In 1978, Frank Zappa played five nights in a row in New York
\nleading up to Halloween, some elements of which have been released
\nbefore. Each of these concerts was recorded to 24-track analog
\ntape, and is thus in a perfect position to be mixed into stunningly
\ncrisp, high quality sound. This disc is the first release of
\nDVD-Audio by the Zappa Family Trust, it’s a music-lovers selection
\nfrom a series of concerts, and it’s been painstakingly remixed to
\ntake full advantage of a 5.1 system.<\/p>\n
This is a live recording, and as such it is mixed differently
\nfrom the re-releases of studio material. In particular, the
\nlistener is made to feel as if he is actually *at* the concert,
\nfacing the stage, with the audience behind and surrounding. With
\nclosed eyes, I felt as though I could point at each member of the
\nband in turn! It’s so clear, in fact, that the rear channels even
\ngive off a feeling of being in an arena, with echoes and ambient
\nnoise. The two-channel downmixes feel very much like a standard
\nZappa live album.<\/p>\n
The disc starts out with some crowd noise, and then moves right
\ninto a blistering, amazingly crisp guitar solo. The tone is
\nexcellent, and the composition is spot on. By the third track we
\nare expecting nothing but the best; but regrettably, “Dancing Fool”
\ndoesn’t live up to the expectation. It’s a solid cut, but it
\ndoesn’t fit with the quality preceding it. “Easy Meat” brings us
\nanother soaring, crystal solo, and then slides into a masterfully
\nedited together montage of two separate nights’ worth of “Magic
\nFingers.”<\/p>\n
Some of the compositions, as others have pointed out, feel as
\nthough they have not aged well. Perhaps the plethora of Zappa
\nreleases has worn out their welcome a bit, but “Stink-Foot” and
\n“Dinah-Moe Humm” are not particularly engaging — while they
\ncertainly transplant the listener to the concert, they are not in
\nand of themselves worthy additions to the disc.<\/p>\n
However, “Camarillo Brillo” and “Conehead” feel remarkably
\nfresh, the latter presumably from Frank’s recent (and included, in
\nthe extras) appearance on
\nSaturday Night Live<\/i>.<\/p>\n
A few words should be made of the track “Zeets,” which is quite
\nan achievement. It is a drum solo with some rather interesting
\nmixes that I won’t spoil for you here; however, upon listening, I
\nbegan to ask myself — is this an engaging drum solo? I confess I
\nfound that it was not. The innovative mixing in 5.1 is neat, but I
\ncan’t say the music kept my interest. The concluding track of the
\nalbum is the impressively lengthy “Black Napkins (The Deathless
\nHorsie)” which is, speaking quite frankly, an beautiful
\nperformance. This piece of music is alone worth the purchase price
\n— the brilliant vamping underneath an astounding solo, the solo
\nitself, and the sound quality all conspire to produce a fitting
\nalbum closer.<\/p>\n
This album is an experience. It is, as the liner notes suggest,
\na transporting experience, 1.21 Jigawatts in a plastic jewel case.
\nThe mixing is extraordinary, and it even sounds good in just
\ntwo-channel stereo, and is thus accessible to anyone with a
\ncomputer or set-top DVD player. A few missteps in the choices are,
\nit seems, a necessary evil — picking concerts favorites is rather
\na foregone conclusion when trying to represent the concert
\nexperience. Despite this, the album overcomes and becomes quite
\npossibly the most satisfying posthumously compiled release to come
\nfrom the Zappa Family Trust.<\/p>\n
Before I close, a few points should be made about the DVD-Audio
\nformat, and the nature of this particular mix. DVD-Audio is one of
\ntwo competing standards for next-generation music storage, and
\ntypically the discs are composed of at least two audio layers —
\nthe DVD-Audio layer, which is only playable on certain, enabled
\nplayers, and a normal DVD mix, typically in DTS 5.1, which is of
\nslightly (very slightly) lower quality, and in a different encoding
\nstyle. This particular disc includes a DVD-A track, a DTS 5.1 track
\nand a 2-channel stereo. It is playable on any DVD player, but
\nobviously you will hear the best sound if your player is capable of
\ndecoding either DVD-A or DTS, and if you have a five-channel setup
\n(front, left front, right front, left rear, right rear, and
\nsubwoofer.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":26450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5625],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-37684","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-frank-zappa","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37684"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}