should be of great interest to a fan of fusion, or to a Zappa fan who never got around to hearing it. I think it's safe to say that there never previously was fusion quite like the way Zappa did it here. The first track, "Big Swifty," is a seventeen-and-a-half minute monster and it ultimately became the best-known number from the album: despite its unwieldy instrumentation, Zappa's band performed it frequently on his final tour in 1988. "Big Swifty" has its moments of inspiration taken from Miles Davis, specifically "Right Off" from A Tribute to Jack Johnson (that steely muted trumpet paired with Zappa's distorted guitar throughout much of the first half) but Zappa was trying out a "small big band" format with Waka/Jawaka and the tricky horn charts in the beginning that whip through difficult time signatures also draw comparisons to the music of Don Ellis. And Zappa's guitar is, well, Zappa's guitar; you wouldn't mistake his style for John McLaughlin's. Rather than merely a vehicle for soloing, "Big Swifty" contains a few melodic themes that resurface throughout the piece and the guitar/electric piano/trumpet trio often play around each other rather than sit out while the other guy solos. The feeling I get from this track is totally electric; everything works magnificently and is perfectly synchronized (I'm sure it must be overdubbed to hell). "Big Swifty" is unlike anything else that Zappa had recorded prior to 1972 and in my opinion it remains one of the all-time great Zappa tracks. "Waka/Jawaka," which ends the album, is another long instrumental fusion track, but this time there is much more emphasis on the horns and on soloing. Pretty much every superlative that I heaped on "Big Swifty" applies here as well. Because Zappa had used quirky horn motifs in his music on earlier albums and because there is something very "Zappa-like" about the ones used on "Waka/Jawaka, it does not quite seem as much of a departure from Zappa's previous sound as "Big Swifty." Nevertheless, Don Preston's brilliant Mini-Moog solo is the first of its kind on a Zappa album and I think it stands out as one of the great synthesizer solos of the fusion genre. Frank Zappa's guitar solo, which follows, is excellent as well. To a listener in 1972, I imagine that as the final strains of the horns faded out to end the album, he or she was left eagerly anticipating the second album of the pair. "Big Swifty" and "Waka/Jawaka" bookend two short vocal tracks (no vocals by Zappa himself, however) that are often dismissed as "filler." This makes little sense to me, since Zappa could easily have tacked another two or three minutes onto the larger pieces if he wanted to bulk the album up to proper LP length using just those tracks. So, I have to assume that "Your Mouth" and "It Just Might Be a One-Shot Deal" are on the album because he wanted them there, not just to fill space. Another criticism of these songs is that they don't "fit" with the long instrumentals. I disagree with this assessment as well: the instrumentals represent one side of jazz and the vocal tracks represent another. "Your Mouth" - a bluesy stroll making full use of the horns and sung in traditional jazz vocalist kind of way - effectively supplements the domestic issues raised in the tune made popular by Jimi Hendrix, "Hey Joe." I wouldn't call it a great song, but I certainly wouldn't say it's a throwaway either and I think it fits the album fine. I like "It Just Might Be a One Shot Deal" more, though. It's an interesting synthesis of country (via "Sneaky Pete" Kleinow's pedal steel) with the R&B of vocal jazz and it has some good lyrics, to boot. Thoughtfully existential sentiments paired with the greatest pedal steel solo I've ever heard? I'm on board. As exciting and refined as Waka/Jawaka is, Zappa would arguably display even greater skills as a larger-ensemble jazz arranger on the next album, The Grand Wazoo; indeed, this seems to be the general consensus. If you are inclined toward this kind of stuff, though, don't let the reputation of the latter album overshadow Waka/Jawaka. You definitely need both. review by Matt P. — 5-2-05 —