Actuel Festival

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FZ as MC: Amougies & Turnips

Late in October 1969, after the break-up of the Mothers Of Invention, Zappa agreed to being a Master of Ceremonies at an open air concert in France. The event was put together by BYG Actuel, a French record label specializing in free-form jazz acts that was attracting artists to Paris in a recording bid for the American market. (The BYG comes from the founder's surnames; Jacques Bisceglia, Jean-Luc Young and Jean Georgakarakos) Non-jazz acts booked for this concert included Captain Beefheart, Aynsley Dunbar's Retaliation and Pink Floyd.

However, the organization of this concert became a disaster. FZ arrived to find that the event had been moved, at the last minute, across the French border to a turnip field in Belgium because it had been banned by lobbyists in the French capital.

This 5-day, 24-hour, non-stop rock show was consequently sited in the remote town of Amougies, (now Amougies, Mont-de-l'Enclus), Belgium - consisting of a makeshift performance tent held up by steel girders in a turnip field - attended by 15,000 people who had to sleep and eat rough in a climate of cold, damp and fog. Zappa's role as an MC turned into a failure - he only spoke English and the audience only understood French, or Belgian and German. Festival co-host Pierre Lotez suggested Zappa could play along with some of the bands, but this too proved a disappointment. FZ generally described this event as one of the most miserable points in his career.

However, FZ did get to introduce Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, who played "My Human Gets Me Blues" (Track 1, CD 5 on Grow Fins: Rarities 1965-1982).

"Listen, be quiet and pay attention to this man's music. Because, if you don't you might miss something important - and we wouldn't want that to happen to you - because you need all the friends you can get..."

Zappa jammed on two numbers with Retaliation's drummer Aynsley Dunbar, bassist Alex Dmochowski (aka Erroneous), keyboardists Tommy Eyre & Victor Brox, and guitarist John Moorshead. He also did some improvised jazz pieces with Archie Shepp, drummer 'Philly Joe' Jones and others.

An article upon FZ's comments of this event;
Extract from It's all in self-defence Friends, 1969 November 22, by Jonathan Green (Rolling Stone, Clinic):

"There were this group of people from Paris who put the shit on this festival, mainly because they were scared to death of having large numbers in that city. So these guys who wanted to put the festival on just refused to quit and they finally wound up choosing a cow pasture about two hours out of Brussels.

A lot of fog, and I guess it must have been twenty or thirty degrees out there, it was really miserable, a few tents and the people began to turn up from nowhere and they turned on the PA and that worked, and they turned on the lights and they worked, and the groups actually began to play and by God they had a pop festival.

And then they looked at it and realised that they had to keep on for five days. I was asked to join the festival. They first of all asked for the Mothers to play but there weren't any Mothers at that time, so Pierre Lotez, who I had known for some time, asked me to co-host the festival, but when I arrived there I found that most of the people spoke French and they wouldn't know what the fuck I was talking about so it was useless for me to introduce the groups.

So Pierre suggested that I might play with some of the groups. But I was at a great disadvantage because I didn't have my own guitar and I had to use other people's guitars and the amps that were around for everyone at the festival to use, and they kept blowing up and fucking up, and on top of that some of the groups found it a little difficult to relate to what I was playing. Cause, if you have a group that has certain arrangements and sets that they play every night, it's difficult to stick in an alien element that isn't part of the set up.

The audience and the reviewer forgot about those variables - perhaps seeming a little anxious to prove that I was a crappy guitar player".

One benefit from this event was that Zappa remembered Dunbar's skills and, later in the Spring of 1970 at The Speakeasy Club in London, invited him to join the band in America. Chunga's Revenge followed.