And still they come. It seems that not a day goes by that there isn’t yet another extended Frank Zappa gem released to luxuriate in. His sons Ahmet and Dweezil might still be embroiled in exasperating legal wranglings over the family name, but in the meantime, Ahmet appears to be spending his days rifling through his dad’s extensive archive with the help of Joe Travers, gatekeeper of the Zappa vault. And what riches it holds. Frank didn’t lay down a guitar lick without pressing ‘record’ or go on stage without the sound engineer capturing that night’s performance.
The original One Size Fits All begins with the complex, clever and complete Inca Roads (basic tracks recorded in LA, guitar solo from a show in Helsinki: Zappa 101) and continues to transcend from there. It didn’t hurt that the Mothers at that point included keyboard player George Duke, drummer Chester Thompson and saxophonist/singer Napoleon Murphy Brock.
Upon its release, Zappa complained about its lack of record label push. But where do you start with an album that begins with sheer bloody poetry and ends with the heartfelt (and mostly sung in German) Sofa No. 2? A rough mix of Sofa No. 2 is one of this reissue’s 58 tracks (the original album was nine songs long), although when Zappa says ‘rough mix’ it can sometimes sound as complete as a Jim Steinman edit.
This is the kind of treasure trove that’ll make a Zappa fan fall on it like a vulture on a dead body. It includes a complete, previously unreleased show from Rotterdam from autumn 1974, with the Mothers in thunderingly good form – Stink-Foot is just brilliant, Inca Roads is simply out of hand live, while Cosmik Debris transforms into a wonderfully loose jazz work out over the best part of 13 minutes.
There’s also the now ubiquitous Blu-ray surround-sound and Dolby Atmos mixes of the core album. Which is all well and good if you’re the kind of person who likes to feng shui your speakers and lives alone. Much better to play the three different original rough mixes of San Ber’dino back to back and marvel at a music legend lost. Glorious.
