Published on Sep 26, 2005
The one drawback to hearing any live show – it doesn’t matter
who the artist is – is that there is some aspect of the concert
that is visual, and when you try to separate the audio on its own
without any of the visuals, something is inherently lost in the
translation. Very few live albums have gotten it right; others have
tried mightily, but failed through no fault of their own.
In the case of
Ahead Of Their Time, a recording of the 1968-era Mothers Of
Invention performing a series of skits onstage to tie together some
choral music that Frank Zappa had been writing while on the road,
that lack of visuals is painfully evident. (According to All-Music
Guide, some of the scenes made it into the film
Uncle Meat, which I’ve never seen.) When the band focuses on
the music that made their name, the disc turns out to be pretty
good (even if the sound borders on pseudo-bootleg at times), but
when the play is the thing, the experience sours.
This, indeed, is the problem with early Mothers Of Invention
material, in that the work that Zappa and crew did on stage was as
much visual as it was musical. In this case, with Zappa bringing in
members from the BBC Symphony Orchestra to accompany the band for
the choral pieces of music, the scene had to be held together with
action on-stage. In this case, it was a play where members of the
Mothers are torn between structured music and avant-garde. That’s
about all of the story that I was able to figure out, as it quickly
delves into weirdness that you almost need a GPS to navigate. I
mean, how does one explain a cut named “The Rejected Mexican Pope
Leaves The Stage”?
The choral pieces, to be honest, are nothing to write home about
– though they did contain some of the seeds that would later
germinate into
200 Motels. Unfortunately, that greatness isn’t always
evident here. Maybe it’s because the pieces are buried in the
bizarre stage play, maybe it’s the sub-par sound (though there’s
nothing that could be done about that, as this was the only
performance of this suite of songs with stagework).
When the Mothers get down to work, though, they prove to be
unstoppable. Kicking in to “King Kong,” the listener knows that the
magic is starting – and it proves to be nearly unstoppable, as the
band tears through classics like “Transylvania Boogie,” “Let’s Make
The Water Turn Black,” “Harry You’re A Beast,” “Help I’m A Rock”
and “The Orange County Lumber Truck”. In this regard, the Mothers
are captured at one of their best points.
So, it’s hard to say that
Ahead Of Their Time is a failure – though it’s not possible
to call it a success, either. Anyone not schooled in the pre-1970
Mothers Of Invention will undoubtedly be lost listening to this
disc – as I was way back when I first bought it over a decade ago.
Those with knowledge of the Mothers’ music will celebrate the live
tracks, but tread carefully on the stageplay.
2005 Christopher Thelen and “The Daily Vault.” All rights
reserved. Review or any portion may not be reproduced without
written permission. Cover art is the intellectual property of the
Zappa Family Trust / record label, and is used for informational
purposes only.