Zappa CDs on the "Zappa Records" label

[Ess Ay Cee Dee]

nt

[Rspaight]

Now, I've got the Sheik Yerbouti LP on Zappa (and Zoot Allures on Warner), but that's not what you asked...

Ryan

[Xenu]

Yeah...I dunno. I'm just intrigued by some of the US/UK variations we've spotted so far. But I haven't found anybody with the Zappa Records discs. They can't be THAT rare.

[Rspaight]

The Yerbouti is Canadian, if that helps my coolness factor any. WITH THE TRACK LISTINGS ON THE BACK. Hot shit.

Ryan

[Crummy Old Label Avatar]

Is there any other major artist who was more clueless about sound quality than Zappa. Given the anal nature of his tape archiving, how is it possible that he and now the FZT have done such a shitty job with his digital legacy?

Yeah...I'm not holding my breath for any of those things.

I have to agree with everything Ian Penman has to say about Zappa here. Including this:

"The strangest feeling I got from listening to all this back-to-back, hyper-clean, remastered stuff is that Zappa (supposedly the great arch-modernist, the man who lived inside a studio console) was actually on some level scared witless of technology; or that he could only approach it (like everything else) as something to be mastered, a kind of aural vacuum cleaner for his archives, and that any real mind-scrambling interface with music-as-techne or techne-as-music was quite beyond his scope; that any rending of the veil of the future and away from his beloved twin antiquarian unreconstructed poles of Guitar and Symphony would have sent him gibbering into a permanent yesteryear."

I am sick and tired of Gail Zappa sitting on the masters to Captain Beefheart's Bat Chain Puller, though. I do know that when Revenant Records approached her about this for inclusion in the Grow Fins set, she demanded a truly outrageous sum of money. (Which is why you won't find any of it there - or anywhere else, besides lo-fi bootlegs.)

Also, don't really remember the details, but wasn't/isn't the CD of Cruising with Ruben and the Jets another horrible botch job rerecording/remix? I heard it once or twice when the CD came out, and it just sounded gruesome.

[Xenu]

Having read that article, I have to say I don't particularly agree with Mr. Penman. He reads like a Dark World version of David Leaf, and he gets off a bit too much on the usual suspects ("Stinkfoot," "Dinah-Mo Humn," "Titties and Beer").

Then again, we all know that I'm too young to know better!

I am sick and tired of Gail Zappa sitting on the masters to Captain Beefheart's Bat Chain Puller, though. I do know that when Revenant Records approached her about this for inclusion in the Grow Fins set, she demanded a truly outrageous sum of money. (Which is why you won't find any of it there - or anywhere else, besides lo-fi bootlegs.)

It's amazing how Gail is almost as much of a cypher as Frank, eh? Lord knows what her motives are half the time. The way she dealt with Ryko was an excercise in ungrateful back-stabbing.

Don't quote me on that, though. I want a job.

Also, don't really remember the details, but wasn't/isn't the CD of Cruising with Ruben and the Jets another horrible botch job rerecording/remix? I heard it once or twice when the CD came out, and it just sounded gruesome.

I (somewhat shamefully) kinda like it. One thing that has always amused me is that the remix of Ruben is indicative of a hell of a lot more TLC than the remix of "Money." Parts mesh; the whole thing doesn't sound nearly as Frankenstinian. Besides, if Chad's cheesy drums have to go SOMEWHERE, the cheesiness of Ruben is the place.

That said, there's no excuse for it having persisted into the 1995 catalogue. I can't believe it's still the standard version.