Rubber chicken
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Rubber chickens were sometimes used during Zappa's stage performances and in video footage.
Contents
Appearances of rubber chickens
Scene from Massimo Bassoli's music video Tengo Na Minchia Tanta in Dub Room Special (1985), where he uses "a rubber chicken to measure his dick".
- During Mozart Ballet (Piano Sonata in B Flat) at the concert in the Royal Albert Hall, London, on 6 June 1969, Dick Barber strangled a rubber chicken, which Zappa already announced during the Intro.
- During the 1971 tour, a toy giraffe was giving birth to a rubber chicken on stage, according to Zubin And The Mothers, Playboy, April 1971.
- During the 1974 tour, Bruce Fowler used a rubber chicken on stage (Source: Frank Zappa: a Mother Only a Face Could Love, interview by Michael Bourne, American Eye, 23 October 1974).
- In 1984, engineer Marque "Marqueson" Coy hung a rubber chicken on one of the mic stands during the break, causing a particular song to be retitled by Zappa as Marque-son's Chicken. [1]
- On the front and back cover of the Uncle Meat movie, Cal Schenkel also depicted a rubber chicken. In the film itself, Carl Zappa uses a rubber chicken to measure his dick (Uncle Meat Film Excerpt). In Tengo Na Minchia Tanta, Massimo Bassoli sings a song about this activity.
- In a 1996 article by Rip Rense, The Lost Episodes: about the album, a plaque from the actress Beverly D'Angelo is described hanging in Zappa's room, "for excellence in chicken measurement".
General references to chickens in Zappa's songs
- Plastic People: "I think his wife is gonna bring him some chicken soup."
- Advance Romance: "Chicken was never like this!"
- Disco Boy: "And feed you a box full of chicken delight!"
- Marque-son's Chicken
- The Dangerous Kitchen: "The chicken in the dish with the foil"
Quotes
Interviewed by Jay Ruby (Jazz & Pop, August 1970), Frank Zappa talked about the use of rubber chickens in his (then unreleased) Uncle Meat (The Film) movie:
"Another one of the themes in the film is a rubber chicken. We describe events as we're using a chicken to measure it. At one point we're measuring the MGM royalties with a chicken. Ray Collins does that. He comes up with a royalty statement which consists of a certain amount of foam which is expelled from the blowhole of the rubber chicken. He says, "Yes, I think we have some royalties coming now. It's very avant-garde."[2]
