Three-disc deluxe edition includes original album remastered from master tapes plus recording of previously unreleased two-hour concert, extensive liner notes and newly created cover art.
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."
In 1966, when even the Doors and the Grateful Dead were still at a garage band level, Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention took great pride in being the ambassadors of freakdom. The hippie/flower power culture was just getting under way, but the Mothers' debut album found them already taking great delight in turning Aquarian imagery inside out. No starry-eyed rainbow people, the Mothers were the living incarnation of underground comics such as R. Crumb's Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: nasty, ugly, and downright dirty.
Aside from the experimental side project Lumpy Gravy, Hot Rats was the first album Frank Zappa recorded as a solo artist sans the Mothers, though he continued to employ previous musical collaborators, most notably multi-instrumentalist Ian Underwood. Other than another side project – the doo wop tribute Cruising With Ruben and the Jets – Hot Rats was also the first time Zappa focused his efforts in one general area, namely jazz-rock. The result is a classic of the genre. Hot Rats' genius lies in the way it fuses the compositional sophistication of jazz with rock's down-and-dirty attitude – there's a real looseness and grit to the three lengthy jams, and a surprising, wry elegance to the three shorter, tightly arranged numbers (particularly the sumptuous "Peaches en Regalia").
Official Release #83. At the time of Frank Zappa's passing in late 1993, he left a number of projects in varying stages of completeness. Some of these had gotten no further than the so-called "build-reel" stage. It was at this preliminary phase that the artist had done little more than set aside various and sundry audio on the back-burner in his Utility Muffin Research Kitchen home studio. One Shot Deal (2008) is a single-CD compilation taken from a number of disparate sources – including a pair of tunes from Zappa's "build reels." As the set's co-producer Gail Zappa explains in her inimitable style in the brief liner notes essay "…the guitar was the main element for me…." With that as an unofficial mandate, the 5-plus minutes – which cover the meaty nine-year span of 1972 to 1981 – is undeniably fret-centric.
The box contains a 40 page color booklet which includes the Interview by Bob Marshall. Liner notes appear on the far right on every right-hand page - in the style of the YCDTOSA series. This is a very popular bootleg box with luxurious packaging: a book-style box with a leather appearance (although not at all made of leather). The front has a photo of Zappa's moustache, and says "APOCRYPHA", "FZ" and "Thirty Years Of Frank Zappa". The back cover shows Zappa walking down the street with his UHER portable tape recorder, wearing a bulbous derby (from the same session as the inside photo in the Strictly Commercial package).