Ides 25: Bob & Frank’s Not Your Mother’s

50 years ago Bob Rae (yup, the former Premier of Ontario and interim leader of the federal Liberal party) hired Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention to play a gig at U of T’s Convocation Hall. The show, called “(B)ABEL: Society as Madness and Myth” was a weeklong ‘happening’ culminating in the Zappa show on the final Sunday night. The Mothers unpacked their unconventional performance against a white backdrop with white balloons filling the room and completed the white theme by “pouring shaving cream in every possible orifice of the huge organ at the front of the hall” so that the cream exploded all over the room at the end of their show. The resulting mess — both literal and figurative — landed in Bob Rae’s lap, and legend has it that much of the following week was spent cleaning it up.

To commemorate this great ‘happening’ we’ve executed our own unconventional performance. Starting with a wit background, we’ve inventively unpacked hops and yeast in a way that delivers a double-whammy of fruity and spicy character (we were careful not to make a mess, of course) to this classic style.