I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: September 4, 2021] The Zappa Band

When this tour was announced, I was pretty pleased to see that The Zappa Band was opening for King Crimson.  I’ve been a fan of Frank Zappa’s music for years, but I never saw him while he was a live and I’ve never seen any of the various posthumuous offerings that have come around.

I’ve often thought about going to see Dweezil play his dad’s music but I haven’t (looking at the setlist, there’s quite a lot of good stuff there).

But this was an “official” Zappa project, and better yet they were going to be playing where I was planning to be.  Although this lineup isn’t exactly chock full of great Zappa names, everyone in the group has a connection of some merit.

The Zappa Band’s lineup features Zappa alumni Ray White (lead vocals, guitar), Mike Keneally (guitar, keys, vocals), Scott Thunes (bassist) and Robert Martin (keyboards, sax, vocals), and ZPZ alums Jamie Kime (guitar) and ZAPPA archivist Joe “Vaultmeister” Travers (drums, vocals).

I recognized Ray White’s voice immediately (he’s been on 20 plus records).  The other voices were actually quite close approximations to the original.  But really the most amazing thing was hearing  these really complicated and fast pieces done live (and perfectly).

I was pretty delighted to hear “Zomby Woof” a nonsensical song that I’ve always liked.  And I would have been thoroughly disappointed if they hadn’t played “Peaches en Regalia.”  It was somewhere during this song t hat I realized that none of the people on stage was Dweezil Zappa.  I was fairly certain this was his band, but it clearly was not.

I have listened to most of Zappa’s albums many times, (but he has about 1,000 releases).  So I was surprised when I didn’t recognize some songs.  I was even more surprised to find that “I Ain’t Got No Heart” was on Freak Out, and album I particularly like.

The couple that sat down next to me during this set were horribly obnoxious.  And yet, they (or at least she) were die hard Zappa fans.  They sang every word and went especially nuts for “What’s New in Baltimore” (Prevention was the first Zappa album I’d ever bought).

Then Ray White asked if people liked Roxy and Elsewhere.  This is one I guess I haven’t listened to all that much as I didn’t recognize either of the next two songs (although everyone else did).  I believe it was in one of these songs that the drummer called out as a special guest for New Jersey, drummer Jeremy Stacey from King Crimson to play.  It was a weird special treat since we’d be seeing him later and it’s not like the song was especially drum-centric or anything nor is Stacey in any way connected to New Jersey.  But whatever, it was nice to mix things up.

Up next was “City of Tiny Lites” from my favorite Zappa album Sheik Yerbouti.  Adrian Belew sang the original (note that Belew sang for Zappa and Crimson, but was not invited on this tour).  Ray White sang it after Belew left so this was his song.  It sounded really nice–but of all the songs on this album I would not have picked this one to play).

Alien Orifice also comes from Prevention.  It’s instrumental and was fun to watch them play all the notes.   I would have liked if they had had a vibes player–that would have been very cool.

They ended the set with two songs from One Size Fits All.  This is an album I know pretty well, although I didn’t recognize the names of either “Florentine Pogen” or “Andy.”  “Florentine” was fun to hear–all of the bits and pieces were spot on.

If I had to pick an hour of Zappa music to play, I’d have made a largely different list.  But I guess they didn’t play very many songs that Frank sang lead vocals on, and that makes sense.  And I did really enjoy hearing Zomby and Peaches.