Frank Zappa & The Mothers - 1970 "A Snail In My Nose"

A Snail in My Nose (CD)

• Fillmore East OR West, 1970 (location & date fiercly debatable)

• Re-issued on CD (Lost Rose 8)
• Re-issued on CD as A Snail in My Nose (Teddy Bear Records TB 49 (Italy)), with the bar code 8 016607 942492
• Also issued legally as part of the Beat the Boots II set

Length: 51:37
Sound quality: Soundboard A

The Italian title comes from a 1980s number in the Uncle Meat movie and on the Uncle Meat CD re-issue; an Italian has translated it as "I got a big bunch of dick". An Italian re-issue is cowardly renamed A Snail in My Nose.
This seems to be hodge-podged together from tapes of two shows that night (that goes also for the Freaks & Motherfuckers boot). Tracks 1-5 are probably from the early show and tracks 8-14 from the late show (?). Tracks 6-7 could be from both. The "Interlude" includes "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head", and track 13 includes 40 seconds of "Inca Roads" (a very early version, of course, with only the 16th-note theme) and 24 seconds of "Easy Meat". Around the track break between tracks 11 and 12 there are some "Mudshark Variations".
"Sharleena" is the same performance as on Hotel Dixie. Tracks 11-14 are the same recording as side two of Freaks & Motherfuckers and Hotel Dixie.
The location and date of this show is up for grabs. Beat the Boots claims it as Fillmore East 11-May-1970, which is wrong; the Flo & Eddie band had not been formed then. According to fanzine T'Mershi Duween, the tape the boots are struck from is recorded at the Fillmore West and sometimes identified as 24-May-1970, sometimes as 6-Nov-1970. (As Mike Phillips points out, Zappa does talk about "the speech-impediment lounge at the Fillmore East" during "Does This Kind of Life Look Interesting to You?".) Some people identify them as 14-Dec-1970, but according to Miles' book A Visual Documentary, Zappa was in Europe in December 1970, which has given rise to the date 14-Nov-1970. The Hotel Dixie boot claims to be from that date - but is it the same recording? Pick your favourite.
A Snail in My Nose has a different, imagainative track listing on the cover, but everyone says its a copy of Tengo 'na Minchia Tanta. The cover picture is a black and white snail on a colourful background. The Lost Rose CD cover has a sepia head-and-upper-body photo of Zappa playing guitar with a blurred portrait of him in the background.

Track listing:

1. Does This Kind Of Life Look Interesting To You? (00:49) [intro]
2. A Pound for a Brown on the Bus (07:26)
3. Sleeping in a Jar / Interlude (04:50)
4. Sharleena (04:31)
5. The Sanzini Brothers / FZ Talking to Audience (02:22)
6. What Will This Morning Bring Me This Evening? (02:30)
7. What Kind Of Girl Do You Think We Are? (01:44)
8. Bwana Dik (01:46)
9. Latex Solar Beef (01:00)
10. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy (02:50)
11. Little House I Used to Live in [including "Penis Dimension"] (04:10)
12. Holiday in Berlin [with lyrics!] [including "Would You Like a Snack?"] (04:29)
13. Instrumental [including "Inca Roads" & "Easy Meat"] (07:16)
14. Cruising For Burgers (02:46)

Musicians:

Frank Zappa,
Mark Volman,
Howard Kaylan,
Jeff Simmons,
Aynsley Dunbar,
George Duke
Ian Underwood