Jason Pettigrew

My personal favorite prog-rock king is hands-down, Edwin “Eddie” Jobson. My first exposure to Jobson was seeing him with Roxy Music on an episode of ABC’s In Concert sawing away on his clear plexiglass violin during “Street Life” and “A Song For Europe.” When all my fave prog bands made their most ass records (do the research: prog died in 1976), Jobson stepped up in ‘77 and formed UK with Bill Bruford and Allan Holdsworth and John Wetton (may they both RIP) for a stellar self-titled 1978 debut. When Holdsworth and Bruford jumped ship, Jobson enlisted PTGRW’s fave drummer in life (Terry Bozzio) and recorded Danger Money and a live album, Night After Night, and then adjourned sometime in 1980. Bozzio started Missing Persons; Wetton was enticed to front Asia; and Jobson went out on tour with Jethro Tull, maintained a brief solo career and then stayed at home for nearly three decades and composed music for movies and TV shows. (He has seen more episodes of Nash Bridges than you have.) 

But waaaaay before all that, Jobson was enlisted to play in Frank Zappa’s band. Apparently Roxy Music was opening for FZ on some American shows in 1975 and Jobson expressed a great desire to enter the ranks of America’s most sardonic musical genius. He joined Zappa just in time to end up on the front cover of 1976’s Zoot Allures, but nowhere on the record. FZ did put some mileage on him though: The musically sophisticated Englishman appeared on SNL and plays on the maestro’s recordings Zappa In New York, Studio Tan, Philly ‘76, Läther and Zappa/Erie. I was already a Zappa fan in 1974 after getting a free copy of Roxy And Elsewhere for subscribing to CREEM. I spent the rest of the ‘70s acquiring all the other Zappa/Mothers records in his discography at the time. 

I distinctly remember reading about Zappa in an issue of Circus magazine in the summer of 1976. Throughout the story, the writer kept talking about this record called The Night Of The Iron Sausage and the tracks that were on it. In my self-appointed role as The Imperial Teenage Zappa Ambassador For The Milky Way Galaxy, I was incredulous. That’s not the name of the record, you dolt. There’s not even a song on the record with that title. This particular moment would come into play in adulthood during my tenure at the culture factory, when the phrase “two-month lead time” comes into play. In the two-month window prior to the record’s release, a lot of plans were scrapped. The most obvious of them was the title of the record being changed and the harsh reality that the planned two-LP set was now a single album. The record was also issued on Warner Bros. (now Warner Records) instead of Zappa’s label imprint, Discreet. (FZ was suing his manager at the time, who was a co-partner in that venture.) The fanboy obsession over this stuff meant I didn’t get invited to a lot of parties. To this day, I’m OK with that.

I’m bloviating about this for two reasons. The first reason is that uME and the undisputed king of the Zappa archivists, Joe “The Vaultmeister” Travers, have announced Dec 4 as the release date for the 50th anniversary of Zoot Allures in a number of permutations. There’s a six-disc Super Deluxe Edition which includes the original LP, a complete 1975 concert recorded in Paris (featuring the lineup on the FZ:OZ release), as well as various mixes and previously unreleased tracks. But what has my heart practicing potential atrial fibrillation is a reconstruction of the intended Night Of The Iron Sausage, where Zoot tracks are augmented with songs that ended up on future FZ releases (drawing significantly from 1979’s Sleep Dirt). If you want the specifics about the contents of “Zoot 50” in all its majesty, well, I’ve got you, boo.

While not quite burying the lede, the second reason I’m bit-champing is that I was asked to contribute an essay to this reissue, which found me checking in with bassist/synthesist/Zappa band alumnus Patrick O’Hearn (almost hidden by FZ in the above photo) and Davey Moire, the co-engineer on the original Zoot sessions. I also professed my love of the album by discussing that it was the tour heralding my first time seeing Zappa in the flesh, something I would do approximately seven times later whenever he rolled into Pittsburgh, prior to his resignation from live gigs in 1988 and his passing in 1993.

Admittedly, I have not heard the final result of Monsieur Travers’ historical curation and state of the art mixology, nor have I read his always informative premablic essay about the project. In complete transparency, 15-year-old PTGRW can’t believe what the hell is happening and the elderly version of me is looking forward to cultivating new levels of tinnitus. I am forever grateful to Tim Plumley, Mr Travers and Holland Greco for their enthusiasm, encouragement and laughter at my puns (especially the bad ones). And let me once again shout out the 60th anniversary of The Mothers Of Invention’s debut, Freak Out, that I was incredibly honored to assist in.

Meanwhile, the latest issue of SPIN is waiting for you, so go to your favorite newsstand and scrape some microplastics off your credit card. Not only do you get some commentary from culture-war veterans (Henry Rollins, Anthrax, Diamanda Galas), electronic icons (Soft Cell, Human League) alt-rock institutions (Death Cab For Cutie) and columnist Steve Hochman’s Outside The Lines dispatch, my esteemed editor Jon Cohen turned me loose on the new Queens Of The Stone Age LP, Perfecth, as well as Who Loves The Sun, the remarkably depressing new album from Chat Pile (the d-word is not pejorative), as well as The Vinyl Countdown where I shoehorn commentary on no less than 13 records centered around all kinds of noises and the swath of people who make them.

Oh yeah, back to Eddie Jobson. Years ago, I registered with his information service (The Zealot’s Lounge) for $20 and stayed up for nine weeks straight refreshing my browser waiting for a response as to what I’d be getting in return for sending him a portrait of Andrew Jackson. I’m only half-kidding: I didn’t wait by the computer like a ‘70s teenage Air Supply fan waiting for the phone to ring three weeks before the senior prom. But like that unloved youngster, I too, got nothing.

Recently, efforts were made to potentially interview him for some outlet in support of what he considers “his final live dates.” But alas, his publicist said he wasn’t interested. So I took the money I had earmarked for seeing him in Chicago this week and preordered the deluxe version of Roxy Music’s second album, 1973’s For Your Pleasure, which features all kinds of experimental madness perpetrated by his predecessor, Brian Eno. Now mind you, it would’ve been cool to corner Jobson’s drummer Marco Minnemann and ask him about his stint in Necrophagist with guitarist Muhammed Suiçmez. But to spend $125-plus for the VIP pay-me-an’-dig-me package with travel expenses on top of that? Why, I could bring home a 50-count box of copies of Zoot 50 to give to my friends. Or better yet, finance a trip to see a much more exhilarating expedition.

Late-stage capitalism. As a wondrously cynical man once posited, “That’s what’s the deal we’re dealin’ in.”

My publicity sherpa Whitney has always stressed the importance of indie book stores. When I was starting to promote my Land of Rape And Honey book, she instructed me to go into as many stores as I could to introduce myself and offer to sign any copies they had in stock. So in your role as an early adopter, if you purchased a copy from Exile In Bookville, The PPIM, Liz Garo’s v. awesome Stories or Skylight, you’ll have some form of my autography in your collection, sometimes tweaked with some kind of musical reference. Most of them were a nod to the refrain in  “Flashback” (“Laugh like a what?”) while others were patently absurd mashups of Luxa Pan and Pee-wee Herman (“You know what you are, but what am I?”).

Fortunately for me Skylight ambassador/podcast producer Justin Remer thought me more worldly than turdly. Turns out that he was grinding through his 33.3 book which was centered on the 1984 LP “Weird Al” Yankovic In 3D, by the titular polymath parodist. We swapped “agony aunt” stories and cracked each other up. Long story short: He read my book; we played email tennis. He finished his book; and we both put further discussion on the back burner of our respective psychic stoves. 

And now it can be revealed: I am featured on the latest episode of The Skylight Books Podcast available on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and a few more places, most assuredly. Listening back to it, I think I should probably consider decaf or maybe repeated listenings of Tate McRae an hour before a live interview. (Then again, I wouldn’t want to sound like Mitch McConnell.) Justin is a solid dude, well-read and -researched and I wish him nothing but joy and a briefcase filled with unmarked $50s and $100s that doesn’t have exploding dye packs nestled in it. And while I have you here, you should also listen to the episode featuring Tyler Sonnichsen and his wonderful book on The Dead Milkmen for J-Card Press.

Thank you for landing on this webpage. Oh and one last thing: In this summer’s latest issue of SPIN, you can see me waxing about Gene Loves Jezebel, Jon Spencer, Marmozets, Crocodiles and a few more in my Vinyl Countdown column. I was also completely taken by the latest Failure album, which you can read about for free here. In the meantime, I am filling up the drive up to Doomsday (read: midterm elections) with the very thought of Angine De Poitrine, Bikini Kill, Gilla Band, Piss, Beat (now fortified with Terry Bozzio!) and Cabaret Voltaire. Because when they kick in my front door, I won’t hear it. There’s a good chance I’ll be deaf AF by then…