BUFFALO

A live recording of a concert in Buffalo, New York on October 25, 1980 and released posthumously, this is very well produced album with excellent sound and some great and not so great performances. In other words, it's not always consistent, however, there are enough great solos (guitar and others) that still make it worthwhile.

There are three tracks from "You Are What You Is" which is not one of my favorite studio albums from Zappa, however, one of them (The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing) is very well done. The version of Cosmik Debris is excellent with a killer guitar solo, but too short. After that, things stay kind of standard and nothing really stands out much until Frank Zappa forgets the lyrics in "Honey Don't You Want a Man Like Me" After that, the band seems to get really really tight and things get amazingly excellent all the way through two huge guitar solos and a few shorter songs. This part of the recording is very enjoyable, especially "City of Tiny Lights", which has always been a favorite of mine, but this is by far the best live rendering of the song and I always thought it provided a great base for a killer shredding guitar solo, which is exactly what happens here.

The second disc starts out with the band still in excellent form. This carries on through the gargantuan version of "The Torture Never Stops" which features many many solos from not just the guitar, but drums, keyboards etc. After this, things falter a bit with some awful versions of a couple of some normally great Sheik Yerbouti tracks. When "Andy" ends, it seems that we have come to the end of the show, but what follows are several encore performances which for the most part are well done and fun. A lot of humor here with Frank doing some naughty musings and stuff making fun of people and mating habits.

So, overall, a little inconsistent but still an excellent addition to your Zappa collection and the good parts outweigh the substandard parts, so it's worth having.