Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention--best of the Boots
kireviewer | Sunnyvale, Ca United States | 02/29/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is a CD from Frank Zappa's Beat the Boots series. He took bootleg releases of concerts, transferred them to CD and released them with minimal artwork; just the cover of the original bootleg and track listing and the members of the group at the time of the recording. Dates and places of the recording are not given unless that info was on the original cover. These CD's were originally released in two boxsets, but later were sold individually. Now they are hard to find. The sound quality on most of the Boots is poor to mediocre.
The band on this CD is the later version of the Mothers of Invention, when Ian Underwood was in the group, but before Flo and Eddie joined. I would guess this concert was during the time of Burnt Weenie Sandwich. It is about 58 minutes long.
This is mostly an instrumental CD. It features some of the best jams I have heard from the original Mothers. I think this is the best live album by the Mothers.
There are some problems with it. The sound quality is mediocre. There is tape hiss that can be over powering in some parts. The tracks are poorly edited. It is like fades were done just before any vocal parts to keep this an instrumental CD.
I almost knocked it down a star because of the sound problems. It probably deserves it. But, the music is so good, it is worth getting. And the sound quality isn't so bad that you can't listen to the CD through headphones. It does have pretty good stereo separation.
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