page_title: Thing-Fish
section_title: Music and performance
hierarchical_section_title: Thing-Fish / Style and influences / Music and performance
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo portrait of Vaudeville star Bert Williams in blackface with cigarette; cropped from original
context_page_description: Thing-Fish is an album by Frank Zappa, originally released as a triple album box set on Barking Pumpkin Records in 1984. It was billed as a cast recording for a proposed musical of the same name, which was ultimately not produced by Zappa, but later performed partially in 2003, ten years after his death.
  The album's storyline is inspired by Broadway theatre, AIDS, eugenics, conspiracy theories, feminism, homosexuality and African American culture. It involves an evil, racist prince/theater critic who creates a disease intended to eradicate African Americans and homosexuals. The disease is tested on prisoners who are turned into "Mammy Nuns" led by the story's narrator, Thing-Fish. The story within a story is a satire of a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant couple, Harry and Rhonda, who attend a play performed by the "Mammy Nuns", and find themselves confronted with their pasts: Harry presented as a homosexual boy, Rhonda presented as a sex doll brought to life.
context_section_description: The prologue is delivered as a spoken monologue over an instrumental piece with a heavy rock guitar riff. It is followed by the song "The Mammy Nuns", which originated as a hard rock instrumental, which appears in a live recording as "The Mammy Anthem" on You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 1, and opened performances in June and July 1982. "Galoot Up-Date" is an altered version of the recording "The Blue Light", which appeared on Zappa's album Tinseltown Rebellion. As Harry and Rhonda express admiration for the "performance" of the Evil Prince, an early version of Zappa's Synclavier composition "Amnerika" is heard. "Clowns on Velvet" was performed live as a "spirited, playful instrumental". A recording of the instrumental version featuring guitarist Al Di Meola was planned for release on the album Tinseltown Rebellion, but DiMeola refused its release.
  Johnny "Guitar" Watson, appearing as the character Brown Moses, delivered running commentary in the song "He's So Gay", and sang the song "Brown Moses", which was influenced by soul and gospel music. The play's first act is concluded with "Artificial Rhonda", a rewrite of the song "Ms. Pinky", which appeared on Zoot Allures.
  The next track begins with early Synclavier music by Zappa, and the computerized voice of "The Crab-Grass Baby", followed by the Mammy Nuns singing "The White Boy Troubles". The Evil Prince, defeated at his own hands, delivers a soliloquy in the form of a Broadway piano ballad, "Wistful Wit a Fist-Full".
caption: The concept of Thing-Fish satirized minstrel shows. "Mammy Nuns" resemble blackface performers.
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