UNMITIGATED AUDACITY

Frank Zappa: Live and completely overlooked!

Probably Zappa's most overlooked live recording, Unmitigated Audacity should have a place in every Zappa fan's heart as this concert was performed as the tenth anniversary of the original Mothers Of Invention. Of course, it was almost 1975 at this time and new musicians had come and old ones gone, most notably the arrivals of Napoleon Murphy Brock, Tom Fowler and Jeff Simmons. That brings me to my next point, which is the vocals. I much prefer Zappa on vocals, but Napoleon Murphy Brock brings a nice spin on things. What is ironic is that he wasn't even a musician when the bulk of this material was released, yet he finds himself as the singer here. Nicely presented, however.

Every single song on here, except for Camarillo Brillo (Over-Nite Sensation, 1973) and Oh No (Weasels Ripped My Flesh, 1970) was originally cut before the original Mothers departed in 1969. This concert put together the best of the best from Freak Out!, We're Only In It For The Money, and Cruising With Ruben & The Jets, with a few added extras. Frank ends the concert by reciting the band line-up over the riff from "Louie, Louie", and "Oh No" starts in the middle of a climactic vocal harmony. Frank's improvisational lyrics and massive solo make "More Trouble Coming Every Day" an excellent rendition.

This is a very exciting and captivating album, and unlike Frank's numerous other live outputs this features virtually no spoken word. Essential to any collection, the only reason I can't give this 5 stars because it is plagued by horrific sound quality. 4 stars nonetheless, this is a hidden gem for any collector.

This is a bootlegged portion of a 1974 concert that Frank decided to release, completely unenhanced and unremastered, in late 1991. The sound quality is appropriately horrendous, and while I don't know how long Frank and his band played that night, I'm guessing that it was a lot longer than the 46 minutes captured on this album. Negatives aside, however, this is still a pretty decent listen, if only because the novelty value is high due to this album providing the listener with the opportunity to hear Frank's mid-70's band (not that much like the original Mothers, mind you) take on over half of Freak Out!. That's right, not only does the album open with the band doing "It Can't Happen Here" (!), it follows this with half a dozen of the "normal" songs from Freak Out!. Granted, the songs don't necessarily work here as well as they did in the context of the original album, but it's still neat to hear a heavily funkified "Hungry Freaks, Daddy," and it can't really be denied that Napoleon Murphy Brock shows a better voice for the doo-wop songs than Frank (from a "pure" standpoint, anyway).

After the FO! chunk is done, followed by standard runthroughs of "Let's Make the Water Turn Black" and "Harry You're a Beast," we fade into the middle of an extended runthrough of "Oh No" (called here "Oh No, I Don't Believe It"), which then jumps into a runthrough of "More Trouble Every Day." They're basically the same as what's on Roxy, albeit in worse sound quality, but they're definitely enjoyable. The album then closes with a couple of minutes of "Louie Louie" and then, in the first acknowledgement that it's 1974 and not 1969, breaks into a fun rendition of "Camarillo Brillo," with an even more emphatic barking of, "and she was breeding a DWARF." And that's it. Not an essential album by any stretch of the imagination, but a nice one nonetheless, and yet another testament to the coolness of the San Francisco Amoeba Music Store.

Yet another of Frank Zappa's "Beat The Boots" releases, this one contains one of his better bands. This 1974 concert has three Fowler brothers, George Duke, Don Preston, Napoleon Murphy Brock, Chester Thompson, Ralph Humphrey and Jeff Simmons. Sadly, it's missing the amazing Ruth Underwood on percussion.

The concert itself is notable because other than a short Dupree's Paradise at the beginning and Camarillo Brillo at the end, the set consists of songs originally recorded in the sixties, most of them played in a medley. What was originally side 1 of the bootleg LP has some arrangements I haven't heard elsewhere.

The problem with this album is the sound. It's just awful. The first half is often distorted, and on the entire disk the bass is almost non-existant. While the second half is more listenable than the first, it's only slightly better.

While there are some moments for collectors, everyone else should avoid this disk.

Yet another bootleg which was chosen to be released officially by itself or as disc 4 of the Beat the Boots I compilation. This performance was part of the show from 12/5/74 at Notre Dame in South Bend, IN. This bootleg has some historical significance in that it was celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Mothers yet it is performed by a different incarnation of the Mothers.

I really like the songlist from this performance and it sounds like it was a lot of fun. It's really too bad that there isn't a better recording of this concert because the sound is extremely bad, especially on the first half. Vocals are muddled and the entire sound is unbalanced. The best sound is from FZ's solos on Oh No and More Trouble Every Day. Any casual collector should stay away from this one unless you are just interested in the value of it. Completionists only.