Frank Zappa Discography - Beat the Boots '67

About These Disks

Way Back, a long time ago, at the start of the 1990's, a couple of well known artists released a few recordings from small, obscure performances and made a big fuss about how they were beating the bootleggers by releasing authorized versions of the performances before the scumbags could release stolen versions.

In 1991, Frank gave a new twist to the whole affair when he decided to team up with Rhino Records (themselves often accused by artists of being nothing more than a bunch of bootleggers) to slightly enhance, press and release several of the bootleg recordings that he had collected over the years, - in essence, bootlegging the bootleggers.

Thus, the now legendary two-box set of uncharacteristicly low-fi Zappa recordings, Beat The Boots, was born.

For the true audiophile, these disks probably rank as the worst sounding recordings that you could ever inflict upon your CD player, but to the true Zappaphile, This set of CD's is a priceless collection of all too rare glimpses into un-edited, raw performances by various Zappa incarnations.

Dig in and enjoy!

The only disk in this set to feature Ray Collins and Billy Mundi, 'tis the season to be JELLY also features the earliest version of King Kong that I am aware of. Aside from that, there is nothing overly remarkable about the performances on this disk, unless you crave hearing the early Mothers trying to falsetto their way through Baby Love, that is. Their low-budget version of the opening to Stravinsky's ballet, Petroushka, is worthy of a listen, however.

Primarily one drawn out instrumental jam, Electric Aunt Jemima is pretty much what you would expect from the Mothers - snippets of familiar melody sprinkled over liberal doses of organized mayhem. Don't expect to hear full (or even recognizable) versions of any titles save for King Kong (1st version) and Pound For A Brown.

There are a couple of great guitar moments on this disk. Check out Frank's clean-toned boogie offering in What, and his ultra-fuzzed-out moments in King Kong.

The final moments of this performance include the familiar melody of King Kong played being played by the horns while the rhythm section churns out Louie Louie.

July, 1968

How ironic that this disk opens with frank telling the audience that the performance is being recorded for posterity, only to have the tapes stolen and bootlegged.

The first thing that you will notice about The Ark is that the recording seems to be running a little slow, giving Franks voice a depressed and droopy sound.

The clean sound quality and inclusion of four vocal offerings makes this disk a good choice for anyone who is not sure their ready for the Mothers. For the rest of us, there's Some Ballet Music which contains a few of the themes that Frank would later work into full scale compositions and some straight ahead blues playing by Frank in My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Momma, although his solo on the end of that tune is cut short. King Kong features some intense improvisation from (I assume) Ian Underwood.

November 8, 1968

After a rough and out of tune Bacon Fat, the remainder of Our Man In Nirvana finds the mothers getting down to some serious playing with Frank taking an extended, wah-inflected solo in Pound For A Brown that continues after a brief detour through Sleeping In A Jar.

Wild Man Fischer provides some a cappella madness before we are treated to yet another rendition of King Kong. what is interesting about this version is how much the piece has changed in the couple of months since the Ark performance, and how Frank is really starting to step out front as a soloist.