Frank Zappa
Album: Tinseltown Rebellion to Baby Snakes; and Mothermania
Label: Zappa
Tracks: n/a
Website: http://www.frankzappa.com

Carrying on where we left off a few months back with the second batch of remastered reissues, we enter the '80s with Tinseltown Rebellion, another ear-grabbing example of how stylistically versatile Zappa and his crack band could be live as well as in the studio, moving effortlessly between archetypal pastiche R'n'R through to keyboard extemporisation - including a new version of Peaches En Regalia a whole decade after Hot Rats. Zappa also conveniently revisits other old numbers (Brown Shoes Don't Make It and Ain't Got No Heart) alongside the contemporary disco references of the title track, and the whole affair is only compromised by a couple of embarrassing audience-participation numbers (Panty Rap and Dance Contest). I don't regard this album as essential Zappa by any means, but the musicianship is first-class and, in common with the next few reissues in the series, the sound is just fine, suitably crisp and upfront where it needs to be.

Next up comes Shut Up 'N' Play Yer Guitar, a cornucopia of (mostly) live performances that originally came out on a cumbersome three-disc vinyl box-set but is now happily condensed onto a pair of well-filled CDs without losing any of the content. As the title indicates, it concentrates on Zappa's extreme, and yes, stylistically all-embracing, prowess as a guitarist. However, lest the thought of two discs full of often weird guitar solos fill you with dread, I'd venture the opinion that this set (even without its ostensible sequel just titled plain Guitar) is worth a whole clutch of Tinseltown Rebellions. Extended exposure to the musically literate quirks and endless subtleties of Zappa's own thrillingly individual brand of instrumental dexterity brings considerable dividends, and these subtleties are so well brought out in this remastered version. I'd regard this as an essential item in your Zappa collection, even if on first listening you'll be in serious danger of being gloriously overpowered by the amount of invention on display, whether in the mode of outright rockism or creatively swirling beauty or brittle jazz-inflected experimentalism. Despite the extremes of expressive nuance, the serially strange structures, tunings and time-signatures (hey, what IS a conventional rock guitar solo anyway?!), and despite the fact that some of the selections are effectively little more than bleeding chunks of abstract music shorn of their original musical context (for instance, within a song or longer piece), there's a coherence in this collection that extends beyond the basic unity of axeman-supreme Zappa's artistry on the humble guitar. Brilliant - and as I say, essential Zappa.

In contrast, the ensuing You Are What You Is was a distinctly song-based record, which although containing much biting social commentary in the approved mould of the 60s Zappa classics, relied too much on mundane mainstream rock gestures and song structures for it to be terribly interesting to me, and however good the production and (re)mastering, this album never really did it for me. I still get irritated by the gimmickry, the technical tricks and the treated vocals. But I can't fault the quality of the vocal work generally, and there's also more than a modicum of compensation in the exceptional guitar playing, which exhibits a healthy degree of non-showy spontaneity and a genuine bluesy-rocky sensibility.

Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch (dating from 1982) followed swiftly on the heels of its predecessor, and among other things it heralded (at least for some its timespan) a tentative start to Zappa's obsession with the synclavier and its sonic and compositional possibilities, most notably perhaps on the extended title track - that is, alongside the more conventional of his continuing guitar explorations elsewhere. Having said that, the noisy Envelopes says much in under three minutes. Zappa's typical bleak wit comes to the fore on I Come From Nowhere, while daughter Moon makes a predictable if relevant cameo of Valley Girl and Teen-age Prostitute sports a glorious quasi-operatic vocal from Lisa Popeil. It's actually not a bad set by any means, if a tad brief at just 34 minutes, and the instrumental work is majestic, and exceptional by any other standards. Using the 1993 digital master this latest reissue sounds fine too.

The Man From Utopia, which followed, has never been one of my favourite Zappa albums, not least because its stylistic diversity was too wilful by half, but also because its relentless parade of technical skill and virtuosity seemed to eclipse the actual material, some of which resembled nothing more than a lame strut to my ears. The domestic drama Dangerous Kitchen leaves me especially cold; and even the tight, capably economic instrumental Tink Walks Amok and the deliriously over-the-top doowop of Luigi & The Wise Guys can't quite compensate, and the fripperies of Moggio come too late in the day. Other Zappa fans have disagreed with me, pronouncing The Man From Utopia one of the finest of Zappa's 80s albums; but whatever your view, this latest reissue, again using the mid-90s digital remaster, still sounds sharp and highly present, so there can be no quibble there. Or should I say "Znórt"?…

The 1983 release Baby Snakes was for me (at the time) an even bigger disappointment than The Man From Utopia - it throws us right back to the late 70s, being an outing for a short sequence of recordings from Zappa's 1977 Hallowe'en concert, the set-list for which has almost half its length in common with songs from the Live In New York issue from a few years earlier. I didn't welcome the duplication of stuff like Titties And Beer, and although I can appreciate the rock-stadium power and expertise of this particular band lineup I felt it relied too much on tired postures, and certainly didn't merit a second bite at the cherry. I'd still regard the disc as one for the harder-core Zappa fans who like this particular material, although the version of Punky's Whips that closes the set is a stunner (with some super drumming). And I could've done with more of the calibre of instrumental The Black Page #2 rather than another take of the tedious Disco Boy, especially considering the disc's puny total playing-time of 35 minutes. As far as remastering goes, though, no complaints with using the original 1993 master.

The final release in this batch is best regarded as an honourable oddity, even within the series. Albeit reissued strictly out of sequence, this is the 1969-vintage compilation Mothermania (subtitled The Best Of The Mothers), which here makes what is unaccountably its first-ever appearance on CD (although the Zappa Family Trust did issue it as a download through the website back in 2009). Arguments have raged about whether even the hardcore Zappaphiles and completists need this disc, but its CD reissue should settle that question once and for all with a fairly resounding yes. Not only because it contains alternate takes/mixes of even-then-established Mothers classics. But it kicks off with Brown Shoes Don't Make It, probably the best encapsulation of early Mothers, the whole glorious gamut of styles in just 7½ glorious minutes… except perhaps for the gleesome freaky barbershop of It Can't Happen Here, which (luckily) crops up later in the sequence (in a radically re-edited mode), and the overtly accessible, greasy rock'n'doowop commercially-oriented side of the Mothers. At first glance Mothermania appears just a seemingly randomly compiled assemblage of bleeding chunks from Absolutely Free and Freak Out!, with just a couple of samplings from We're Only In It For The Money thrown in as makeweights. But even a cursory listen to the latter two cuts (Mother People and The Idiot Bastard Son) reveals almost entirely different, nay revelatory variants - the former complete with previously excised F-word verse, the latter now a complete song, both now shorn of original interruptions. Plastic People is a superior master to even that on last year's definitive Absolutely Free reissue. And the (for Zappa) comparatively orthodox meanderings of You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here emerge resplendent in the context of this compilation. The whole caboodle ends in swaggering lounge-anarchy with America Drinks And Goes Home. Essential.

David Kidman