Weasels Ripped My Flesh

Vinyl LP repressing. Weasels Ripped My Flesh is the tenth studio album by the Mothers of Invention, released in 1970. It is the second posthumous Mothers album released after the band disbanded in 1969, preceded by Burnt Weeny Sandwich. In contrast to it's predecessor, which predominately focused on studio recordings of tightly arranged compositions, Weasels Ripped My Flesh largely consists of live recordings and features more improvisation. Whereas all but one of the pieces on Burnt Weeny Sandwich have a more planned feel captured by quality studio equipment, five tracks from Weasels Ripped My Flesh capture the Mothers on stage, where they employ frenetic and chaotic improvisation characteristic of avant-garde jazz and free jazz. This is particularly evident on "Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue," a tribute to the multi-instrumentalist, cited as a musical influence in the liner notes to the band's Freak Out! Album, who died in 1964. The album also documents the brief tenure of Lowell George (guitar and vocals), who went on to found the country-rock band Little Feat with Mothers bassist Roy Estrada. On "Didja Get Any Onya", George affects a German accent to relate a story of being a small boy in Germany and seeing "a lot of people stand around on the corners asking questions, 'Why are you standing on the corner, acting the way you act, looking the way you look, why do you look that way?'"