THE MYSTERY DISC

"Frank Zappa's Random Old Stuff That Nobody Needs" could very well be the title of this collection of totally useless tracks. Most of the album is just the Mothers or Frank by himself dicking around like usual, well not exactly like usual since a large portion of this predates the first Mothers of Invention album, which means that yet another alternative title for this could be "Dicking Around in the Early Years" or something like that. Captain Beefheart makes an appearance, and you know what happens when two geniuses collaborate, no you don't, because here nothing happens, just a boring blues number. The only track here worth anything is 'Black Beauty' sadly the track is similar to 'Moonchild' on the King Crimson debut in that it starts out real good (in fact incredibly good) but then just descends into random pointless instrument banging and half the track is a total waste of time. There's also some music Zappa made for a movie nobody has ever seen, and if the movie is as boring as the music penned by Zappa then I hope I never see it. On one track called 'Lecture from Festival Hall Show' Zappa tells the audience to [%*!#] themselves if they don't like his music, if you haven't figured it out already the message here is that you won't like this because it's utter garbage.

"The Mystery Disc" is a compilation album by US experimental rock artist Frank Zappa. The songs are compiled from the two mystery discs from "The Old Masters, Box One (1985)" and "The Old Masters, Box Two (1986)" box-sets. A few songs have been omitted from the original releases to make it fit on a single CD format. Most notably the "Big Leg Emma/Why Don'tcha Do Me Right?" single from the Mystery Disc #1 from "The Old Masters, Box One (1985)" (the two track are included on the CD version of "Absolutely Free (1967)" so no loss there if you already own that), and part of the Mothers of Invention concert from the Mystery Disc #2 from "The Old Masters, Box Two (1986)" (the omitted part of the concert is included on "Ahead of Their Time (1993)" so again no loss there, if you own that release).

"The Mystery Disc" CD album concentrates on the early output of Frank Zappa and almost all 35 tracks are pre-Mothers of Invention recordings. Most are very short dialogue pieces or badly recorded blues or r´n´b songs and the most interesting parts of the album already appear on other recordings like "Ahead of Their Time (1993)" and "Lost Episodes (1996)". So to be quite honest I find "The Mystery Disc" to be a totally dispensable album and I wouldn´t even recommend it to the hardcore fans. Sure there´s the occasional hilarious dialogue or nice little section but as mentioned the best parts have already appeared elsewhere giving this album very little value. I can´t defend giving the album more than a 1 star (20%) rating.

This disk contains most of what was on the two "Mystery Disc" LPs from the two "Old Masters" collections from the mid-eighties, the boxed sets containing Frank's earliest albums. The majority of the best tracks of this album have been released on other discs, mainly "The Lost Episodes" and "Ahead Of Their Time", rendering this CD mostly for collectors or completists. Many of the tracks have been circulaing around for years on various bootleg releases, so in that respect, it's good to have legitimate releases of them.

The best of the tracks not on the other CDs are early recordings of Zappa in various combinations. We actually get to hear him play with Johnny Franklin (mentioned in the song Village Of The Sun on "Roxy & Elsewhere"). Even so, they don't raise the value much. But AI'm glad I own it.