"There’s this guy from the CIA, and he’s creeping around Laurel Canyon" - Frank Zappa, “Plastic People”

Frank Zappa’s story as a Laurel Canyon hippie provocateur is curious to say the least. His father, Francis Zappa, was a top chemical weapons specialist at the Army’s Edgewood Arsenal, a facility tied to both chemical warfare research and MKULTRA mind control experiments. While Zappa’s manager, Herb Cohen, a former US Marine, was among the first to arrive in Laurel Canyon. In 1961, Cohen was in the Congo at the exact time Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was tortured and killed in a CIA-backed coup — a moment when the agency was sending jazz musicians overseas as cultural cover. Zappa's freak movement would be at the epicentre of the counterculture from its outset to its demise in 1969. 

After Zappa's cavernous Laurel Canyon ‘Log Cabin’ suspicious burned down in 1970 (it was originally built as the Laurel Tavern in 1913, it was home to the silent-era film star Tom Mix), he moved to a new Canyon home and built his 'Utility Muffin Research Kitchen' (UMRK) recording studio there. The name of the studio came from a location in one of Zappa’s songs; “Muffin Man” from the album Bongo Fury. The concept of a “Utility Muffin Research Kitchen” also appeared in Zappa’s rock opera, Joe’s Garage, with the plot ending with the protagonist, Joe, giving in to conformity and getting a job at the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen, where he decorates muffins with icing rosettes. 

Ethically made in Portugal