Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

Via and Zappa photo by mudshark.

Saw the ZPZ show tonight at the (Civil) Warfield Theatre in San Francisco. There were so many battered, long haired old timers creaking up the balcony steps with the aid of canes and crutches, it looked like a Civil War Veterans gathering. The Warfield’s lobby contains a large enshrined photo portrait of Jerry Garcia, so you can well imagine the creaky soul survivors who have fired up many a fat joint in this old time theatre.

It was the last show of a lengthy tour and Dweezil deserves a lot credit for pulling this together from the extensive Frank Zappa discography. Opening with Montana video footage from Frank Zappa’s great Roxy club performance, the entire night had an eerie emotional vibe, a battle between the energies of the living and the memories of the dead. It truly must have been traumatic for Dweezil and the Zappa family to witness free spirited Frank being prematurely aged and taken away by cancer. In a touching moment at the close, Dweezil brought his mom, Gail, out onto the stage and thanked her for helping put the tour together. They plan to rest up and return to touring again in October, including a Halloween New York City show.

Dweezil’s playing is quite good and faithful to his father’s music, and he’s found some fine new band members in addition to the veterans, to spice up the mix. They play over three hours of strenous music, which took it’s toll on Terry Bozio’s bicep a few days ago in Las Vegas. Still Terry appeared on stage and livened things up with his hilarious singing poses and gyrations on I’m So Cute and two other Punk Angst theme songs.

Napoleon Murphy Brock’s voice is in great shape, and his added choreographic antics were true to the roots of Frank Zappa’s humor in music tradition. His theatrical voice provides authenticity to the songs, such as The Idiot Bastard Son, Cheepnis and Oh No since they sound pretty much the way he performed them while touring with the FZ band in the 70’s and 80’s.

Steve Vai is an excellent technician and carved strong, sweet notes on Peaches En Regalia, stunt sounds on Zombie Woof, and great power on Sofa. His stage presence is different from when I saw him play with Frank Zappa’s band. He’s now a virtuoso star, with a theatrical presence not unlike a David Copperfield stage magician. I’m not up on Steve’s solo work and would like to hear more of what Steve does on a sweeter melodic side, rather than losing the melody of a song such as More Trouble Everyday in a high pitched guitar screamfest with Dweezil. I would love to hear his rock guitar treatment of compositions by John Dowland, Beethoven and Copland.

There are ZPZ tour blog stories, tons of great photos and a few videos at the Zappa Plays Zappa web site. Music is the best.