The Trip
The Trip was a club established in September 1965 by Elmer Valentine, following the success of his Whisky a Go-Go, in what had once been The Crescendo jazz club. Zappa listed it as one of the Freak Out! Hot Spots.
"That was the start of the Big Time. Next up the ladder was the Whisky, and then the Trip, which was just nirvana." - Frank Zappa - The Rolling Stone Interviews Vol. 1 1968
Although only a small (200 capacity) venue it attracted many of the up and coming acts of the day - usually with newly released records or a healthy local following. These would range from locals The Byrds/The Leaves/The Mothers to Motown acts such as Marvin Gaye/Temptations/Martha and the Vandellas.
It was a short lived venture closing in May 1966. During its short existence The Mothers played at The Trip on three occasions:
- December 1965 - "Happy Xmas Beat"
- January 1st - February 5th 1966
- May 3rd (and possibly 4th) 1966 - see below
Exploding Plastic Inevitable Show
After performances around New York throughout April Andy Warhol brought his Exploding Plastic Inevitable mixed-media show featuring The Velvet Underground to The Trip at the beginning of May 1966 having been booked to perform from the 3rd to the 18th.
As both The Velvet Underground and The Mothers were signed to MGM and both had a Tom Wilson produced album about to be released it was seen as a marketing opportunity:
"We got back to L.A. to learn that MGM had organized a special event at The Trip to promote The Velvet Underground and The Mothers of Invention at the start of May" - Jimmy Carl Black[1]
It did not go well. The crowd cheered The Mothers and booed The Velvet Underground who Zappa had mocked from the stage.[2] Lou Reed despised Zappa calling him “the single most untalented person I’ve heard in my life. He’s a two-bit, pretentious academic, and he can’t play rock & roll, because he’s a loser."[3]
Mary Woronov, a dancer with the EPI show, described the west coast audience: "We weren’t like them at all. They hated us.... They thought we were evil and we thought they were stupid."[4] Or as Maureen Tucker, The Velvet Underground's drummer, succinctly put it: “I didn’t like that love-peace shit.”[4]
Musicians in the audience were also less than impressed. Cher, leaving half way through, quipped: "It will replace nothing, except maybe suicide". David Crosby likened the experience to "eating a banana-nut Brillo pad".[5]
From Jimmy Carl Black's perspective:
"The thinking of the audiences was completely different than those from New York City. They were lukewarmly received."[6]
“The band seemed kind of strange to us as they were coming from a totally different angle than we were. I talked to Nico and I thought that she was nice and also I talked to Mo the drummer but Lou Reed and John Cale seemed pretty out there.”[1]
The signage and flyers list the Modern Folk Quartet as support.[7] The MFQ were also managed by Herb Cohen and had played at The Trip regularly; they claim they played as support. An employee at The Trip claims that The Mothers opened the show on the first night.[8] Jimmy Carl Black claims:
“I think we played three nights there with them at The Trip. About a week after those gigs, we travelled up to Hayward to play at a place called Frenchys[1]
The Mothers were booked to play at Frenchys in Hayward, a six hour drive to the north, from the 6th of May for the next two weeks.
After the opening show, with a celebrity filled audience, audience numbers declined significantly: "The line for the second show circled the block but the customers leaving started warning people not to go in. They said the show was vulgar and violent. The line got smaller and smaller until only a handful of people remained." [8]
The Exploding Plastic Inevitable Show was shut down on the 6th of May after the wife of one of the operators sued in the L.A. Superior Court to obtain $21,000 allegedly overdue on a promissory note, resulting in a sheriff’s office representative being posted to enforce a writ of attachment and/or charges of obscenity due to the sadomasochistic nature of the show[9]. The closure meant the Velvet Underground claiming over $3000 contractually due to them.[10] Neither Jimmy Carl Black or Zappa refer to being there as it closed. In an interview later that year Zappa barely acknowledges it:
"We came back and worked ahh, with Andy Warhol at the Trip. The show that closed the Trip as they say." Don Paulsen interviews FZ - December 1966.
To summarise: The Mothers return to LA to learn that they are, unexpectedly, doing a special show at The Trip with the Velvet Underground. Probably down to some Cohen/MGM manoeuvres.[11] They played the opening show on the 3rd - probably the early and late show. The MFQ were probably the support on the 4th/5th. Mothers probably travelling to Frenchys on the 5th. The show is shut down on the 6th. Probably.
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 For Mothers Sake:The Memoirs & Recollections of Jimmy Carl Black 1938-2008 (Inkanish Publications 2013)
- ↑ Jimmy Carl Black: "I don't remember Zappa actually putting them down on stage, but he might have. He really disliked the band... I know that I didn't feel that way and neither did the rest of the Mothers." - White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day by Day, Jawbone Press
- ↑ Up-Tight. The Velvet Underground Story. (Omnibus Press 1983)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (New York: Grove Press, 1996)
- ↑ 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded By Jon Savage (Faber & Faber 2015)
- ↑ - White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day by Day, Jawbone Press
- ↑ Jim Morrison claimed that they were negotiating for The Doors to take over as support
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Victoria Cavaleri
- ↑ "Gerard and Mary acted out our sexual S & M rituals - he licked her boot, she made a show of whippping him - and Gerard panotmimed injecting a drug with a huge toy syringe, but that's all it was: an act. However, the police said that their dances were pornographic, and Lou's lyrics were pornographic. Gimme a break!" - John Cale
- ↑ Strip’s Trip Hit by 3G Pay Claim As Club Shutters, Variety, May 17, 1966
- ↑ The Velvet Underground would soon claim that Cohen had used his influence to ensure that The Mothers album was released first so as to maximise its impact.
