Exposé Online banner

Exposé Online

Not just outside the box, but denying the existence of boxes.
Covering music from the fringes since 1993.

Reviews

Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention — Whisky a Go Go 1968
(Zappa 02458 67156, 1968/2024, 3CD)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2024-09-16

Whisky a Go Go 1968 Cover art

Only one thing can be said about live albums from the 60s: with few exceptions they are uniformly terrible sounding — think about Jefferson Airplane’s Bless Its Pointed Little Head or the Stones’ Got Live If You Want it! No, I don’t want it — I would be perfectly happy if I never heard either of those again! One exception to that would be The Who’s Live at Leeds, of course, and now I present to you another exception, available as a 3CD or 4LP set, of the original Mothers of Invention at the Whisky A Go Go on July 23rd 1968, a document of a performance that is legendary, though it has never been released until now. Oh yeah, there are other live albums by the Mothers, in the Beat the Boots series, but most of those are from ‘69 to ‘71 and generally don’t sound that great (the notable exception being ‘Tis the Season to Be Jelly recorded in Sweden in late 1967, which I can heartily recommend). This is the big nine-piece band with Zappa on vocals and guitar, singer Ray Collins, Roy Estrada (bass and vocals), Don Preston on keyboards, saxophonists Bunk Gardner, Motorhead Sherwood, and Ian Underwood, and drummers Artie Tripp and Jimmy Carl Black; this document is a solid testament to how great these players were — some of the finest musicians in the Los Angeles area. In addition, local celebrities Kim Fowley and the GTOs join the Mothers on stage providing additional vocals on this track or that. Most of the material played was taken from Freak Out (“Hungry Freaks, Daddy” and “Help, I’m a Rock”) and Absolutely Free (“Plastic People,” “Status Back Baby,” “Brown Shoes Don’t Make it,” “America Drinks And Goes Home”) plus a few others that wouldn’t show up for several albums to come (“Valerie,” “King Kong” among them), but by and far most of what’s here are one time improvisations, works in progress or songs that are lost in time, like the standout cover of The Penguins’ “Memories of El Monte.” An interesting side note is that The Mothers’ third album We’re Only In It for the Money had been out four months at the time of this show, but no songs are included from it in this set. This is an amazing document of one of the best bands ever, and the sound quality all around is nothing short of superb. The booklet contains several essays, including an Ahmet Zappa interview with Alice Cooper (who also played that night) and numerous rare photos.

Filed under: Archives, 2024 releases, 1968 recordings

Related artist(s): Frank Zappa, Kim Fowley

More info
http://store.zappa.com/products/whisky-a-go-go-1968-3cd

 

What's new

These are the most recent changes made to artists, releases, and articles.