Published on Aug 18, 2003
In 1978, Frank Zappa played five nights in a row in New York
leading up to Halloween, some elements of which have been released
before. Each of these concerts was recorded to 24-track analog
tape, and is thus in a perfect position to be mixed into stunningly
crisp, high quality sound. This disc is the first release of
DVD-Audio by the Zappa Family Trust, it’s a music-lovers selection
from a series of concerts, and it’s been painstakingly remixed to
take full advantage of a 5.1 system.
This is a live recording, and as such it is mixed differently
from the re-releases of studio material. In particular, the
listener is made to feel as if he is actually *at* the concert,
facing the stage, with the audience behind and surrounding. With
closed eyes, I felt as though I could point at each member of the
band in turn! It’s so clear, in fact, that the rear channels even
give off a feeling of being in an arena, with echoes and ambient
noise. The two-channel downmixes feel very much like a standard
Zappa live album.
The disc starts out with some crowd noise, and then moves right
into a blistering, amazingly crisp guitar solo. The tone is
excellent, and the composition is spot on. By the third track we
are expecting nothing but the best; but regrettably, “Dancing Fool”
doesn’t live up to the expectation. It’s a solid cut, but it
doesn’t fit with the quality preceding it. “Easy Meat” brings us
another soaring, crystal solo, and then slides into a masterfully
edited together montage of two separate nights’ worth of “Magic
Fingers.”
Some of the compositions, as others have pointed out, feel as
though they have not aged well. Perhaps the plethora of Zappa
releases has worn out their welcome a bit, but “Stink-Foot” and
“Dinah-Moe Humm” are not particularly engaging — while they
certainly transplant the listener to the concert, they are not in
and of themselves worthy additions to the disc.
However, “Camarillo Brillo” and “Conehead” feel remarkably
fresh, the latter presumably from Frank’s recent (and included, in
the extras) appearance on
Saturday Night Live.
A few words should be made of the track “Zeets,” which is quite
an achievement. It is a drum solo with some rather interesting
mixes that I won’t spoil for you here; however, upon listening, I
began to ask myself — is this an engaging drum solo? I confess I
found that it was not. The innovative mixing in 5.1 is neat, but I
can’t say the music kept my interest. The concluding track of the
album is the impressively lengthy “Black Napkins (The Deathless
Horsie)” which is, speaking quite frankly, an beautiful
performance. This piece of music is alone worth the purchase price
— the brilliant vamping underneath an astounding solo, the solo
itself, and the sound quality all conspire to produce a fitting
album closer.
This album is an experience. It is, as the liner notes suggest,
a transporting experience, 1.21 Jigawatts in a plastic jewel case.
The mixing is extraordinary, and it even sounds good in just
two-channel stereo, and is thus accessible to anyone with a
computer or set-top DVD player. A few missteps in the choices are,
it seems, a necessary evil — picking concerts favorites is rather
a foregone conclusion when trying to represent the concert
experience. Despite this, the album overcomes and becomes quite
possibly the most satisfying posthumously compiled release to come
from the Zappa Family Trust.
Before I close, a few points should be made about the DVD-Audio
format, and the nature of this particular mix. DVD-Audio is one of
two competing standards for next-generation music storage, and
typically the discs are composed of at least two audio layers —
the DVD-Audio layer, which is only playable on certain, enabled
players, and a normal DVD mix, typically in DTS 5.1, which is of
slightly (very slightly) lower quality, and in a different encoding
style. This particular disc includes a DVD-A track, a DTS 5.1 track
and a 2-channel stereo. It is playable on any DVD player, but
obviously you will hear the best sound if your player is capable of
decoding either DVD-A or DTS, and if you have a five-channel setup
(front, left front, right front, left rear, right rear, and
subwoofer.)