ZAPPA/MOTHERS
Roxy music, by way of a seven-CD Zappa set.
In the quieter moments, when you’re in the pub with your mates, and darts or seeing how many pickled eggs you can fit in your mouth have lost their allure, here’s a game you can play. Choose which classic band line-up and what show you’d shave off the rest of your hair to have seen, and then debate it between you in a full and reckless voice until the barman tells you to keep it down or you’ll all be barred.
EIGHT HOURS OF ELAN, HUMOUR AND MINDBOGGLING DEXTERITY.
This writer has lost many nights arguing David Lee Rothera Van Halen (first album tour, LA homecoming show) against Led Zeppelin’s debut at the Royal Albert Hall over Yes playing just about anywhere on their original Fragile tour. Honestly, you’ll shout yourself hoarse, lose friends and then come to some strange accord just before closing time. No, you’re welcome.
That said, it seems I’ve been remiss in my choices. Since this seven-CD box set came through my door with a sound like a brick hitting the window, I can only be heard shouting one thing in my local: “Zappa and the Mothers, 1973 line-up, Roxy Theatre, LA!”
As a man who likes Zappa the way a fat child likes chocolate, it’s been hard to stomach the infighting between the remaining factions of the family, and it’s hard not to sneer when you see the hand of Ahmet Zappa in this (the man, remember, who’s keen to resurrect Frank as a touring hologram), but The Roxy Performances are something in spite of him. They predate the acrimony and the ugly scrum that’s currently arm-wrestling over the Zappa estate in a Californian courtroom somewhere.
Truly, it’s better to remember the good times, and what good times this box set brings. Five incredible shows over three nights, including one invite-only show (though it’s hard to spot the join), as well as the sessions a few days later that the band recorded in Ike Turner’s
Bolic Sound studios.
Nothing’s new under the sun, some of this was unearthed on the following year’s Roxy And Elsewhere, in 2014 on Roxy By Proxy and the soundtrack to Roxy The Movie, though if you want to lose yourself in almost eight hours of a band playing with such elan, sophistication, humour and mind-boggling dexterity, then you’ve come to the right place.
If there is such a thing as capturing lightning in a bottle, then it happened here in this recently opened club on a corner of the Sunset Strip, Frank centre stage, calling the caterwauling heavens down. God, was there ever such a glorious noise again?