ZOOT ALLURES

A serious Zappa album again. Zoot came after Bongo Fury, an excentric live album with the hilarious Beefheart, an album far from the funky´n hard Roxy & Elsewhere. This time Zappa bring a new studio line-up, with the highlights beeing Terry Bozzio and Patrick O´Hearn, both terrific musicians. Zoot Allures is maybe the album that starts a new phase in Zappa´s carrer: the late 70´s complex funky rhythm & musical parody, sexual lyrics, never ending guitar solos and even better bizzarre stuff than in the late 60´s. We can see all this stuff from 77 to 80, including Läther (and the four albums that figure in this 3-CD box set), Sheik Yerbouti and Joe´s Garage (and maybe in Shut Up...). Here, the songs are played basically by a power trio, including Zappa in some keyboards, but the basic line-up is Zappa / O´Hearn / Bozzio. Other musicians appear here and there too. The album has some typical Zappa of this period, including the orgasmatic and spacey "The torture never stops", the parody "Disco boy", the nice "Find her finer" and some very good instrumental pieces, where Zappa show us excellent guitar work, what would be a common approach in many albums until the mid 80´s. "Black Napkins" and "Zoot Allures" are really great songs, with the trio workin´ hard to make a very well structured rhythm section that really kicks off! Well, Zoot Allures is an extremmely recomended album for begginers, due to its easilly listenable songs containing plenty of Zappa 70´s ideas, placed together in a very pleasant way. Get it.