Who IS Frank Zappa

It's OK. I understand.

Edited by darkshade - January 03 2013 at 12:00

I'm on disc 2 now, and it seems to be a little more avant-garde like Weasels Ripped My Flesh than disc 1, which was more avant-jazz/fusion. There's even some really quiet moments, then all of a sudden the music explodes. Crazy !!! 

Edited by darkshade - January 03 2013 at 12:40

Getting Finer Moments, I hope it is something in the vein of Lather's unpredictability.

And it is just basically a lost double album? Entirely new material? Where does it keep coming from? 

I'm not as big of a buff in Zappa history as you guys are. 

What I don't understand is why these albums, along with Finer Moments, which were completed 20 years ago, are being released after other albums which were compiled or discovered by Joe Travers and Gail years after Zappa's passing... Why not release these unreleased albums first? It's great to get the two Wazoo live albums, One Shot Deal, even Feeding the Monkeys album, as well as full concert albums like Hammersmith Odeon, FZ:OZ, etc. but these unreleased completed albums should have been released years ago, instead of stuff like Joe's Corsage, EIHN, Congress Shall Make No Law, and other useless and unnecessary albums with little to no musical value.

Edited by darkshade - January 06 2013 at 13:29

The Truth wrote: Entirely new material?

It was all new material when it was supposed to come out, but since then about half of it has been released elsewhere, albeit mostly in different edits:

• "Mozart Piano Sonata in Bb" has been released on YCDTOSA5 in a shorter edit.
• The first 40 seconds or so of "You Never Know Who Your Friends Are" have appeared on Mystery Disc as "Harmonica Fun".
• "Uncle Rhebus" is the same performance as "Uncle Meat/King Kong" on Beat the Boots I: The Ark, but the sound quality is vastly improved and both seem to contain stuff that is not on the other. The audience recording on The Ark abruptly cuts off, so I assume "Uncle Rhebus" is an edit of the performance that includes stuff from after the cut.
• "Music from the Big Squeeze" appears on The Lost Episodes in exactly the same version.
  
• "There Is No Heaven from Where Slogans Go to Die" has been released on YCDTOSA4 in a shorter edit as "You Call That Music?"
• "Squeeze It, Squeeze It, Squeeze It" has been released on Mystery Disc in a shorter edit.
• "The Subcutaneous Peril" seems to be a composite of several solos from the 1971 Carnegie Hall concert, which was released in 2011.

When the Mothers originally disbanded in 1969, Zappa planned a huge 12-disc box set of unreleased Mothers recordings. That plan never materialized, but a lot of that stuff resurfaced on albums like Burnt Weeny Sandwich, Weasels Ripped My Flesh, the YCDTOSA series, Ahead of Their Time, The Lost Episodes and Mystery Disc. Finer Moments apparently took its material from that would-be box set too, which is why some of it has already been released over the years.

darkshade wrote: and another album titled "The Rage and the Fury", but I'm not sure what that will consist of.

Performances of Varese pieces as performed by the Ensemble Modern in 1993.

darkshade wrote: What I don't understand is why these albums, along with Finer Moments, which were completed 20 years ago, are being released after other albums which were compiled or discovered by Joe Travers and Gail years after Zappa's passing... Why not release these unreleased albums first? It's great to get the two Wazoo live albums, One Shot Deal, even Feeding the Monkeys album, as well as full concert albums like Hammersmith Odeon, FZ:OZ, etc. but these unreleased completed albums should have been released years ago, instead of stuff like Joe's Corsage, EIHN, Congress Shall Make No Law, and other useless and unnecessary albums with little to no musical value.

You have realize that some of these Zappa-compiled albums have probably been rotting in the vault all these years, unbeknownst to Joe and Gail. I assume that nobody at the ZFT knew that Zappa had planned an album called Finer Moments until the tapes were discovered in the vault at some point in the last 2-3 years. By the way, Feeding the Monkies is similar to Finer Moments in that it was at some point compiled by Zappa and considered for release, but then abandoned and buried in the vault. I agree that some of the stuff that has been released in the past should have been left in the can, but Zappa-compiled doesn't automatically mean better. For example, the recent Understanding America compilation was made by Zappa, but most people agreed that it didn't need to be released.

Prog_Traveller wrote: Wow. All I can say is "wow." Anyone who asks who Frank Zappa is on a prog site is either very, very young (under 20), or very new to prog(as in just discovering it a month ago). If you are over 40 then you must have been living under a rock for the past twenty five years.

When I think about it, most of what I ever hoped Zappa would release has been fulfilled.  Maybe a Petit Wazoo-era live album would be nice (maybe the '73 Ponty thing you mentioned).  But come to think of it, I kind of miss the You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore series.  Those six volumes were always a lot of fun, I wouldn't mind a continuation of that, even if it was a Joe Travers job instead of Frank's own work.

HolyMoly wrote: darkshade wrote: I'm missing those 3 albums in my collection, though I've heard The Lost Episodes before; but is Mystery Disc worth getting? Mystery Disc is quite similar to Lost Episodes, and there is a little bit of overlap between the two.  Mystery Disc focuses almost exclusively on the 1960s Mothers (and prior). I actually prefer it to Lost Episodes a little bit, but that may just be because I don't like the Lost Episodes artwork.  Mystery Disc feels more rough and bootleggy, which is how it should look/sound.   Mystery Disc compiles the two different "Mystery Albums" originally included in the Old Masters Vol 1 and Old Masters Vol 2 sets.

Edited by darkshade - January 07 2013 at 12:27