Thing-Fish

by Frank Zappa

Thing-Fish cover art
  • Type: Album
  • Released: 21 December 1984
  • Label: Barking Pumpkin
  • Country: United States
  • Length: 1:30:52
  • Community rating: 2.3/5 from 2 ratings

Album Notes & Community Reviews

Conceived as an immensely controversial, unproduced Broadway musical, 'Thing-Fish' serves as a scathing, profane satire of American culture, feminism, Broadway theater, and government conspiracies. The sprawling triple album heavily recycles and remixes previously released instrumental tracks, overlaying them with elaborate, racially charged AAVE vocal performances by Ike Willis. It remains one of the most polarizing and difficult entries in Zappa's extensive discography.

Genres

Descriptors: Avant Garde, Parody, satirical, lgbtq, vulgar, conceptual

Tracklist

  1. Prologue (2:56)
  2. The Mammy Nuns (3:31)
  3. Harry & Rhonda (3:36)
  4. Galoot Up-Date (5:27)
  5. The "Torchum" Never Stops (10:33)
  6. That Evil Prince (1:17)
  7. You Are What You Is (4:31)
  8. Mudd Club (3:17)
  9. The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing (3:14)
  10. Clowns On Velvet (1:51)
  11. Harry-As-A-Boy (2:34)
  12. He's So Gay (2:44)
  13. The Massive Improve'lence (5:07)
  14. Artificial Rhonda (3:31)
  15. The Crab-Grass Baby (3:47)
  16. The White Boy Troubles (3:34)
  17. No Not Now (5:50)
  18. Briefcase Boogie (4:09)
  19. Brown Moses (3:01)
  20. Wistful Wit A Fist-Full (4:00)
  21. Drop Dead (7:56)
  22. Won Ton On (4:17)

Credits

  • Robert Fletcher - artwork [costumier]
  • Jene Omens - assemblage [prosthetics for thing fish & sister ob'dewlla 'x']
  • Arthur Barrow - bass guitar
  • Scott Thunes - bass guitar
  • Jay Anderson - double bass
  • Chad Wackerman - drums
  • Ray White - electric guitar, voice actor [owl- gonkwin- jane cowhoon]
  • Steve Vai - electric guitar

More from Frank Zappa: full discography