The Adventures of Greggery Peccary

The Adventures of Greggery Peccary

"The Adventures of Greggery Peccary" was introduced for the first time on the album Studio Tan in 1978 and later on recompiled into the posthumously released Läther album. An instrumental variation appears on the Wazoo CD presenting the unique Wazoo ensemble and debuted at the Hollywood Bowl on September 10, 1972. On that CD it is in 4 movements totalling 33.05 minutes. The song is an epic that extended twenty minutes and 33 seconds in duration when first released and later 21 minutes (in a little different mix and change) on Läther, mocking the rock opera kind and reprising the prolonged story structure used in "Billy the Mountain" and, to some extent, the lengthy adventures outlined in the "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow Suite".

Zappa presented a much previously version of this piece (via an acetate) on 99.1fm WPLR, Connecticut, radio on April 23, 1975.In this variation Zappa presents Quentin Robert DeNameland as the most desirable living "two headed philostopher" known to mankind. Quentin's philosophical spiel (Zappa's voice effected by a variable speed oscillator a la "Dumb All Over" on You Are What You Is) goes on considerably longer compared to the official released Studio Tan versions or the Läther version. The spiel is specifically colored (in a madrigal style) by the musical accompaniment. Quentin is pretty likely a spoof of the writing and speaking style of beat writer William S. Burroughs.The following is the complete philosophical speech as documented in the Zappa book, Them or Us.

 In contrast to lots of Zappa's earlier lyrical compositions, "Greggery Peccary" relies merely minimally on repetition and more or less runs with a somewhat humorous but completely heavy orchestral arrangement. The story is progressed by means of both lyrics and instrumental pathways, e.g., Greggery's drive to operate in "his little red Volkswagen" is written by a frenetic musical interlude, after which Greggery provides the punchline "Boy, it's so hard to find a place to park around here".