Frank Zappa: FZ:OZ
The late 90’s was a strange time for Zappa fans. The Zappa Family Trust in partnership with Rykodisc had unveiled the rather wonderful “Lost Episodes” and “Lather“, but by the time that “Have I Offended Someone” and “Mystery Disc” came out they seemed to be accompanied by the highly ambient sound of the bottom of a barrel being vigorously scrapped. What about the mythical Vault we had heard so much about? A subterranean lair 73 miles deep filled with 2,396 unreleased Zappa albums…or at the very least a few cool live shows? Time passed…something Zappa fans would soon get used to in regards to new releases. But then! Suddenly! An animated Kangaroo appeared on zappa.com signalling the arrival of the first, official Vault release: FZ:OZ – Live In Australia. After getting over the initial disappointment that this was not from the 1973 world tour with the Ponty/Duke era band, fans could start getting excited about what was contained on these two discs. Firstly, the extremely rare line up of Napoleon Murphy Brock, Roy Estrada, Terry Bozzio and the “blink and you’ll miss him” super rare appearance of Andre Lewis on Keyboards, who has a very distinct playing style, particularly when he takes his many synth solos throughout the show. Then there was the prospect of a full, complete concert. Not even the Helsinki Concert had been a single unedited performance, so this was a first. And also, a great set list. Certainly, short on the instrumentally challenging side of things, but interesting nonetheless with both Freak Out and We’re Only in it for the Money medleys, prototype versions of soon-to-be-classic Zappa songs, and lots and lots of great guitar solos. In fact, disc 1 feels a little like a Blues version of Shut up and Play Your Guitar at times.
But it’s on disc 2 that, for me the fun really starts. There’s the just about recognizable early draft of Let’s Move to Cleveland, here going by the title of Canard Toujours, a 100% unreleased “new” song in the form of Kaiser Rolls – not a Zappa classic, but still well worth hearing – and the aforementioned Money medley, featuring my favourite moment on the whole album: the blistering re-working of Lonely Little Girl that contains the coolest guitar solo since…well, Advance Romance back on disc 1.
Chunga’s Revenge (amazingly receiving its first official live release here) and Zoot Allures finish the main part of the set with nearly 30 mins of solos and, later on in Frank’s case, some extremely introverted guitar improvisation that makes you forget the fact that there were several thousand, possibly inebriated, Australians waiting for Dinah-Moe-Humm. In fact, it’s worth remembering what a challenge a Zappa show must have been for the “average” audience, with a good 50% of this material being unreleased at the time of the recording. Even on CD, and listening in the comfort of your own home, the full concert experience is quite exhausting – name any other artist in history who played, completely uninterrupted for over 2 hours?? – so much so that the encores are a bit of a let down and probably will be listened to considerably less that the bulk of the main concert.
As an opening shot from the ZFT this was a great start with lots to keep rediscovering upon each listen. But the next few years would prove to be an extremely bumpy ride….
to be continued…
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