Bizarre Records
Bizarre Records was a record label formed for artists discovered by Frank Zappa and his business partner/manager Herb 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 with The 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 the Mothers 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 as Essra Mohawk. These albums were all released by Verve 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, also distributed by Warner Bros. 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 by Captain Beefheart, Alice Cooper and The 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 by United 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 on Reprise Records between 1973 and 1981. The Zappa/Mothers titles are now available on CD from Rykodisc.
The only other Bizarre Records artists were "Wild Man Fischer" and Lenny Bruce. In 1988 Enigma Retro released Lenny Bruce's only album for Bizarre The Berkeley Concert on CD and cassette.
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