Interviews with Jimmy Carl Black

Part One

Grand Hotel, Oslo. 23 January 2007 (8 PM and on)
By Calvin Krogh

CK: So, you just arrived in Oslo?

JCB: Right. Five o'clock. The plane was two hours late from Germany and it didn't... I don't know what happened.

CK: You live in Germany?

JCB: Yah. Near Munich.

CK: OK. How long have you been living there?

JCB: I've been in Germany for fifteen years. A long time. I don't speak German, but...

CK: Still not..?

JCB: Nah, man. You can't teach old dogs new tricks.

CK: No... Why did you decide to move there?

JCB: Well, I wanted to... I've always liked Germany. The first time I came there was with Zappa in 68, and I thought it was a beautiful place. And so I wanted to, I always wanted to live there, so I moved there...

CK: Just did it..?

JCB: Yah. I enjoy it. Lovely place.

CK: What are you doing when you're not in Norway recording with Jon Larsen?

JCB: I'm gonna be on tour on the forth of... On the fourth of February I go on tour with Eugene Chadbourne, in Switzerland, Italy... Italia, and Croatia.

CK: Hm... I just read about Eugene Chadbourne, I'm not familiar with his music.

JCB: Well, I'm gonna give you a... gonna give you our new CD when we go back upstairs.

CK: OK. What is it? Is it blues or rock, or..?

JCB: No. (Laughs) It's... we do a lot of free jazz festivals. That kind of music, it's experimental music. But it isn't experimental. We do some blues, we do country... some country music. He plays banjo, he's a real good banjo player. But it's real psychedelic.

CK: Sounds good...

JCB: Yes, it is. It's interesting music.

CK: You don't get bored easily?

JCB: I never get bored playing with him. And people seem to like it, man. You know... we played here in Oslo. The Jack & Jim Show... in 1993. We played at the Cosmo... Cosmopolitan? Is that the name of the place?

CK: Ehm... I'm not sure. There's a place called something like Cosmopolit or...

JCB: Yeah, something like that. So I played that place once with The Grandmothers and once with Chadbourne.

CK: Hm... You...

JCB: We just played the Kronberg Festival three years ago. Jazz festival.

CK: With a good response?

JCB: Excellent, man! Excellent response. We have a keyboard player that plays with us now. Sometimes it's a du... on this particular tour it's gonna be a duo. But a lot of times the keyboard player, a guy from England named Pat Thomas... Really good player.

CK: And you play the drums, then?

JCB: I play drums in that band. Drums and singing.

CK: I checked out youtube, tried to search for "Jimmy Carl Black" on there, and I found a few videos. It was The Muffin Men.

JCB: Yeah...

CK: You tour a lot with Zappa cover bands?

JCB: Well, that's... The Muffin Men, I... Have you ever heard the Muffin Men?

CK: Just on the Internet, on those clips.

JCB: Because they're really not a... I wouldn't call them a cover band at all. They play Zappa music, but they definitely play it their way. They use Zappa music as a vehicle, you know, the beginning, the end... everything else in the middle is theirs.

CK: Yeah. I noticed that they had a song that was a mix between a Beatles song and a... I don't remember which Zappa song, but it was strange.

JCB: Yah. It's good, man. It's a lot of fun playing with these guys. I've been with them for, since they... twelfth year. Thirteenth year I've been with them.

CK: You tour every year?

JCB: Every year. Twice a year. In fact, in April I go to England to do the tour in England. And then in the fall time, we do the tour in Germany, Netherlands and... I wish we could come up here, man. It's where we need to play... Scandinavia.

CK: Yah. It'd probably be fun.

JCB: It'd be great, man. Its, you know, we don't have an agent up here. We need to find an agent, somebody that can put together a little tour up here. As part of the German tour. Maybe only five or six dates, in Norway, Sweden and...

CK: Finland..?

JCB: ...and Denmark. No, Finland is really difficult, man. You got the ferry and... have to take the ferry across. But we could play... we can play in Denmark and we take the ferry across at Malmo, and then we can drive and play Gothenburg and then come over here, and back across and play a couple of other gigs and then to Stockholm, back down to Malmo and OK. It could work.

CK: Hm... You just need someone to put it together.

JCB: It needs to be put together, right...

CK: It seems that you keep yourself busy.

JCB: Well, I'd like to retire, man. I'm gonna be 69 on February the First. My birthday is coming up next week. And man, I'm tired. I've got leukemia, so you know I'm not in the best of health. I mean, my health is OK, but it's not the best it's ever been. And I'm getting old and I'm getting tired of being on the road.

CK: What's been keeping you on the road for all these years?

JCB: Well, I'm trying to earn a living, you know. I don't have any money, man. Got no money from Zappa. We never got anything from that. Mothers of Invention.

CK: I heard a radio documentary one time, where you were... you were one of the people who was interviewed, and I just remember you said that he told you that you would become rich and famous, and...

JCB: Well, that's what he said, if we'd play his music. We played his music, we became famous, but we damn sure didn't become rich. He did.

CK: Yea... When you were the Soul Giants, right..?

JCB: In the beginning.

CK: Then you met Zappa, and...

JCB: Well, we needed a guitar player and we auditioned Zappa. He had to audition for the Soul Giants. And he passed the audition and he joined the band, and about a month after he joined the sax player, Davy Coronado, who was the leader of the band at that time, he went back to Texas and... he quit the band and went back to Texas and then Zappa took over. That's when he said "If you'll... I'll make you rich and famous... If you'll play my music, I'll make you rich and famous." His exact words.

CK: When I read about that period, people say not exactly the same thing about what happened. Zappa said that Davy Coronado had a fist fight with the guitar player and the guitar player quit. Some people say it was just an argument, it was not a fist fight.

JCB: Well, yeah. But the guitar player was this really weirdo guy named Ray Hunt. He wasn't even a good guitar player, but a terrible guitar player.

CK: OK. So the conflict was about his playing, then?

JCB: Well, that's what Davy was screaming at him about, man. "Play some rhythm and blues. You're playing some weird shit and we don't know what it is" (laughs). And Ray Collins knew this guy that had a studio, named Frank Zappa, and he called him up and asked him if he wanted to audition for the band. He came down the next day and auditioned... Motorhead came with him, so Motorhead was there from the beginning as well. He came down and auditioned, and he was ok... Frank wasn't a very good lead guitar player in the beginning, man. Not that good.

CK: But did you want him...

JCB: But he was the best rhythm guitar player I'd ever heard in my life, man. And he was a great arranger. So it wasn't that important. Although, through the years, after we started playing, he got a lot better. Frank is an excellent guitar player.

CK: You said that after Coronado left, then Zappa came with the proposal. But in Zappa's account of it, he said that "If you will play my music and blah blah blah", and then Coronado said that he didn't want to do it, because you'd just get fired...

JCB: Well... Davy didn't want to play Frank's music, really. But that's not the real reason. It's because he was tired of California, man. He wanted to go back to... he wanted to go back to Texas. And he did. He used to have a tex-mex band in... quite famous one in Texas. I mean, in the area it was, you know. Where he was, he was from around Brownsville... Laredo, Texas. That was where he was from.

CK: What was the name of the band?

JCB: Little Davy and the Chiquitas or whatever (laughs)... some crazy... I don't know what it was, man. But they had a tour bus, name all across it. An old... you know, an old Greyhound bus. So they did a lot better than The Mothers of Invention were doing.

CK: Financially?

JCB: Playing that tex-mex music. Especially down there because there's all Mexican people living there, man. Sure, they played the right music, sing in Spanish. It's what the people want to hear.

CK: Yea. I guess so... What did you think was the greatest change after Zappa came into the band?

JCB: Henry Vestine played with us for a while. That was good. Then Frank moved to Hollywood and got us to coming in to Hollywood and doing kinda the freaky things and, you know... And then we met Herb Cohen, the manager. And he got things... you know, we started playing in Hollywood. We played at the... we played a long time at the Whisky A-Go-Go, about twenty-two weeks at the Whisky.

CK: How often? Every day?

JCB: Six nights a week. It was a real gig, man. A good gig.

CK: Hm. I don't think that's... I never heard of that kind of thing happening in Norway... that they have live music, at least not the same band playing every day...

JCB: Well, that's the way they used to do it in the sixties. If the band was drawing people... as long as the band was drawing people, it didn't matter, you know. They just keep... keep us going, man. Of course.

CK: So they... But you played weirder material at that time, at the Whisky A-Go-Go?

JCB: We were doing "Motherly Love", "Trouble Coming Every Day"... that's what got us the record deal. Tom Wilson came into the Whisky and he only heard us play one song. Only heard us play "Trouble Coming Every Day". They were looking, MGM Records, Verve Records, were looking for a band that was like... sort of like maybe the Rolling Stones. American band that was sort of... that would play that kind of music. And that, and "Trouble Coming Every Day", that's, he thought he had the band. 'Till we got into the studio. And the first song we played in the recording studio was "Who Are The Brain Police". And he was on the phone to the main office in New York City saying "We didn't hire a blues band, we didn't sign a blues band here. I'm not sure what kind of band we signed, but we didn't sign a blues band."

CK: Hm. Do you think he regretted it later?

JCB: No. Tom Wilson was a good friend of mine. A good guy, really good guy. He's dead now. No, I don't think he ever regretted it. Because he started a whole thing. The music, the Mothers of Invention's music, it was recorded over forty years ago, you know that. "Freak Out!" came out in 1966. Last year it was fortieth year anniversary of "Freak Out!". I still get e-mails and comments on myspace and on my website from young kids, twenty-one years old, twenty years old at this... they can't believe "Freak Out!", man. "That music is absolutely great!". I write them back and say "Shit, man! That was twenty years before you were even born, that was recorded." So that music is timeless! It's not dated. It's still as fresh as it was when it first came out. The band was truly ahead of its time.

CK: Is "Freak Out!" your favourite Mothers of Invention record?

JCB: No. I like it a lot, but no, it's not my favourite. My favourite is Ruben and, "Cruising With Ruben And The Jets".

CK: Without the new drums and bass, of course...

JCB: The original!

CK: What did you think of it when you heard the...

JCB: I thought it was bullshit. Why did he do that for? He said the tapes were ruined. Well, Rykodisc put out "We're Only In It For The Money" the right way again. You know, he put that out also with those other two guys playing on it. "We're Only In It For The Money". Why didn't he ask me and Roy Estrada to come and play? We're the original guys that did it, anyway. I mean, we woulda gone in the studio and redone it.

CK: Yeah. What year was it that... was it the beginning of the Eighties?

JCB: Yeah... Either that, or get all new musicians and re-record the record. But don't put it out as The Mothers of Invention. Put it out as Frank Zappa, with all those new musicians, you know. If you're gonna re-release the old material, because that's what the fans wanted, was the old stuff.

CK: I know. I have a friend in Tromsø, Northern Norway. He says he can't listen to the... those two albums with the new drums, so he had another friend transfer the old LP's to CD, so he could have that instead. So... I know a lot of people are upset about that, and Zappa was confronted with during a press conference here in Oslo in -88, and he just...

JCB: The real Mothers of Invention fans were all upset about it. It was stupid to do that, man. But you see, he didn't ask us, 'cause we don't count. He wrote the songs. He didn't play the songs. He wrote the songs, he didn't play the drums, he didn't play the bass, he didn't play all the other instruments. We played those, not him! He only played guitar.

CK: When he disbanded the Mothers, what... I don't know exactly what happened around that time.

JCB: We don't either. We don't know why he did it.

CK: But you had just been on a tour, or something...

JCB: Great tour, man! Very successful tour. I guess it's successful when the place is packed wherever you're playing. Sold out, that means that it's successful, to me it is. See, he really screwed up, man, when he refused to... he didn't wanna... We got invited to do Woodstock, The Mothers got invited to do Woodstock. And Frank said "I don't wanna play for a bunch of hippies, and there's not going to be anybody there, anyway."

CK: Was that -68, or -69?

JCB: Sixty-nine. Big mistake.

CK: Hm. But then that tour ended, and when he decided to disband the group, were you on vacation, or a break?

JCB: No.

CK: It was just business as usual, and then suddenly he..?

JCB: We'd been home about one week, and I got a call from him, on the telephone - it wasn't even in person - on the telephone. While we were talking... Is this OK like this, man, 'cause I had to eat something..?

CK: It's fine...

JCB: Now, we were talking about nothing in particular for about fifteen minutes. You know, just bullshitting. And then he said "Oh, by the way, I've decided to disband the band. Your salaries have stopped as of last week."

CK: How did you react to that?

JCB: Well, he hung up after that. I didn't get a chance to react to him. I called the rest of the guys and they said "Yeah, we just got a phonecall from him." Basically did the same thing to them, which to me was very, very cold. You know, not even... not even telling you in person.

CK: And then it was just... The next few years, what happened then?

JCB: Well, he tried about six months later... He tried to get the band back together.

CK: Same band?

JCB: Tried to get The Mothers back together to do this thing with Zubin Mehta. It was actually part of the music that was in "200 Motels". Tried to get us back together and we... nobody in the band wanted to do it. No. The way he broke the band up turned everybody off to him. It wasn't a good move on his part, to do it the way he did it.

CK: It seems, when you look at his entire career, that that was his way of dealing with things.

JCB: M-hm...

CK: But a few of you guys went back to do the movie, "200 Motels".

JCB: I went and did "200 Motels" when he asked me. I didn't do it for him, and I damn sure didn't do it for the money, because the money wasn't very good. But I wanted to see if I could get into acting. Why not? I... A golden opportunity here, to do that. And so I took it. And I never regretted doing that, although it didn't do... really didn't do shit for my movie career.

CK: It wasn't a blockbuster movie...

JCB: Although, I could tell you one thing, it's still being played right now.

CK: In theaters?

JCB: M-hm. There is a theater in... I think it's in Hollywood, or Santa Monica or one of those places, that still do a midnight show once a week of "200 Motels", like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show".

CK: Hm. Once a week..?

JCB: I'm sure there are guys coming dressed like Jimmy Carl Black as Lonesome Cowboy Burt.

CK: Yeah. Did you like the movie?

JCB: Uh... Since I got married, which was ten years ago to this German woman who is the biggest Zappa fan I've ever met in my life that was a female, I've had to watch that movie at least sixty or seventy times. And until I married her, I'd seen the movie only about two times, when it first came out. Two or three times I saw it, and that's all. I just saw it two weeks ago, again.

CK: Hm. Sounds familiar. I think a lot of Zappa fans are like that. I've terrorised my family for about ten years.

JCB: Well, she, my wife, she's crazy about it.

CK: Well, it's understandable.

JCB: I don't know why it's understandable. (Laughs).

CK: I don't know if it's the same way with fans of other bands, but a lot of people who are... seem obsessed by this stuff.

JCB: They are. Zappa fans are really... Hard-core Zappa fans are really obsessive, to put it that way. (Laughs). Sometimes it makes me really laugh, man. I can't help it.

CK: What's the worst example you've encountered?

JCB: What do you mean?

CK: The worst example of an obsessive fan.

JCB: I had a guy one time in Texas, I was living in Austin before I moved here to Europe. And he came up and said "Man, I saw you playing in 1972 with Frank. I was there, at the concert the night that he took the shit on the stage and ate it." When he said that, I knew that this guy was fucking crazy. First of all, Zappa might have gotten somebody else to do that. But he's not ever gonna do anything like that. And second of all, in 1972 I wasn't even in the band anymore, so how could I have been there? I couldn't convince the guy. I said "Man, I wasn't even in the band!". "You were there, man! I saw you. You were there, and you remember when he did it! He took a shit on the stage and ate it." Well... that was the end of that story.

CK: Well, it's a good example.

JCB: And probably not the only... There's many similar examples to that. Some of these people really bug me sometimes. Just... they get too fanatic. "What was Zappa really like, man? Tell me, what was Zappa really like? I gotta know what he was really like!". "He was just a normal guy." "No, but what was Zappa really like, tell me. Come on, he wasn't a normal guy! How could he be a normal guy? He did tons of drugs!". You can't convince 'em. You can't tell them what he was really like. He was a normal guy!, that didn't do drugs. He didn't even drink beer or alcohol. Nothing. In the early days, he didn't. I think, toward the end at least he drank a little alcohol... drank a little wine. 'Cause I remember one time, I think it was eighty-one, nineteen eighty-one, I had just done the album "You Are What You Is" with him, and he played in Albuquerque. I was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico at that time. And he played a gig there, it was one of the first gigs of the tour. And he asked me to sit in and sing "Harder Than Your Husband" with the band. And I did. And he said "come on backstage", before I went on. "Have a glass of wine with me". And I said, you know, at that time I wasn't drinking anymore. I had quit, I think for five or six years I didn't drink anything, no alcohol. And that was at that time. "I'm sorry, Frank, but I'm on the wagon." "OK... All right." He was cool. Most of the time, he was cool.

CK: I have a bootleg where you play with... I think it's the "Bongo Fury" band, in Texas. I have it right here, as a matter of fact.

JCB: In El Paso?

CK: Yeah. That was some tunes that you... are they your songs? "You're so fine" and "Lonely Nights"...

JCB: M-hm.

CK: So you have a few... you sat in with him a few times.

JCB: I sat in with him that night. At time, when he came through, in 1975, I was living in El Paso. Or Anthony, my home town. And that's when I got the job to go on the road with Beefheart. I was in the Magic Band for one tour. Indian Ink Consopho.

CK: What?

JCB: Indian Ink Consopho.

CK: Consopho? Hm... What was that like? Was that anything like... When I saw the documentary about Beefheart on the Internet...

JCB: Have you seen the documentary?

CK: Yeah, "The Artist Formerly Known As Captain Beefheart".

JCB: From the BBC.

CK: Yeah.

JCB: Yes, I did that... I did my segment of that in 1993, when I was on tour with Chadbourne in England... He said: I wanna do this documentary, I want to do this right now, because we think, we don't know how long he's gonna be alive. Well, he's still alive. I guess he's still alive, I haven't heard any otherwise. I'm sure I would have heard if he was dead.

CK: He lives out in the desert, just..?

JCB: Trinidad.

CK: Trinidad?

JCB: Northern California. I've been quite a bit in contact with Art Tripp, Ed Marimba. Are you familiar with Beefheart?

CK: Not very much. I have a few records.

JCB: Not like Zappa... You're not... You're more into Zappa than Beefheart.

CK: Yea... But the thing about being a Zappa fanatic is that you get familiar with things that is connected in some way, so...

JCB: Well, believe me, there's... there are the same kind of fanatics for Beefheart as there are for Zappa. And it's usually the same people.

CK: Do you know this well known radio person here in Norway, his name is Harald Are Lund.

JCB: I don't know him.

CK: He's been on the radio since the sixties or seventies, and he always plays one song by Beefheart on his programs, I've heard. So he's a hard-core Beefheart fan. He met Beefheart a couple of times, and Beefheart drew him... made pictures of him. So...

JCB: A beautiful guy, man. Crazy as hell.

CK: Yes, I got that impression from the documentary. How was that tour in seventy-five?

JCB: Pretty fucking wild. (Laughs). We rehearsed for seven weeks, seven days a week. Twelve hours a day, in Hollywood. In the rehearsal room of Zappa's record company, Discreet, when he had the record company called Discreet. Then, in the seventies. And we maybe rehearsed one and a half or two hours out of those twelve hours. The rest of the time, we were listening to him bullshit. Which he did. Or we had to go with him to The Brown Derby on Sunset and Vine, and go in and drink coffee all afternoon while he drew pictures of people coming into The Brown Derby. Now, that was... we all had to go with the band. Sit around, and that's what we did.

CK: That was part of the training?

JCB: That was part of the training, I guess. Well, anyway. After seven weeks, we went... The first gig was a television show for Public Radio... eh, Public Television, called Sound Stage, a very famous show in America. They had the best artists on there, man. It was on a university campus and they had a really good studio and they had a really good facility for recording. So we got to Chicago the day before the television show, 'cause we had a rehearsal... we had to do a rehearsal for the television. So, get the sound right and get all, you know, everything done. Then we would leave the equipment there all set up and, there's not a problem. We get there. He couldn't remember ONE word to any of his songs. HIS songs that HE wrote. Not ONE word to ANY of those songs could he remember.

CK: So he just read them, then, or what?

JCB: Well, his wife, Jan, a lovely lady... If I could give her a medal for living with that guy, she deserved the best medal that there is in the world. But she spent the whole night making these gigantic cue cards up. From the floor up to here, but all the words to the songs. They put them on an easel. You know, a painter's easel, so he could read them from... the cameras were right here, I mean, just that he could read them from there. And one of the songs we were doing in this set was "Orange Claw Hammer", the name of the song, it's off from "Trout Mask Replica", and it's got at least a million words to it. I mean, it's a poem, is what it is, and it's really... there's not actually even any music to it. It's just him reading this poem that he wrote called "Orange Claw Hammer". That must have taken her at least three hours to do all those words to that song. But she made all these cards up and she took 'em off as the songs were going on, 'cause she knew the songs better than he does. She knows all the words to his songs that he didn't know. And so we did the show, and on the same... they did two artists the same night. We did our show, and... which is an hour long, because this program was an hour long. And after that, Tom Waits did one hour. Because Herb Cohen was Tom Waits' manager at that time. This was in seventy-five. Tom was just starting, you know. It's great though, man. Tom Waits is. He's a nice guy, too. I liked him a lot. It was interesting meeting him and, you know. But then we went to England. We played the Knebworth Pop Festival. 260,000 people at a one-day festival, in the little town of Knebworth, England.

CK: Nedworth?

JCB: Knebworth. Famous festival, man. Beefheart and The Pink Floyd were the top... the headliners. And then... well, the Fairport Convention played that night, that day. And also Steve Miller.

CK: The big band... no... is that the..? What's Steve Miller?

JCB: The Space Cowboy. The guy that did... Steve Miller.

CK: No, I'm not familiar with it.

JCB: Famous guy from America. Sold millions of records. "I'm A Space Cowboy" was one of his hits. He had a lot of hits. Anyway, he was on the bill with us. That was a great show, man. And then we went back to LA and played at The Roxy, two nights. And that's when I said... I said "Man..." He wanted me to stay with him, and I said "Man, I can't. I gotta get out of here. You're driving me crazy." So that's when I left the band. I couldn't. I couldn't play with him anymore, man. He's just too spaced out for me. You know, he doesn't know what he's doing half the time. When you can't remember the words to the songs you wrote, man. You've been playing those songs for fifteen years, since they came out. You can't remember those words? Crazy...

CK: How long did that tour last?

JCB: About a month. We played other gigs, but those were the highlights of the tour. It's crazy... And still at The Roxy, still couldn't remember the words after doing the whole tour.

CK: So the wife was bringing the...

JCB: No, the cue cards went with us everywhere. Unbelievable, man... That's an experience. That was a real experience to play with that guy. Known him for a long time. I met him in sixty-four when the Mothers first started.

CK: His first album...

JCB: "Safe As Milk"

CK: When was that released?

JCB: That was about, uh, sixty-seven I think. Sixty-eight, maybe. Sixty-seven I think that album came out. We had two albums out at that time, when that one came out. We had "Freak Out!" and "Absolutely Free". And we had just recorded "We're Only In It For The Money", but it wasn't out yet.

CK: The Garrick Theater period. What's the most...

JCB: At the Garrick Theater is where we started actually recording "We're Only In It For The Money".

CK: Live?

JCB: No, no. We were getting the material together and we'd go to the studio and we did it at Mayfair Studios in down town, in... around 42nd and Broadway. That part of New York City. But we didn't... We finished it at the Apostolic Studio, after we... We hadn't even finished that record, and we went into the studio and started cutting "Uncle Meat" and "Ruben & The Jets". So there were three records right there that weren't even finished yet that we were working on all at the same time.

CK: Hm. You had your hands full?

JCB: He had his hands full. He knew what he was doing. Or maybe he didn't know what he was doing, I don't know. (Laughs).

CK: He just did it?

JCB: Shall we go upstairs?

CK: Yeah.

(End of Part One)

Part Two

Grand Hotel, Oslo. 23 January 2007 (9 PM and on)

JCB: I met the most beautiful woman there. She was absolutely lovely. I thought it reminded me of the John Lennon song "Norwegian Wood" (laughs).

CK: So that was your first impression (of Norway)?

JCB: Well, I'm a big Beatle fan. Always have been, since they first came out. I was... I thought that the Fab Four were FAB (laughs).

CK: Did you hear the... Zappa's versions of the Beatles' songs in -88? What did you think of that..? Since you are a Beatles fan...

JCB: Well, I think it's good. He had the band to do it with. He certainly had the band, man. With the horns and all that, man. The Grandmothers, though, the Austin Grandmothers that I had... in Austin... I have a recording of... We recorded "I Am The Walrus". Sounds good, man. Lovely song. I think it is. We used to do "A Day In The Life". With the Muffins I did "Come Together". And then... "Come Together", and then it went into "Baby You Can Drive My Car" and then back into "Come Together" again. Fucking wild. Good version. We put that medley together in 2001, because we had a, we got a gig at The Cavern in Liverpool. And so we wanted to... If we're gonna play at The Cavern, we're gonna play a Beatle medley.

CK: Yeah, of course...

JCB: And we recorded it. It's on an album called "Live At The Cavern".

CK: With the Muffin Men?

JCB: Yeah.

CK: This... Those albums with the Grandmothers and the Muffin Men and all that, is it a good distribution on it? Is it...

JCB: Nah, man.

CK: Where would we have to go to get stuff like that? Have to go to their websites?

JCB: You can go to my website and get 'em.. for instance.

CK: Yeah. jimmycarlblack.com?

JCB: jimmycarlblack.com, at Uncle Jimmy's Online Record Store (laughs). Uncle Jimmy's got it all!

CK: OK. I'll check it out. The job that you're doing here in Norway now, have you... You just arrived, so you haven't been doing any work on it yet.

JCB: No, in the morning. He's picking me up at about 9:15. We're going to the studio. And we're going to do it tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it, I think it's gonna be... because Jon, although I've never actually heard him play live or anything, but I've heard, you know, on myspace I can hear his songs and he's a good guitar player, man. Also, how I got in contact with him is really... He signed my guestbook on jimmycarlblack.com, on my website, and I wrote him back and said thanks for signing my guestbook and blah-blah, let's stay in touch, you know. But he had put his website up there, when he signed my book, and I... Usually if someone does that, and especially if he's a musician, and I knew this guy, Jon, was a musician, because he said he was. So I put his website... you know, got it on there, and I heard his music and I said "Man, this guy can play, man! He's a good player. Real good player." And then, on the website there was another place to check his art out, and I loved his artwork. He's one hell of a painter, man. Really talented artist. So then we communicated back and forth and he said "Would you be willing to do this project?", and I said "Yeah, man, I'll come to Oslo, man." And we were gonna do it in November first, but he couldn't, he couldn't get it together in November, so we did it now. That's OK.

CK: Are you playing drums or are you doing different things?

JCB: No, it's... just going as a... Being the first Indian on Mars.

CK: OK.

JCB: Now, I think it's gonna be... I think it's mainly a talking thing, but with music in the background and all kind of... We'll see, I don't know what's going to happen. We're gonna see what happens. But there's a story, you know. There's a story line. He knows what he wants, man. He's got it all in his head, and there's one line in there: "Does Humor Really Belong In Music?" (laughs). You know, the thing that Frank said, and it does belong in music, of course it does. Why not?

CK: It belongs everywhere, I think.

JCB: But especially music. You can just get too serious about music! And ruin the whole thing, man. That's what I think. It's better to have a little fun with music. That's why I like the blues, man. That's why I play the blues.

CK: Because it's fun...

JCB: Well, it's fun to do, man! Nobody takes it seriously (laughs).

CK: No... A lot of the lyrics, for instance on the... this... I have to think about the "...Ruben & The Jets" album, the lyrics on those songs.

JCB: Well, you know something... a lot of those songs were from "Freak Out!". We just slowed them down. I mean, we just did a doo-wop version of it...

CK: I just started using that, if you...

JCB: I'm on... are you on myspace?

CK: M-hm.

JCB: Well, send me an E-mail, be my friend! I'll put you on my site.

CK: Yeah. I'll do it. Yeah, but I just started to try out that. I didn't realise, but it's very interesting, because you can...

JCB: All the people that are on my site, man. Most of the people, they're all Zappa freaks. And you're a Zappa freak. You can get in, you know. You can get yourself some pretty damn good friends, man, that are into the same thing that you are into, man! You know, you can start conversations back and forth, man. You can... it's very good, I think. I really, I'm really jazzed about it, man.

CK: As a matter of fact, I had a little bit contact with Jon Larsen one time before, because I'm on the Zappa forum on zappa.com, and he's on there too. So he sent me an E-mail, because my E-mail was there. So it's true, you can... you do get in contact with people.

JCB: There's a lot of them around, man. Have you been to the Zappanale?

CK: No. I've never had money to go.

JCB: That would be a nice, that would be very interesting for you go there. You'd enjoy it.

CK: Yes, I'm sure. How many days is it?

JCB: Three days.

CK: You just bring a tent and...

JCB: Yeah, you bring a tent, man... a sleeping bag. Have fun, man. I mean, hang out with 4500 Zappa freaks right there, all at one place (laughs).

CK: Yeah. I've seen the website, of course.

JCB: Well, I played... let's see, how many times... I played about five of those Zappanales. Grandmothers played Zappanale #2 and #4, in the beginning. Then I played #13 and #14. Zappanale #13 and #14, so I've been on it four times.

CK: And it's been fun every time?

JCB: Oh yeah, man. #13 and #14 were good. #14 were great for me, 'cause I played with the Muffin Men. And I also played with Jack & Jim Show. We did a... they hired us to play. Man, we did a great show. We got a beautiful version of "Mom and Dad".

CK: What year was that?

JCB: "Mom and Dad"?

CK: No, the... that...

JCB: #14th was 2003. So I played 2002 and 2003. 2002 I played with... I sang two songs with The Grandmothers, the American Grandmothers, with Roy Estrada, Bunk Gardner and Don Preston and Nappy. And I also sang "Willie The Pimp" with Mike Keneally and Scott Thunes. That was fun, man. They're really... Mike Keneally is just... one of my all time best friends, man. I really like that guy a lot, man. And what a fucking guitar player, man! He's frightening!

CK: Yeah. I've seen... you know, on the Zappa albums that he's on, it's difficult for me who isn't a musician to hear what he is actually playing, but I've seen some videos with him, and...

JCB: Have you ever listened to his music?

CK: Uhm... Yeah, I have. I have a couple of...

JCB: He's got some great albums out, man. That guy... I like his albums much better, his stuff, than I did the stuff that he did with Zappa. I like him, doing his music, man. He's an incredible singer, incredible guitar player and an incredible keyboard player. He's really good, man.

CK: I think I have a couple of records with him. I just have to dig into my stuff.

JCB: I like his stuff, man. I really like his stuff a lot.

CK: Hm... ehm, what was I thinking about...

JCB: He will always give me a CD... he always gives me CDs, new ones. But I go out and buy 'em, man. I help him out.

CK: Yeah. Keep him going?

JCB: Yeah, man. 'Cause I really like his music, man. I really do. He's a nice guy. He's a good man.

CK: Hm... I was thinking about one thing. The... did you see the Zappa Plays Zappa tour?

JCB: I haven't seen it, no. I wouldn't even bother.

CK: The reason why I was thinking about it was that I... you know, I don't follow all the forums and all the news, but I read on the website of the bassist from that band, that there had been some... eh, grudges or... I don't know how to put it, but... Some of the bands that are doing Zappa today, they didn't like that concept.

JCB: Which one?

CK: No, I don't know. I don't remember.

JCB: Who's the bass player? I don't even know...

CK: Oh, he's a young guy. His name is Pete Griffin. He's a young guy... in his twenties...

JCB: I bet he's a good player.

CK: So, I didn't know what the problem was. He just mentioned that very briefly, but... hm... You don't know anything about the project, or not much?

JCB: Ah... no. A little bit about it, man, but I don't know that much. I don't want to know that much. I don't get along with Gail Zappa, man.

CK: Hm...

JCB: You know, so therefore I don't have anything to do with Gail Zappa or anything that she's doing.

CK: You just ignore it?

JCB: Ignore it, man. I want her to forget that I even live, that I'm even alive. I've had nothing but trouble with that woman, and I don't need any more of that shit. I don't want any and I don't need it... from her.

CK: It seems like several people are... they don't like her.

JCB: Well, I don't. And I've known her for a long fucking time, man. I introduced her to Frank. It was a big mistake. He wanted to know... he wanted to meet her. I knew her before he did. She worked at the Whisky A-Go-Go, in the office.

CK: Hm... what is the main problem with her?

JCB: She's a cunt!

CK: Hm. Simple as that?

JCB: Just problems with her, man. About... and they ripped us off big time, man. And they, you know, we had to sign away all this shit. We had a fucking lawyer that just... All that's just bullshit. Huh?

CK: Was that in the Eighties?

JCB: Into the early Nineties.

CK: Yeah, I don't know so much about that. I just saw a video of Zappa on Larry King where he's asked about a lawsuit from The Mothers of Invention. But that was very early in the process. That was... there wasn't a lot of information there... But in the record business, the music business, lawsuits like that, they are just... there are settlements. Or what happened with that?

JCB: Well, we made a settlement with him.

CK: And that means, when artists do a settlement like that in court... it means they give up their royalties in the future, or..?

JCB: Well, it never went to court. We made the settlement outside of court.

CK: So that means that, when somebody does that...

JCB: Well, we had to sign this paper stating that we had no future claims on anything after that, and then right after that is when all the stuff started coming out on CD, because this is way before CDs were happening, man. So we got burned on the CD thing. And that's where he sold us. Especially when he died, man. They fucking sold... all that shit was redone again.

CK: It was a new round of..?

JCB: It sold a lot better than the first round ever did. Or the second round, or the third round ever did.

CK: But was it a new... you did just one settlement, or was it drawn out?

JCB: One settlement. And it wasn't very much money.

CK: Hm. In general, what did you think of the way that Zappa did business? Generally?

JCB: Generally? He was a hard business man.

CK: To everyone...

JCB: He was a businessman! Whoever he's doing business with, man. (Laughs).

CK: In the United States, in that time... I'm very young, I'm not even thirty years old, so I don't know much about anything, really. But it's surprising to me that a guy who has hardly any education or anything can do all the things that he did.

JCB: Self taught. He was a very smart man. A genius. He was a very, very focused man. He knew what he wanted and he was gonna get it no matter what happened. No matter who he had to step on, it didn't fucking matter.

CK: Just the results...

JCB: And you know, I appreciated that out of Frank. I... to tell you the truth, man, I always loved Frank Zappa, man. Even with the lawsuits and all the fucking trouble and with all the shit and all that, it doesn't even fucking matter, man. I still tried to get hold of him before he... you know, when I was getting ready to move over to Europe. 1992. I called Motorhead, and I said "Motor, would you do me a favour. Would you call Frank, or call Gail, and find out if it's at all possible that I can call Frank." I'd like to... you know, wish him good luck with his problems, and, you know. Basically, what it would have been at that time, was just "Hey, man. It's been a pleasure knowing you. You taught me a lot." And he did, man! I learned a lot of different things about music that I didn't know.

CK: Hm... But what happened?

JCB: No... she said no. It's one of the reasons why I don't want to have anything to do with her. And the kids... the kids only know one side of the story. They don't know our side of the story. You know, they only know her side... what she says. How bad we are. What could we have possibly done to them? We didn't take any money from them! We didn't steal anything from them! What could we possibly do to them? Say things? Say the truth? You mean you're not allowed to say the truth? Fuck you, man! I will say the truth! I'll tell you what happened! I mean, I'll tell you the way I saw it happen! The way it happened to me. But... you know... I don't know, man.

CK: You just stay away from it?

JCB: I do. I do, man. 'Cause it's not worth it to me. You know, I will say one thing. I just got for my birthday, from Roddie Gilliard. You want a little?

CK: Uh, yeah. OK.

JCB: From Roddie Gilliard I got a birthday present...

CK: Roddie Gilliard?

JCB: The bass player with the Muffin Men. The leader of the Muffins. He always sends me a birthday present. Especially this year, 'cause this year is a special birthday for me. It's my favourite number. 69!

CK: Hm!

JCB: And it's a... it's a four CD package of "Freak Out!". It's the CD, it's the... The first record is a remastered version of "Freak Out!" from the LP, from the tapes, though. They remastered the tapes. "Freak Out!" never sounded that good to me before. It's fucking dynamite, man! It's SO FUCKING GOOD, man! Unbelievable. And the other three CDs are outtakes. It's called the making of "Freak Out!". It's what it is. Scratch vocals here, and when we were recording it... Different things, different versions, different things in the studio, man. It's really fucking well put together from the Zappa Family Trust. Zappa Records... to put this "Freak Out!" thing out, man. It's beautiful. It's really good, man. It's REALLY fucking good.

CK: That's the MOFO thing...

JCB: MOFO, right. Fuck. Have you heard it?

CK: No, not yet.

JCB: I don't know how much that fucking thing cost, I bet it's expensive.

CK: Yeah, but...

JCB: She's only in it for the money, man. That bitch is gonna get paid for it.

CK: But she accidentally does some good sometimes in the process? Occasionally...

JCB: It's produced by her. I doubt very seriously if she really had anything to do with the music part of it. I think that was Joe Travers, 'cause he's the guy who works the studio.

CK: Yeah, the Vaultmeister.

JCB: He's fucking good too, man. That guy, he's also one hell of a drummer. Mike Keneally's drummer.

CK: He played with him?

JCB: He plays with Mike, and he also plays Zappa Plays Zappa. On that tour... with Dweezil. I think Dweezil... I think Dweezil had some stuff to... some input on this MOFO CD as well. I do, man.

CK: It's going to be interesting to see, then, what they do when the... you know, the fortieth anniversary of the other records comes. If they have material, they will suddenly...

JCB: Well, this year would be "Absolutely Free". That would be interesting, to have the outtakes on that fucking thing, man. 'Cause it was even getting more and more, it was starting to get more and more complicated. "Absolutely Free" was done on 8 track, the first 8 track machine that came out. Half inch tape. "Freak Out!" was done on 4 track, 'cause that's all there was. That was state of the arts recording. TTG Studios. We did "Absolutely Free" at TTG Studios as well, but they had gone to 8 track by that... We started recording "Absolutely Free" at the end of 1966. About November 1966 is when we started recording that record. "Freak Out!" had just come out. In June... I think it was in June or July. June I think. End of June, it came out... it came out for sale in the States. That's when we did a little promo tour for that.

CK: "Freak Out!" or "Absolutely Free"?

JCB: "Freak Out!". Strange fucking five-day tour. Washington DC. Detroit. Windsor, Canada. And Dallas. Four gigs. And it weren't even, we didn't even take equipment. It was lip syncing. We did TV shows. They weren't... Huh?

CK: Lip-syncing "Freak Out!"?

JCB: They weren't even ready for the fucking Mothers, man. We did "Who Are The Brain Police" in Washington DC (laughs). Perfect place for that.

CK: Yea...

JCB: Just asking the question (laughs). When we played in Dallas it was only about two years after John F. Kennedy was assassinated there. And Dallas was a redneck fucking place, man. Still is. That was pretty wild, man. We got off the plane, started walking down the quarter and we just parted the fucking quarter like the... like Moses parted the Red Sea. People would just... plastered up against the wall, looking at us. They thought that they were invaded by Mars. Or something.

CK: That's about the same... almost the same thing that Zappa said about the... when you guys went to New York. You know, people looked at you like you were from Venus. So if the response was like that in New York...

JCB: Well, it wasn't that bad in the Village. The Village was the only place in New York. If you got outside of Greenwich Village they started fucking looking at you like you were from Venus. As long as you were in... it was the same as on the West Coast. The same as being in Hollywood. It was ok as long as you were in Hollywood. If you'd get outside of Hollywood, man, then they started fucking throwing rocks at you.

CK: Because of the hair and...

JCB: Yeah, just having long hair and dressing in wild colours and shit like that. The other safe place was San Francisco. All of San Francisco was safe.

CK: Hm. But I was just thinking about, if they... if people in New York looked at you like you were from Venus, and that was a year later, I can... You know... the people in Dallas must have been far beyond that.

JCB: Oh, man. Well, Dallas is just so... crazy fucking place.

CK: Well. It'll be interesting to see if they put it out, and next year it's... if they keep up this tradition, it's the... it's "We're Only In It For The Money" and... didn't it... no... wasn't it released in 68? Yeah. So maybe you'll hear it. You said that "Freak Out!" never sounded so good to you before. Have they done something to the record itself?

JCB: Well, they remixed the... I don't know what they did. They super-charged it or did something, man. I mean, it's so... sounding so fucking good, man. It's really full, man. Really good.

CK: I just I'll just have to get it.

JCB: Well, you won't regret it when you do, man. It's worth it. I mean. I didn't buy it, but. And I probably wouldn't have bought it, simply because I don't want to give one fucking penny to that woman. But I might have let my wife buy it (laughs). Just to hear it, 'cause it's... When I put it on, man, it's so fucking good, man, I can't believe it. Really, really nice. Interesting.

CK: If you're starting to get tired... You know, just say when you want to go to bed.

JCB: What time is it?

CK: It's nine thirty or almost a quarter to ten.

JCB: Yeah, I'm gonna hit the sack pretty early, 'cause I'm getting up early. He's coming to get me at 9:15.

CK: Yeah, he mentioned it in an E-mail that it's going to be tough in the studio... I think. So, but tough... from what you said...

JCB: What, because it's early?

CK: No, no. I don't know how to translate it to Norwegian, no to English. But... ah... it's not important. From what you said earlier, I think it's gonna be fun anyway.

JCB: It'll be fun, man. You know, I want him to get his money's worth out of me. So I'm going to do whatever he wants me to do the best that I can do it. And that's all I can do anyway. And that's all he wants me to do.

CK: He said that there's several other Zappa musicians on the album. Later... I don't remember... Ed Mann and Bruce Fowler and...

JCB: Arthur Barrow.

CK: Yeah.

JCB: That's gonna be... I think he's gonna have a really nice CD here, man.

CK: I think so too. I'm not too familiar with his music, but... but I've heard that it is very good. I'm going to check it out. My father, who is a drummer too, actually, he saw the band Hot Club de Norvège, which Jon Larsen is a guitarist for. And he said that it was absolutely great.

JCB: Yeah, he's been doing a lot with this Gypsy music. Well, I think he's. You know, I've got his picture on the website, and I wasn't expecting... I was expecting this young guy, man. 'Cause he really looks young in the picture. And he's 49 years old, man, he's not a fucking kid. This guy has been around the block a few times.

CK: 49? Oh... Yeah, I didn't think he was that old, either.

JCB: Well, that's what he told me. He's 49. I thought, I was gonna say "Man, I thought you were around 22 or 23, man" (laughs). He's a good guy, man. I like him a lot. I think he's got a good sense of what he's doing. He plays a lot of jazz. And you know, and I don't mind... I like jazz, I like good jazz. I'm not a jazz player myself, but... I mean, I can play jazz, but I don't prefer it.

CK: Me neither. I like some of it, but... hm... but I'm not a musician either.

JCB: What kind of music do you like?

CK: Other than Zappa, I like some classical music and listen to... the problem is that there are lots of things I like that I don't even know what it is.

JCB: You like rock and blues?

CK: Yeah. And some... you know, some singer/songwriter things, as long as it's not too... you know, they try to be too sincere and all that stuff, you know. I don't like the whining types. But the guys who have a sense of humour and...

JCB: They have to have a sense of humor.

CK: Yeah. And I like the latest albums by Dylan too.

JCB: By who?

CK: Bob Dylan. The latest albums. I like the new albums that he made much better than the...

JCB: That's the new one, I'm giving you.

CK: Oh. Thanks.

JCB: That's my new CD.

CK: "How Blue Can You Get?"

JCB: There's three or four Dylan songs on there.

CK: Yeah, and you have the... mr. Miller, Steve Miller. "I'm A Space Cowboy". So now I'll be introduced to his music too... That's great.

JCB: This is the guitar player that I play with. He's from England. His name is Mick Pini. He's 56 or 57 years old now. And the bass player is the guy from the Muffin Men. The Muffin bass player. Rod Guillard. And he sings on... well, the one song "Waiting For My Man"... that's a Lou Reed song. That's a Velvet Underground song. We did... we have, we all write music, man. We have original stuff, but we didn't want to do any original stuff on this CD. We did songs that we wanted to do.

CK: Yeah. Why not?

JCB: "Like A Rolling Stone", man, fucking great song, man.

CK: Yea... The Lou Reed. Sometimes you see him mentioned in connection with Zappa as... they hated each other, or something like that. Is that true?

JCB: I don't know why they hated each other. Maybe they were jealous of each other. I don't know what the fucking deal was (laughs). I never knew what that deal was.

CK: Did you...

JCB: We played some gigs with him, yeah. I don't know why him and Zappa didn't like each other. Didn't matter to me, man. I liked Lou Reed, you know. I talked to him, fuck, I didn't have anything against him. And he talked to me, I mean, you know, I'm just... I wasn't Zappa (laughs), that's for sure. So why not? Interesting concept (laughs).

CK: I think I read that he isn't that hostile now, but I guess it's easier when the person you hate isn't around anymore.

JCB: Well, Dweezil and Ahmet are keeping it up though, for their dad, against Lou Reed. I think that's fucking stupid for those two boys to do that, 'cause what the fuck do they know? See, that's what I'm trying to say, man, is they... they, you know, a coin has got two sides to it, man. It takes two to tango! You can't tango by yourself! You know, it takes two to tango. So learn both sides of the story, man, before you make a judgement. You know, because this is said over here, that makes it all true? You know: "This guy is an asshole!", well, "I'm telling you, he's an asshole!", but then this guy over here's saying that he's not an asshole. So find out, man, and make up your own mind, man. You know, don't listen to your mom and dad! That's the way they feel about him.

CK: The attitude that you're describing... you know... the boys keeping up the hostility towards Lou Reed, Gail Zappa saying that she represents the intentions of the composer and all that... What do you think that Zappa would have... that mentality, how would he judge it, do you think? If you can imagine... It doesn't seem... They have a different mentality than he did. More like normal people, you know. I think about neighbours where I come from, and...

JCB: I don't know, man. Like I said, I don't know those kids. I really... you know, I've met them a few times. I don't care about them that much. I'm not a big fan of Dweezil. I think he's probably a good player. But my son Geronimo is also a good player on the damn guitar! Plays a different style, he doesn't play Zappa music. I mean, it doesn't mean that he couldn't if he wanted to. He can play anything he wants to, man. He's that good of a musician.

CK: Is he working as a musician.

JCB: Yea... he plays. Not only as a musician, but... You know, he can't make a living. He's got three kids, man. He's got a... you know... he's not a fool. I didn't... when I was living in Austin for ten years, I didn't... I couldn't make a living as a musician. I painted houses, with the God of Hellfire.

CK: The God of Hellfire?

JCB: Arthur Brown! "FIRE... duh-duh-duuuh duh duh... FIRE..."

CK: Oh. I know that name, but I don't know where I...

JCB: Well, 'cause that's his song. His hit was "Fire".

CK: OK. (laughs)

JCB: "I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE AND I BRING YOU FIRE... duh-duh-duuuh duh-duh... FIRE".

CK: So you painted houses in Austin...

JCB: Yeah, him and I were, we had a little company called The Gentlemen of Colour. Jimmy Carl Black and Arthur Brown, and we cut a CD in Austin called "Brown, Black and Blue", that's a fucking classic CD, man.

CK: Is it available anywhere? On the website?

JCB: Yeah, through my website (laughs). It's fucking excellent CD. I had the best, some of the best musicians in Austin at the time playing on it... I mean, that I could get to play for free on it. But they played, because it was me and Arthur. And it's a fucking classic, I'm telling you, this guy is, to me, still is the best singer ever. Arthur Brown, man, is such a powerful singer, man.

CK: He's still around?

JCB: Yeah, man. He lives in England. He's on tour all the time. Yeah, Arthur is about 64. In fact, we're gonna do... we're gonna do a sequel to "Brown, Black and Blue", maybe next year or maybe this year. If we can get the right... if we can get some money behind us, somebody to put it out, I tell you, it'd be fucking dynamite. 'Cause we wanna use... I'll play drums on that. And I think we can get Jack Bruce to play bass, which would be a lot of fun. And we might even get Clapton to play guitar, you never know. It's possible. I was thinking Clapton, or... Jeff Beck would be good also. You know, get some of the older guys... some of the old guys from England, man, on it. Go in and have some fun playing those old r&b songs, man, and let Arthur do his fucking magic to it, man. Believe me, he can do the fucking magic to it, man.

CK: So it's... For people like me, I just have to visit your website every once in a while and see what happens? Or myspace, or..?

JCB: Myspace... I'm trying to get... I think what I'm gonna do is, I think we're gonna redo my website on jimmycarlblack.com, we're gonna give it a new face lifting. Brighten it up a little bit. Get psychedelic with it, or whatever. You know, just make it a more fun thing and a better looking thing, man. It's a good website now, but it's been going for seven years, the same way. We haven't changed anything with it. I finally updated my fucking bio a couple of weeks ago. I think the bio ended about 2000. Well shit, man, seven years has gone by. I've done a lot of shit since then, man (laughs). So I finally updated that thing. I updated my... the online record store. 'Cause it didn't have the new stuff that I've got out now... on it. I got a lot of new stuff out, man.

CK: You have put that out on that website now?

JCB: The Jack & Jim Show, we've got a lot of new stuff out. I've got a tour... I'm going to America with Chadbourne in August and September. The end of August and part of September, small tour, but... We got three nights in New York City at John Zorn's club.

CK: He has his own club?

JCB: In New York City. Then we got a couple of gigs in Martha's Vineyard and Boston. One gig in Boston. Probably do Philly and some other places around on the East Coast, 'cause it's gonna be a short tour... we won't go that far, man.

CK: Hm... but it's going to be on the website. The tour dates and the...

JCB: Yeah. It'll be fun, man. You know, I haven't been in the States for seven years.

CK: Oh... But your kids, do they live over there?

JCB: They do, and that's one of the reasons why I want to go, because I'll be making a little bit... enough money so I can go... I can go out. I'm gonna take a... My wife wants me to go, and stay at least ten days or two weeks in El Paso with my kids.

CK: How many kids...

JCB: I got six kids... three girls, three boys.

CK: Hm... they all live in Texas...

JCB: Well, they're not KIDS, man. Geronimo, he's the... he's my baby boy, he's... Geronimo will be 39 next month, February the 21st. Gary, my oldest son, is 47 right now. He'll be 48 in April. Almost 50 years old, my KID.

CK: Almost the same as my mother...

JCB: And Darryl, the next oldest boy, he's 46. He's the drummer. Good drummer too, man. Solid fucking drummer. Really... power drummer. Good one. Gary, the oldest son is a timbalis and trumpet player. Plays latino music. Tex-Mex stuff. He likes it, man. I like it too. I'm proud of 'em, and they're good fucking players, those boys. They've been playing their whole lives, man.

CK: Are they musicians, all your sons? They are musicians...

JCB: The three boys. The girls, nah, they're not musicians. They just like to bitch at me a lot. Just like my ex-wife. That's a heavy trip, man. The only thing I don't like about going back home is that I gotta see her once in a while.

CK: Well...

JCB: Well, and I'll tell you, it's always the same shit... it's the same fucking shit is the reason why I divorced her in the first place. She still does it. Mexican women...

CK: So she's not easily bored...

JCB: She's not an easy woman to get along with. She knows Gail Zappa pretty well, too. My ex-wife does.

CK: I brought a... I would like to take a photo or two, but I don't have a camera, so I took my computer. It has a small camera. If it's ok.

JCB: Yeah, man. (Laughs)

CK: Perhaps even... I don't know how this hotel is, but it may be possible to get online here too, if there was something. Do you have that bootleg with you and Zappa in El Paso in 75?

JCB: I have a bootleg of it.

CK: You have it? OK.

JCB: I think I do, some place. I had one, I don't know. I don't give a shit about it. I had a tape of it. I have a fucking great recording, though.

JCB: I'm getting to be a fat old fart... don't look sexy anymore. Ah, fuck it. Who cares? I'm not trying to win any beauty contests. (Laughs)

CK: I'm not trying to do that either...

JCB: But I have a... I have a live recording of The Mothers of Invention in 1968 at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam that was recorded by the Dutch Royal Radio. Fucking great recording, man.

CK: Yeah, that sounds very good.

JCB: There's only three songs on the CD and it's 73 minutes long.

CK: 73?

JCB: 73 minutes long. One song is called "Orange County Lumber Truck", that's about 38 minutes long. One song is called "Sleeping In The Jar", which is another 32 minutes long. I think that's what it is... or "Help, I'm A Rock". It's fucking amazing. It's a concert we played at the Concertgebouw in 1969.

CK: But the way you, when you had shows and... those songs aren't that long on the records.

JCB: No, no... And that's what it's called, but there's probably ten other songs mixed into that medley.

CK: Hm.

JCB: You know, "Orange County Lumber Truck" is about ten songs. "Harry, You're A Beast", "Let's Make The Water Turn Black", "Oh, No", "Check Your Cheese"... (sings part from Lumpy Gravy)

CK: That's called "Check Your Cheese"? That's good. I didn't know it was called "Check Your Cheese".

JCB: Well, that's what we used to call it in the beginning. Ray Collins, that's what he called it. He sang it. Then "F Sharp". (Sings part from Lumpy Gravy). It's called "F Sharp". Frank used to play with this black saxophone player that used to say "Let's play the song in F Shaap, Frank". "F Sharp", they don't say "Sharp", they say "F Shaap". Sounds like "Shop", but it's not a "Shop". "F Shaap"... You know: "Beat my key, Frank. Get me my key, I can play the sax on that key good." (Laughs).

CK: Well... Are you going to the Zappanale this year?

JCB: (Shakes his head). Adrian Belew is gonna be there, though... playing.

CK: If I can afford it, I will go...

JCB: That might be a good one, man.

CK: One thing, I'm usually broke all the time, but now at least I live in Oslo, so it's easier, much easier to get to...

JCB: Are you... are you married?

CK: No.

JCB: Got a girlfriend?

CK: No.

JCB: Man, get yourself a good-looking girl that's got a lotta dough, baby! Then you got some money, honey. (Laughs).

CK: Good idea. I'll try to figure out how to do that.

JCB: Well, you got the Zappa moustache and... and you got the imperial, man. You should be flying high...

CK: Yeah, that ought to do it?

JCB: Could do it.

CK: One thing... One of my strange hobbies is to... I'm interested in moustaches. I made a website called habart.org.

JCB: (Laughs)

CK: And my argument is that it is extremely important for men to have moustaches. How long have you had that one.

JCB: I've had this fucking thing for a long time, man. A long time.

CK: What made you grow it in the first place?

JCB: Zappa. I've had it at least since 64.

CK: Hm. That's when he started to tell you to let your hair grow and...

JCB: No, that's when I started growing it. 'Cause he... He never said to do it, but he had one, and I always kind of wanted... I wanted to see if I could grow one, and I really couldn't grow one very good then. 'Cause I'm an Indian, man, you know. But the more you shave, the more you... A woman can grow a moustache if she shaves enough times right here.

CK: My grandmother told me when I was a little child that... She told me not to shave, I was six years old. "Because if you do that, you'll get a moustache". And I wanted to have a moustache, so I started to shave.

JCB: At six? You wanted..? Hey, man, put one of those babies on me! Looks good on Zappa. (Laughs).

CK: (Laughs) Yeah. I didn't know who Zappa was, but that's one of the reasons why he appealed to me immediately. Because of the moustache on the cover.

JCB: I like it...

CK: Yeah, I like it too. I think more people should have moustaches. I'll try to make some propaganda. I have another website too, but it's in Norwegian, so there's no point in advertising that.

JCB: Outside of Norway (laughs). Unless people outside Norway understand Norwegian, which I don't think they do.

CK: Most people don't, no.

JCB: There are some in the States that do, though. Around Minnesota. There's a lot of Norwegian people there, man.

CK: Yeah. I've seen programs about that on the... on TV. But I'm going to... when I get home, go into myspace and add... and we'll probably stay in touch in there. Another thing, I just started thinking...

JCB: Do you have a website? I mean an E-mail address.

CK: Yeah.

JCB: Put it on there. I'll put you in my book. In my address book. I'll keep in contact with you, man.

CK: Yeah, that's good. I'm always interested in all I can get ahold of... information about everything that has something to do with Zappa or related people. One thing, are you familiar with the guy... ehm... Nicolas Slonimsky? Has Zappa... I know, in the later years, he forced his musicians to read the "Scales and Melodic Patterns" by Slonimsky. I don't know if he did that in the Sixties.

JCB: Who, Frank?

CK: Yeah.

JCB: I never heard of that.

CK: OK. But he was a very funny guy. Mr. Slonimsky was a hundred years old and he...

JCB: Well, that's really funny, that Frank can do all this shit and... that's a guy that couldn't even read music!

CK: He couldn't?

JCB: He could write his music, but if you wrote a guitar piece and said sight-read this, he couldn't do it.

CK: Yeah, I know. I read that.

JCB: No, he couldn't. So...

CK: But the reason why I started thinking of Slonimsky is because we talked about the Internet earlier, and this guy Slonimsky, he was a friend of Varèse, who was Frank Zappa's idol. And there are some lectures with Slonimsky on the Internet, that is very entertaining. It's about music and his... But I can tell you about that later. One more thing that I started thinking about earlier too, when you mentioned that "Freak Out!" was recorded on a 4 track machine. Today, on this machine, I have this primitive music program, but you know... I haven't tried it, because I don't know about music. But I have an unlimited number of tracks and you have all these sound samples and you have equipment and... If a guy who is interested in making music said to you that he couldn't do it because he didn't have the right equipment... he didn't have the newest Mac computer with the finest ProTools or something like that, what would you say to a guy like that?

JCB: I don't have it. (Laughs). I wished I had it too, man. All I have is a PC, and it's... I hate 'em. I hate Bill Gates, man. I think he's a fucking idiot! I hate Windows!

CK: Yeah, I know. That's why I bought this, because there's no Windows on it.

JCB: I know, man, it's a Mac, man. This is the fucking... this is the machine that... You can do music on this machine. It's a MacIntosh. That's what they are, man. G5 is the best. Or a G6. That's what they mix CDs with, man. That's what they sell... record CDs with. You can do... Unlimited amount of tracks. Sandro Oliva, the guitar player from The Grandmothers, he's got a studio in Rome. He has a G6. And he does some fucking incredible stuff, man.

CK: Yeah. I can imagine that. But when you think about the... if "Freak Out!", which was done on a... nobody does music on that kind of equipment anymore...

JCB: No. The Beatles, all their stuff was done on 3 track! "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band" was done on 3 track. You ever listen to that thing?

CK: I've listened to it a few times.

JCB: That's a dynamite record, man.

CK: Yea... So that shows that you don't necessarily need a computer at...

JCB: Just imagine what they could have done if they had've had computers then.

CK: Do you listen to a lot of music that comes out now? Do you like...

JCB: I don't like the music of today, 'cause I don't like... I don't... I take that back, I do. On Myspace is where I'm hearing some of the best music. My... I feel good about the new generation that's coming up. I hear some good fucking creative music on Myspace. And you're not gonna hear it on a record, because there's not a record company that's gonna put out that kinda shit, man. They don't want anything creative! If it's creative, it gets people thinking. And they don't want people thinking, man. They wanna do the thinking for you. They don't want you to do the thinking. They'll do the thinking for you, thank you very much. "We know what's best for you. You don't have a clue what's best for you. We do! So here it is, man. And we will program it, and you will hear it on the fucking radio... you'll hear it every time you turn around, that's what you're gonna hear." It's shit! Queen said it perfect! "Radio Ga Ga". In their song. Did you ever hear that song by Queen? Fucking great song, man!

CK: Which record is it on?

JCB: I don't know which record it's on, but it's called "Radio Ga Ga", it's really fucking funny, man. And it's so true.

CK: It gets truer and truer...

JCB: I like Queen, man. I think Freddy Mercury was one of the best singers ever, man. What a singer, man! He really was a great singer. I'll tell you who I like, is Robbie Williams. I dig the shit out of Robbie Williams, I think he's fucking dynamite, man.

CK: Because of his voice?

JCB: Because of him! 'Cause he's fucking crazy as a loon! You know, he's totally insane, man. Always. You know what he's gonna do? He's gonna play at Elton John's 60th birthday. I think it's next month in New York City. He said he was gonna strip for him, on stage. And he will, man! Probably brown him out man, and fucking get Elton John all hot and bothered!

CK: Yeah. Give him... give Elton John marriage problems...

JCB: Give him marriage problems! But you know, that's... I just think he's got a... I like his voice and I like his songs. Got some good stuff going on, man.

CK: Hm. I haven't heard much of it. I've just accidentally listened to it on the TV and things like that, so I've... actually haven't paid attention to his music. But I don't pay much attention to any of the new music that comes out.

JCB: Well, there's not very many that I do. But he's one that I do. I like him a lot, man. I like what he said... one time he said "I can do anything I want. You know why? 'Cause I'm FOCKIN RICH!" (Laughs). He'd just signed a 60 million dollar deal with EMI. When he signed that deal he said "I'm FOCKIN RICH!" (Laughs).

CK: Yes, he is.

JCB: But the way he said it, man! That's so fucking funny. "I'm FOCKIN RICH!"

CK: That's English... What is it? Cockney accent, is that it?

JCB: Beautiful, man... Well, I'm gonna hit the sack, Jack. I'll tell you what, man. I want you to... I'm gonna keep one of these beers, and I want you to take the rest home, and you can have yourself a ball! OK? Don't get too drunk tonight.

CK: I'll try not to.

JCB: Or if you do, think about me!

CK: Yes, I think I'll think about that... I think I'll think about you for... a couple of days. Would you sign these?

JCB: Sure, man.

CK: I don't know if this pen is very good, but...

JCB: Well, we got one over there, from the hotel. I don't know how good it is either.

CK: It's probably better than... Than one is worn out. It's been a long interview...

(The End)