Jasun started composing The Pillory and assembling the Neoteric Orchestra in 1976. Following the premiere live performance in Los Angeles in July of that year, plans were initiated for the studio recording. However, when Jasun was asked by Frank Zappa to join his world-tour as a synthesizer programmer, the orchestra was temporarily disbanded and the album production delayed. After the Zappa tour in mid-77, Jasun moved to London to record some of the basic tracks and began auditions for the soon-to-be 40-piece orchestra.
As far as Zappa goes, I used to be a synthesizer programming wiz-kid and so I toured with him for a year or so. He had this HUGE synthesizer set up for Eddie Jobson that took me literally half a day just to tune. It was a great tour and Frank and I got along really well and I learned a lot from him. I recorded some interesting percussion and vocal overdubs for "Zappa, Live In New York".
After college, around 1977, I started touring as a roadie for lots of bands. Frank Zappa had this huge, and I mean huge Emu synth. It was like 10 feet tall and had literally hundreds of knobs and cables. By then I was a synthesizer wiz-kid and synthesizers were pretty new, so Frank hired me to run it, and Eddie Jobson to play it. I was excited to work with Eddie as he was an incredible musician, and we became really good friends touring with Zappa.
During the tour I started composing and recording THE PILLORY. It was a blend of all my musical tastes: prog, avant-garde, noise, freeform jazz with LOTS of mellotron. I owned 2 mellotrons at the time and have always loved the mellotron sound. Somehow the Neoteric Orchestra as I dubbed it, grew to 40 musicians including Jobson and Ruth Underwood from Zappas band. [...] It took me a few years to record it in LA, New York and London studios. Zappa was very supportive since he liked this type of music too. I have to admit, even though it was recorded 25 years ago, to me THE PILLORY still sounds pretty amazing.
[...] Frank and I got along really well and he showed me more about music than I learned in all my university music classes.
Art Rock: When you were in U.K., you appeared on Jasun Martz's The Pillory album. How did you get involved with Jasun's project?
Jobson: Jasun was my roadie in Frank Zappa band. He was keyboard tech. That album was done during Zappa. He wanted to make some kind of Avant-Garde record. He just asked me some favor if I would play something on his record. So I helped him out. I know that album still keeps coming out. People keep asking me what this album is.
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