Sho 'nuff!
"Jeff... he's so comical... so sensitive."
--Mary Wells
"No one knows it... not even him... but someday that kid's gonna be a great R&B singer."
--Frank Zappa
"Seh!... he's a jammin' mother-hubbard!"
--Dion DiMucci
"After rehearsal, let's get some fried cheese."
--Etta James
"If I want instrumentals I'll listen to Mantovani! Get back in the #@!%& studio!!
--Herb Cohen, manager
"Naked Angels and Lucille Has Messed Up My Mind were released on Straight by multi-instrumentalist Jeff Simmons.The first was a film soundtrack album, a sequence of instrumentals that combined melody and fuzz guitar: heavy, psychedelicized surf-rock. Zappa produced Lucille under the name La Marr Bruister, wrote the title track, co-wrote "Wonderful Wino" and played lead guitar on two tracks. Jeff was in the Mothers at the time of 200 Motels and left under a cloud (his ambitions to form a "heavy" group were satirized in Cal Schenkel's brilliant animation 'Dental Hygiene Dilemma' and the attitude of the rest of the band to him can be examined on Playground Psychotics), but returned to play rhythm guitar on Waka/Jawaka and clown about with Frank and George Duke on Roxy & Elsewhere."
"Playing bass, piano, organ and accordion and singing in a style similar to that of Jack Bruce with Cream, Simmons presented a brace of strong, harmonically sophisticated songs that have some of the explosive, multi-hued impact of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. "
excerpted from "Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play" by BenWatson
This site will continue to provide various bits of dazzlement and other mementos of this ephemeral encounter for the delectation of the discerning.
