Mo 'N Herb's Vacation

FZ album(s) in which song has appeared

 

Tour(s) on which song is known to have been performed (main source: FZShows, v. 7.1)

 

Comments

Foggy G, "The Songs That Were Played," We're Only In It For The Touring

1978 Aug-Oct: This is a full band version of the orchestra piece known as "Mo and Herb's Vacation" (at least part of it). Running about 4 minutes in length, this tune sounds like a cross between the "Black Page #1" and the full band version of "Little House I used To Live In." These performances, however, are for bass and drums only- a veritable showcase of Artie's and Vinnie's talents. Sean Gaffney points out that the opening notes to this tune correspond to the notes that Ike sings in "Wet T-Shirt Nite", slightly slowed down for that studio song, for the lines "And it's wettshirttime again...I know you want someone to show you some tit...Big Ones...Wet ones....Big Wet Ones"

Wøööøł

Rip Rense, "Frank Zappa—A Would-be Chemist Who Turned To Music," The Valley News, December, 1977

He recently completed [...] a new symphonic work called "Wooool" (spelled with slashes through the first and last o's, umlauts over the two middle o's, and a tilde over the L—thus pronounced something like "Woh-ooo-oh-luh," but modern typesetting prohibits such reproduction here.)

"Wooool" is scored for a Mahler-sized orchestra: 60 strings, four flutes, piccolo, all other woodwinds four-deep, eight french horns, four trumpets, three trombones, bass, tuba, six percussionists.

Steve Vai, interviewed by Michael Brenna, Society Pages #10, May, 1982

There's a version called "Moe's Vacation," "Herb's Vacation," and "Moe AND Herb's Vacation." The song originally started out when David Ocker, who is a music copyist for Frank, should get a raise, and he said he would rather have Frank write him a song. So Frank wrote him the melody entitled "Moe And Herb's Vacation." The melody is constant throughout all the three pieces. "Moe's Vacation" consists of the melody being played and a written drum part and a written bass part, which varies a little bit between all the three tunes. "Herb's Vacation" is just the bass and drums, "Moe And Herb's Vacation" is the actual orchestral score, which used to be the introduction to a song called "Wøöl," would you know how to pronounce that? [(A quick introduction to Scandinavian lettering from the interviewers.)] But then, what happened was that "Wøöl" was taken out, and the whole piece was called "Moe And Herb's Vacation."

drdork, Zappateers, September 13, 2013

You can hear FZ pronounce the title several times during Titties & Beer, 10/20/77 (late) Boston.

United States Copyright Office

PAu-53-432
Title: W0oo0l / Frank Zappa.
Description: 81 p.
Note: Orchestral piece.
Claimant: Munchkin Music
Created: 1978
Registered: 10Oct78
Miscellaneous: See also W0oo0l; REG 24Feb81; PAu 303-692
Special Codes: 3/M

PAu-303-692
Title: W0oo0l. By Frank Zappa.
Claimant: Frank Zappa d.b.a. Munchkin Music
Supplement to Registration: PAu 53-432, 1978
Effective Registration Date: 24Feb81
Title on © Application: Mo 'n' Herb's vacation, 2nd and 3rd movements (a.k.a. W0oo0l)
Special Codes: 3/M

Blow Job

Ed Mann, Facebook, September 2, 2014

the first rendition had no name, then a few of us sight read it and told frank we liked it, so he named it Blow Job, then he changed a few things and renamed it moe and herbs vacation

Charles Ulrich, September 2, 2014

after David Ocker told FZ about a John Bergamo composition for solo bass drum entitled Blow Job.

 

Conceptual Continuity

Herb Cohen:

 

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