...
CD-R Note: This product is manufactured on demand when ordered from Amazon.com.
(...)
Audio CD (January 25, 2010)
Original Release Date: November 1989
Number of Discs: 2
Format: Live
Label: Zappa Records
ASIN: B0000009TP(...)
Disc: 1
1. Sharleena
2. Bamboozled by Love/Owner of a Lonely Heart
3. Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up
4. Advance Romance [1984]
5. Bobby Brown Goes Down
6. Keep It Greasey
7. Honey, Don't You Want a Man Like Me?
8. In France
9. Drowning Witch
10. Ride My Face to Chicago
11. Carol, You Fool
12. Chana in de Bushwop
13. Joe's Garage
14. Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?Disc: 2
1. Dickie's Such an Asshole
2. Hands With a Hammer
3. Zoot Allures
4. Society Pages
5. I'm a Beautiful Guy
6. Beauty Knows No Pain
7. Charlie's Enormous Mouth
8. Cocaine Decisions
9. Nig Biz
10. King Kong
11. Cosmik Debris
TW: How much time did you and Dweezil rehearse before performing "Sharleena" on stage?
FZ: None. It was the last concert of the 1984 tour. I'd been on the road for six mouths and had just gotten back to town. Dweezil had been rehearsing away, and since we were working at the Universal Amphitheater, I knew that he wanted to go onstage. He had played a solo on the album version, so he already knew the song. It was just a matter of him coming down to the soundcheck in the afternoon and getting his equipment set up. That was the first and only time that he and I had ever played together live.
TW: Was it mainly his idea? Did he come to you and say, "How about if I sit in tonight?"
FZ: Yeah.
TW: What sort of guidelines did you have? Did you talk it over ahead of time?
FZ: No, but it wasn't the first time Dweezil had appeared with the band. He made his debut onstage with the group in Europe when he was 12 years old in 1982. He played with us at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, on two of the three days we were there, and also in Munich, Vienna, and I think one other city [Zurich]. But I was conducting on those, and the Los Angeles performance was the first time that he and I played lead guitar together. When two lead guitar players perform together, I think it usually turns out like noise. It's not one of my favorite things on this planet to listen to or participate in.
TW: What made this duet work so well?
FZ: At least I had the good sense to stay out of his way [laughs]. My goal was to make a piece of music there, not to play competitively or to dump your bag of tricks on the stage. Usually that is what happens when jam sessions occur. Usually jam sessions are exercises of egomania. [...]
TW: When mixing the two lead guitars, did you intentionally avoid a hard left and right separation?
FZ: Yes, because Dweezil starts off first, and if he were to be off to one side it would have been kind of obnoxious. I'm not sure if that kind of separation really obviates what the musical activity is, but I think it makes an obnoxious-sounding record anyway. When it's placed hard to one side, it's a mono signal--it sticks out, especially when you're wearing earphones. How many tracks was it recorded on? The original was a 24-track digital recording, and the remote was my truck, the UMRK mobile. The mix was done here in the UMRK. The live recording engineers were Mark Pinske and Tom Ehle, and the room mix engineer was Bob Stone.
TW: What was your guitar equipment?
FZ: A blonde Stratocaster, a Marshall amp, and two small Acoustic amps. [...]
TW: You had no guidelines for Los Angeles performance?
DZ: Right, it was all just improv. [...] I was so nervous that I didn't know what I was playing until about two or tree minutes into the solo, and then I could kind of get comfortable. It's like a five-minute solo, and I just had fun with it. We also did "Whipping Post" later on that night, which was real good, too. That turned up on a CD [Does humor Belong In Music?, available in the U.S. only as an import].
TW: What equipment did you use for the recording?
DZ: I was using this guitar that had body by Performance. It had a Kramer guitar neck, a Floyd Rose, and two preamps in it that are stacked and just mondo overdrive. I played through this Acoustic amplifier--I don't know what model--and just turned it all the way up and turned on the preamps and just went for it. I didn't really have hardly any equipment at the time. I just recently bought my own amplifier.
"THAR SHE BLOWS!"
"Thar she blows" is a quote from [Herman Melville's] "Moby Dick", and is usually used to refer to a very fat girl.
In late May of 1982, the month Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch was released, a show in Kiel, Germany ended just as it was getting started after the crowd bombarded the band with various objects. Saarbrucken, Offenburg and other German shows were duly cancelled in light of the country's fresh tendency for uprisings. Another halt was called due to hurled objects in Geneva, Switzerland at the end of June, and a few people were killed during a police-instigated riot in Palermo, Sicily; that show ended after half an hour. Frank chalked the incidents up to "emotional freight that is attendant to European attitudes toward American foreign policy."
Site maintained by Román García Albertos