EVERYTHING IS HEALING NICELY [AKA: EIHN]

This album is a selection of rehearsals and outtakes from the wonderful "Yellow Shark" album. The liner notes indicate that much of the album documents Frank Zappa teaching the Ensemble Modern many of his unusual techniques and his approach to the performance of his music. And while much of it is unpolished, all of it is beautiful.

You get to hear pieces where the group is learning how to follow Zappa's hand signals (a technique he used frequently with his rock bands), and a classical group, trained in the performance of strictly composed music, learning how to vamp and solo.

I enjoy every track, but the most pleasing to me are the two that feature violinist L.Shankar, Roland's Big Event/Strat Vindaloo and /8 Objects, and a fine orchestral version of T'Mershi Duween.

The packaging is exquisite. It's sort of a plush velvety cover. And the liner notes give a good description of what was happening during the creation of each track.

Prudes should beware, that a few of the pieces, with keyboardist Hermann Kretzschmar readng from a magazine for body piecing and tattoo enthusiast, are over the top explicit.

This album was released posthumously by the Zappa Family Trust. Basically, it is a collection of outtakes and rehearsals that were recorded during the recording of the "Yellow Shark" album. Being that "YS" was a highly respected work of FZ, this album was released to give people an insight as to what goes into the recording of one of FZ orchestral/serious works.

The good side of this album is that it contains some run-throughs that are very well recorded and these tracks are a good supplement to "YS". Tracks like "Roland's Big Event/Strat Vindaloo", "T'Mershi Duween" and "9/8 Objects" are excellent recordings that could have been included in the final product. However, there are others that tend to drag on too long and are difficult to remain attentive to like "Nap Time" (a fitting title) and "Wonderful Tattoo". For titles like these, it would be good to have accompanying video to watch how Zappa lead the orchestra/band with his hand signals and cues.

The bad thing about this collection is the times when the record button was left on during certain "readings" that ramble on for too long and take up too much time on this album. The novelty of these tracks just wears off way too quickly. I don't know if this was an attempt by the family to make the album more listenable and light weight, but to me it distracts from the best parts of the album and also lessens the chance that it could ever be taken seriously. This album could have been utilized as a study tool in music education to aid into the insight of FZ's serious music, but there is no chance of that happening because of the ramblings.

Anyway, with the unevenness of the album, the best that I can do is give this a 3 star rating. I suppose this album would make the most sense to the lovers of the "Yellow Shark" album that would like to hear more, Anyone else would probably scratch their head wondering what all of this is about.