A TOKEN OF HIS EXTREME

Sourced from a live TV performance from August 1974, A Token of His Extreme finds Zappa with the revered mid-1970s incarnation of the Mothers - that's right, we're square in the middle of the Apostrophe/Roxy and Elsewhere/One Size Fits All era here, and that means you're in for a treat. Sure, sure, there's been plenty of material from this lineup put out over the years - but that's because it was one of Zappa's true golden ages, with excellent performers turning out stellar performances with a knack for improvisation which means that every performance they recorded has its own unique qualities.

Here, since they were recording this for television broadcast, the recording quality is particularly tight, and has been offered up in pristine condition by the Zappa Family Trust to coincide with their release of the video of the show. Notably, this includes a version of Inca Roads which ends up very close to what we eventually got on One Size Fits All, because Zappa was able to use the live rendition here as the basic track; earlier versions of the song I've heard have tended to have more of a lounge jazz intro than the later version got, so this might be one of the very first times the song took on its familiar form. (A guitar solo from the Helsinki concert captured on You Can't Do That On Stage Any More was added in to the album version of the track in an example of Zappa's xenochrony technique, later used extensively on Joe's Garage.) On the whole, it's another winner from this excellent incarnation of the Mothers.