Chunga's Revenge - Song Info

Song Info

The material presented on Chunga's Revenge is eclectic: there are two guitar jams ("Transylvania Boogie" and the title track), a bluesy amble ("Road Ladies"), a jazz interlude ("Twenty Small Cigars", culled from the Hot Rats sessions), an avant-garde live improvisation (the multi-part "The Nancy and Mary Music", an excerpt from King Kong), and several poppy numbers ("Tell Me You Love Me", "Would You Go All the Way?", "Rudy Wants to Buy Yez a Drink", "Sharleena").

The vocal tracks all deal with the subject of sex and/or groupie encounters, and, as Zappa notes on the sleeve of both the vinyl and CD, are a preview of the (then forthcoming) 200 Motels film/album (parts of the album were intended to grace the film, but did not make the final cut). Several of these tracks ("Transylvania Boogie", "20 Small Cigars", "The Clap", and the title track) were recorded during either the Hot Rats sessions or during the early 1970 sessions for the follow-up to Hot Rats that never materialized.

Other material from those sessions appeared on: Weasels Ripped My Flesh ("Directly From My Heart To You"), Burnt Weeny Sandwich (Sugar Cane Harris solo section of "Little House I Used To Live In"), Zoot Allures (backing track for "Friendly Little Finger"), Studio Tan (backing track for "Let Me Take You To The Beach", and The Lost Episodes (original version of "Sharleena" and possibly "Li'l Clanton Shuffle").

Other "lost" tracks from these sessions include the instrumentals "Twinkle Tits" and "Bognor Regis". A live version of "Twinkle Tits" is available on bootlegs (though the original studio version is not available yet), and "Bognor Regis" was supposed to be released as a B-side of "Sharleena". The single was never released, though the track was leaked to the public on an acetate disc copy which made its way to the collector's market.

Supposedly, the title track is a song about a small industrial Gypsy vacuum sweeper. A "chunga" was a mutated individual of the sort Zappa depicted in such songs as "The Idiot Bastard Son." The term was coined by Dan O'Brien, a teenage Zappa admirer, for the effects of the Hiroshima blast on later generations.

The title track was later recorded by Parisian tango revival group Gotan Project for their 2001 debut album La Revancha del Tango.

The guitar melody in "Tell Me You Love Me" is extremely similar to the one used in "Bwana Dik" and "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy" (during the "if his dick is a monster" section), from Fillmore East - June 1971, and 200 Motels, respectively.