ROAD TAPES - VENUE #3

The third (and so far final) entry in the Road Tapes series offers up the two sets that the Mothers performed in Minneapolis on the 5th July of 1970. There's some overlap in song selection between the two shows, but not so much as either show feels redundant - and, after all, Zappa and his bands weren't inclined to play the same song the exact same way twice.

The sound quality on this one isn't what it could be, but equally it's a rare official live release from an underserved part of Zappa's live history. Other than this and the subsequent Mothers 1970 boxed set, we only really had Chunga's Revenge to give insight into what Zappa and the gang were up to in that year; as it turns out, the answer in a live context was "trying to plot a course between the rougher and readier style of the original Mothers of Invention live and the slicker style that Zappa's music was evolving towards".

The sound quality on this is shaky enough that the rougher side of the sound wins out, but that's not an altogether terrible thing, and in some respects the odd mild fuzziness around the vocals is helpful - it helps to appreciate them as a part of the sound, rather than a source of sometimes corny or poorly dated jokes from Flo and Eddie.