BABY SNAKES

Aside from the title track - an edit of the cut from Sheik Yerbouti - all of this stuff was recorded at Zappa's late October residency at the Palladium in New York, and is an extremely brief - under 40 minutes - extract of the full swathe of the music showcased on the concert video of the same name.

As a result, this release is in the unusual position of being quadruply redundant. For those who want the visuals, it can't stand in for the movie. For those who quite like the movie and the presentation of the material there and want an audio version of that, there's been a much more complete release of the soundtrack via download which they can track down. For those who would rather listen to the actual concert set rather than a hacked-about edit of it, the expansive Halloween 77 set covers every concert from the residency in question in its USB or download version, or just the Halloween show on its 3CD version.

If you're a big enough Zappa fan to be interested in any of those, this soundtrack becomes utterly pointless - and if you aren't a big enough fan to want those, you're probably not a big enough one to want this. I can't mark it down too much because those 1977 shows are really, really good, despite Zappa's lyrical direction sometimes not going in a direction that thrills me - but at the same time I can't give this a particularly high rating considering that it was always a rather tepid attempt at a soundtrack release at the time, and the passage of years has only made it seem like an even worse deal. Don't bother with it unless you are an absolute completist.