I thought I might get tired of all the same songs in the box, but each show has a life of its own, no two songs sound the same. And the sound is so good, when I'm listening on my Pono with my Sennheiser HD 700s I feel like I'm at the show. One of the best box sets of the year, in my very humble opinion.
I don't know if Osaka is in the vault (the audience recording which is circulating is very good but not as good as the 2 Boston 76 shows with Bianca (early and late) which are superb audience recording)- but they put out (on the AAAFNRAAAA Birthday Bundle 2010 thus lossy unfortunately) a jawdropping version of "Treacherous Cretins" (which is even more furious than the Shut Up version which I couldn't imagine) from a concert in France, Pau (de chambre (sorry for the bad joke), 1979 which doesn't circulate as an audience recording... Thus I imagine than a LOT of stuff is in the vault... Zappa did a good work in editing "Black Napkins" for "Zoot Allures" album; certainly the reason to edit this guitar-solo was because of vinyl length limitation. But the whole "Black Napkins" performance from Osaka is far much longer (and Zoot Allures deserve also to be released) and this is a killer track... (I was kind of disappointed when they release the FZ plays the music of FZ that they didn't choose the complete Osaka performance of Black Napkins (although this early version (from Prague if I remember well) is very interesting), but I was hoping that they could release an extended Black Napkins version (unedited) for "FZ plays the Music of FZ". That said, some other guitar solos needed to be edited : on "Guitar" album : "Sexual Harassment in the workplace" is a great track (my favorite on "Guitar" is "Watermelon in Easter Hay" (superb perfromance); "Sexual Harassment" sounds like a floydian live performance, almost like if Zappa was playing around the guitar solo of "Dogs" from Animals. But this is a common chord progression and Zappa plays it with a kind of "gilmourish" feeling (after all even "Watermelon..." sounds like an aerian Comfortably Numb solo) I have listened to the unedited guitar solo of "Sexual Harassment in the workplace". This was not an audience recording. Although I was very happy to discover all the missing gaps of the guitar solo (it turned out that Zappa also edited some guitar parts/bars), all of the edits done on this guitar solo on "Guitar" just make sense. Zappa did a great work on this one. But the "Black Napkins" Osaka was a monster track... I'm still hoping for an official release... But there's so much thing to release...
thanks- unfortunately I can't open mine. I'm on Mac running under Sierra; the file looks corrupted... (I can't open it with "Aperçu" or Acrobat Reader- or GraphicConverter)... But I did a back-up of the USB stick and the audio files are all okay. 17,6MB doesn't mean that it does not contain a few jpeg (even in high-res) format... but if I look some other recent releases I have : for instance the Sgt Pepper Booklet.pdf was 8,4Mb and had a few high-res photos... McCartney "Flowers In The Dirt (Special Edition).pdf" was only 3,3Mb and had some very nice colour and black & white photos. If you zoom the pdf, the original size of the photo is not that small (because it was not "pixelized") : it's not easy sometimes to extract the original format of the image/jpeg/png encapsulated into a pdf file. Sometimes you need some special software such as pdf penpro if you want to extract the original size of the photo. That's why with all the softwares I have, I really wonder what is the problem with this pdf file of the Halloween 77 stick
I always thought "Sexual Harrassment In The Workplace" had more of a ZZ Top feel to it, but I can certainly see the comparison to Floyd's "Dogs". I question the sequencing of Guitar, but some of those performances are amazing. EDIT: Now that I think about it, the vamp is more ZZ Top. The solo is more Floyd.
Interesting that he sings the lyrics through most of the run, but on Halloween night he does some kind of bizarre scat. Sounds awful.
Just curious: where did you get a PDF of the Sgt. Pepper booklet? None of the online retailers I've seen offer the book in PDF form.
I always thought that Muffin Man on Baby Snakes was wholly from the 31st. The start is, but FZ's guitar solo seems to be from the 30th.
Yep. Throw in Peaches, Pound, Lather, Envelopes and Black Page and you can build a nice instrumental playlist for each night. Maybe choose a Torture, City, or Punky to go with it.
This weekend, I'm going to go by each track, back-to-back, to pick my faves.... I'll let you know which ones I choose....if anyone's interested!
Has anybody got the box from Grooves Land? Grooves Inc. indicated "on stock" at time of order and repeatedly thereafter but never sent. - Very bad experience. Storno only via e-mail. (I fortunately left my Amazon order open and received mine right in time on Halloween.)
Agreed. I ordered from them "in stock", then got a "expected early Nov" email from them on release date, and still no news. They've got my money and no comms. Very disappointing. It's heading to a credit card dispute at this rate...
Sorry to hear everyone has problems with Grooves Land. I have no experience with them and only posted their link after I found it while searching for prices on this set. I didn't order from them and hope people get their orders asap. Waiting to receive pre-ordered goods while they're being delivered elsewhere is a pain...
I special ordered my box from a local indie and it took a good two weeks for it to arrive at their distribution center. I finally bought it on Halloween day. I guess I'm lucky!
