[2] François Couture, a reviewer for Allmusic, said that "Mystery Roach" contains multiple meanings, all of which have a connection to lyrical subject matter in Zappa's discography.

[3] "Dance of the Rock & Roll Interviewers" is an orchestral piece originally intended to be paired with "Touring Can Make You Crazy" as part of an early scene in which the band arrives in Centerville and is greeted by music journalists, but only part of the sequence, depicting a mannequin of Zappa being torn apart by the journalists, appeared in the final film,[4] due to timing and budget restraints, and the "Touring Can Make You Crazy" sequence was not shot and does not appear in the film.

[5] Regarding "Touring", Couture writes that "The long double-bass notes and the overall dark atmosphere and slow tempo suggest a tiring trip.

is a vocal version of Zappa's composition "Holiday in Berlin", which reappears throughout the album and film in different arrangements, including the "Semi-Fraudulent/Direct-From-Hollywood Overture".

[8] Zappa earlier recorded an unrelated song of the same name, which features members of the Mothers of Invention and Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick.

[8] "Redneck Eats" begins and ends with spoken dialogue featuring the character Lonesome Cowboy Burt (played by Jimmy Carl Black) heckling the orchestra, which is performing an Igor Stravinsky and Edgard Varese-influenced composition.

[9] "Janet's Big Dance Number" is about one of the film's two groupie characters and features "Slow piano chords [...] played over sustained contrabass notes.

The main part of the suite, "Dental Hygiene Dilemma" incorporates elements of rock band, orchestra and spoken dialogue,[13] and depicts Jeff smoking a marijuana cigarette which had been dipped in Don Preston's "foamy liquids" and imagining Donovan appearing to him on a wall-mounted television as his "good conscience" and asking him not to steal the towels, while Studebacher Hoch appears to him as his evil conscience, "dressed as Jim Pons", and convinces Jeff to quit the Mothers of Invention, start his own hard rock band and play music like Grand Funk Railroad or Black Sabbath.