upcoming documentary film regarding "the Pal sound" and FZ; with Paul Buff, Lorraine Belcher
Hoodoo
Zappa, Surfaris recorded tunes in 1960's Cucamonga
Pair rekindles music studio's glory days
By Molly R. Okeon
Staff Writer
http://www.dailybulletin.com/Stories/0,1413,203~21481~2850373,00.html
- - -
A photo of Frank Zappa (bandleader of the Mothers of Invention,
songwriter, guitarist, composer, producer and recording engineer)
at the controls in the studio in Rancho Cucamonga, mid-1960s.
- - -
RANCHO CUCAMONGA - In a town once called Cucamonga, a young
musician and his ambitious mentor would make history.
The pair - Frank Zappa and musical engineer Paul Buff, both then
twentysomethings - clocked countless hours in the Pal Recording
Studio at what is now 8040 Archibald Avenue, engendering a sound
musicians have sworn defies reproduction.
More than 40 years later, the city since renamed Rancho Cucamonga
serves as a launching pad for a musical tribute spearheaded by
former high school friends Adam Fiorenza, 23, and Derek Miley, 24.
The two have spent the past 18 months retracing the steps of
Zappa and Buff, as well as other musicians who thrived on the Pal
sound.
By the end of 2005, filmmaker Fiorenza of Pasadena and producer
Miley of Whittier plan to wrap up two years of exhaustive
research, culminating in a documentary that celebrates the
artists and bands that passed through the Pal studio during its
heyday.
Fiorenza's initial intent was to honor Zappa, the prolific
avant-garde composer, rock musician and co-founder of the band
Mothers of Invention. Zappa died of cancer in 1993 at the age of 52.
But with each new revelation, he and Miley realized there were
"more characters," others who found their way into the studio
during its run in the 1960s.
"From my point of view, when people think of Cucamonga, they
think it's the butt of a joke," said Miley, referring to the
famous line from Jack Benny's radio show in 1945, "Train leaving
on Track Five for Anaheim, Azusa and Cuuucamonga!" "(The studio)
shows a lot of other stuff came out of Cucamonga.
"I didn't know about this studio that recorded "Wipeout!' and
"Pipeline' in Cucamonga, and I love those songs."
LAYING THE FOUNDATION
After graduating from USC in spring 2003, Fiorenza contacted his
old friend Miley.
"He calls me up and says, "Dude, I just graduated, I got this
nice camera and this great idea,'" Miley said.
Shooting for the film would begin in late September 2003.
Fiorenza and Miley, both graduates of Rancho Cucamonga High
School, enlisted the aid of Kent Crowley, 54, their "official
Rancho historian," at the suggestion of Daily Bulletin columnist
David Allen, who had earlier captured the men's attention by
writing about Zappa and the Cucamonga studio.
After gathering Crowley's input, the two were allowed to tour the
Zappa family's former home in Claremont with the permission of
Zappa's younger siblings, Candy and Carl.
"They were talking a lot about the neighbors and how they were
one big community," Miley said. "The old neighbors who still
lived there talked about the memories they had. They said the
Zappa kids were always at this one neighbor's house. It was their
second home."
Fiorenza and Miley then were able to score what might be the
final interview of Zappa's mother RoseMarie before she died in
January 2004 at the age of 93.
Their research also took the two to Nashville, Tenn., where they
visited with Buff, the musical engineer who owned Pal Recording
Studio from 1959 until December 1964, at his home and two
workplaces - a digital art gallery and a lighting business.
"(Buff) told us a lot of technical stuff about the actual studio
itself," Miley said. "It was a five-track studio back when the
norm was two-track. We wanted to see if he could re-create it for
us, tell us exactly how it looked."
Fiorenza explained Buff's relationship with Zappa as more of a
partnership in the latter years of Pal. But he added that Zappa
was "green" when, in his early 20s, he showed up at the doorstep
of Pal.
EARLY ZAPPA
In early 2005, the filmmakers managed to find Karl Kohn, a
retired composition professor from Pomona College who taught Zappa.
Kohn, who was born in Vienna in 1926, described Zappa's demeanor
as a student as much different from the persona he adopted as a
famous musician.
"He was not outgoing, not the long-haired hippie-looking guy,"
Fiorenza said of Kohn's recollection of Zappa. "He was more
low-key and shy. His compositions were good, and they were turned
in on time. He was very meticulous."
But the two filmmakers' biggest coup was in finding Zappa's
former girlfriend, Lorraine Belcher Chamberlain, who in March
1965 was arrested with Zappa at the studio for conspiracy to
commit pornography.
Chamberlain, who was 19 at the time of the arrest and now lives
in San Francisco, has previously avoided interviews about Zappa.
Fiorenza was thrilled to capture Chamberlain's rare musings and
anecdotes.
According to various accounts, the surprise raid came after a
notorious San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department sting at the
studio over a racy audiotape.
The pornography charges were dropped soon after, but a chance
snapshot would immortalize the moment.
Just after the bust, a photo published in what was then the
Ontario Daily Report showed Zappa and Chamberlain smiling, their
arms draped around one another.
"If you look at it, it looks like they're posing for the picture
and smiling like they're really proud of what just happened,"
Miley said.
In fact, Chamberlain explained, it was just an odd coincidence.
After officers had separated the couple to question them,
Chamberlain insisted on being reunited with Zappa. Once back
together, Zappa apologized so profusely that the two burst into
laughter and embraced, she recalled.
At that moment, a news photographer kicked open the door, which
turned the couple's attention toward the camera.
"It was totally not their plan to pose for the picture - it just
ended up that way," Miley said.
THE "PAL SOUND"
Through the course of their research, Fiorenza and Miley
interviewed members of early 1960s surf bands The Tornadoes, who
wrote "Bustin' Surfboards" - which appeared on the soundtrack to
the movie "Pulp Fiction" - and the Surfaris, who performed the
surf hit "Wipeout!"
The filmmakers discovered that the original versions of the two
hit songs were produced at Pal Recording Studio and later
re-recorded and put into radio rotation.
"Paul Buff developed this unique sound that people liked,"
Fiorenza said. "It was the "Pal sound' from Pal studios."
And it was a sound the musicians insisted could not be duplicated
elsewhere.
"They went out to L.A. many times, trying to re-create the Pal
sound, but couldn't do it, so they came back," Miley said.
During this time, Zappa worked for Buff as an engineer and
producer, helping record the surf tunes.
"He was cutting his chops on these surf songs," Fiorenza said.
"You really don't equate Frank Zappa to surf music. (The bands)
were impressed with him as an engineer and producer."
Zappa would take over the studio briefly - and rename it Studio Z
- after Buff departed in late 1964.
But he left the studio, and the city, in August 1965.
"Lorraine said he was kind of done with Cucamonga," Miley added.
Studio Z was torn down the following year.
WHAT'S NEXT
Among the more modern recording successes that Fiorenza and Miley
interviewed for the documentary are "Weird Al" Yankovic and the
band Alien Ant Farm, whose remake of Michael Jackson's "Smooth
Criminal" enjoyed extensive radio play.
The men hope to enter the finished documentary into film
festivals - including Sundance and the Los Angeles Film Festival
- as well as distribute it on DVD.
They have also teamed up with Chaffey College student Aaron
Rothe, himself a composer, on plans for a concert honoring
musicians cited in the documentary, tentatively scheduled for
July 30 at the Chaffey College Theatre.
In the end, Fiorenza said he hoped the documentary would leave a
sense of artistic culture, a source of pride for the community of
Rancho Cucamonga.
"If you've grown up in a town like this, it's really lame as far
as culture," he said. "For kids that want to do more arts and
theater, it's not the place to be. ... There's no sense of
history, and that kind of bothers me. No sense of self."
Molly R. Okeon can be reached by e-mail at
molly...@dailybulletin.com or by phone at (909) 483-9376.
Hoodoo
http://media.mnginteractive.com/media/paper203/zappaatstudio.jpg
Hoodoo
> Address for a large version of the accompanying photo:
> http://media.mnginteractive.com/media/paper203/zappaatstudio.jpg
Something screwy's going on here. I posted the full article three
times for the added info above and I haven't seen any one of them
show up. The info above was posted in reply to my third attempt
which I made through Google. Because I subsequently saw the
article posted via Google, I made the follow-up post above
through there as well.
For some reason my usenet-server is not allowing me to post the
full article. If y'all see three copies of it, pardon that
situation. I haven't seen any one of them yet, except the attempt
in/via Google.
--
It's a big old goofy world. - John Prine
The Arrogant Mop
Hoodoo
> Will there be an NTSC version?
Who knows?
Or, as Mike Gula might phrase it,
"_Who do_ you know that may have an answer?"
Corné van Hooijdonk
it's visible here.... and it's great news, really looking out for this
one....
Thanks!!!
Ellen Brenner
news:1115220397.7...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> May 03, 2005
>
> Zappa, Surfaris recorded tunes in 1960's Cucamonga
>
> Pair rekindles music studio's glory days
>
> By Molly R. Okeon
> Staff Writer
> http://www.dailybulletin.com/Stories/0,1413,203~21481~2850373,00.html
Fascinating. Thanks for posting that.
I do hope the movie more thoroughly covers Cucamonga's hostility towards
Zappa, and the forced closure of Z Studios, than this article does. The
article's ending implies that Zappa gave up the studio *only* because he got
tired of Cucamonga, and then throws in mention of the studio being torn down
as a coincidental afterthought--none of which, of course, does justice to
the dirt involved in those events and their relation to the porno-sting/bust
as described by Zappa himself. But that may just be the spin put on these
events by the reporter or the paper, no doubt heavily invested in presenting
a dirt-free version of Cucamonga even as these documentary-filmers seek to
dig up the truth. Anyway, yeah, I'll definitely keep my eye peeled for this
movie and hope for the best.
/the duck
(whose long accustomed to reading between the lines of newspaper articles)
--
Ellen "Miz Ducky" Brenner
mizducky "at" drizzle dot com
http://www.mizducky.com
http://www.livejournal.com/users/mizducky/
Ellen Brenner
news:nB9ee.21235$R46....@tornado.socal.rr.com...
> /the duck
> (whose long accustomed to reading between the lines of newspaper articles)
and who is usually a lot more on the ball about grammar and typos and such
computeruser
it paid the light bill at Studio Z when Frank could not.
computeruser
"Hoodoo" <hoo...@spamcop.net> wrote in message
news:1115220397.7...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
computeruser
> The Arrogant Mop wrote:
>> Will there be an NTSC version?
>
> Who knows?
Gula didn't you get the PAL joke?
Michael Gula
> "Hoodoo" <hoo...@spamcop.net> wrote in message
> news:427906E3...@spamcop.net...
>
>>The Arrogant Mop wrote:
>>
>>>Will there be an NTSC version?
>>
>>Who knows?
>
>
> Gula didn't you get the PAL joke?
I got the joke, pal.
Hoodoo
>>The Arrogant Mop wrote:
>>>Will there be an NTSC version?
>>Who knows?
> Gula didn't you get the PAL joke?
I'm the one who missed the joke.