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Frank Zappa: Sheik Yerbouti

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Zappa Records
Released: 1979.03.10
Time:
 72:33
Category: Surf Music, Doo-Wop, Garage Rock
Producer(s): Frank Zappa
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.zappa.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2012
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] I Have Been in You (F.Zappa) - 3:33
[2] Flakes (F.Zappa) - 6:41
[3] Broken Hearts Are for Assholes (F.Zappa) - 3:42
[4] I'm So Cute (F.Zappa) - 4:27
[5] Jones Crusher (F.Zappa) - 2:49
[6] What Ever Happened to All the Fun in the World (F.Zappa) - 0:33
[7] Rat Tomago (F.Zappa) - 5:17
[8] We've Got to Get into Something Real (F.Zappa) - 0:31
[9] Bobby Brown (F.Zappa) - 2:49
[10] Rubber Shirt (T.Bozzio/P.O'Hearn/F.Zappa) - 2:45
[11] The Sheik Yerbouti Tango (F.Zappa) - 3:56
[12] Baby Snakes (F.Zappa) - 1:50
[13] Tryin' to Grow a Chin (F.Zappa) - 3:31
[14] City of Tiny Lites (F.Zappa) - 5:32
[15] Dancin' Fool (F.Zappa) - 3:43
[16] Jewish Princess (F.Zappa) - 3:16
[17] Wild Love (F.Zappa) - 4:09
[18] Yo' Mama (F.Zappa) - 12:36

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Frank Zappa - Lead Guitar, Vocals, Arranger, Composer, Producer, Remixing

Adrian Belew - Rhythm Guitar, Vocals, Bob Dylan Impersonation
Patrick O'Hearn - Bass, Vocals
Terry Bozzio - Drums, Vocals
Ed Mann - Percussion, Vocals
Tommy Mars - Keyboards, Vocals
Peter Wolf - Keyboards, Butter, Flora Margarine
David Ocker - Clarinet on [17]
Davey Moire - Backing Vocals, Engineer
Andre Lewis - Backing Vocals
Napoleon Murphy Brock - Backing Vocals
Randy Thornton - Backing Vocals

Peter Henderson - Engineer
Jon Walls - Engineer
Kerry Mcnabb - Engineer
Joe Chiccarelli - Remixing, Overdub Engineer
Bob Ludwig - Mastering Engineer
Bob Stone - Digital Remastering
John Williams - Art Direction
Amy Bernstein - Artwork, Layout Design
Lynn Goldsmith - Photography, Cover Photo
Gail Zappa - Photography
Barbara Isaak - Assistant

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


1979 2xLP Zappa Records SRZ-2-1501
1990 CD Zappa Records CDZAP 28

Frank goes to the disco, loves your nails, and comes back with a genuine hit single, "Dancin' Fool." Not to mention the Number One hit, "Bobby Brown Goes Down" - okay, it was Number One only in Norway, since most US stations were too timid to play it. Zappa's band on this one includes drummer Terry Bozzio, keyboardist Tommy Mars, and the then-unknown Adrian Belew, who not only plays guitar but does his best Dylan imitation on "Flakes." Also here are the notorious "Jewish Princess," the definitive romantic treatise "Broken Hearts Are for Assholes"; and "I Have Been in You," a parody of Peter Frampton.



In order to finance his artier excursions, which increasingly required more expensive technology, Frank Zappa recorded several collections of guitar- and song-oriented material in the late '70s and early '80s, which generally concentrated on the bawdy lyrical themes many fans had come to expect and enjoy in concert. Sheik Yerbouti (two LPs, one CD) was one of the first and most successful of these albums, garnering attention for such tracks as the Grammy-nominated disco satire "Dancin' Fool," the controversial "Jewish Princess," and the equally controversial "Bobby Brown Goes Down," a song about gay S&M that became a substantial hit in European clubs. While Zappa's attitude on the latter two tracks was even more politically incorrect than usual for him, it didn't stop the album from becoming his second-highest charting ever. Social satire, leering sexual preoccupations, and tight, melodic songs dominated the rest of the record as well, as Zappa stuck to what had been commercially successful for him in the past. The "dumb entertainment" (as Zappa liked to describe this style) on Sheik Yerbouti was some of his dumbest, for better or worse, and the music was undeniably good - easily some of his best since Apostrophe, and certainly the most accessible. Even if it sometimes drifts a bit, fans of Zappa's '70s work will find Sheik Yerbouti on nearly an equal level with Apostrophe and Over-Nite Sensation, both in terms of humor and musical quality.

Steve Huey - All Music Guide



To paraphrase the composer himself, Frank Zappa isn't dead. He just smells funny to a lot of posthippie pundits who claim the master Mother made his point with Freak Out, Absolutely Free and We're Only in It for the Money before descending into the depths of pornographic cheap shots and jazz-rock redundancy for most of his next twenty odd albums.
As the first release on Zappa's own label, the four-sided Shcik Yerbouti won't change everybody's mind, but it reaffirms (at least for the faithful) Zappa's chops as a bandleader and rock & roll wit who doesn't have to be socially relevant to get a laugh. The opening salvo, "I Have Been in You," is a marvelously snide sendup of Peter Frampton's wimpiest hour ("I'm in You") that does for putzy love songs what "Dancin' Fool" does later for uncoordinated nerds with fatal John Travolta complexes. Indulgent scatological exercises like "Broken Hearts Are for Assholes" and "Bobby Brown" (in which the artist unleashes a few zingers at record companies) continue to raise the question of Frank Zappa's lyrical gift and just what's left of it. But even when Zappa and crew come on like the avant-garde answer to Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts, they do so with such self-parodying panache ("I'm So Cute," "Jewish Princess") that you're just as likely to laugh with them as at them.

Instrumentally, Sheik Yerbouti is a refreshingly straightforward record. Zappa refrains from pulling too many doo-wop gags or musique concrète tricks, instead conducting his tight, punkish ensemble through hard-rock operettas (e.g., "Flakes," "City of Tiny Lites") that actually score points over some of his clever concertos of yore. Despite his cynicism and classical pretensions, Frank Zappa is still a first-class rock & roll musician, capable of peeling off on a hot guitar solo (the live "Yo' Mama" here) and penning a riveting riff. If this LP does nothing else, it offers proof that, ten years after his supposed heyday, this sheik can still shake it.

David Fricke - May 3, 1979
© Copyright 2009 Rolling Stone



On many levels — creative, personal, and business-related — 1979 would go down as a banner year in the long and storied career of Frank Zappa. But perhaps nothing else accomplished during those significant 365 days left as large and lasting an impact as the double album cheekily named Sheik Yerbouti, which arrived in stores in March 1979.

To put things in perspective, Sheik Yerbouti was already Zappa’s second product of 1979 (Sleep Dirt’having arrived in January), albeit the first released by his brand new Zappa Records. With the launch, he officially announced his hard-won freedom from former label Warner Bros. and its onerous contract, though Warners would only finish unloading their trough of unsanctioned recordings with Orchestral Favorites that May.

That contract had driven a belligerent Frank into bootlegging his own, originally envisioned sequence for all this material (entitled Lather) on the radio airwaves a few years earlier — then hoarding whatever music he subsequently wrote or recorded until he was legally free to package it as he saw fit, beginning with the largely concert-recorded, then studio-manipulated Sheik Yerbouti. This explains both the opening of Zappa’s creative floodgates throughout 1979 — later to include the ambitious three-album rock opera known as Joe’s Garage — and the inspired songs collected in Sheik Yerbouti, which served as a virtual omnibus of Zappa’s wide-ranging musical pursuits.

On the one hand, there were free-form instrumental guitar workouts (“Rat Tomago,” “The Sheik Yerbouti Tango”), avant-garde techniques (“Rubber Shirt,” which mixed two entirely separate performances in the studio, a process he dubbed “xenochrony”), jazz-inflected prog-rock (“City of Tiny Lights”) and select snippets of dialog and virtuosic instrumentation in the tradition of musique concrete.

On the other, there were surprising amounts of relatively straightforward, hard-rocking numbers, filled with titillating comedy such as “Broken Hearts Are for A–holes,” “Jones Crusher” and “Tryin’ to Grow a Chin” — all of which appealed to Zappa’s twentysomething male audience sweet spot, ever-prepared to lap up the man’s most extreme examples of social commentary and all-purpose controversy.

Among these, the faux love song “I Have Been in You” poked fun at Peter Frampton’s soft-porn smash “I’m in You” while the topical “Flakes” parodied Bob Dylan’s distinctive voice and harmonica. “Dancing Fool” fiercely mocked disco and “Jewish Princess,” well … you know. And with the gleefully obscene “Bobby Brown (Goes Down),” Zappa offended pretty much everyone else for good measure, and still came away with one of his most popular songs.

But if any doubts remain regarding Sheik Yerbouti’s broad appeal within and beyond the core Zappa audience, they can be dispelled by the album’s remarkable sales figures, which surpass those of any other Zappa LP with an estimated two million units shifted to date worldwide.

And they were all obtained strictly on Zappa’s terms — as always.

Eduardo Rivadavia - March 3, 2015
UltimateClassicRock.com



One of his most popular and infamous albums, Sheik Yerbouti finds Frank Zappa unleashing his unique brand of sociological documentation on the disco-injected culture of the late '70s. From crises of sexual identity to the rhythmically challenged, the songs are hilarious and occasionally close to home (The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith didn't care much for "Jewish Princess"). The satire is some of Zappa's most scathing and unsympathetic, and the music is equally loud and unrelenting - especially when showcasing the talents of sidemen Terry Bozzio and Adrian Belew. A must-have in any Zappa collection.

Andrew Boscardin - Amazon.com



Sheik Yerbouti is a live double album with studio elements by Frank Zappa made up of material recorded in 1977 and 1978. It was first released on March 3, 1979 as the first release on Zappa Records. Sheik Yerbouti represented a major turning point in Zappa's career. The first album to be released on his own eponymous label after his departure from Warner Bros. Records, it emphasized the comedic aspect of his lyrics more than ever before, beginning a period of increased record sales and mainstream media attention. Sheik Yerbouti remains Zappa's biggest selling album worldwide with over 2 million units sold to date.

The title is a play on words; Zappa appears on the cover in character in Arab headdress, and the name, meant to resemble an Arabic transcription, is pronounced like the title of KC and the Sunshine Band's 1976 disco hit "Shake Your Booty".

The album featured Zappa's satirical and otherwise humorous or offensive material. "Bobby Brown" is well-known worldwide, except for the USA, where it was banned from airplay due to its sexually explicit lyrics. "I Have Been in You" pokes fun at Peter Frampton's 1977 hit "I'm in You" while maintaining a sexually driven structure. "Dancin' Fool", a Grammy nominee, became a popular disco hit despite its obvious parodical reflection of disco music. "Flakes", about the lousiness of laborers in California, includes a parody of Bob Dylan. "Jewish Princess", a humorous look at Jewish stereotyping, attracted attention from the Anti-Defamation League, to which Zappa denied an apology, arguing: "Unlike the unicorn, such creatures do exist—and deserve to be 'commemorated' with their own special opus".

Some of Zappa's solos from the album began life as improvisations from his earlier work. "Rat Tomago" was edited from a performance of "The Torture Never Stops", which originally appeared on Zoot Allures; "The Sheik Yerbouti Tango" likewise from a live "Little House I Used to Live In", originally a Burnt Weeny Sandwich track. The song "City of Tiny Lites" featured an animation video made by Bruce Bickford which was featured on the Old Grey Whistle Test.

Most of the tracks were recorded live, then extensively overdubbed in the studio. "Rat Tomago" is bookended by two brief pieces of musique concrète, constructed of studio dialogue, sound effects, and assorted musical fragments. In making "Rubber Shirt", Zappa combined a track of Terry Bozzio playing drums in one musical setting with one of Patrick O'Hearn playing bass in another, and totally different, musical setting. The tracks differed in time signature and in tempo. Zappa referred to this technique as xenochrony. Nearly every song on the album features numerous overdubs.

The album was also notable for being the career break of noted producer and engineer Joe Chiccarelli. In an interview with HitQuarters, Chiccarelli said: "[Zappa's] engineer couldn’t make the session and so he decided to take a chance on me. I’m so thankful ever since that day because he gave me a career."

Initially, the album was met with mixed reviews, due to the controversy of its lyrical content. The album remains a cult favorite among Zappa fans to this day. The song "Bobby Brown" was extremely popular in Scandinavia. Zappa was reportedly so astounded by its success, that he wanted CBS to hire an anthropologist to study why the song became such a big hit.

Wikipedia.org
 

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