AS AN AM

This is the first disc in the Beat the Boots I collection and before being released in this collection, was only available as a bootleg. FZ, as a way to get back at all the bootlegs being sold of his concerts, released a good many of them in these Beat the Boots collections. He kept the same level of recording "quality" of the original bootlegs and, unfortunately, this particular album does not have a very good sound. The first track is a short clip from a radio interview where FZ expresses his feelings about bootleggers. The next two tracks were recorded in Cologne. The remaining three tracks were recorded at The Palladium in NYC. There is nothing special about any of these performances except for track 6 "The Torture Never Stops". Strangely enough, this track seems to have a somewhat better recording quality. The words are very clear and understandable. As the band leads into the "Evil Prince" verse, they play a snippet of Chatanooga Choo-Choo which sounds hilarious in contrast to this song which is usually very dark and then Frank does his cheeriest lounge singer vocals which makes it all even funnier. Then they do something completely surprising and sing part of the verse to the theme song of "My Three Sons" (an old TV series). It's amazing how the lyrics fit to the theme song and even that much more funnier. Then, FZ pumps out an excellent guitar solo as he usually does. Other than this performance, there isn't much here that hasn't already been done and you are probably better off not searching for this recording by itself. The performances are good enough, but the recording quality is only fair for the most part. For collectors/fans only.