THE NIGHT WATCH

This double CD live recording was taken from a 1973 concert in Amsterdam, where the band was preparing songs for the upcoming Starless And Bible Black album. In fact, some of this performance was used as the base tracks for that album (I like that approach - Zappa used to do that all the time as well).

The concert was actually quite good. The improvs flowed quite well, and the song selection, despite only coming from two album (plus the obligatory Schizoid Man) is nice and varied. Especially good are Fracture and The Talking Drum. Lament at this point sounded underdeveloped (although the song never sounded complete to me anyway), and Larks' Tongues In Aspic - part Two is lacking a bit in power. But otherwise, this is a very good concert recording of the premier prog band of the seventies.