Customer Reviews

Wazoo

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's about time this CD became available on Amazon! Not all of the posthumous Zappa releases have necessarily been all that great, but this one is both excellent and crucial. Like Imaginary Diseases, this one fills in a gap in Zappa's discography. In 1972 FZ did a limited 12 concert tour with the big band, comprised of some of the top LA area jazz musicians, that recorded "Waka Jawaka" and "Grand Wazoo". This is as close as Zappa got to jazz.

2006's "Imaginary Diseases" (also highly recommended!) was a recording of the "Petit Wazoo" tour, which had a smaller brass & wind section. The full "Grand Wazoo" band only did 12 shows. This is a recording of the final concert in Boston.

Disc 1 inlcudes "Grand Wazoo" and "Big Swifty", the long songs from each of the two albums, plus "Aproximate", another long-format tune, which is more in the avant-guarde style. The band sections and solos are all excellent, and really give the peces a very different character than the originals. I consider the version of "Big Swifty" superior to the studio version.

Disc 2 includes a lengthy instrumental version of "Greggery Peccary", minus the narration. Though I love the narration on the studio version, it does overpower the music. This version allows you to focus on the instrumental music in a new light. It is stretched out to 32 minutes and, though there is a slow spot or two, is generally excellent. A very interesting cello solo is a highlight. It also includes an instrumental version of "Penis Dimension" from "200 Motels (!).

This is a very enjoyable album. I think this is the best new release since "Lather". Any fan of Zappa's instrumental music will want to get this one. If you like The Grand Wazoo" and Roxy & Elsewhere, you need this!

I own virtually every Zappa release, and I have to say that this one ranks right up near the top. I'm also a fan of jazz from John Coltrane to Ornette Coleman. Again, this album rates right up near the top of great jazz albums.

Zappa was touring with a huge jazz band for just a few dates. This 2-CD set captures the final night of this tour. It's all instrumental, with plenty of room for improvisation from some of the best studio musicians available at the time.

If you are a jazz fan, you need this CD -- even if you're not familiar with Zappa's work. This album will change the average jazz fan's opinion of Zappa in much the same way that The Yellow Shark got classical fans to take Zappa seriously. Get it, listen, be amazed.

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.

Despite the 3 stars this is a still good CD. It just that except for "The Grand Wazoo" and "Big Swifty" (only 1/3 of these discs) this is pretty much mostly free form jazz. If you like that side of Frank's music then you will like this one.

A lot of the hype around this releases is probably a result of the expectation of rumor. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Zappa fan from way back, at one time I had 36 Zappa albums, which at the time was most of them. So it pains me a little to say it, but, most of Zappas best stuff was released while he was alive, and there's a reason why Zappa did not release this himself.

There are essentialy two problems here...the band is not fully on top of the material and the recording is terrible. These were session pros, not avante guard jazz musicians, at it's best the performances are pretty sterile. This is also a direct to half track master so there was no ability to mix this once recorded, and much of the instrumental balance is off, sometimes a lot. The micing on the horns is terrible. At points in Grand Wazoo it sounds like somone had a compressor set with it's threshold too low and short attack, there is some distortion. The drums mostly sound aweful, there is some distortion on hard attacks and the toms sound like cardboard boxes. Bass is way to loud and has no depth, it almost sounds like a DI rather than a miced up amp. The performace overall sounds rushed and the attacks are not as super precise as they ought to be. And quite frankly, even the solos are not up to the studio recodings of these tracks. Even Zappas guitar work on Wazoo and Big Swifty sounds thin and anemic and tenative.

The period between Hot Rats and Roxy is one of my favorite Zappa periods, but the studio recodings of this material are way better. This obviously has some historic value to hardcore Zappaphiles. At very least you hear Zappa working out his ideas and trying to find the best way to get them heard during a perios of transition. If that's what you want to hear, you will not be disappointed. But some experiments work better than others. Zapapa was not really a big band style jazz arranger, for that try Stan Kenton, Don Ellis or Gary McFarland.

And rather than be totaly negative, because it's not all THAT bad...movement 3 on Gregory Pecary is a pretty good example of how a big band might be used in this kind of avante gurad or modern classical context, and Aproximate reveals once again that Ian Underwood is a master of understated brilliance.

If you think that's enough, check it out.

But if you just want to hear Zappa's music from this big band period, and are not a hard core Zappa fan, I'd advise you to buy the original studio recordings. They are the ones Zappa put out himself, and they are a lot better...or get Roxy and Elsewhere if you don't have it.

Overall...3 stars...not because it really sucks, because it's not really great. When analyzed soley as a composer of modern music, Zappa is a good film composer....not Stravinsky or Schoenberg. By most standards of the day, this is good, and is still better than most of the then avante progressive jazz wanna be's.

I own almost every Zappa album and this one is definitely in the top five as far as recording and performance go. This is a musical performance and not a "comedy" album. The horns and percussion are spellbinding. I know that it's hard to choose when it comes to Zappa's posthumous albums, but, this should be in your collection. Jim Gordon is incredible. I've kind of overlooked him for decades and now I'll have to go back and listen to his work on other albums that I've owned for years. Perfect performances. If I had to own one or the other (Though not exactly the same set), I'd pick this over Grand Wazoo and I love Grand Wazoo. Just buy it!