Thing-Fish  

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Thing-Fish is a 1984 album by Frank Zappa. Released as an "original cast recording," it is a concept album with strange characters and a bizarre story revolving around a government plot to kill African Americans and homosexuals by way of an engineered disease. This is told to us by mutant black ex-cons who are performing a musical. All lines between performance and audience are blurred, as it is a play about a play, and about some people who go to see the play, and the story behind the play.

The album's story comprises the soundtrack to an unproduced Broadway musical and contains many references to famous plays. Originally released as a triple-vinyl box set, much of the album's material originates from heavily overdubbed versions of recordings originally released on albums like Tinsel Town Rebellion, Zoot Allures, You Are What You Is, and Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch.

In promotion of the album and proposed musical, a layout was prepared for Hustler magazine in 1983. Larry Flynt paid a total of $55,000 for the spread and for the Thing-Fish mask and Ob'Dewlla 'X' doll. Zappa also appeared on Late Night with David Letterman to promote the musical, showing photos of the unfinished mask and doll.

Story

The government has experimented on inmates of "San Quentin" penitentiary turning them into strange, hideous creatures known as "Mammy-Nuns". The story is narrated by The Thing-Fish, who speaks in an exaggerated Negro patois, hence his name is meant as a pun on the Amos 'n' Andy show's "Kingfish." He is ostensibly some sort of leader amongst the Mammy Nuns. This was done using a substance known as "Galoot Cologne" (cuh-LOG-nuh) which was invented by an Evil Prince (and part-time theater critic) living underneath Virginia, to get rid of selected "highly-rhythmic individj'lls" (blacks) "an' sissy-boys" (gays). Before long, members of both groups "be droppin' off like flies". Being unable to return to their original jobs (because "they nackins growin out they bodies"), the Mutant Mammy-Nuns are forced to perform in a Broadway musical about their plight. During a stage show of the Mammy-Nuns, Harry and Rhonda (your average white, middle-class couple) are invited on stage and put in chains by Mammy-Nuns and are forced to witness and perform many twisted things. At one point, the racist evil prince performs a riveting operatic number with a group of "Broadway zombies" explaining that the Mammy Nuns ending up on Broadway is a terrible thing because "all the best music on Broadway is native". Since he is a part time theatre critic, he explains his plan to write a terrible review of the work, to ensure that only traditional Broadway entertainment remains on Broadway. In "flashback" segments, we learn that as a boy, Harry briefly became homosexual after he lost all desire for intercourse with females because of the women's liberation movement, before falling in love with a rubber sex doll called "Artificial Rhonda." Harry also suffered from an addiction to sniffing glue, and was a fan of the Grateful Dead. Rhonda is impregnated by Quentin, a service station employee, the son of Quentin Robert DeNameland, a video preacher, working out of Las Vegas, Nevada. After this occurs, she gives birth to The Crab Grass Baby, who is an apparently robotic infant with a broad vocabulary and large genitalia. As rebuke for Rhonda's cheating, Harry works a brief stint as a truck-driver, running string beans to Utah. During this time, Rhonda becomes engrossed in her career, and participates in the widespread female conspiracy known as the women's liberation movement. She becomes infatuated with her job, and seems to have a severe personality disorder which leaves her split between being a stereotype of a little girl, interested in cute flowers and potpourri, and a deranged, sex-crazed brief-case fetishist. During "Briefcase Boogie" Rhonda embarks on a 7 minutes masturbation sequence during which she has sex with her briefcase, and verbally abuses her husband for being "a cocksucker" and "a worm, a fucking worm". The bizarre conclusion occurs when The Thing-Fish meets the Evil Prince, who has taken some of the Galoot Cologne in an attempt to see if he is immune to it. He is turned into what sounds like a partial Mammy Nun, as he begins speaking "de vernacuhluh". Thing-Fish and Evil Prince chat about "tater husbandry" at their old Alma Mater, and the work ends with a public service announcement against using Galoot Cologne, and a backwards rendition of the track No Not Now.

Cultural relevance

The story of the Thing-Fish surrounds the creation, presumably by the US government, of an insidious substance, which is to be added to the water supply to kill off blacks and gays. This is a reference to the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, and also gives voice to a conspiracy theory that AIDS was engineered. Racist and homophobic sentiments were common the group subject to parody by Harry and Rhonda, during this time period, and blacks and gays were an oddity, viewed as exotic, unsettling, and dangerous. Zappa created this work to harshly satire these views, as well as to take a stab at the world of Broadway which he viewed as bland, uninspired, and formulaic. This formula is discussed during the Thing Fish -- "I want faeries on a string! I want wind rushing down the plain!" -- and then as though to deliberately unsubstantiate them, bizarre, unsettling acts occur, with the disclaimer that the Mammy Nuns will have "faeries on a string for your ass just a little later".

Track listing

On the original 1986 CD issues, the tracks "The Massive Improve'lence" and "Artificial Rhonda" were at the beginning of Disc 2, rather than the end of Disc 1. The 1995 track listing is closer to the way the songs would appear in a performance of the musical, Artificial Rhonda being the end of the first act. There were two versions of the 1986 Rykodisc CD release—later pressings fix some sound quality problems and add some additional comments by Brown Moses (Johnny "Guitar" Watson) to the song "He's So Gay." The same commentary also appears on a rare EP version of "Won Ton On." Earlier pressings feature the original vinyl mixes of three tracks ("Prologue," "Harry-As-A-Boy" and "He's So Gay"), but are otherwise identical to later pressings.

Personnel

Cast

• Thing-Fish—Ike Willis
• Harry—Terry Bozzio
• Rhonda—Dale Bozzio
• The Evil Prince—Napoleon Murphy Brock
• Harry-As-A-Boy—Bob Harris
• Brown Moses—Johnny "Guitar" Watson
• Owl-Gonkwin-Jane Cowhoon—Ray White

Musicians

• Frank Zappa – arranger, composer, director, vocals, producer, Synclavier, guitar
• Tommy Mars – keyboards, vocals
• David Ocker – Synclavier
• Scott Thunes – vocals, bass guitar
• Johnny "Guitar" Watson – vocals, cast
• Ray White – vocals, cast, guitar
• Chuck Wild – piano
• Jay Anderson – string bass
• Ed Mann – percussion
• Chad Wackerman – drums, vocals
• Ike Willis – vocals, cast, guitar
• Dale Bozzio – vocals, cast
• Arthur Barrow – bass guitar
• Terry Bozzio – drums, vocals, cast
• Napoleon Murphy Brock – vocals, cast
• Steve DeFuria – Synclavier
• Bob Harris – keyboards, vocals, cast
• Steve Vai – guitar

Production staff

• Bob Fletcher – costume design
• Ladi Von Jansky – photography, cover photo
• Bob Stone – engineer
• Mark Pinske – engineer