| Zappa plays Zappa (Amsterdam May 15th) [message #265750] |
Di, 16 Mai 2006 20:50 |
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So I went to this quickly sold-out show, me and 2.999 other happy and
excited Zappa fanatics. The tour had been posponed for several months,
for more rehearsals appearently. Well, it showed: they quickly
convinced me totally as a performing unit, rivaling the best of Frank's
live bands of the past, certainly in pyrotechnics but the interplay was
good too. They seemed to focus mainly on the 'Black pages' in the book
(the tough complex tunes) but I hardly heard wrong notes. And I can
tell: like most Zappaholics I can get quite anal about that.
Dweezil gathered the combo to do the job: six young briliant multi
instrumentalist 'Zappa robots' (with the FZ Vaultmeister on drums) and
three FZ celebrities. Napoleon Murphy Brock (close to 60 now) impressed
the hell out of me (out of all of us) as a fabulous vocalist,
copperwind player and energizing stage personality. Steve Vai and
Terrio Bozzio were introduced as 'guests' and each played some songs in
the second half of the show. Vai played some flashy solo's and duets
with Dweezil and Bozzio drummed aggressively and sang 'Punky' and 'I'm
so cute'. Note: Zappa brother Ahmet was not in the line-up - as was
announced.
Dweezil seems to have matured a lot as a guitarplayer, firmly and
traditionally in Frank's footsteps. I've got three questions for you
eyebrow-raiser about that:
1) isn't this a worthy tradition?
2) who would you rather see do that?
3) how else would you like Dweezil to play?
The program was a total crowd pleasing feast - as it should be - an
unending set of greats. Each song was enthousiastically greeted by the
audience. Most of it was from the '73 - '78 era but they included a
couple of Mothers songs and an occasional later tune. It felt really
good to hear all of this fantastic music played live instead of from my
stereo. I had thought it was gone forever.
The Amsterdam show was actually the debut of their worldtour. Several
aspects of the show were still a bit uneasy, not finetuned. They wasted
the first half hour on a video (albeit a '73 FZ concert featuring NMB).
Ten minutes would've been nice but this was more than I bargained for.
Right from the start the sound (and light) was pretty good, except for
the solo guitars: quite a bit too loud in the mix.
It must be tough to take Frank's place as bandleader. In the first half
of the show Dweezil seemed a bit uneasy with his role of audience
communicator, and his 'directing' the band improvs with gestures was
not very spontaneous. But those are obviously the things that grow as
the show matures. Frank was explicitly mentioned once or twice, nothing
cheesy, just honest about him and their new live effort with his music.
I think they timed it right: 5 years earlier would've made it more of a
sentimental thing.
Concluding, I think Dweezil did the impossible: as Frank Zappa's prime
heir he formed a fantastic live band, honed its musical performance to
world class level creating a show that honours Franks legacy without
making his painful absence be a shortcoming in the show. Hats off.
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| Re: Zappa plays Zappa (Amsterdam May 15th) [message #267716 ] |
Mi, 17 Mai 2006 19:08 |
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Hey Juno,
Thank you for that report. I really appreciate reading it and I'm glad
you enjoyed the show.
Marc
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| Re: Zappa plays Zappa (Amsterdam May 15th) [message #270573 ] |
Do, 18 Mai 2006 16:39 |
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My pleasure.
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