The album is named after a 1950s song, written by Donald and Doris Woods, which Zappa covers as part of "The Man from Utopia Meets Mary Lou".

The album's opening track "Cocaine Decisions", with its groove redolent of skiffle washboards, is an attack on drug-influenced businessmen and features a harmonica.

"The Dangerous Kitchen", "The Radio Is Broken", and "The Jazz Discharge Party Hats" all feature Zappa's "meltdown" style of generally pre-written but sometimes improvised singing/speaking.

Hungarian composer Péter Eötvös said in an interview:[3] Dangerous Kitchen", off the album "The Man From Utopia", grew to become a basic piece for me, especially in later years, after I began working on operas.

An unauthorized CD of this edition (with the exception of a remixed "Mōggio") coupled with Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch was issued by EMI in the UK in 1988.