The Frank Zappa "You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore" volume by volume thread

As usual with FZ, it's a bit more complicated. The solo is from the December 9th version but the vocal sections are from December 10.

 

I think Joe said there are sound quality problems with the "road tapes." I'm hoping the Austin multitrack shows exist in full and can come out someday.

 

Oh, I bet there will be one. We just don't know what the theme will be next time around. Werewolf Frank? Mummy Frank? The creature from the black lagoon-vault Frank?

The suspense is killing me.

 

The YCDTOSA series was big for me at the time so it was quite a pleasant shock to find YCDTOSA 4 sitting in the bins after the year and a half wait (in the days when I didn't have the Internet to learn about upcoming releases). I remember the song titles promised a more interesting release than volume 3, although when I got the CD out of the longbox I was disappointed to find no FZ liner notes.

As for the music...still more '84 than I wanted (despite my non-critical attitude at the time I remember volume 3 left me thinking that '84 was not a very exciting year for FZ) but it was great to get more one-off improvs and spoken bits. I remember especially liking the 1978 "Pound" solos (although the track dies off in the second half) and "Smell My Beard"/"The Booger Man." I will say that the '84 "Black Page" (despite the cheesy arrangement of the theme) has a fine FZ solo.

Speaking of the Roxy, I didn't realize for some time that the interlude between "Love Of My Life" and "Let's Move To Cleveland" was the Roxy band.

 

Vol. 4 was indeed a mixed bag of a release, and like 1 & 6, was always in my mind a sampler for the vault, and what could be released one day. 30 years later we have seen some expanded releases that fleshed out these tracks, but still there are many that are languishing in the vault. Were the full shows mixed down for FZ to listen to before cherry picking these individual tracks, or did he have them selected well before the series began? Its true that perhaps not every show is worthy of release, but certainly far more are worthy than have been so far.

I tend to grab 4 the least often among the 6, but like I said before "Brown Moses/Evil Prince" are outstanding (and I am a fan of Thing-Fish, one of only a handful), but many of the other tracks are simply interesting. The original Torture is my favourite version, and from the same shows as Bongo Fury. I believe this version was the same one Frank offered to CB when FZ wouldn't allowed the original Bat Chain Puller tapes to be released.

 

I listened to disc one again a few months back and I thought it was a fantastic collection of performances. The Evil Prince is a very sophisticated piece of music and I'm very impressed with the performance. I also love Peter Wolf's mini-moog solo. It's not something you hear on very many Zappa albums. The other piece I'll mention is the big band Filthy Habits which is just great! An excellent vehicle for FZ to unleash some dark guitar mayhem.

 

FZ had already selected and edited several of the tracks up through 1980 or so for unreleased past projects like the Collected Improvisations set and Warts & All. He may have newly selected the tracks from '82 through '88.

 

condensed ratings:

Vol. 3:

Sharleena 7/10 (it's good but nothing special)
Bamboozled By Love 7/10 (i prefer the 88 versions)
Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up 5/10 (nowhere near as good as the Joe's Garage version)
Advance Romance 7/10 (i like it)
Bobby Brown 7/10 (Hi-Yo Silver!)
Keep It Greasey 5/10 (there are several much better tours for this song)
Honey, Don't You Want A Man Like Me? 7/10
In France 4/10 (no guitar solo and no Johnny make it lose several points)
Drowning Witch 6/10 (why not give us 2 crazy 1982 solos instead of 2 so-so 1984 wanderings?)
Ride My Face To Chicago 7/10 (a nice, if ultimately not very interesting track, but with a decent solo)
Carol, You Fool 9/10 (beautiful and hilarious)
Chana In de Bushwop 6/10 (would be 7/10 with a guitar solo)
Joe's Garage 6/10 (a simplified, soulless runthrough of what was a beautiful tune on its parent album)
Why Does It Hurt When I Pee? 7/10 (check out the way they hold out those long notes at the end. Pretty cool.)

Dickie's Such An ******* 7/10 (8/10 if it were unedited)
Hands With A Hammer 6/10 (it's an ok drum solo, but it's short and it leads beautifully into the next track)
Zoot Allures 8/10 (i would prefer it if it were either all 1982 or all 1976, because the transition is a bit jarring to me in terms of mood, but screw it, this is good stuff)
Society Pages/I'm A Beautiful Guy/Beauty Knows No Pain/Charlie's Enormous Mouth 6/10 (it's well-performed, but there's nothing added to it, in fact they omitted 2 songs after 1980, including my favorite part, Any Downers?)
Cocaine Decisions 6/10 (2 point for the song, 4 for historical value)
Nig Biz 7/10 (it's pretty good AND historical)
King Kong 9/10 (easily the highlight of the volume)
Cosmik Debris 6/10 (why an 84 version? why not an actually interesting version of the song?)

Overall, an uneven volume, but taken as a whole listen, it's still pretty good, just quite disappointing.

 

Vol. 4

Little Rubber Girl 6/10 (mildly amusing, but i really miss Go Cry..)
Stick Together 7/10 (it's bouncy and it leads nicely into..)
My Guitar 8/10 (one of my favorite 84 revivals, now with a crunchy little solo and eyebrows up the oiseau)
Willie The Pimp 4/10 (i like the transition into Montana and i don't hate it, but this is really a mere shadow of its former self)
Montana 7/10 (in spite of the jarring transitions, there's plenty to like here)
Brown Moses 9/10 (one of the few redeeming things about Thing-Fish, made even better here)
The Evil Prince 10/10 (my favorite track from this volume and one of my favorite FZ tunes in this arrangement, includes great vocals and a vicious solo; more stuff like this please)
Approximate 9/10 (amazing)
Love Of My Life 6/10 (i like it, but can't justify giving it more points)
Cleveland solos 7/10 (the solos aren't that great, but i'm glad they're here, for the interplay alone)
You Call That Music 5/10 (i actually like having this here, but in no way can i give it more than that)
Pound solos 9/10 (another homerun; had he included the longer W&A edit, it would have been 10/10)
The Black Page 7/10 (it's neat to have this arrangement officially, but the solo pales in comparison to 1982)
Take Me Out To The Ball Game 6/10 (it's amusing enough, but out of all the unreleased 88 stuff, i'm not sure this is even near the funniest bit)
Filthy Habits 8/10 (this is more like it)
The Torture Never Stops 7/10 (if only he hadn't faded it out)

Church Chat 6/10 (amusing enough)
Stevie's Spanking 9/10 (a no holds barred match between "Airsculptor" Zappa and "Flashfingers" Vai)
Outside Now 8/10 (beautiful in all its incarnations)
Disco Boy 8/10 (i don't know why, but i love this arrangement)
Teen-Age Wind 5/10 (eh)
Truck Driver Divorce 6/10 (disappointing)
Florentine Pogen 5/10 (why not stick with 1974 and a solo?)
Tiny Sick Tears 6/10 (the joke wears thin after a few listens)
Smell My Beard 8/10 (George does his thing)
The Booger Man 8/10 (and Nappy joins in; if only this were unedited)
Carolina Hardcore Ecstasy 8/10 (they sure did this song well)
Are You Upset 4/10 (meh)
Little Girl Of Mine 7/10 (nice)
The Closer You Are 6/10 (slightly less nice)
Johnny Darling 7/10 (nice vocals)
No No Cherry 7/10 (niice)
The Man From Utopia 7/10 (fun)
Mary Lou (also fun)

Overall an improvement on Volume 3. This is actually my favorite installment and also the most fun if you ask me. Still quite a few performances that i wouldn't have chosen personally, but it's pretty good.

 

Because "Cosmic Debris" has the payoff for the Lone Ranger references.

 

yeah, but still it's not exactly anything remarkable otherwise.

 

YCDTOSA 3

After the excellent first two releases in the series, this one is a big drop off. We get a huge dose of '84 group which is fine, but it prevents there being tracks from other bands. Still nothing from the '88 band, but FZ was releasing the actual 1998 live albums during this time frame so I get it. Still, that band would've been welcome here. It is a lot of 1984, though. Overall I do enjoy this one, but it's a huge step down from the brilliance of the first two. Highlights: the absurdity of Bobby Brown/Greasey; quite few songs that hadn't been released before; great version of Drowning Witch even though it's a frankenstein; the original Dickie's was a revelation and hearing the Roxy group after so much 1984 really shows how good they were. King Kong was an interesting experiment that doesn't fully work as I wish it had been solely the '71 band. The album is average so it gets a 3/5.

 

YDCTOSA 4

It's a good mixture like Vol 1, but it's got a lot of inferior tracks. This was my next to last purchase in the series, so other than 5 I've lived with it the least. Most of the time when I reach for this it's specifically for Brown Moses/The Evil Prince which is outstanding. I listen to those two tracks more than I listen to a number of albums in the catalog. Those performances are just excellent. Other highlights are: Love of My Life, I love how cruddy it sounds; Take Me Out to the Ball Game; the closing doowop medleys. Those are fun. There are so many "blah" tracks here that it really felt like Zappa ran out of steam. Songs are either played too fast or way too slow or just plain wrong (the original Torture, which it is to listen to). There's a LOT of filler here, unfortunately. For the whole set I have to give it a 2/5 to be honest. If not for the Thing-Fish tracks, I don't know how much I'd ever listen to this album.

 

That and I think he wanted to plug the "Does Humor Belong In Music" VHS.

He also emphatically said there is going to be one, though. As for the Austin multitracks: I'd have to remember which Zappacast it was but I seem to remember he said they were indeed chopped up. Of course, there's a possibility he can digitally re-assembled them, just like he did in the past, but there would have to be a reference tape or something.

Sounds like a bandmember to me, possibly JCB.

Thanks for this. When I opened this thread I was also interested in hearing it from people who bought them as they came out.

Thanks for these. Keep them coming!

Today's pick, one of the few tracks that everybody can agree on:

 

I enjoyed Beefheart's tortured vocals but the tune is rather monotonous due to the fact that FZ hadn't developed the vocal melody so it's just a boring vamp that goes on too long.

 

I gonna have to and agree with you.....
All that talk of Frank calling it the , "Someone get me a Pepsi!" version...I expected more.....

 

Part of the problem is that the version included here isn't that good. There are some better ones floating around on concert recordings that are a lot more dynamic.

 

i really like the one from Boston that is preceded by a George Duke-led jam and leads into Marty's Dance Song. THAT is a monstrous performance and the Bongo Fury lineup at its best.

 

The Evil Prince is clear and by far the winner for best track from Vol. 4. Everyone shines on this song, especially Ray White. Earlier versions from the '84 tour, especially when NMB will still in the band during the first two weeks of the tour (LA thru Santa Fe), were good but not great. But by the time December hit, this band was on fire and seemed to be too comfortable with the material (not that that's a bad thing). I'm also proud of the fact that this stunning rendition of TEP was recorded here and officially released (as were a few other tracks from both 12-18-84 QE Theatre shows).

Overall, this is a better release than Vol. 3, but not better than Vol. 1 & 2...

 

Nobody was more surprised than me that my favourite track on this would be something from Thing Fish. But it's just great isn't it?

 

Absolutely. And FZ's solo is one of his best ever. Also, Brown Moses deserves a lot of praise as well - amazing vocal harmonies/deliveries!

 

I like Ike's singing and Vinnie's crazed drumming in the 1979 part.

 

The OSFA medley was really good in 1979. I hope we'll get a release from that year soon.

 

I'd guess FZ wasn't happy with his singing in Go Cry.. In some of the Halloween 78 tapes he might have discarded the parts he didn't like which could make a full release difficult.

Incidentally, one of the early 1980 rehearsal tapes shows FZ trying to bring back Little Rubber Girl for that tour.

 

does this exist as an ebook? I’d love to read this but trying not to make moving any more difficult for a couple years.