ROXY BY PROXY

For years , the ZFT has been teasing us with hints and rumors of the eventual unveiling of the legendary Roxy video footage. With more and more statements that the video was near, this album was marketed as a hint of things to come. So just put it out there already.

First, in order to fund the Roxy video project, licenses were sold to investors, who were to receive master copies of the album and packaging, with the rights to sell their own copies. At the end of last summer, fans who could not afford the high cost of the investment could pre-order the album from the Zappa.com web site (sort of a slap to those who wanted to recover their investment).

Then came a comedy of missed release dates, where a week or so after every announced shipping date, a new schedule was announced. Investors and pre-order customers vented their frustration at Zappa.com and other fan sites.

Finally, in March, the disk shipped. Luckily for the ZFT, ratings are for the actual product, not the circumstances around the realease.

To many of us, Roxy & Elsewhere is one of the pinnacles of Frank Zappa's career. The band he assembled, featuring Ruth Underwood, Chester Thompson, Ralph Humphrey, Tom and Bruce Fowler, George Duke and Napoleon Murphy Brock was possibly the most impressive of FZ storied touring groups. And the original Roxy album, although heavily overdubbed, is a stellar work of genius.

This album, taken from the two Roxy shows in December 1973 has some of the same titles as the classic album, but the overlapping tracks are mostly from alternate shows. At most, there may be a few edited sections that FZ spliced in the Elsewhere album.

Of interest to Zappaphiles: "Inca Roads" is somewhere between the loose, light version as heard on "A Token Of His Extreme" and the "One Size Fits All" fusion wonder. A percussion-only "Cheepnis" gives a view of the inner workings of that song. And a rollicking medley of "King Kong", "Chunga's Revenge" and "Mr. Green Genes" closes the set.

The above tracks, and the overall amazing performance, tempered by the oh so slightly deteriorated tone of the tapes, and the flurry of other recent releases of this lineup would have been cause for a four star rating.

But this album is boosted by possibly the best liner notes ever written. Ruth Underwood has resurfaced and supplied twenty pages of in depth analysis of each song and performance. Her detailed descriptions of what it was like playing these almost impossible works, the interplay between FZ and the band, and between band members themselves, gives a rare, but highly emotional glimpse of the experience of this incredible group.

Reading along as the music is playing is as close as you can get to being on stage at those historic shows.

So 5 stars it is.

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