CHEAP THRILLS

Prog Reviewer daveconn wrote the definite review of this title in 2004, perfectly describing the purpose of this budget priced sampler in economic and humorous terms, and his observations are dead-on. To give a taste: "But Rykodisc did something different: they released a pair of budget-priced samplers at $6.99 (about half the price of a regular CD) that compiled an album's worth of music from various ZAPPA reissues. What that meant was that consumers flipping through the CDs at their local record distributor were lulled from the internal dialogue of "Fifteen bucks, eighteen bucks, twenty-two bucks, sheesh" with the revelation of ""Seven" BUCKS?!" Then, in their trembling hands, they'd lift the CD to the light, check it for damage, and quickly flip through the rest of the ZAPPA section to see if this was a mistake that might happen again." [daveconn] Read his whole review, it's priceless. And he was right. Having not owned any Zappa since the days of vinyl I have been putting off the dreadful thought of a financial commitment akin to buying a lake home, a few fine sports cars, or perhaps the 200 best RPI albums. Tough choices. So I cheated and started with a cheap sampler to wet my taste.and it did the job as the marketing team at Ryko planned that it would. Another middle-aged fall-out who will come back to the fold eventually.

As an album this is a completely unnecessary title for those who plan on getting into Zappa properly. And yet it gets my highest rating possible for a compilation (3 stars) for its fine selection of tracks and achieving its likely mission of converting that segment of the population who keep picking Zappa titles up but putting them back due to price. The strange assortment of live tracks (many heavily edited in length no doubt) flows as well as could possibly be expected, seeming to run continuously into each other creating a sort of manufactured concert experience. The balance seems to weight in the humorous direction with lots of vocals and not too many long jamming passages, though the trademark killer guitar does appear in places. Delicious irreverence and wonderful dirty talk are around many corners as we hear about what "Catholic Girls" do backstage at the Tower Theatre. We get social commentary on "Bobby Brown" and really clever wordplay on "You are what you is." The spoken word excerpts are sadly short in length but what can be expected from a collection that tries to do it all. "The Mud Shark Interview" is particularly fun as a hotel manager is pressed for the sordid details of sexual escapades with ocean creatures. A bit more rockin' comes later in the album via 10 minutes of "The Torture Never Stops" and "My guitar wants to kill your mama." The Cheap Thrills releases would seems to be a reasonable way for a FZ newbie to get a taste of things although as in the case of most compilations, it's really best to just dive into the studio albums. Ryko's sound quality is good and the fold-out insert provides detailed notes on where each of the tracks came from. Tons of good clean fun and a bit of the defiance which is what I love most about Zappa.

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