Frank Zappa 56: Strictly Commercial

How could anyone anthologize Frank Zappa’s career with a single disc? Well, since Rykodisc had the rights and the estate’s permission, they tried in 1995. Strictly Commercial purported to be “The Best Of Frank Zappa”, and as it opens with “Peaches In Regalia”, the single version of “Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow” (which incorporated part of “Nanook Rubs It”, and “Dancin’ Fool”, it’s a good start. But then from there it becomes something of a grab bag, democratically hitting as many albums as possible, staying mostly upbeat, but with some head-scratching choices, like “Sexual Harassment In The Workplace”, finally hitting “Montana”, “Valley Girl”, and “Muffin Man” towards the end.

But Ryko also knew that wouldn’t suffice, and followed this up less than two years later not once but twice. Have I Offended Someone? was a collection of his more sexually and racially controversial lyrics, curated by Frank himself, and in many cases remixed. The other draws for people who already had this (in addition to two songs already on Strictly Commercial) were a live version of “Dumb All Over” and a longer “Dinah-Moe-Humm”. Ralph Steadman cover art and liner notes by Ed Sanders of the Fugs doubled down on the attitude of defiance.

Then, to further prove his artistic worth to naysayers, Strictly Genteel offered “a ‘classical’ introduction” to his more, shall we say, serious work. Along with the expected selections from albums like Orchestral Favorites, The Yellow Shark, and even Francesco Zappa, tracks from Uncle Meat, Hot Rats, and other rock albums were able to provide something of a picture of the man’s compositional style.

But even then Ryko wasn’t done. Hoping to provide value to someone, Cheap Thrills was a budget-priced collection of tracks people already had, mostly live versions, bookended by dialogue from 200 Motels with “The Mudshark Interview” from Playground Psychotics as a centerpiece. A year later Son Of Cheep Thrills was even more random, though the choices were arguably better. (The personal mixtape concept kept going in 2002, with two volumes of Zappa Picks, one chosen by Jon Fishman of Phish, and the other by Larry LaLonde of Primus.)

By this time the estate had already began to undertake their own archival reissues, the waters of which had already been tested in 1996 with Frank Zappa Plays The Music Of Frank Zappa. Packaged in a leatherette case with a replica mustache and soul patch on the front, this “memorial tribute” compiled by Dweezil celebrated Frank’s three favorites of his guitar compositions by presenting the earliest (at the time) known live recordings of each, paired with their standard album versions. Thus “Black Napkins” has a snotty introduction, and “Zoot Allures” is the 16-minute performance that begat “Ship Ahoy”, but “Watermelon In Easter Hay” doesn’t have the grandeur of its best-known version, which unfortunately still has the Central Scrutinizer whispering over the top. (Yet Dweezil found a way to add a “good night” from some concert at the end.) “Merely A Blues In A” breaks up the program in the middle with a lengthy jam from a Paris concert.

In 2012 the estate licensed themselves a new deal to reissue the Zappa catalog worldwide, and since it was an election year, that was a reason to unveil Understanding America, another Frank-curated compilation from back in the day that never got past initial production. Loosely based on the concept of skewering American culture, this two-disc set begins heavy on the first three Mothers Of Invention albums, touches on the ‘70s, then goes whole hog into the ‘80s, the centerpiece of the second disc being a 25-minute expansion of “Porn Wars”.

Four years later, ZAPPAtite served up what were said to be his “tastiest tracks” on a single disc. Although separated into “appetizers”, “entrées” and “dessert”, it merely reshuffled half of Strictly Commercial and 52-pickupped the rest. Even decades later, it only underscores the fact that summing up Frank with anything but his individually albums is not only futile, but just silly.

Frank Zappa Strictly Commercial: The Best Of Frank Zappa (1995)—3
Frank Zappa Frank Zappa Plays The Music Of Frank Zappa: A Memorial Tribute (1996)—3½
Frank Zappa Have I Offended Someone? (1997)—2½
Frank Zappa Strictly Genteel: A “Classical” Introduction To Frank Zappa (1997)—3½
Frank Zappa Cheap Thrills (1998)—2½
Frank Zappa Son Of Cheep Thrills (1999)—3
Frank Zappa Understanding America (2012)—2½
Frank Zappa ZAPPAtite (Frank Zappa’s Tastiest Tracks) (2016)—3

Warren Zevon 2: Warren Zevon

After several years working with the Everly Brothers, together and apart, as their musical director, Warren Zevon found his way to L.A. where he hooked up with the usual cast of characters who played on albums on the Asylum label. Jackson Browne produced his eponymous debut for the label, and this is really where Warren Zevon as we came to know him began.

It’s all there from the first track—his piano and distinctive croon, Waddy Wachtel peeling off leads, David Lindley on whatever string instrument he pleased, and lyrics worthy of a hard-boiled crime novel. Following a stately piano intro, “Frank And Jesse James” seems too clichéd a choice of subject matter in 1976, but it sets a bar low enough for him to vault over, and soon. “Mama Couldn’t Be Persuaded” very much has the signature Asylum sound, and a catchy chorus. “Backs Turned Looking Down The Path” sticks out, mostly because it’s so obviously based around an acoustic guitar rather than a piano, and the wistful lyrics have us thinking this was an older song that was sitting around. It seems very much a detour leading into “Hasten Down The Wind”, a heartbreaking portrayal of the end of a relationship without being cloying. (It’s also just one of four songs here that would be covered by Linda Ronstadt, and this one even gave her an album title.) Any sentimentality is smacked away by the raucous “Poor Poor Pitiful Me”, which is loaded with terrific couplets, not all of which Linda would use. Glenn Frey and Don Henley provide trademark harmonies on “The French Inhaler”, which they probably wish they wrote. With the swelling strings, it could pass for an Eagles track, though they would never write a lyric like “Your face looked like something death brought with him in his suitcase.”

Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks harmonize on “Mohammed’s Radio”, a truly bizarre lyric with wonderful imagery that encapsulates the city of Los Angeles, or so we’re told. With frequent collaborator Jorge Calderon interjecting just below the level of discernability, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” is the first of many statements of purpose, though we probably shouldn’t take it seriously. By the same token, if the junk den scene so vividly described in “Carmelita” is from personal experience, it’s a wonder he made it this far. The dirty delivery in “Join Me In L.A.” is hardly enticing, and the gang female backing vocals are just plain too much. While it does accurately portray what’s wrong with the city, it’s one we like to skip. Much better is the closer, on all fronts. A vivid portrait of alcoholic waste, “Desperadoes Under The Eaves” is the first use of a word that will recur in several song titles, and boasts a wonderful segment where the main musical arrives out of a description of a humming air conditioner. Clearly, this guy was smart.

Again, there’s nothing on Warren Zevon that compels us to visit Southern California, but we sure like listening to him describe the world around him. And he really was just getting started. (The album was expanded in the 21st century with a bonus disc including demos, alternate takes, and one song from a live radio broadcast, providing a little more insight into the album’s creation and discarded arrangements.)

Warren Zevon Warren Zevon (1976)—3
2008 Collector’s Edition: same as 1976, plus 15 extra tracks

Van Morrison 52: Moving On Skiffle

The news of a third multidisc release of new material from Van Morrison would give anyone pause in the post-Covid era. But while Moving On Skiffle is equivalent to four sides of vinyl, it delivers on its title. These are mostly old folk, country, and blues songs, some traditional, which would have been easily tackled by the skiffle players he heard back in the day. But it’s not a straight skiffle album—after all, he’d already done one, live, with Lonnie Donegan and Chris Barber.

This is another genre exercise, not that different from any of the other covers albums he’s done over the previous decade or so, with a selection of players and singers he’d been using throughout the century. (We were hoping the credit for one Sticky Wicket on washboard was a pseudonym, but no, he’s an actual drummer.) Only on “Gov Don’t Allow” does he get political, altering the original “Mama Don’t Allow”, which forbade certain kinds of music, to extend to freedom of speech. It does, however, give little solo spots to various of the musicians. (That song might be familiar thanks to a YouTube video of a 13-year-old Jimmy Page playing it on television; the man himself provided a back cover testimonial here.) “Worried Man Blues” was also on the live album, but this is a much different arrangement, working in “Mystery Train” and other lyrics. Things slow down only for Jimmie Rodgers’ “Travelin’ Blues”, Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”, and the closing “Green Rocky Road”, which runs nine minutes. (Thanks to the violin and the mood set, it’s worthy of Into The Music and No Guru No Method No Teacher.)

As usual there are complete instrumental credits, so you can tell when he’s playing the saxophone, and he’s singing with the passion you’d expect him to muster for the music he loved as a boy. At least he sounds cheerful.

Van Morrison Moving On Skiffle (2023)—3

Beach Boys 2: Surfin’ U.S.A.

Having established their brand on their first album, the Beach Boys kept giving their audience what they wanted on Surfin’ U.S.A. To double down on the genre, five of the tracks were instrumentals, nicely showing off the band as instrumentalists, especially little brother Carl Wilson. For the rest, Brian Wilson wrote on his own as well as with co-lead singer Mike Love, freelancer Gary Usher, and a new key collaborator, deejay Roger Christian, for the lyrics.

The title track is not only one of the most effective Chuck Berry rewrites; they even gave him the publishing, which is one reason why he loved the tune. Led by Brian’s falsetto, “Farmer’s Daughter” tries a little too hard and misses, as it can’t quite straddle the line between innocent and dirty. New listeners in this century may be surprised to hear them tackle Dick Dale’s classic arrangement of “Misirlou”, especially if they only knew it from Pulp Fiction. Here it’s followed by the original instrumental (save the shouted title) “Stoked”. But Brian really starts to stretch on “Lonely Sea”, the first sign of the sensitivity that would take the band beyond the beach. And just like last time, a car song closes the first side; in this case, it’s “Shut Down”.

“Noble Surfer” is supposed to be a portrait of a he-man, but the celeste solo seems incredibly incongruous; their surf-influenced cover of the “Honky Tonk” instrumental works as a good palate cleanser. “Lana” just happens to be a love song, though it needs more lyrics, and the celeste makes more sense. While “Surf Jam” is a basic 12-bar instrumental, Carl gets sole writing credit, and you’d have to listen close to their version of Dick Dale’s “Let’s Go Trippin’” to tell it apart; again, the shouted titles help. “Finders Keepers” is just plain odd, switching tempos and keys, landing somewhere between a joke track and two different Four Seasons songs.

Even more than their first album, these are the songs that made every other kid in the country (and overseas) want to move to California. The boys were still learning how to make records, and had yet to define what an album would mean. Decades later, the overall vibe paired the album well with Surfin’ Safari on its two-fer CD. The one bonus added from the album’s sessions was “The Baker Man”, a lame attempt to create a new dance craze out of the patty-cake nursery rhyme. (The two-fers have gone out of print and back from time to time. In 2012, this and their next ten studio albums were reissued individually in nice slim digipacks sporting original artwork and CDs with both mono and stereo mixes.)

The Beach Boys Surfin’ U.S.A. (1963)—2½
1990 CD reissue: same as 1963, plus Surfin’ Safari album and 3 extra tracks

Brian Eno 31: Eno Soundtrack

Look at streaming services like Amazon Prime, and you’ll see a handful of documentaries about Brian Eno, some more quickie than others. Yet the only one that had his active participation can’t be found online. What’s more, there’s a chance that if you have seen it—and we haven’t—you won’t be seeing the same production that was screened somewhere or some time else. In a direct reflection of its subject’s aim when creating art, Eno uses generative software so that every showing has a unique, almost random sequence.

Luckily its companion soundtrack compilation does have a standard tracklist. It begins with “All I Remember”, a new song with vocals and introspective lyrics. From there it cherry-picks from throughout his career, split between vocal and instrumental, loud and quiet, with an emphasis on collaborations with the likes of Cluster, David Byrne, John Cale, and up to Fred again… These, however, only scratch the surface, both of the people he’s worked with as well as the music he’s release over fifty years.

Rare tracks don’t appear again until the end of the program. The noisy, clattering “Lighthouse #349” is one of hundreds of instrumental tracks uploaded to his Sonos radio station from his vaults, Finally, “By This River” comes from a live performance in 2018 with his brother Roger at the Acropolis in Athens, and it is simply stunning.

Brian Eno Eno (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2024)—3

Elton John 28: Reg Strikes Back

The comeback started with the live album continued for Elton John, but he wouldn’t call it that. Rather, the title of Reg Strikes Back suggested a pugnacity along the lines of “I’m Still Standing”, and to prove he was serious, the album cover showed several closets full of old costumes and hats, which were presumably among the items soon to be auctioned for charity. Musically it wasn’t much of a departure; Bernie Taupin was on board and Davey Johnstone was still in the band, but Dee Murray and Nigel Olsson were only asked to provide backing vocals.

The arrangement of “Town Of Plenty” proves what part of what decades we’re in, and the mix—with the aforementioned backing vocals up front—obscures the social commentary in the lyrics. (News flash: Elton doesn’t like “the media”.) Then “A Word In Spanish” saunters in reminiscent of “Nikita”; it’s a nice idea, bringing in Bernie’s fascination with movies and romance, but Elton belts out the lyrics where a softer approach would have been more effective. Speaking of throwbacks, “Mona Lisas And Mad Hatters (Part Two)” is a sequel nobody asked for. While its predecessor eloquently celebrates New York City and the vulnerability one can feel there with a tender backing to match, this one gushes over just how awesome it is, presumably for those who can afford it and aren’t worried about getting mugged, atop a brassy R&B track with Freddie Hubbard taking a trumpet solo. But while “I Don’t Wanna Go On With You Like That” is a lot like what we’ve heard so far, it works, even with the limited range of the melody and mildly robotic beat. “Japanese Hands” finds Bernie in love again, but this time on another continent, and with a softer approach and not too heavy on the clichéd Oriental accents.

As with side one, side two also starts with a kiss-off. “Goodbye Marlon Brando” is mostly a list turned into a lyric, fleshed out in the bridges, but it also mostly expands on an idea already started by Tom Petty and Bob Dylan a year before on “Jammin’ Me”. “The Camera Never Lies” is an improvement, a meaty performance and catchy changes throughout, following an accusatory tale. Davey gets credit for helping out with “Heavy Traffic”, a character-heavy study of vice that burbles along over something of a salsa beat that stops and starts with odd frequency. The judgement continues on “Poor Cow”, which unfortunately uses that term as a hook in the chorus, at odds with the disdainful verses. While it makes for a nice finale, “Since God Invented Girls” just seems odd coming out his mouth, even if he was still technically married to his wife. It’s not the first reference to the Beach Boys on the album, underscored by Carl Wilson and Bruce Johnston actually providing harmonies, but it needs a better hook, which starts with the title.

Reg Strikes Back was something of a hit, as he’d intended, and certainly brought him back to a point where he was consistently on the radio—as well as VH-1 if not MTV. In contemporary interviews he boasted about all the piano playing he’d done compared to his recent output, but it still sounds too much of its time. (The expanded reissue added the B-side “Rope Around A Fool”, which could easily have replaced one of the lesser tracks on the album, plus a remix of “Mona Lisas Part Two” and two of “I Don’t Wanna Go On With You Like That”, one of which was labeled “Just Elton And His Piano”, but like the rest of the album, it’s still a digital piano instead of a grand.)

Elton John Reg Strikes Back (1988)—2½
1998 CD reissue: same as 1988, plus 4 extra tracks

Beatles 35: Anthology 4

Realizing that 30 years had passed since the first installment of the Beatles’ Anthology was unveiled was even more astounding when one considered that only 25 years had elapsed between that event and the band’s breakup. And while the Anthology CDs were said to close the vault on unreleased material, the people in charge of things back then obviously hadn’t dreamed of the potential, either sales or academic, that 50th anniversary super deluxe editions could create.

So it was that the original series was remastered and re-edited for broadcast on Disney+, the book was reprinted, and the three CD volumes were remastered, sonically cleaned up in a few places, and repackaged into a slipcase dubbed Anthology Collection, with the tantalizing addition of the new Anthology 4. Fans wondered at the fresh bounty that could be unveiled, only to find not Gideon’s bible, but that the new set—initially only available in the big set but eventually offered separately—consisted predominantly of selections from those recent expansions of Sgt. Pepper, the White Album, Abbey Road, Let It Be, and Revolver. Besides the repetition, the choices were somewhat lopsided, with only eleven new tracks coming from the first three years of their career, and almost the entirety of the second disc devoted to the last two. And of course, certain things that people wanted to hear were still missing, even with two discs not filled to capacity.

That said, as a collection of outtakes, it is an enjoyable listen, even when you’ve heard some of it before. The alternate takes of “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Money” were pulled from the (also initially limited) Bootleg Recordings 1963 download album, and two broken takes of “This Boy” were rescued from the out-of-print CD single for “Free As A Bird”. Each of the yet-to-be-deluxe-editioned albums get peeks; as ever, the early takes aren’t always too different from the final products, but it’s fun to hear the boys bantering along the way. There’s a lot of giggling between takes, and the source of the laughter isn’t always obvious, nor necessarily pharmaceutical. Take one of “Matchbox” wouldn’t have been our choice, but the first take of “In My Life” is lovely, and a very Byrdsy “Nowhere Man” only has vocals on the intro. “Baby You’re A Rich Man” is delayed while John asks Mal Evans for Coke and Paul demands cannabis, the instrumental tracks for “Fool On The Hill” and “Hey Bulldog” are revelatory, and the isolated strings and brass for “I Am The Walrus” prove that George Martin was the best friend they ever had. Finally, new Jeff Lynne-approved remixes of “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love” (which clean up John’s voice more via Peter Jackson’s AI tech, but aren’t as good as the ones on 2015’s 1+ DVD), followed by “Now And Then” (which most people would have already bought via either the expensive single or the expansion of the Blue Album two years earlier) bring things full-circle.

With the equivalent of two album sides of new music out of a nearly two-hour program, there is enough here that we hadn’t heard before, as it hadn’t been bootlegged. Having to follow the format of the previous three volumes put the compilers in a tough spot, as reissue projects have certainly evolved over three decades. Here, it’s quite a mad rush from “I Saw Her Standing There” to “I Am The Walrus”, and something of a stumble to the end. But while Anthology 4 is very much an afterthought, it’s still welcome. And we still want to hear everything, and we do mean everything.

The Beatles Anthology 4 (2025)—3½