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Anyway, it’s a good album when it cooks, it really, REALLY cooks. Village of the Sun is pleasant enough as the obligatory “normal” song on the record, though (spoilers!) I like the super-fast version the group did later a lot better. Pygmy Twylyte is a small gem, with a great melody, a great groove and energy through the roof setting aside the vocals, it sounds like a kind of Hot Rats/Chunga’s Revenge offspring. On those two in particular, they’re just on fire. The band, by the way, is just on point here for damn sure. Oh No & Orange County were about the only things I really liked on Weasels Ripped My Flesh, so I like seeing them both pop up here in a kind of new way More Trouble Every Day skimps on the lyrics, which are so searing on the original that I did miss them, but it builds to a really astounding frenzy. Son of Orange County and More Trouble Every Day are both fantastic, really great live reworkings of tracks I loved in their original incarnations. But when the album works, it really works. Nothing else is really as bad as those two, but there’s trivia here: Echidna’s Arf and Penguin in Bondage are both. Dummy Up is the obligatory skit section of the evening and you know how I feel about that. I mean, cut the nearly seventeen minute Bebop Tango, which is pretty well dead weight, and you’re down to just three sides. But, much as I love the song, I wish he’d tightened this album up. Cheepnis is a great, high energy track and I think it really is something of a genuine artistic statement from Zappa and it really points up why he wants an album like this one to be sprawling and messy. Roxy & Elsewhere is a good example of where that leads him sometimes.īecause there’s a superlative, one of the greatest live albums ever, masterpiece in Roxy & Elsewhere, buried under the fat of what is ultimately a sloppy, sprawling mess. But Zappa loves double albums LOVES them.
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Two of the greatest musical acts of all time ****** up when they tried to do a double album. Because look at all the people who ****** up double albums: the Beatles, Bob Dylan, I mean, stop right there. See, I’m of the theory that a musical artist should take the desire to do a double album as a kind of red flag when you start thinking, “Yeah, this could be a double album,” it’s time to take a step back and reevaluate things. The audio quality of this vinyl is superb.I think I’ve figured out one of the major splits that puts me and Zappa at odds a lot of the time. On a side note, Zappa can be heard, on the released and unreleased Roxy tapes, speaking of the making of a 'film' that could potentially be "broadcast on television", as well as reminding the audience not to be "uncomfortable around the intimidatingly large 16 mm cameras."Ī four-channel quadraphonic version of the album was prepared and advertised, but not released. Other tracks were released on Volumes One, Three and Four of the You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore series. Some of the unused tracks from the Roxy shows circulate as bootlegs, as well as the entirety of the Edinboro show. The guitar solo on "Son of Orange County" is one of the few Zappa guitar solos edited together from more than one concert, in this case the Edinboro and Chicago dates.
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The opening track, "Penguin in Bondage" is edited together from performances at the Roxy and the Chicago date. The material taken from the Roxy concerts was later amended with some overdubs in the studio, while the "Elsewhere" tracks ("Son of Orange County" and "More Trouble Every Day") were recorded on May 8, 1974, at the Edinboro State College, Edinboro, Pennsylvania (and parts of "Son of Orange County" on May 11, 1974, at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, Illinois (late show) and do not contain overdubbed material. Most of the songs were recorded on December 8, 9 at The Roxy Theatre in Hollywood, and featured tracks never before or thereafter released on any Zappa/Mothers album. Roxy & Elsewhere is a double live album by Frank Zappa and The Mothers, released on September 10, 1974. Frank Zappa and The Mothers - Roxy & Elsewhere - 1974 - DiscReet Records - Double Live Vinyl LP