Don't Eat the Yellow Snow

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"Don't Eat the Yellow Snow"
Single by Frank Zappa
from the album Apostrophe (')
B-side"Cosmik Debris"
ReleasedAugust 1974
RecordedMay & December 1973[1]
Genre
Length3:26 (Single version)
10:53 (Original suite)
2:07 ("Don't Eat the Yellow Snow")
4:38 ("Nanook Rubs It")
1:50 ("St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast")
2:18 ("Father O'Blivion")
LabelDiscReet
Songwriter(s)Frank Zappa
Producer(s)Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa singles chronology
"Cosmik Debris"
(1974) 		"Don't Eat the Yellow Snow"
(1974) 		"
Du Bist Mein Sofa
"
(1975)

"Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" is a

percussionist Ruth Underwood on marimba, who added a very distinct sound to many of his songs in the early 1970s.[4]

In keeping with the arctic theme of the song, after the first lyric "Dreamed I was an Eskimo" there is a musical quotation from the 1947 jazz tune "Midnight Sun".[5]

Story

"Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" is a song about a man who dreams that he was an Eskimo named Nanook. His mother warns him "Watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow."[citation needed] The song directly transitions into "Nanook Rubs It". The song is about Nanook encountering a fur trapper "strictly from commercial" who is whipping Nanook's "favorite baby seal" with a "lead-filled snow shoe". Eventually Nanook gets so mad he rubs husky "wee wee" into the fur trapper's eyes, blinding him. According to the lyrics, this scene is destined to take the place of "The Mud Shark" (a song from the live album Fillmore East – June 1971) in Zappa mythology. Zappa then sings in the fur trapper's perspective, who laments over the fact that he has been blinded. The fur trapper then makes his way to the parish of St. Alfonzo, introducing the next song "St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast".[citation needed]

From this point forward, the suite almost completely abandons the previous storyline (the fur trapper's blindness is never explicitly healed though an outtake of Nanook Rubs It reveals that there is a cure to his afflicted eye.)

Latin phrase "Dominus vobiscum, Et cum spiritu tuo (meaning "The Lord be with you, and with your spirit."). Won't you eat my sleazy pancakes just for Saintly Alfonzo." There are many possible reasons why the pancakes are "sleazy"; Zappa leaves them to the listener's interpretation. The suite can only loosely be said to follow a story and is treated as one piece only because of the musical transitions, the way each song introduces the next, and how later songs reference previous songs.[citation needed
]

Rollo

"Rollo" was a piece of music that went along with the original suite, but Zappa decided against putting the whole piece in the album. Instead, he decided to add the main theme of "Rollo" as the instrumental second half of "St. Alphonzo's Pancake Breakfast".

QuAUDIOPHILIAc, and his posthumous live album Imaginary Diseases. The piece itself was written during Zappa's recovery from injuries suffered in December 1971, when he was pushed from the stage at London's Rainbow Theatre by a deranged fan. The original piece had lyrics detailing the adventures of a "Man and a dog" (the dog being named, "Rollo") who encounter a couple in some sort of act of lovemaking. The piece was performed with the vocals during much of Zappa's Grand Wazoo Orchestra tour in September 1972. Sometime after that tour, Zappa decided to drop the lyrics and play it strictly as an instrumental; eventually finding its way into the Yellow Snow suite. In 1978, Zappa resurrected and revised the lyrics (sung by keyboardist Tommy Mars) into the suite. Rollo was performed on October 21, 1978, during Zappa's appearance as host of Saturday Night Live. For the broadcast, Tommy Mars' vocals were modulated via a vocoder to avoid issues with network censors concerning the song's lyrical content.[8]

Single

A disc jockey in Pittsburgh edited the album versions of "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" and "Nanook Rubs It" to play on his radio show. While Zappa toured Europe, he learned of this version's success, and decided to create his own edited version once he returned to the United States, and released it as a single.[9] The version released as a single contains some of the album version of "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow", most of "Nanook Rubs It", and the intro to "St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast." The single also appears on Frank Zappa's best-of, Strictly Commercial, which title is taken from the lyrics of the song "Nanook Rubs It".

The single was Zappa's first chart entry on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #86 in November 1974.[10]

Track list

A."Don't Eat The Yellow Snow" – 3:26 (Contains "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow", "Nanook Rubs It" and the intro to "St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast")
B."Cosmik Debris" – 4:10[11]

Record Store Day reissue

On April 14, 2014, Zappa Records released a special limited edition re-issue of the single edit originally released in 1974. This edition contains an alternative version of the piece "Down In De Dew" (from Zappa's 1996 posthumous release Läther) as the B-Side. The record sleeve uses a previously rejected cover photo for Apostrophe (').[12]

References

  1. ISBN 978-1-554201-46-4
    .
  2. ^ Popoff, Martin (January 5, 2024). "The Top 20 unlikely Progressive Rock hits, ranked". Goldmine. Retrieved January 7, 2024.
  3. ISBN 031214704X
    .
  4. ^ Song Review by François Couture. "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow - Frank Zappa | Song Info". AllMusic. Retrieved 2016-10-09.
  5. ISBN 9781617136207
    .
  6. ^ Nanook Rubs It (Session Outtake)
  7. YouTube
  8. ^ "Rollo". Globalia.net. Retrieved 2016-10-09.
  9. ^ ^ Quellette, Dan (1995) (liner notes). Strictly Commercial. Rykodisc. Strictly Commercial at Discogs (list of releases)
  10. ^ "Frank Zappa Chart History". Billboard. Retrieved 16 February 2018.
  11. ^ "Frank Zappa - Don't Eat The Yellow Snow / Cosmik Debris (Vinyl)". Discogs.com. August 1974. Retrieved 2016-10-09.
  12. ^ "SpecialRelease". Record Store Day. 2014-04-19. Retrieved 2016-10-09.
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