ArtistInfo

Frank Zappa
Muffin Research Kitchen

Album 2015 on Scorpio label
Jazz and Rock (Jazz-Rock)

[CD sleeve notes] CD 1 FRANK ZAPPA - MUFFIN RESEARCH KITCHEN STUDIO REHEARSALS 1982 UTILITY MUFFIN RESEARCH KITCHEN STUDIO, UMRK, LOS ANGELES THE STORY SO FAR By the end of the 1970s, Frank Zappa had released 28 original Albums (including seven two-LP Releases), either by the Mothers of Invention or under his own Name. Deeply distrustful of large record companies, Zappa had set up his own Independent record Label and, frustrated by the cost and logistical difficulties of scheduling lockouts in Commercial Studios, had constructed a state-of-the-art personal Studio, the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen (UMRK). And to ensure the highest-quality live recordings, Zappa purchased the Beach Boys' remote truck. The refurbished truck, dubbed the UMRK Mobile, became an integral part of the touring organization and was used to record every Show, as well as premix various instruments for the FOH and Monitor energeers. "I might have 22 channels on the drums," says Mark Pinske, then working as Zappa's recording engineer in the truck and at UMRK. "I would take the combination of all of it and send, for instance, Tom Toms left and right back out of the house. We might take nine different Stereo Keyboards, and i would mix them all down to a Stereo Keyboard mix that could go back to the Monitors onstage and back to the house mix. We found that we had a lot more control over the Feedback and a lot fewer Problems with the recordings, because we had the same sonic tone and the same path pretty much going to each of the Locations. CD 2 I had 85 noise gates in the truck, and we could pretty much control everything. I could hear Problems --- Little buzzes or hums --- and we could Isolate the Problems, and then i could treat them with some of the best outboard gear you could get and send it back to These guys, and it would be all spiced up. And , of course, you're not going to get the Kind of equalization that you have in a Neve console out of a Little portable Midias board." With two Ampex MM1200s running at 30 ips, the Operation soon required bulk shipments of tape to various Points on the tour. "On the first three-month tour, we had 946 master tapes, if i remember correctly," says Pinske. "A huge amount of master reels of tape. Normally, it would take about eight reels a Show, overlapping them. A lot of times, we did thease small Theaters in America, so we would do double Shows, and Frank had a Habit of not repeating any of the Songs from Show to Show. So we'd have pretty much different tunes throught both Shows." MAGIC FINGERS Having played about 825 concerts in the preceding 10 years, Zappa retired from touring in July 1982 and devoted his energies to new Studio recordings and mixing the now-enourmous backlog of live tapes. Bob Stone, formely chief engeneer at Larrabee, where he had mixed many of Cassablanca's dico hits, including Donna Summer's "Last Dance," joined the UMRK stall in 1980, and he and Pinske would up tag-teaming on Zappa's various Remix Projects. "Frank liked to work around the clock," recalls Stone, "so we'd take shifts. I'd leave a Setup for mixing on the console and leave any notes that needed to be done." In fact, the surprise hit "Valley Girl" (from the 1982 Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch Album) was mixed while Zappa was asleep. CD 3 "When he got up the next morning to check out what happened the night before." Stone says, "he thought maybe one of the vocal raps might have been different, from a different track earlier in the tape. But I'd already tried that and knew it wouldn't work. I demonstrated that to him, so we went back to what I had and moved on. That was about all the Attention we gave it." "Valley Girl" became Zappa's highest-charting single and, along with an out-of-court Settlement with Warner Bros., provided funding for Zappa's next recording adventure. In January 1983, Zappa and Pinske traveled to London to record the London Symphony Orchestra performing various "classical" pieces that Zappa had composed since 1968. Unable to secure a good concert hall for the recording date, Zappa wound up recording the 105-piece orchestar on a soundstage at Twickerham Film Studios, using about 40 prototype Crown PZM microphones (supplied by Ken Wahrenbrock) in unusual Close-miking configurations. Another technical Innovation was the use of Sony's new PCM-3324 digital Recorder, but neither the wide dynamic range of the digital medium nor the seperation archieved through Close miking could entirely save the Performances. "I think we had about 1,000 Edits," Pinske recalls of the Remix sessions. "We were counting them at one Point --- we got up to like 900 --- and we decided that counting them was ridiculous. But [Zappa] could edit like nobody could. When I first started with him, I was afraid to pick up a razor blade. Now I could put a breath into a vocal or take a breath out. I was just privileged to be able to have learned from somebody like that." Despite his dissatisfaction with the LSO's Performances, Zappa was extrmly impressed by the apparently noisless digital recording medium and wound up Leasing and eventually owning two Sony PCM-3324s, as well as a Sony PCM1610 for 2-track mixdown. From 1984 on, all of his new recordings, both in the Studio and live, were in the digital medium.

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