- Bizarre Records
Bizarre Records was a
record label formed for artists discovered byFrank Zappa and his business partner/managerHerb Cohen .Bizarre was originally formed as a production company. Zappa's label,
Verve Records , had missed the deadline to renew their option on Zappa's recording contract after his second album withThe Mothers of Invention , "Absolutely Free " in 1967. This gave Zappa and Cohen the upper hand in negotiating their own production deal with Verve. As the owner of his own production company Zappa greatly increased the amount of creative control he had over his work.The first albums associated with Bizarre were released in early 1968. These included "
We're Only in It for the Money " by theMothers of Invention and "Lumpy Gravy ", Zappa's first solo album. Other Zappa related releases were "Cruising with Ruben & the Jets " (1968) and "Mothermania " (1969). The company also produced the late 1968 release "Sandy's Album Is Here At Last " by singer-songwriter Sandy Hurvitz, now better known asEssra Mohawk . These albums were all released byVerve Records under the "Bizarre Productions" imprint.In 1969 Bizarre became a record label distributed by
Warner Bros. Records . This venture was formed at the same time as a companion label,Straight Records . When the Bizarre and Straight labels were created Zappa's intention was to release albums by avant-garde artists on Bizarre, and recordings by more mainstream artists on Straight. However the original concept failed to work out as expected due to issues with distribution and management. This led to some very unusual albums on the Straight label especially those byCaptain Beefheart ,Alice Cooper andThe GTOs .Zappa released eight of his own albums with and without the
Mothers of Invention on Bizarre from 1969 to 1972. The only Zappa project not on Bizarre during this period was the "200 Motels" film soundtrack album, released byUnited Artists Records in 1971.Bizarre and Straight were both discontinued by 1973. In their place Zappa and Cohen created
DiscReet Records also distributed by Warner Bros. The Zappa/Mothers titles on Bizarre were re-issued onReprise Records between 1973 and 1981. The Zappa/Mothers titles are now available on CD fromRykodisc .The only other Bizarre Records artists were "
Wild Man Fischer " andLenny Bruce . In 1988 Enigma Retro released Lenny Bruce's only album for Bizarre "The Berkeley Concert " on CD and cassette.See also
*
List of record labels External links
* [http://globalia.net/donlope/fz/related/labels.html Discography of Zappa related record labels]
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