Frank Zappa Tyou Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore

Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention is a transitional album that sees Zappa turning away from rock and putting more time into his Synclavier compositions. This is a year away from the computer-only (minus one live track) Jazz From Hell…

This album is something of an anomaly in Frank Zappa's catalog. On all but two of the songs, Frank plays guitar, bass and keyboards. Terry Bozzio plays drums, and other favorites add tracks (Ruth Underwood, Roy Estrada and "Donnie" (van) Vliet, among others) to fill out the music. So among his seventies albums, this is more of a solo album than any.
Zappa proves himself to be a fair keyboardist. Although none of the keyboards stand out as great, they don't detract from the music either. And he tends to stay somewhat low key on the bass as well. The one place his bass stands out is on Friendly Little Finger, where Zappa is soloing on bass and guitar at the same time, with spectacular results.
The two guitar solo pieces are also outstanding. Black Napkins became one of Frank's signature guitar solos, and Zoot Allures is beautiful as well…

Frank Zappa’s ‘Over-Nite Sensation’ Turns 50 With New Super Deluxe Edition. The new five-disc edition of Zappa’s widely-acclaimed 1973 opus includes 57 previously unreleased tracks and mixes.

A fascinating collection of mostly instrumental live and studio material recorded by the original Mothers of Invention, complete with horn section, from 1967-1969, Weasels Ripped My Flesh segues unpredictably between arty experimentation and traditional song structures. Highlights of the former category include the classical avant-garde elements of "Didja Get Any Onya," which blends odd rhythmic accents and time signatures with dissonance and wordless vocal noises; these pop up again in "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask" and "Toads of the Short Forest." The latter and "The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue" also show Frank Zappa's willingness to embrace the avant-garde jazz of the period. Yet, interspersed are straightforward tunes like a cover of Little Richard's "Directly From My Heart to You," with great violin from Don "Sugarcane" Harris…

The first live album compiled from various performances on Frank Zappa's 1988 world tour (his final outing), Broadway the Hard Way is composed mostly of new, vocal-oriented material. The tone throughout is highly political, with Zappa taking potshots at such targets as Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Pat Robertson and other televangelists, Jesse Jackson, C. Everett Koop, and so on…

The musically similar follow-up to the commercial breakthrough of Over-Nite Sensation, Apostrophe (') became Frank Zappa's second gold and only Top Ten album with the help of the "doggy wee-wee" jokes of "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow," Zappa's first chart single (a longer, edited version that used portions of other songs on the LP). The first half of the album is full of nonsensical shaggy-dog story songs that segue into one another without seeming to finish themselves first; their dirty jokes are generally more subtle and veiled than the more notorious cuts on Over-Nite Sensation. The second half contains the instrumental title cut, featuring Jack Bruce on bass; "Uncle Remus," an update of Zappa's critique of racial discord on "Trouble Every Day"; and a return to the album's earlier silliness in "Stink-Foot"…