What can I say about this album that hasn't been said already by other people? Zappa is one of my musical heroes, and this is one of his most "bluesy" albums. Not everyone will find the following comment "helpful", but I know some people will... I read an interview with Kate Bush (the singer) once in which she claimed that this was her favorite Zappa album - because with this one, she said, "we've got two loonies on one album". There you go, people, when I like it, and The Muse likes it, it must be good.

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I love it, it's perfect, but I'm a Zappaphile.

The most perfect moment on it for me is simply when the tempo changes in Sam with the Showing Scalp Flattop and Beefheart says, "Sam was a basket case...!" and the blues guitar kicks in. Wow. And the segue into Carolina... yum. I think it's a studio segue, though.

FZ's Mufin Man solo is of course superb, sublime even, it overshadows the other exremely fine guitar work on the album. And the little comeback after the closing band introductions just sends the song right over the top into a universe all its own. It's such a unique FZ solo, just pure id, and maybe even some love, or maybe it's just because Denny Walley was listening, I dunno. By far the most superior version of the song available.

Carolina, 200 years, Advance Romance... it's all great. I have a longer bootleg version of the concert from the night before this one was recorded (as have most of you, I'm sure, lol) and I think this was most certainly one of FZ's best lineups. The bootloeg is pretty crappy quality, but it shows how much more juicy material was available for Bongo Fury. Shame it wasn't a doule album. FZ doesn't seem to have given this one much thought, he didn't put any eyebrows on it, maybe it had to do with Beefheart's presence?

I would never try to argue with someone who doesn't like this album, except maybe for Muffin Man. Bongo Fury's plenty weird enough for us to all agree that it's a matter of taste and generally a matter for those already accustomed to FZ, and hopefully Beefheart as well.

Bongo Fury and Roxy & Elsewhere are probably the two FZ CDs that spend the most time in my car's stereo...

If you're a fan and you're considering buying this album, my advice is to just do it, now.

Today's modern "musical tastes" are, in the various ideologies, a demagogue's dream, a money making enterprise, a haven for ineffectual people with voids to fill, and, above all, the tools of the idle bourgeoisie and perhaps the truest enemy of Euro-American culture and it's twin sister, the leisure class. History clearly shows us that, as a society, we ignore Frank Zappa at our peril.

Every wan musical style that has ever pushed aside another for the sake of filthy lucre or the illusion of a yuppie savoir faire has unavoidably been influenced culturally and indeed genetically by the sound of "yesterday". This sort of evolutionary retribution has manifested itself ubiquitously ... Egypt, Greece, Montana, Portugal, and even pre-Cesarean England. So much for P-Diddy's so-called 'musical purity'. The average New Kids On The Block fan is to his Backstreet Boys inheritor musically what the Taino Indian was to the Spanish Conquistador. The Taino (the original commonalty of Puerto Rico) had, unlike the Spaniard, a multi-crop agrarian system. The hard fact is that no musical act today has ever created a multi-crop agrarian system, except for perhaps Willie Nelson and Farm Aid.

The lessons of history also prove that musical trends are much like a mint-flavored dental floss. A music perceived as technically more "hip" or "today" (not a more advanced musical or tooth cleaning process) implementing will, world view, and a mint-flavored belief system through indolent financial bloodletting. Does mint flavor actually facilitate oral or unisonant catharsis? No, but now you can, with a clear conscience, have those oh so chic onions with your luncheon. With discs like Zappa's "Bongo Fury," we see the estranged ingenue enact his revenge. It is the so-called "Carolina Hardcore Ecstasy" effect of having a plastic leather 14 triple D shoe stomped down hard upon the 'musicology-as-coffee-table-embellishment' aesthetic.

Understanding this, why would anyone advocate our society's slothful musical prostitution? Frankly, it boils down to rapacity, misguided urban aspirations and a very poor long-range view and past recollection of history. Historically, this sort of snobbery was found exclusively on the golf course, but is now available at an inner city housing project near you.

The bottom line on avaricious musical obtuseness: Imagine if you will, the world has reverted to the year 1893...
All the luxury, all the profit from overseas, lets say India for example, enables some bank clerk from London to amass a fortune from investing in the "Nouveau Riche Mint-Flavored Tea Co., LTD." You, his former co-worker at the gas station, at the same time lose a fortune you personally saved up by investing in a proposed sweat-shop which would create puffed and flabulent Mexican rebel gasmasks from Burmese rubber sap for the British aristocracy. Suddenly, the monsoons appear. You, along with the whole Mexican gasmask idea, are wiped out ... blatantly extrusive. Now what? Perhaps you wind up as a polo ball cleaner at your former (and financially sound) co-worker's estate out at Snooty-On-Avon. No more credit from the liquor store pal. Now just click your heels together three times and say "Where's my cell phone?"

In closing, a final blow to the current musical bourgeoisie: it's idealization of the rigid weight-lifting sports-fanatic buff-oriented non-musical type. This glorified ideal has made our musical situation as it is. The ideal of intelligence over physicality was frowned upon for years, (until recently as a fad and half-assed atonement for the detestable Tai-Bo and Thigh-Master lifestyle), and had taken a back seat to the football-score neurotic. Remember folks, we need muscle ... but the muscle needs brains. Eat more Zappa.

Do you like Zappa? Do you like Beefheart? Then why don't you have this album yet? But it now!! Great music!

I was pretty dissapointed, when I listened to it. I borrowed it from a friend. Here's only one good song. It's Muffin Man. Actually it's a great song. I really don't recommend this album.
It's bad & poor.