*

Offline xasop

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 9776
  • Professional computer somebody
    • View Profile
Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« on: July 16, 2014, 03:53:14 PM »
It's that time again, folks. Zappa's 1984 tour was, without a shadow of a doubt, his most controversial ever. With the combination of an abundance of Thing-Fish material, ludicrous rearrangements of his revered classics, Zappa's first use of percussive samples on the road and a band that (to put it mildly) knew how to rock out, this group consistently managed to pull off sounding funny, demented and energetic all at the same time.

Which one is most important, and whether that is a good or a bad thing, has been debated by Zappa fans for the past 30 years, and it's rare to find someone who doesn't either love or hate this tour. Whatever your opinion of it, it's definitely not one that is quickly forgotten.


Meet the band

Ray White (vocals, guitar)


A veteran of Zappa's touring ensemble, this would be Ray's last year on the road with Frank. He definitely goes out with a bang; apart from reprising his well-established lead vocal part in songs like City of Tiny Lights and Advance Romance, he is a vital part of this band's vocal harmonies (one of its biggest strengths), as well as more than filling Napoleon's shoes in late-tour renditions of The Evil Prince.

Chad Wackerman (drums)


The straight member of the group. Chad was, is, and would continue to be the rock underpinning most of Frank's studio and live work in the '80s, and his is the first year in which he gets a regular solo spot. It is also the first year in which he has pads rather than real drums at his disposal, resulting in some of the most bizarre-sounding drum solos you'll ever hear, including weird dissonant chiming noises and fake handclaps.

Scott Thunes (bass)


The other half of Frank's steady rhythm section, Scott also contributes to this tour with his eccentric sense of humour. He would occasionally yell something half-intelligible into Ike or Ray's microphone, and generally give audiences humorous antics on stage to accompany the music -- incredible, when you consider that he keeps a steady bass line going the entire time.

Alan Zavod (keyboards)


Alan is an Australian pianist, and this would be his only tour with Frank. He is best known in Zappa circles for his "volcano" keyboard solos, so called because he would give the exact same style of performance every night for this five-month tour, in a very dramatic style that his bandmates likened to a volcano erupting. While impressive and awe-inspiring to audiences, these performances would have been very repetitive to the band members he toured with.

Bobby Martin (keyboards, alto saxophone, vocals)


Back on the road after his distinguished success with Frank in 1982, Bobby frequently takes on the falsetto part of this band's exceptional vocal harmonies, and does a magnificent job of such. His instrumental duties this time around are largely accompaniment only, but when he gets his chance to shine with a lead vocal here or there, he makes the best of it.

Ike Willis (vocals, guitar, kazoo, tambourine)


Ike has returned since disappearing at the end of 1980, and is stronger than ever. A key part of this band's vocal harmonies, he is also one of the biggest contributors to its humour, its other biggest strength. He would frequently interject at seemingly arbitrary moments with secret words and other assorted insanity, creating an interesting deviation in even the most frequently performed songs from time to time.

Napoleon Murphy Brock (vocals, tenor saxophone)


Napoleon was only with this band for the first two weeks, but in those two weeks, they had (in this reporter's opinion) the best vocal harmonies of any Zappa band ever. Put Ray, Bobby, Ike, Napoleon and Frank all together in the one band, and you have a recipe for pure, unadulterated vocal supremacy. This is the sort of band He's So Gay was written for, a band that makes Carol You Fool seem to meld together into one quintitimbral masterpiece. Those two weeks aren't this band's high point, as they are still finding their sweet spot, but they do offer a special something that no other Zappa band ever has.

Frank Zappa (conducting, guitar, vocals)


The one and only. This tour, Frank's sense of humour has overtaken his guitar playing -- he does crank out the occasional masterpiece on guitar, but for the most part, his playing isn't up to his usual standard. He makes up for it with secret words and silly arrangements in abundance. This isn't Frank at his best, but it is Frank at his funniest.


See you tomorrow for the first show.
when you try to mock anyone while also running the flat earth society. Lol

*

Offline xasop

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 9776
  • Professional computer somebody
    • View Profile
Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #1 on: July 17, 2014, 01:56:32 PM »
Tuesday, 17 July, 1984
Palace Theater, Los Angeles, California



Set lists

Main show

Zoot Allures
Tinsel Town Rebellion
Oh No
Trouble Every Day
Penguin in Bondage
Hot Plate Heaven at the Green Hotel
Dumb All Over
The Evil Prince
Carolina Hard Core Ecstasy
Advance Romance
He's So Gay
Bobby Brown
Keep It Greasey
Honey, Don't You Want a Man Like Me?
Carol You Fool
Chana in De Bushwop
Kreega Bondola (formerly "Young and Monde")
Why Don't You Like Me?

First encore

The Closer You Are
Johnny Darling
No No Cherry

Second encore

Dancin' Fool
The Illinois Enema Bandit


Review

Two years and three days after his last infamous appearance on stage in Palermo, Frank steps out to a warm welcome from this Los Angeles crowd. Unfortunately, while the audience's welcome is warm, this tape is anything but. Most of the recording is from one tape which is quite muffled and extremely unbalanced, with drums loud enough to cause distortion and vocals vanishingly quiet. The last part of the show, from about halfway through No No Cherry, is from a different tape which has somewhat clearer vocals but much more distant guitar.

Quirks of the tape aside, this performance is more or less what you'd expect for the first show of a tour. Still a number of mistakes as the band settles in, and not much in the way of improvised deviation at this point. Frank spends a couple of minutes talking about how he's glad to be on tour again, and then the band launches into Zoot Allures. Right off the bat, this band sounds cheesy and demented, a stark contrast to the beautiful and rich Zoots of '82.

Frank's Zoot solo is fairly mundane, which is no surprise given that he's been out of practice for two years. Frank takes his time working through the band intros, making a big deal out of each individual band member, and even including John Smothers. He finally gets to Napoleon, at which point the audience erupts into loud cheers that drown out most of what Frank is saying.

Tinsel Town Rebellion continues the trend of "cheese-oriented comedy music", as Frank puts it. In the absence of Tommy Mars's synths, this tune really does sound like a parody of itself, although for my money this is the best arrangement of this song ever. The third verse of this arrangement includes well-arranged quotes from and references to numerous '80s pop hits, including Bowie's "Let's Dance" and Culture Club's "I'll Tumble 4 Ya", before we go into what would in any other tour be the powerful climactic ending. Instead, we get Ike playing the Woody Woodpecker theme on kazoo to round off this delightfully hammy performance.

Woody Woodpecker heralds the start of Oh No, an established classic dating from Napoleon's last stint in Frank's ensemble. Like most established classics that made a comeback in the '80s, this song is now reggae. As if that weren't cheesy enough, every occurrence of the word "love" in the song has been replaced with "glove", completely destroying whatever charm this song may once have had. Then, all of a sudden, we get to the "and in your dreams..." section and the reggae stops, dumping us into a fast-paced version of the 10/8 vamp from the original Oh No. Frank couldn't just stick with ruining one classic arrangement of this number, though, and the band quickly drops that vamp again and goes into a cheesy, overblown big band-type climax as Napoleon sings "I just can't believe you are such a fool". This is one '84 rearrangement I do not enjoy.

Every cloud does have a silver lining, though, and in Oh No's case it inspired Frank to bring back the Roxy version of Trouble Every Day. This has also been rearranged, but much more tactfully. The first few bars as on Roxy are missing, and instead the band launches straight into the descending sax riff, at a much faster tempo than on that album ten years ago. Of course, this means that the ensuing dramatic drum fill is much faster too, but Chad pulls it off without breaking a sweat. When eventually the band reaches the vocal section, the increased tempo results in a very catchy rock 'n' roll vamp behind Frank's classic lyrics. While this is clearly based on the Roxy arrangement, it has a very different feel to it.

Frank gives us another mundane solo in Trouble, and then the band makes a segue into Penguin in Bondage, another Roxy tune. This one is fairly similar to the performance on Roxy, aside from continuing the faster pace, and contains another uninteresting guitar solo. The end of Penguin in Bondage is very well executed on this tour, though. Its final lyric, "and leave you a dried up dog biscuit", is followed by the band chanting "bow wow" over the opening vamp to a new song.

The new song is Hot Plate Heaven at the Green Hotel, a story of someone who lost their job and ended up in poverty. It's a political song, as is thematic for Frank in the '80s, and makes a point of the fact that "Republicans is fine if you're a multi-millionaire / Democrats is fair if all you own is what you wear / But neither of 'em's really right, 'cause neither of 'em care / 'Bout that hot plate heaven, 'cause they ain't been there". It would also be a source of many great guitar solos to come, although tonight's is nothing special.

Dumb All Over hasn't changed very much since 1982, except that the "and when his humble TV servant" bit has grown a reggae beat. The guitar solo is a different story, with Frank rearranging the Dumb All Over vamp into something I can only describe as "kickass" to solo over. He doesn't do much with it tonight, as we're coming to expect, but he would in time.

Frank then steps up to tell the audience about his new album, Thing-Fish. It is widely regarded as his worst album of all time, but that aside, some of its material was very well performed on this tour, including The Evil Prince, which Frank now introduces. The Evil Prince was a song specifically written for Napoleon to sing; the Prince, as with most of Frank's creations, being a character slowly created over time to suit Napoleon's performance style. The character was first referenced in The Torture Never Stops, first performed in 1975; indeed, on Thing-Fish the piece is inserted into the middle of Torture instead of the guitar solo.

However, I digress. Napoleon delivers a very operatic rendition of The Evil Prince for this LA crowd, and although the segue into the guitar solo is not as polished as it would get in later performances, this is still a force to be reckoned with. As expected by now, Frank delivers something less than noteworthy on guitar, and the tape cuts out before the end of this piece. A pity, as I would have been curious to hear how solid the ending was the first time around.

Nevertheless, the tape cuts back in during Carolina Hard Core Ecstasy, which sounds far more polished and directional than the released version on Bongo Fury. However, the high point of this tune is typically the guitar solo, and given Frank's lacklustre performances tonight, this one doesn't do much for me. Ditto Advance Romance, which seems to fly by without anything particularly eventful happening.

Then comes one of the signature medleys of the '84 band. He's So Gay, a Village People parody about flamboyant homosexuality, really shines with this many vocalists filling out the harmonies, and is one of the few songs that can make me smile no matter how bad the rest of the show. The segue into Bobby Brown is particularly pleasing; on any other tour, Bobby Brown would be the most forgettable part of the show, but this medley raises it to new heights of magnificence. As would be the norm for most of the tour, Frank ends the song with the line "watch me now, because the name of this song is Keep it Greasey!"

This band keeps it greasey, all right, and this faster-than-usual arrangement can be quite exhilerating to listen to. On this tape, though, the details aren't very audible, and so this song doesn't really do much. It eventually segues into Honey, Don't You Want a Man Like Me?, another very well-rearranged piece. This arrangement is much more in-your-face than the released version on Zappa in New York, and would be ripe with secret words as the tour progresses. All in all, though, this medley of four songs is far greater than any of the pieces in it alone.

Next up is a pair of new songs. Carol You Fool is a reggae (surprise!) song about a woman named Carol and a hopeless love story. As with most Zappa lyrics, the details are a little vague, but according to what I've read, she was a groupie who fell desperately in love with one of the band's road crew. Anyway, it's an enjoyable song in its own right, and in these early versions, Napoleon's tenor sax solo adds that little extra something that it would lose in later performances.

Next is Chana in De Bushwop, a song about an imaginary friend of Frank's daughter Diva. The lyrics are juvenile in a fun way, with a very basic rhyming scheme explaining how she lived in a tree, was nine foot three; and eats a horse, which is very large, of course. She even went to France, where she tried to dance. Ah, those crazy Bushwop folks. This is a bit of lighthearted fun that would persist through the entire tour, and also be a common ground for secret word abuse (as in the officially released version).

Kreega Bondola is the original name of the '84 arrangement of Young and Monde. This song would have many different names throughout the tour, since it's only lyrics come at the very end and would often be adapted based on the secret word of the night. Aside from the title-giving lyrics, it's an instrumental that contains a keyboard solo from Alan and a guitar solo from Frank for tonight, neither of which is anything special. It would gradually get longer and have more interesting solos as the tour goes on.

The main set ends with Why Don't You Like Me?, a version of Tell Me You Love Me with rewritten lyrics about Michael Jackson. I much prefer the 1988 arrangement of this tune (as heard on the CD release of Broadway the Hard Way), but on this particular tape, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference.

Frank introduces the start of the first encore as being from their next album, Them or Us. The ensuing '50s medley (of which only the first tune is on Them or Us) would be a staple of the '84 band, and was never a disappointment. There's no amount of boring solos or lacklustre performances that a bit of good old '50s pop can't fix.

Dancin' Fool is mostly routine, except that something amusing (it's hard to tell what with only audio) happens with a stool at the start of it. Also, Frank comments that Ike was about to use the toilet, but they had to come back on stage before he could. That's not very interesting, yes, but neither is Dancin' Fool, at least until Frank announces the segue into The Illinois Enema Bandit.

The final song sounds as the Bandit always sounds, except for the guitar solo. Frank plays for a while on the usual vamp, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, it transforms into a hyped-up blues rock riff, complete with cheesy synths and guitars in the background. This is an incredible vamp, and it's just a pity that Frank's guitar sounds so distant on this tape. This may well have been the only good solo of the night.

To summarise, this tape doesn't sound very good, but I don't count it as a huge loss because the performance isn't great either. I've spent most of this review talking about what's new in '84, rather than what's good about this show, because there just isn't that much to tell about the latter.

Not to worry, there's always tomorrow.
when you try to mock anyone while also running the flat earth society. Lol

Offline Blanko

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 2471
    • View Profile
Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #2 on: July 17, 2014, 01:58:33 PM »
epic simply epic

*

Offline xasop

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 9776
  • Professional computer somebody
    • View Profile
Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #3 on: July 18, 2014, 01:37:01 PM »
Wednesday, 18 July, 1984
Palace Theater, Los Angeles, California



Set lists

Main show

Heavy Duty Judy
Tinsel Town Rebellion
Oh No
Trouble Every Day
Penguin in Bondage
Hot Plate Heaven at the Green Hotel
Dumb All Over
The Evil Prince
The Dangerous Kitchen
Cocaine Decisions
Nig Biz
Outside Now
Be in My Video
Carol You Fool
Chana in De Bushwop
Kreega Bondola
Why Don't You Like Me?

The tape with encores on side A was confiscated the following night while taping side B. No known alternative source for the encores exists.


Review

Back for the second night at the Palace Theater, Frank wastes no time making up for the mediocre performance last night. Just as the band gets tuned up, someone in the crowd yells out "shut up 'n' play yer guitar!", at which point Frank responds "as a matter of fact, the song we're going to start off with is from that album". The band then launches into the first Heavy Duty Judy of the tour, which has only gotten even more badass since 1980.

Personally, this tour has my favourite arrangement of Heavy Duty Judy. It's not as polished as the 1988 version and it doesn't have Tommy's eccentric vocals as in 1980, but it just fucking rocks. This version isn't entirely instrumental either, as it has two vocal interjections at the end of each repeat of the head -- "we da best" and "here dey come", although these would change over the course of the tour.

Frank also wastes no time delivering the goods on guitar tonight, presenting us with a very tasty Heavy Duty Judy solo (although bad solos in this song are a very rare thing). After the band intros, we get largely the same sequence of tunes as last night to start with, although this tape is a lot clearer. You can hear the delicious sax harmonies between Bobby and Napoleon at the end of the final verse of Tinsel Town Rebellion, something that would be lost after Napoleon's departure.

Trouble Every Day, Penguin in Bondage and Hot Plate Heaven all have terrific guitar solos tonight, although my personal favourite comes in Penguin. Frank is just in a mood to rock out, and while he still shows obvious signs of being out of practice, the inspiration in his performances makes that easily forgivable.

Dumb All Over and The Evil Prince continue the trend of great guitar solos, although by this point, the lack of variation in Frank's shtick tonight starts to show. He's repeatedly impressing us with short, sweet and heavy solos, but without much substance or build-up to them. On the bright side, The Evil Prince appears on this tape in full tonight, revealing that this early arrangement ends with Napoleon wailing uncontrollably in his distinctive falsetto voice. I prefer the later arrangements, but this ain't bad.

After The Evil Prince, this show deviates from last night's set. We get the first Dangerous Kitchen of the tour, including the usual lyrical mistakes from Frank for an early-tour rendition of this number. It's played somewhat faster than on previous tours, as per normal for 1984, but is otherwise fairly similar to the released version on The Man From Utopia. A treat that doesn't pop up nearly often enough, on any tour.

This tape cuts about half a second into the start of Cocaine Decisions, but it doesn't really matter because Cocaine Decisions just sounds like Cocaine Decisions. The '84 arrangement does include harmonica (I'm not sure whether real or synthesised), and also has the second verse (consisting only of the words "Cocaine Decisions" repeated eight times) dropped, a very wise manouevre from Frank.

As usual, Cocaine Decisions takes us to Nig Biz, and this is the highlight of the night. After the usual guitar solo from Ray to start things out, the band plods along for a few bars as if it's lost its way, and then suddenly drops us into a free jazz vamp a lot like the King Kongs of 1982. Fittingly, Bobby has an alpenhorn solo here, and while it's not quite as magnificent as those from the previous tour, it's still very cool to hear.

After that, we get a keyboard solo (I can't tell for sure whether it's Alan or Bobby playing, but I think it's Bobby), followed by a very abrupt segue back into the usual blues vamp. The construction of this song leaves much to be desired, as it really does sound like a bad edit into an '82 King Kong and back again, but the uniqueness of this Nig Biz more than makes up for that.

Then we get an Outside Now. For my money, this is the archetypal Ike song. Instrumental versions just don't compare to the magnificence of Ike's voice soaring over this beautiful vamp, and this song alone makes me very glad he's back in the band. Frank follows up with a decent solo, but knowing how much better this solo spot would get later in the tour, this doesn't really do much for me.

Be in My Video follows, a fairly obvious parody of the then-new trend of broadcasting music videos on MTV for vapid, otherwise worthless songs. This song also heavily references Bowie's "Let's Dance", although I'm not sure whether there is a connection between the parody and that song, or if Frank just thought it fit in well. Either way, this is one of my favourite new songs this year.

Then it's back into the familiar material from last night. We get the usual fun out of Carol and Chana, and then the almost-instrumental Kreega Bondola begins. Tonight's Kreega has much better solos than last night's, both from Alan and from Frank. Alan shows us just what a volcano can do for the first of many times this year, and Frank's playing is up to scratch with the rest of tonight's efforts. It's not absolutely brilliant, but it's enjoyable to listen to.

The usual coda comes with Why Don't You Like Me?, and this tape lets us more clearly hear the words to this version (including a chorus of "Don't Be a Lawyer", an early alternative title for this song). Personally, I find this to be a fairly crude, grating parody by comparison with the more polished '88 arrangement, but the instrumentation is very similar to the '82 Tell Me You Love Me, which is to say that it kicks ass.

Sadly, the taper came back for the third Palace Theater show the next night with a mostly-blank tape containing the encores from this show, and was caught taping. The encore tape was thereafter confiscated, so we may never know what treats Frank had in store for us to round off this one.

This is a much better performance and a much better-sounding tape than last night, but this band is still warming up this early on. There will be better shows still ahead.
when you try to mock anyone while also running the flat earth society. Lol

Offline Blanko

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 2471
    • View Profile
Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #4 on: July 18, 2014, 06:22:39 PM »
nice

*

Offline xasop

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 9776
  • Professional computer somebody
    • View Profile
Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #5 on: July 19, 2014, 11:47:49 AM »
Thursday, 19 July, 1984
Palace Theater, Los Angeles, California


Secret word: Jungle Boogie


Set lists

Main show

Zoot Allures
Concert review read-out (incl. Jungle Boogie tease)
He's So Gay
Bobby Brown
Keep It Greasey
Honey, Don't You Want a Man Like Me?
Carol You Fool
Chana in De Bushwop
Kreega Bondola
Why Don't You Like Me?
Tinsel Town Rebellion
Oh No
Trouble Every Day
Penguin in Bondage
Hot Plate Heaven at the Green Hotel
Dumb All Over
The Evil Prince

First encore

Jungle Boogie tease
Joe's Garage
Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?

Second encore

Be in My Video
The Illinois Enema Bandit
Jungle Boogie


Review

The third Palace Theater show is the first example of the improvised humour that would become this band's trademark. At the start of the show, Frank references a local newspaper, gathering a cheer from the crowd (presumably some of them had read the article he was alluding to). After a very good Zoot Allures solo, including a few guitar loops, that could be mistaken for a 1982 performance if not for the more grating guitar tone Frank used for 1984, Frank reads the article out loud over the Zoot vamp.

The article is entitled Zappa: The Return of the Singing Cynic, and is a review by a journalist named Steve Pons of the Tuesday show. Frank is introduced in the article as "Moon Unit Zappa's old man", and the journalist describes the show as "a fairly typical Frank Zappa outing: [something] jazz, lots of guitar solos, free-wheeling jarring arrangements of songs with funny titles, and a style that its creator describes as cheese-oriented comedy music". Frank comments on this: "as those signs in the street say, real California cheese".

You start to get an understanding of how much attention this journalist paid to the concert in his next sentence: "If it's comedy, it's black comedy, and that's not a reference to the faintly racist moment when Zappa had his black musicians break into a chorus of Jungle Boogie". As you can tell from the set list for my review, Jungle Boogie was not played during the show in question, which Frank points out and then says "Maybe we'll stick it in someplace tonight, because I hate to see a guy make a complete fool of himself".

The review only gets worse from here, with the reviewer accusing Frank of "unashamedly exploiting his audience's juvenile impulses with sleazy jokes, while harpooning mankind in general with a body of work that succinctly declares that we're all stupid". Frank responds with "nothing wrong with being stupid, a lot of guys get to be President that way", which gathers loud applause from the crowd.

After a while, Frank gets bored of reading out the review and says "let's get it over with, let's just sing a little Jungle Boogie". The band plays a few bars of Jungle Boogie, Frank comments "that was incredibly racist", and the show goes on. However, the stage is now set for the first secret word of the tour; this show would hereafter be packed full of Jungle Boogie references and quotes.

The first deviation from the routine comes in Bobby Brown, where Frank adapts the first verse to include "I tell Steven Pons he can kiss my hiney". Keep It Greasey ends with Ike saying "here comes that racist sound again", and the female protagonist's favourite song in Honey, Don't You Want a Man Like Me? is Jungle Boogie. Also, at the end of that song, her sexual partner for the night sings her Jungle Boogie instead of having to use the phone.

Carol and Chana have one or two Jungle Boogie references apiece, but are otherwise played as normal, bringing us to Kreega Bondola. Kreega has decent solos from Alan and Frank again tonight, although the segues between the solo sections and the head are still a little rough around the edges, and most of the final head is missing due to a tape flip. The audible parts of Why Don't You Like Me? are played as always, though the taper seems to be experimenting with microphone volume during this part of the recording, and much of it is either almost silent or loud enough to cause distortion.

Why Don't You Like Me? expertly segues into Tinsel Town Rebellion, which contains a Jungle Boogie reference during the usual "I'll Tumble 4 Ya" quote. The next few songs are mostly played straight, except for a Jungle Boogie reference or two in the last verse of Penguin in Bondage. On the other hand, Frank is feeling very inspired on guitar by this point, producing some interesting solos in Trouble, Penguin and Hotel, so this is entertaining to listen to nevertheless.

This version of Dumb All Over is played as usual until the "and when his humble TV servant" section, at which point Frank deviates from the usual monologue. "Or maybe he has a bass player who blows the alp horn during the part of the show when you're not supposed to do it", Frank says. He continually allows himself to be interrupted, telling Alan "don't put that in your mouth, that's God, you stupid Australian". He also keeps saying "what?" in response to someone in the audience yelling something, but eventually moves on with the show.

Before the last few lyrics of Dumb All Over, he pauses and says "all together now", at which point most of the audience joins in chanting the lines "dumb all over" and "a little ugly on the side", marking the segue into this year's excellent guitar solo vamp. Frank soars over this vamp tonight, apparently inspired by the brief banter during his monologue to produce a really fantastic solo. As with most good '84 solos, this is short but sweet, and that takes us to the Evil Prince intro.

Frank takes his time introducing The Evil Prince tonight, and tells a story about some of his motivations behind writing Thing-Fish. He tells people to imagine that a pharmaceutical company is having financial trouble, and that some guy from Texas "with a cowboy hat this big" (no doubt accompanied by a visual gesture) pays them under the table to make a virus targeted at killing a group of people he doesn't like. Frank suggests possible viruses that could kill only Iranians, only Russians, or only bass players that blow alp horns when they're not supposed to. He also suggests the possibility of a Jungle Boogie virus, bringing us back to the show's secret word.

The Evil Prince itself is played as usual, except that Frank quotes Jungle Boogie during his guitar solo. It's not a bad solo, but not as good as the ones earlier in the show either. Eventually the final chord of this song marks the ending of the main set, a fitting end to tonight's show. The Evil Prince is partly about the Prince writing a bad review of the mammy nun show from Thing-Fish, and it seems to take on new meaning tonight in the context of the review Frank read out earlier.

The first encore, after the band teases Jungle Boogie for a couple of bars, is a Joe's Pee that has barely changed at all since 1982. The main difference is the addition of Ike singing "I like the drums, I like the bass, I like the one with a scar on his face" after the line "they'd all come over and dance around like"; this would be a frequent spot for secret word appearances later in the tour.

When the band comes back for the second encore, Frank tells the audience that some of them may have heard about a new disease called MTV, by way of introducing the next song. Be in My Video is as enjoyable as ever, and then comes a slightly jarring but well executed segue into The Illinois Enema Bandit, which has both a furiously energetic solo and a few references to Jungle Boogie in the last verse.

At the end of Bandit, Frank announces his hope that they haven't offended the audience's intelligence in any way, but just in case they have, the band launches into Jungle Boogie for one last time tonight. An entertaining end to a very entertaining show.

The sound on this tape isn't as clear as last night's, but it isn't as bad as the first show either. Aside from a few fluctuations in volume that cause distortion at times, it's a decent listen, and made very worthwhile by the Jungle Boogie theme of this show. Definitely my favourite show of the tour so far.
when you try to mock anyone while also running the flat earth society. Lol

Offline Blanko

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 2471
    • View Profile
Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #6 on: July 19, 2014, 01:36:46 PM »
great

Saddam Hussein

Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #7 on: July 19, 2014, 01:43:13 PM »
I am deeply engrossed in these reviews.  I feel like I'm practically at the concerts myself.

*

Offline xasop

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 9776
  • Professional computer somebody
    • View Profile
Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #8 on: July 21, 2014, 02:44:10 PM »
Friday, 20 July, 1984
Palace Theater, Los Angeles, California



Set lists

Main show

Zoot Allures
City of Tiny Lights
You Are What You Is
He's So Gay
Bobby Brown
Honey, Don't You Want a Man Like Me?
Carol You Fool
Panty Rap (incl. Happy Birthday)
Chana in De Bushwop
Kreega Bondola
Tinsel Town Rebellion
Oh No
Trouble Every Day
Hot Plate Heaven at the Green Hotel
Dumb All Over
The Evil Prince

First encore

Dancin' Fool
Cosmik Debris

Second encore

Sharleena (with Dweezil Zappa on guitar)

Third encore

Watermelon in Easter Hay


Review

Apologies for being late with this one, I've come down with a cold and been sleeping a lot.

This tape sounds quite muffled, but otherwise very clear, and after a few minutes one gets accustomed to the tone and it's a very pleasant listen. This is also a very solid show, performance-wise; aside from a few Jungle Boogie references early on, it lacks the slightly unhinged feel of last night's show, but what it lacks in fun it makes up for in consistency.

Zoot Allures has a good solo, but nothing spectacular. After that, Frank drops the first City of Tiny Lights of the tour on us. I find the '84 arrangement of this song quite bland compared to '82; it's played a little faster, but otherwise it's quite similar aside from the last verse, which is played the same way every night and lacks the improvised Frank-conducted insanity that characterised the prior tour's arrangement.

Arranging deficiencies aside, Frank delivers a kickass guitar solo in this City, and one worthy of this song's established place as a vehicle for kickass solos. Then we get the first You Are What You Is of the tour, which feels somewhat misplaced outside the context of its usual medley, but enjoyable nevertheless for Ray's powerful lead vocal during the extended outro, which appears more or less as on the album version.

We're then dropped back into the same set list as we've come to know from the past few nights, and these are some very solid performances of by now familiar songs. The first noteworthy piece of real estate Frank destroys is the end of Chana, where he blurts out "where's the underpants?" during the final chorus. He then instructs the band to continue vamping past the usual ending point as he engages the audience in some banter and underwear collection.

After conducting the band into a chorus of Happy Birthday directed at a member of the audience, Frank tells the story of what happened to the underpants they collected on the road in 1981. Apparently, an artist named Emily Schultz made a piece of art out of the pants, which she demanded not be washed, and had been displaying the work at varous places around America since then.

We get the usual amusement out of tonight's Panty Rap, with Frank commenting on the fact that some of the members of the band in '81 liked to smell the underpants that were collected, and claiming that "Alan is an Australian, and they actually do these things down there". He gives Alan a pair of underpants and asks him to "rate the bouquet", which Alan summarises as "Bondi Beach forevah!" Frank translates this as "a slight tinge of squid", and suggests immediate hospitalisation.

Frank introduces Chana tonight as having its lyrics "suggested, if not partly composed or decomposed" by his daughter Diva, who is supposedly in the audience tonight. We then get a straight performance of Chana and a solid effort at Kreega, although part of the keyboard solo in the latter is missing from this tape.

Kreega segues directly into Tinsel tonight, which is a pleasure to hear, both because it means Why Don't You Like Me? is gone, and because it's a very good segue that was commonplace in '82 set list. The remainder of the set list proceeds mostly as last night, sans the pervasive Jungle Boogie references. As usual, the Trouble Penguin Hotel trio produces some nice guitar work from Frank, including a masterfully crafted Big Swifty quote to finish off in Hotel.

Over the usual reggae vamp at the end of Dumb All Over, Frank seems disappointed with the lack of underpants he's received, accusing Hollywood of having turned conservative in the '80s and summing up his position as "y'all be playing it too safe". By way of announcing the segue into The Evil Prince, he then adds "well, we'll remedy that". This tape cuts out during the solo in The Evil Prince, so we may never know if tonight's crowd was indeed remedied by this majestic composition.

The first encore is one of the most boring pairings of crowd-pleasers ever committed to audience-recorded tape. Dancin' Fool and Cosmik Debris don't even have the lightest sprinkling of secret words tonight, nor does Debris have a worthwhile guitar solo, making these eight minutes a complete waste of magnetised plastic.

As if to make up for that deficiency, Frank comes out for the second encore to say that their next album will feature a reggae remake of Sharleena, with Dweezil on guitar. He then announces that tonight, Dweezil is going to join them on stage to play guitar on Sharleena, and as Dweezil solos go, this isn't bad. As per normal for Dweezil, it contains a lot of incredible techniques without much substance, but it's not entirely uninteresting. Also, this year's Sharleena has completely lost its second verse, expediting the approach to the guitar solo, and a generally good move on Frank's part.

Finally, Frank comes back for a third encore to finish things off and delivers unto us the beautifully composed Watermelon in Easter Hay. This song definitely lost something in the '80s and never quite managed to recapture the magnificence committed to tape on Joe's Garage, but it still has some charm left in it, and it makes a fantastic show closer.

This is a solid performance with a guest appearance from Dweezil, if you're into that. Otherwise, there's not much noteworthy about this concert, and I wouldn't recommend it unless you're already familiar with this tour and want more.
when you try to mock anyone while also running the flat earth society. Lol

Offline Blanko

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 2471
    • View Profile
Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #9 on: July 21, 2014, 02:46:14 PM »
sweet

*

Offline xasop

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 9776
  • Professional computer somebody
    • View Profile
Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #10 on: July 21, 2014, 05:10:38 PM »
Saturday, 21 July, 1984
Palace Theater, Los Angeles, California



Set lists

Main show

Treacherous Cretins
Montana
Easy Meat
Carolina Hard Core Ecstasy
Advance Romance
He's So Gay
Bobby Brown
Keep It Greasey
Honey, Don't You Want a Man Like Me?
Carol You Fool
Chana in De Bushwop
Kreega Bondola
Tinsel Town Rebellion
Oh No
Trouble Every Day
Penguin in Bondage
Hot Plate Heaven at the Green Hotel

First encore

Jungle Boogie
The Closer You Are
Johnny Darling
No No Cherry


Review

This is the first SBD tape of the tour, with vocals mixed into the foreground and Frank's guitar so loud in the mix that it dominates everything else. This makes it a double-edged sword: when the band hits the mark, this tape captures their performance in brilliant clarity; but when they fuck up, that's crystal clear too.

Tonight's set starts out with three new '84 arrangements, which start out cheesy and just get cheesier. Treacherous Cretins comes with a nice guitar solo, which goes some way to make up for this blasphemous arrangement that sounds like a parody of itself, but Montana and Easy Meat don't have that luxury. Easy Meat is especially horrifying, with vocals all over the formerly instrumental sections and in between lyrics, as well as the unforgivable insertion of "weasly meat" in places. Blegh.

Then we get onto the good stuff. Carolina and Advance are riddled with clearly audible mistakes on this tape, but at least they aren't complete abominations. After that, we're treated to the usual set list, which is a lot more solid as the band has played most of these tunes every night so far. Also, something which I forgot to mention previously, the girl's favourite group in Honey, Don't You Want a Man Like Me? has changed from Helen Reddy to Echo and the Bunnymen for this tour.

Carol You Fool is where the clarity on this tape really shines. For the first time, the incredible vocal ensemble in this band really gets to strut their stuff, with all five vocal parts clearly audible on this recording. The same is true for Chana, where Frank also begins to get silly with his lines, especially "where she go?", where he drags out the last "o" sound in a very cheesy, '84-ish style. At the end, he interjects with "take me with you!", sounding very similar to the end of Debra Kadabra on Bongo Fury, and signalling the segue into Kreega Bondola.

Maybe it's just the clarity on this tape, but tonight's Kreega really rocks! Both Alan and Frank are on the ball with their solos, with a slow build-up to a magnificent crescendo as the band segues back into the head, and both Alan's keyboard and Frank's guitar are way up front in this mix, making it that much more appreciable.

The numerous silly quotes from '80s pop hits in Tinsel also gain new life on this tape, and Tinsel itself becomes a new source of silliness, with Frank interjecting "bang your head" numerous times in the last verse. I'm not sure what this is in reference to, but it's amusing nevertheless. Finally, after the Woody Woodpecker theme, he calls for the segue into Oh No with "make it bleed, now".

The awfulness of this arrangement of Oh No is very easily appreciated on this tape, as well as the fact that this band is still finding its feet in Trouble Every Day. Frank makes a reference to the Olympics taking place in LA at the time in the latter: "Well I'm about to get sick / From watching my TV / Been checkin' out the Olympics / Until my eyeballs fail to see".

Trouble and Penguin fail to produce noteworthy solos tonight, but Frank more than makes up for it with an absolutely brilliant effort in Hotel. One of the best solos of the tour so far, and definitely my favourite in this show, but still not as great as they would get later in the tour.

After Frank comes back out onto the stage, he reads out a note from someone in the audience, requesting that he direct his "session men" in some improvisations "like in the days of yore". The writer boldly claims that "even you have to be sick of Dancin' Fool by now" and signs the note as "A Concerned American".

Frank decides to put it to a vote: "Unusual as it may be in America, we're actually going to get the real democratic process working here". It ends up being a tie, at least in terms of how loudly the audience expresses its preferences, so Frank decides to "mix and match".

What comes out of the improvisation is three minutes of somewhat interesting vamps and assorted weird noises. Whatever gripes anyone may have with the '84 band, I find this to be a much more worthwhile use of encore time than Dancin' Fool. Towards the end, Frank directs Ray to do something, and Ray begins singing Jungle Boogie, with the rest of the band quickly joining him; hence its inclusion in the set list above as "Jungle Boogie".

Then, to satisfy the other half of the audience who wanted the usual material, we get a nice '50s medley to round things off. I'm not actually sure if this was the last encore or not, since this tape cuts out during No No Cherry, but it is most enjoyable while it lasts.

This tape can be quite inconsistent, with volume fluctuations at times and a somewhat unbalanced mix. When it's good, it's really good, and when it's bad, it's still tolerable. I'm not sure I'd recommend this show as a whole, simply because it's still so early in the tour and a lot of mistakes are made, but it's one of the more enjoyable shows thus far.


Samples

Finally, to appease the people on IRC who wanted to hear some of what's going on, here are a couple of samples of my favourite bits of this show:

Carol You Fool
Jungle Boogie

I've deliberately not included any guitar solos, because they aren't up to a very high standard this early in the tour. On the other hand, Napoleon would soon be gone, so this early version of Carol You Fool is a rare opportunity to hear it with the original vocal harmonies of this band.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2014, 05:20:42 PM by Parsifal »
when you try to mock anyone while also running the flat earth society. Lol

Offline Blanko

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 2471
    • View Profile
Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #11 on: July 21, 2014, 05:21:34 PM »
exquisite

Thork

Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #12 on: July 21, 2014, 07:01:51 PM »
Ray White is an oxymoron.  :-B

*

Offline xasop

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 9776
  • Professional computer somebody
    • View Profile
Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #13 on: July 24, 2014, 10:41:00 PM »
Sunday, 22 July, 1984
Palace Theater, Los Angeles, California



Set lists

Main show

The Black Page
Tinsel Town Rebellion
Oh No
Trouble Every Day
Penguin in Bondage
Hot Plate Heaven at the Green Hotel
Dumb All Over
The Evil Prince
Carolina Hard Core Ecstasy
Advance Romance
He's So Gay
Bobby Brown
Keep it Greasey
Honey, Don't You Want a Man Like Me?
Carol You Fool
The Dangerous Kitchen
Chana in De Bushwop
Kreega Bondola
Why Don't You Like Me?

First encore

Stick It Out
Truck Driver Divorce (with George Duke on keyboard)
In France (with George Duke on keyboard and Johnny "Guitar" Watson on lead vocal)
Chunga's Revenge (with Aynsley Dunbar on drums, Denny Walley on slide guitar and Bruce Fowler on trombone and interpretive dancing)


Review

The last of the Palace Theater run that opens the '84 tour is mostly captured on a very clear SBD tape, comparable to last night. From The Black Page through to Hot Plate Heaven, though, there's a fairly poor audience tape instead. Apart from the novelty, this Black Page doesn't have a great solo and isn't captured on the best of recordings, so it doesn't offer too much.

From there, we go through the motions as usual, with the band playing through the same set as on their first show. Trouble and Penguin have decent solos, but it's in Hot Plate Heaven where Frank starts getting nasty, just as the recording cuts to the SBD tape. This is well worth a listen just for the part of the solo after that cut.

The show from here is mostly routine, with good-but-not-great solos. Carolina and Romance strike me as being much tighter performances than last night; these sound much like the more mature official releases on the You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore series than what we've had until now.

The next major point of interest comes at the segue from Carol You Fool into Chana in De Bushwop. Where we normally expect the snazzy piano motif that opens the latter, there comes a moment of silence followed by a few sparse notes. "Uh oh... fix that microphone!" says Frank. "Has science failed us?"

Frank then launches into an impromptu Dangerous Kitchen, which is much better performed than the first one a few nights ago. This is, again, much more like the official release on You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, vol. 1, and a very enjoyable variation in what is otherwise a very routine set list.

After having so much fun, Frank can barely remember the words to Chana, making light of this fact by instead singing disjointed words and phrases from the lyrics, and interjecting with "the dangerous kitchen" at one point (though sadly, we don't get a reprise of the whole thing).

Kreega Bondola is as we've come to expect, with good-but-not-great solos from Alan and Frank. To round things off, we get Why Don't You Like Me?, sounding clearer and less grating than the usual performances. All in all, this set list encompasses all the pieces we've come to expect from this band so far, but with much better performances.

That all changes once we reach the encore. This encore has four songs this band hasn't yet played, and five special guest performers, of which four are former band members. Frank describes this as a "Sunday night jam session", and it has the sound of one too. This is some of the most unashamedly unpolished Zappa material you'll ever hear, but it's worth hearing for the good bits.

Stick It Out starts out more or less as the disco version on Joe's Garage, except that it skips straight past the German section and into the English lyrics for this tour. Then the band does one of the most incredible segues I've heard yet this tour; they go straight from the "don't get no jizz upon that sofa" part into a disco version of Truck Driver Divorce, complete with My Sharona bass line. Frank makes reference to the original Sofa suite from whcih Stick It Out is extracted during this version, twisting lyrics such as "oh, go ride the pig". We also get a reprise of the "dun-dun-du-du-du-du-dun-dun" chant from Stick It Out in the lead-up to the guitar solo.

Tonight's guitar solo in Stick It Out starts out fairly mediocre, but after about a minute, Frank stops playing and introduces George Duke. For a while, George just plays rhythm and Frank produces the usual Truck Driver masterpiece over the top, but then Frank stops again and George gets the spotlight. Suddenly, it feels like '74 all over again. It's not one of George's best solos, but it is unmistakably a George solo, and it's awesome to hear again.

After a bit more jamming between Frank and George, Frank announces the second special guest of the night. Johnny "Guitar" Watson comes out to reprise his lead vocal on In France from Them or Us, and to be honest, this sounds like a poorly-rehearsed but fun version of the piece. The band seems to be falling apart half the time; Johnny plays a decent solo on Frank's guitar, but nothing spectacular; and on returning from the guitar to the microphone, he manages to skip a few bars of lyrics and land straight in the IV chord of this 12-bar blues, which the band quickly corrects for.

All things considered, the most noteworthy thing about this version of In France is that it is the last time that Frank Zappa, Napoleon Murphy Brock and George Duke would ever appear on stage together. Back in '74 they went out with a bang; now, for the last time, they go out with a whimper.

Then George and Johnny leave, and Frank invites Aynsley Dunbar (of the '70/'71 bands), Denny Walley (of the '75/'79 bands) and Bruce Fowler (who toured with Frank on and off between '72 and '75) on stage for a rendition of Chunga's Revenge. Through the first head, it's just interesting to hear Aynsley playing Chad's electronic drum kit. It feels surreal after being familiar with his furious exploits on acoustic drums more than a decade prior, to hear the constrained enthusiasm on these sample pads.

Then the first solo starts, and it's Denny on slide guitar. This is definitely the low point of the show. For several minutes, Denny manages to repeat the same two or three motifs over and over again, never taking the solo anywhere. This is a million miles away from the Denny we knew in the '70s, and I'd like to think he was just having a bad night, because I know that he has done (and hopefully still could do) much better.

Denny steps down, and up comes Bruce, and suddenly the whole feel of this encore set changes. Bruce shows us what Chunga's Revenge is supposed to sound like, with his usual trombone majesty. This is a Bruce who has lost none of his brilliance since the Roxy era, and it's little wonder that Frank would invite him to join the '88 band four years later after this performance.

Bruce's performance is so inspiring that Frank deems it worthwhile to deviate from the plodding rock vamp through various other styles, including jazz and reggae vamps, which Bruce adapts to without a problem. Then Frank announces that Bruce is not only known for his ability to play high notes on the trombone ("which don't even exist there"), but that he can also do interpretive dancing.

And so, tonight we get an "interpretive dance-off" between Bruce Fowler and Alan Zavod, as the band returns to the usual Chunga's Revenge vamp and Frank picks up his guitar to round off the affair. Naturally, I can't see how good their dancing is on this audio-only tape, but the guitar solo is pretty good, and Napoleon even gets up to some sax madness in the background.

Frank announces couples one through seven, a usual feature of his dance contests, before directing the band to return to the head. Again, without video it's difficult to know exactly what's going on, but presumably he's inviting people from the audience to dance to the final head of Chunga's Revenge. Then Frank makes the outro quick, tells the audience they'll be in Irvine next week (they were going to be, but that show eventually got cancelled), and they leave the Palace Theater for the last time.

This is a very unique show, consisting of an extremely routine main set and an extremely atypical encore. All things considered, while it has its low points, I couldn't think of a better way to round off the Palace Theater run.

The next show is yesterday, and I've been slacking a bit due to being sick. I'll hopefully have yesterday and today's reviews up within the next 24 hours or so.
when you try to mock anyone while also running the flat earth society. Lol

Saddam Hussein

Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #14 on: July 25, 2014, 12:16:32 AM »
cool

*

Offline xasop

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 9776
  • Professional computer somebody
    • View Profile
Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #15 on: July 26, 2014, 06:45:19 AM »
Tuesday, 24 July, 1984
Open Air Theatre, San Diego State University, San Diego, California


Secret words: matches, tunnel


Set lists

Main show

Zoot Allures
Tinsel Town Rebellion
Oh No
Trouble Every Day
Penguin in Bondage
Hot Plate Heaven at the Green Hotel
Dumb All Over
The Evil Prince
Be in My Video
Carolina Hard Core Ecstasy
Advance Romance
He's So Gay
Bobby Brown
Keep It Greasey
Honey, Don't You Want a Man Like Me?
Carol You Fool
Chana in De Bushwop
Kreega Bondola
Why Don't You Like Me?

First encore

The Closer You Are
Johnny Darling
No No Cherry

Second encore

Dancin' Fool
Cosmik Debris


Review

The first concert away from home, so to speak, is a mostly routine show with a light sprinkling of secret words. The tape it's committed to isn't bad, but is very bass-heavy, which has the result of muffling the rest of the sound. It would probably be more listenable with a little EQ tweaking, although I prefer to listen to these tapes raw when reviewing.

Before playing anything, Frank decides to warn the audience that the show contains "very strong language and things having to do with body functions". He asks any members of the audience for whom that material "makes you vomit, or makes you think that you just might go to Hell" to leave, "because we wouldn't want to harm you".

During the band intros, Frank introduces Ray as "a legend in his own time", because "if you ever have to use the toilet after Ray White -- where's that book(?) of matches -- take these with you!" And thus, the secret word for tonight is born. Many of the "matches" references tonight are followed up with "tunnel" references, although I don't quite understand the connection, so I've listed both as secret words.

From here onwards, the show proceeds mostly uneventfully, with mostly average performances and average guitar solos. These performances would likely be easier to appreciate on a clearer tape, because as it is, Scott's groovy bass lines dominate all else and make it difficult to make out the finer details of everyone else's performances.

The show starts to pick up in Be in My Video, where Frank turns the last line into "and then we'll dance your matches", following it up with "mercy flush" just before the segue into Carolina. Advance Romance also has its fair share of secret word abuse, with Ike throwing in a few "matches" references during the "she might do you too" section before the guitar solo, a part of the song that would be a frequent breeding ground for secret words as the tour goes on.

The fourth verse of Advance Romance turns "he opened three of his eyes" into "he opened three of his matches", but after that, the band goes back to straight renditions for while. Frank has some silly fun with the "uh-oh" line in He's So Gay and begins changing up the rhythm of his lines in the first verse of Bobby Brown, another frequent practice as the tour proceeds. The end of Keep It Greasey brings the first reference to "tunnel" for tonight, with Ike calling in the segue to the next song with "here comes that screamin' tunnel sound again".

Frank is enjoying having fun with his vocal parts tonight, as he rambles on (mostly inaudibly) about Carol meeting another engineer during the last part of Carol You Fool. This keeps up in the second verse of Chana, where Frank has completely changed the second verse into fragmented phrases. It now goes "she has a / and then she looks like / later on she / and it was very difficult to".

The musical highlight of this show, though, comes in Frank's Kreega Bondola solo, where halfway through the band suddenly moves to a shuffle vamp which I find very reminiscent of the '78 arrangement of Suicide Chump. Frank soars over this new accompaniment for a couple of minutes, producing some unusually bluesy improvisation in the midst of an otherwise musically mundane show. This is also a fine taster of the show-to-show variation that would come later in the tour in this solo spot.

It's over all too soon, though, and the band returns to the Kreega head as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Then we get another Why Don't You Like Me?, sounding much more solid and enjoyable than it did a week ago.

Frank comes back out for the first encore and begins introducing the next song by way of saying that it's a great American tradition to fall in love during the summer. He gets interrupted at the most amusing possible time during this speech: "love is the driving force of the Universe -- oh, those are the largest underpants we've ever had thrown onto the stage!"

Someone has passed up a note with their underpants, which Frank reads out: "Show us your tits, Frank -- Mary from the bus". Frank obliges, commenting that "somebody is desperate for entertainment out there". The band continues with some mildly amusing banter; Ike says "where's this Mary?", Frank responds with "where's the beef?", and then expertly brings us full circle through the shows secret words ("where's the matches? where's that tunnel?") and into the next song ("where's that B flat that starts this song off?"), at which point the band immediately launches into The Closer You Are.

Aside from Frank finishing the first verse with "Mary from the bus", we then get a surprisingly straight rendition of this tour's '50s medley, but this medley is always enjoyable no matter how uninteresting the rest of the concert. The second encore is equally straight, except for Frank's closing monologue in Dancin' Fool, which includes a reference to Why Don't You Like Me? ("do you come here often, and if so, why are you trying to be a lawyer?") and various other permutations ("love your moustache", "You're Jewish? Do you have any matches?").

This show is mostly routine. Aside from some very rarefied secret word appearances and an interesting deviation in Kreega Bondola, it doesn't have much to offer, and the recording quality isn't spectacular either. Do yourself a favour and look elsewhere.
when you try to mock anyone while also running the flat earth society. Lol

*

Offline Pete Svarrior

  • e
  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 16073
  • (◕˽ ◕ ✿)
    • View Profile
Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #16 on: July 26, 2014, 09:26:02 AM »
Secret words: matches, tunnel
Those aren't very secret if you just slam them down like this. At least use the [spoiler] tag :(
Read the FAQ before asking your question - chances are we already addressed it.
Follow the Flat Earth Society on Twitter and Facebook!

If we are not speculating then we must assume

Saddam Hussein

Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #17 on: July 26, 2014, 01:29:50 PM »
go on

*

Offline Foxbox

  • *
  • Posts: 956
  • We live inside a dream.
    • View Profile
Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #18 on: August 06, 2014, 03:47:15 AM »
rip

*

Offline xasop

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 9776
  • Professional computer somebody
    • View Profile
Re: Frank Zappa 1984 tour 30th anniversary extravaganza
« Reply #19 on: August 06, 2014, 06:11:20 AM »
My earphones broke, which makes it kind of hard to keep this up. I may pick it up again (albeit with some skipped shows) soon.
when you try to mock anyone while also running the flat earth society. Lol