Motherhood Quote by Jimmy Carl Black

There is a sting of pride hiding inside the complaint. Jimmy Carl Black is talking about rehearsal not as romantic “craft,” but as labor: hours logged, bodies exhausted, a band held together by sheer repetition. By crediting “the old Mothers” with starting the long-rehearsal trend, he’s quietly reclaiming authorship over a work ethic that later got repackaged as professionalism. The punchline is economic: they did the same grueling prep as the bands who came after, only without the paycheck that eventually made marathon rehearsal sound like a badge of honor instead of exploitation.

The line works because it punctures a common rock myth - that the 60s counterculture scene was all spontaneous genius and communal vibes. Black frames it like an industry template: the Mothers of Invention as a prototype for the punishing standards that became normal once rock money got serious. It’s also a sly acknowledgment of Frank Zappa’s famously strict rehearsal culture, where precision was demanded even when the business side lagged behind. That gap between artistic rigor and financial reward is the subtext; it’s not just “we worked hard,” it’s “we were early, and being early meant being unpaid.”

Culturally, it’s a veteran musician’s corrective to history: later bands didn’t invent discipline, they inherited it - and the market finally caught up to the labor. Black’s voice lands because it’s casual and unsentimental, the way musicians often talk when the romance has worn off and the ledger doesn’t lie.