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I'm currently listening to The Hot Rats Sessions, a six-CD set which dropped two days ago. I've been working my way through it on Spotify ever since.
Hot Rats, for those who don't know, is the album where Frank Zappa essentially invented jazz fusion. I think Miles Davis technically beat him to the punch, but Zappa's record sounds a lot more like what we mean by "fusion" today. It's also frequently the one album that non-Zappa fans actually like.
One could make some quibbles here. The album itself takes up the first half of disc five (why disc five of a six disc set?). The album mix heard here is the 1987 remix done for the Rykodisc CD release. The original 1969 vinyl mix isn't included. I would think that most of us, me included, would find it more valuable to have that mix in digital format, rather than duplicate the one that's already available. Disc six does include some "mix outtakes" from 1969. One of the key differences is the sound of the guitar in the 1969 versions is a lot rawer and more in-your-face, which is very appealing.
The track listing is a bit inscrutable at first, but probably makes more sense if you have the liner notes. A number of tunes appear in their working stages with working titles. So you get to a tune called "Arabesque" and you wonder what the heck that is. Then it turns out to be a working version of "It Must Be A Camel".
There are a number of tunes heard here in their raw, unedited forms for the first time. (Some of this material ended up on the Burnt Weenie Sandwich and Weasels Ripped My Flesh albums, sort of giving the lie to the idea of those albums as Mothers Of Invention albums. Of course the line was always blurry. Strangely, none of the material that eventually ended up on Chunga's Revenge is included here.) These unedited takes are the real treat here. For example "The Gumbo Variations", which was a 17-minute song on the original album, is heard here in a sprawling 32-minute version titled "Big Legs".
Ultimately, I can't see buying a copy. Like most of these box sets, it's fascinating to a fanboy like myself, but how many times do I need to hear (for example) a version of "Willie The Pimp" prior to guitar and vocal overdubs? As an audio documentary, it's great and I'm enjoying it, but moving forward I'll probably just listen to the album itself, other than occasionally checking out the unedited jams.
Hot Rats, for those who don't know, is the album where Frank Zappa essentially invented jazz fusion. I think Miles Davis technically beat him to the punch, but Zappa's record sounds a lot more like what we mean by "fusion" today. It's also frequently the one album that non-Zappa fans actually like.
One could make some quibbles here. The album itself takes up the first half of disc five (why disc five of a six disc set?). The album mix heard here is the 1987 remix done for the Rykodisc CD release. The original 1969 vinyl mix isn't included. I would think that most of us, me included, would find it more valuable to have that mix in digital format, rather than duplicate the one that's already available. Disc six does include some "mix outtakes" from 1969. One of the key differences is the sound of the guitar in the 1969 versions is a lot rawer and more in-your-face, which is very appealing.
The track listing is a bit inscrutable at first, but probably makes more sense if you have the liner notes. A number of tunes appear in their working stages with working titles. So you get to a tune called "Arabesque" and you wonder what the heck that is. Then it turns out to be a working version of "It Must Be A Camel".
There are a number of tunes heard here in their raw, unedited forms for the first time. (Some of this material ended up on the Burnt Weenie Sandwich and Weasels Ripped My Flesh albums, sort of giving the lie to the idea of those albums as Mothers Of Invention albums. Of course the line was always blurry. Strangely, none of the material that eventually ended up on Chunga's Revenge is included here.) These unedited takes are the real treat here. For example "The Gumbo Variations", which was a 17-minute song on the original album, is heard here in a sprawling 32-minute version titled "Big Legs".
Ultimately, I can't see buying a copy. Like most of these box sets, it's fascinating to a fanboy like myself, but how many times do I need to hear (for example) a version of "Willie The Pimp" prior to guitar and vocal overdubs? As an audio documentary, it's great and I'm enjoying it, but moving forward I'll probably just listen to the album itself, other than occasionally checking out the unedited jams.
