Frank Zappa - 1971-1988 Strictly Commercial Live (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Guest poster Mike Solof has been busily slaving away in the salt mines, coming up with more albums to post at this blog. In particular, he's got a big Beatles project coming that hopefully will knock your socks off. Unfortunately, I've fallen behind getting some things ready to post, but hopefully I'll catch up soon. For this album, he came up with the idea of collecting live versions of all the songs on the Frank Zappa best of collection "Strictly Commercial."

I'll leave most of the explaining to Mike, in his PDF notes included in the download zip. But Zappa was well known for his lead guitar playing, and he's able to stretch some songs out here. For instance, the official album is about an hour and 17 minutes long, whereas this is almost two hours long. A lot of the difference there is with "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow." The official album has the three minute long single version, but this is a 20-minute-long live version of the entire suite. 

As is Mike's style, he's included a gapless single file of the album in the download zip, for those who prefer to hear it that way.

By the way, all the songs here feature Frank Zappa, except for one. His only Top Forty hit in the U.S. was "Valley Girl," in 1982. But that featured his daughter Moon Unit Zappa on lead vocals instead of him, and she was only 14 years old at the time. So it turns out he never performed the song before dying in 1993. But, much later, in 2010, his children Dweezil and Moon Unit performed the song in concert just once. So that's the version included here. But note the sound quality is a bit rough on that compared to everything else. It's one of only two unreleased versions (along with "Sexual Harassment in the Workplace)." All the others were chosen from the many dozens of official live albums.

This album is an hour and 56 minutes long. 

01 Peaches en Regalia (Frank Zappa)
02 Don't Eat the Yellow Snow (Frank Zappa)
03 Dancin' Fool (Frank Zappa)
04 San Ber'dino (Frank Zappa)
05 Let's Make the Water Turn Black (Frank Zappa)
06 Dirty Love (Frank Zappa)
07 My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama (Frank Zappa)
08 Cosmik Debris (Frank Zappa)
09 Trouble Every Day (Frank Zappa)
10 Disco Boy (Frank Zappa)
11 Bobby Brown Goes Down (Frank Zappa)
12 I'm the Slime (Frank Zappa)
13 Joe's Garage (Frank Zappa)
14 Fine Girl (Frank Zappa)
15 Planet of the Baritone Women (Frank Zappa)
16 Sexual Harassment in the Workplace [Instrumental] (Frank Zappa)
17 Tell Me You Love Me (Frank Zappa)
18 Montana (Frank Zappa)
19 Be in My Video (Frank Zappa)
20 Valley Girl (Dweezil Zappa & Moon Unit Zappa)
21 Who Are the Brain Police (Frank Zappa)
22 Muffin Man [Extra Guitar Mix] (Frank Zappa) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/424ohU9v 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/WWM2Cx8sAJ0funq/file

The cover art is by Greg Joens. The original version was in black and white. I colorized it (because I hate black and white covers) with the use of the Kolorize program.

Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention - L'Olympia, Paris, France, 10-26-1968 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

I've been working a lot with guest poster Fabio from Rio on various projects. I just posted a Joan Baez album he made yesterday, and many more are coming soon. A couple of days ago, he asked me why I hadn't posted any Frank Zappa albums. Was it because I didn't like his music? I like some of Zappa's music, though I haven't gone deeply into his vast musical discography. I told Rio the main reason I haven't posted anything from Zappa is because there has been a tremendous amount of archival material that has been officially released. Dozens and dozens of live albums, for instance. So I don't see much need to post his stuff, when it's been so well done already.

That said, I mentioned that I did have one Zappa concert on my list of albums I've been wanting to post. But that list is many hundreds of albums long, and I probably wasn't going to get to it anytime soon. So Fabio volunteered to step up and write the liner notes, so this concert could get posted sooner rather than later. Thus, you can thank Fabio for this one.

The reason I was interested in posting this despite the vast number of official live albums released already is because there aren't many excellent live recordings from the band this far back in time. Zappa had only released three albums at this point, which would end up being just a tiny portion of his vast output. Few concerts were recorded, period, by 1968, and most of them were badly recorded bootlegs. But this one comes from an FM radio broadcast, probably on French radio, so it sounds as good as an official live album from the time. Admittedly, there was an official live album released in 2024 called "Whisky a Go Go, 1968" that is from the same time period, sounds just as good, and is much longer. But if you want more live early Zappa than that, give this album a try.

There's a lot more to say about this concert, but I'll let Fabio say it. He wrote extensive liner notes, which are included in the download zip. That includes lots of interesting quotes from a newspaper review of this exact concert, so be sure to check that out.

This album is 51 minutes long. 

01 Improvisations [Instrumental] (Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention)
02 King Kong [Instrumental] (Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention)
03 Plastic People (Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention)
04 talk (Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention)
05 Hungry Freaks Daddy (Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention)
06 talk (Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention)
07 Son of Mr. Green Genes [Instrumental] (Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bjHdobd7 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/1D8SeuqXEL1IcrA/file

The cover photo was taken at this very venue in 1968. So the odds are good that it's from this exact concert, although it's possible he played at the venue more than once that year. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.