c. 1956-58
Antelope Valley High School, Lancaster, CA
10 min.
While at Antelope Valley High, because of his special "problems," Frank was enrolled in an art class. There he put together a mixed media presentation. He took a ten-minute piece of film, wiped the emulsion clean and painted each frame individually. Afterwards he keyed it to some classical music.
Unknown place and date
B&W
On this footage we can see James 'Motorhead' Sherwood dancing The Bug. The group has matching suits, and is formed at least by a singer, a pianist (maybe Terry Wimberly), a guitarist, a tenor sax, and a baritone sax (Motorhead). This band can be The Blackouts or maybe even The Omens.
c. May, 1962
I was having these open free sessions with Bunk Gardner, where we would improvise to films that I would get out of the library. I invited Zappa to come and play, so we jammed for a while. Zappa liked a lot of it and was actually in the process of starting to make films himself, so we would use some of his films to improvise on.
June, 1962
82 min.
B&W, 35mm
Probably filmed c. 1962-63
One of the first things you see in this film [Video From Hell] is the music video for "G-Spot Tornado." I am personally convinced that the accompanying visuals to this piece are the 8mm films that Frank showed during his Mount St. Mary's College concert in 1963. Check this from the liner notes to the Lost Episodes:
"The program included a piece called "Opus 5," aleatoric works that required some improvisation, a piece for orchestra and taped electronic music, with accompanying visuals in the form of FZ's own experimental 8mm films (Motorhead Sherwood described one such film depicting the Los Angeles County Fair carnival, double exposed with passing telephone poles)."
Well, that's exactly what's shown in the video accompanying "G-Spot Tornado"! For a real kick, turn the sound down and listen instead to "Opus 5" from the Mt. St. Mary's tape.
Unknown place and date
This seems to be filmed on a recording studio, maybe Pal Recording Studio. Here we can see FZ with a hat and his Fender Jazzmaster, Ronnie Williams also playing guitar, a singer which resembles a short-haired Ray Collins, another singer, another guitarist, a sax player and a trombone player. There are some scenes of this on Frank Scheffer's Frank Zappa: The Present-Day Composer Refuses To Die, and some shots on the "G-Spot Tornado" video from Video From Hell.
March 14, 1963 (first aired on March 27, 1963)
ABC Channel 5
17 min. B&W