Frank Zappa

Over-Nite Sensation
$11.98
I had this on vinyl back in the day. Had to have for my current collection. "Montana" is my favorite! "Dyno Hum" is also very entertaining. We lost Frank Zappa too soon. So much more poetry could had been written & performed by him.

Hot Rats
$11.98
Fabulous album, Zappa and Ian Underwood go overdub mad on tracks laid down live-in-studio by incredible rhythm sections, using one of the first 16 track recorders. The composing - both the underlying songs and the arrangements and layers and doublings that seem to have been created during overdubs - is amazing. Combines great musicianship, balls to the wall playing and just a tiny touch of the arch sense of humor Zappa is known for. A total classic. My only criticism is that I prefer the mix from the old LP version. The CD-era remix brings out the filligree of detail, which is nice, but lacks some of the warmth and grooviness of the LP. The perfect Zappa album for jazzers and people who find his lyrics (tailored, by his own account, for 13 year old boys) ultimately tiresome.

Wazoo
$29.98
Truly an outstanding product in every way. The packaging (photos, liner notes, enclosed booklet, disc sleeves) is superb. The music, spread over 2 discs, will blow your mind. It boogies, it rocks, it veers off into avant weirdness, it lapses into mournful woodwinds, then explodes with 20 piece big band precision. FZ's orchestration and arrangements reenforce his genius status. If you like Zappa, especially the instrumental, non-vocal Zappa, you'll absolutely love this set. If you're a Zappaphile, may I suggest that you load your CD player with these 2 discs along with "Imaginary Diseases" (the 10 piece "petite Wazoo" band which toured in the months after this band) and the original "The Grand Wazoo" and play them on shuffle. The extraordinary depth, breadth, and beauty of Zappa's genius will pour out of your speakers for hours; themes and motifs appearing, modifying, and reemerging; the full magnificence of Zappa's extended jazz/rock vision brilliantly displayed.

Frank Zappa: Apostrophe / Over-Nite Sensation
$14.98
Owning the Classic Albums DVDs for Lou Reed, Sex Pistols, Cream, Deep Purple, Doors and Zappa; I have to say this is worthy, but ain't a classic within the series. Only a handful of songs from Overnite Sensation and Apostrophe are covered here, and only fleetingly in most cases. There are plenty of people interviewed, but it ranges from the half sentence blurbs of the shortest Alice Cooper interview ever done and the chuckling "I don't really have anything to say about that" style of George Duke to the episode stealing interviews with Ruth Underwood and Billy Bob Thornton. Steve Via and Dweezil are insightful and gracious, but few seem to know how to talk about this complicated guy. Though Moon Unit's basic comment that he was a "musical monk...who liked groupies" gives another angle, it reeks a bit of her personal issues more than something helpful to understanding the guy's music. When you've finished the Machine Head Classic Albums DVD, you feel you've learned something new about every song and the circumstance of the recording (hell, they even go further in depth with the Zappa origins of the Smoke On The Water story than most anything here). Never Mind The Bollocks Classic Album is chock full of info and depth. The Fleetwood Mac episode of this series goes so far, for so long it's overwhelming! But this one just doesn't feel complete. It's undoubtedly worth getting for the rare footage (including Halloween Zappa on SNL), but if you own these albums you'll get more about the songs from putting on your headphones than watching this. The "Vaultmeister" as he's introduced, seems to have just gotten the keys to the vault, as all he knows is the location of said album, and the history of the format it's recorded on. Both he and Dweezil seem genuinely surprised when they encounter an interesting bit on the master tapes, as if they'd never thought of sitting down and examining what was there. At least they could've done a dry run before the cameras got there, so they'd appear to know SOMETHING! There's plenty of talk about Tina, but she's not on here. At least Gail gets some camera time and knows how to use it. Maybe it's because Frank is so very different and dead, that they were unable to completely capture the essence of what these recording sessions were all about. But it seems like they didn't do enough research into the original studio, or engineer or enough of the musicians involved to give a concise statement about these truly Classic Albums. Sadly; three and a half stars out of five.