Customer Reviews
Vintage Live Zappa!!!
My only complaint is that the rest of the "You cant do that on Stage. . " series didn't quite live up to Volume One. This disk is a brilliant cross section of different eras of live Zappa.
A Good Place To Start.
There is a lot, and I mean A LOT of music in this series. In the late 1980's Frank Zappa went into his vault, and began work on a mammoth retrospective of every phase of his professional career, from the early recordings of the scandalous Mothers Of Invention, all the way through to what would be his final touring ensemble, the 11-piece backing band that, due to infighting, wound up disbanding before the tour was completed. Every line-up has something to offer, and this volume, the first in the series, gives the listener twenty-eight tracks, all live, recorded on different stages all over the world. The opening number, "The Florida Airport Tape," is a candid recording Zappa made on his portable tape recorder, of Mark Volman telling the other guys in the Mothers, circa 1970, that he had vomited on stage ("puked onstage," in his words), and wanted to know if anybody else had noticed this. Of course, poor-taste jokes follow, and this segues to a 1971 performance of the band, with most of the guys from the 1970 Florida tape, playing part of a forgotten suite,"Once Upon A Time," that leads into an early version of "Sofa (sung in German). " This leads right into a recording of the 1982 band playing an instrumental version of what would, with lyrics, appear on "Thing-Fish," two years later, as "The Mammy Anthem. " And so forth, all through this disc, ending with a 1979 performance of "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow. " FZ himself referred to this as a "totally stupid" song, but the version included here, is a first-class live performance, and worth buying the disc for. It depicts the band, in top form, recreating the music from the original as heard on "Apostrophe'," but with a lot added, most notably, the unreleased "Rollo. "
Disc Two follows the same format, starting with the original Mothers Of Invention playing in a bar in the Bronx, New York, Spring tour, 1969, replete with stage announcements by Frank Zappa, telling the owner of a green Chevy, that his car needs to be moved, and the listener is transported through time and space, from the 1960's, through the 1970's, and into the 1980's, ending with the 1981 band's MTV special, before MTV turned into what it is now; it actually had MUSIC, played by MUSICIANS back then, and to give this volume a sense of beginning, main body, end, it closes with the MTV special's clip of the 1981 band playing an instrumental version of "Sofa," the track near the beginning of the first disc that had Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman singing in German.
Bottom line, this is a THOROUGHLY enjoyable cross-section of Frank Zappa's music, all live, and an excellent first volume of the series. In time, I aim to write reviews of all six volumes.
Zappa does the Grateful Dead thing, only better.
The material in the whole series covers twenty years of performing, and the notes say that great care was taken to select the best version of each piece. This is the first of six volumes of two disks per volume of live material done by various Zappa bands, including the original 'Mothers of Invention', the augmented band including former Turtles, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylen, and later groups simply performing under Zappa's name.
I have so far only heard this first volume and as a long time Zappa fan, I believe this material is as good or better than what you will find in many of the earlier albums done by the original 'Mothers' group. The tracks include a rather large amount of Frank and other band members interacting with the audience and relatively few purely instrumental tracks. This is just fine with me. If you want instrumental, get 'Hot Rats' or 'Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar'.
There is a fair amount of overlap with some well-known albums such as the 'Filmore East, June, 1971' album but most of the material, unlike so many Grateful Dead live albums, is different enough to make the comparison interesting.
Great value for Zappa fans, except that it makes us miss Frank all the more!.
. You can see a complete list of all Frank Zappa discography, or go back to the Frank Zappa tabs
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