CARNEGIE HALL

This four CD set contains two Flo & Eddie era Mothers of Invention shows from the same night, plus a set by The Persuasions, who opened the show. The liner notes detail how Zappa's manager had to lie to the Carnegie Hall staff, telling them that Zappa was going to perform orchestral music from "200 Motels", in order to get the band book.

The Persuasions set only takes up a bit more than twenty minutes on the first set, and while I don't really appreciate a cappella doo-wop, it does server to set the mood for the concert experience.

The rest of the set is exquisite. It has plenty of material that makes this album unique and valuable. The best part, is the release of a full performance of the "Divan" routine, a bizarre story of how God (portrayed by Mark Volman as a fat maroon sofa), likes to watch his friends, The SH\hort Girl and Squat The Magic Pig, perform lewd acts. The piece is offensive and silly, and very funny at times. It also is where songs like Sofa and Stick It Out, later releast in different contexts, originally came from.

Other nice tracks are a half hour jam on King Kong, and a three quarter hour Billy The Mountain.

The sound quality is decent, although the recording is mono, with stereo processing laid over it by FZ some time before Joe Travers converted it into digital format.

If you are one of those people that dislikes this comedy group version of Zappa's band, this is not for you. But I love it.

Perhaps the most varied live set given an official release from the Flo and Eddie incarnation of the Mothers, this includes performances of live standouts of the time ranging from King Kong to Billy the Mountain to the deliciously rare Sofa Suite (featuring concepts which would later get recycled in albums as late as One Size Fits All or Joe's Garage). Various classic tunes from the Mothers back catalogue fill out the running order, and those who particularly dislike the "groupie routine" as captured on the Fillmore East album will be pleased to know that it's scaled back somewhat here - snippets show up here and there in the running order, but it no longer takes up a tranche of stage time, Zappa and the group instead cramming in more in the way of instrumental workouts, to the benefit of the experience as a whole.

The set sounds pretty good for a mono source recording - apparently the Carnegie Hall management weren't happy about hosting Frank, which meant he had to make his own arrangements to record the set rather than relying on the venue's own facilities. Fortunately, Frank was an exacting sort of dude when it came to making his own recordings, so this sounds pretty decent, with Zappa himself doing what he could to slip in some stereo processing and get the best out of the tapes.

For those who regard the Flo and Eddie lineup as an obnoxious farrago of over-intrusive comedy rock which didn't include nearly enough of the instrumental musicianship of Mothers lineups prior to and in the wake of Flo and Eddie's involvement with Zappa, the full live sets from their stint in the group the Zappa estate have dug up from the vaults really go the extra mile in redressing the balance, and this Carnegie Hall show in particular shows that Zappa and the Mothers' progressive chops were not as diluted in this era as they're often regarded as being, with an exceptionally good version of King King and a truly epic Billy the Mountain stretched out with extensive solos and improvisations. On the whole, it might be the best moment of the whole era.