Yes I know that “Freak Out” was the first actual Frank Zappa and the Mothers Of Invention album and hence a part of the first wave of re-issues that were coming care of the arrangement between the Zappa Family Trust and Universal Music but give me a little bit of an artistic license here. I still have a few more chapters to post and make it up to you. For those who are just joining us and seeing this as completely new news, for the first time in many, many years – the entire music catalog of the late great Frank Zappa is back in the hands of the Zappa Family Trust and are being re-issued by Universal Music. I spoke about it in THIS POST in case you are wondering. For those legacy fans who might not have a complete set as yet now is the perfect time to start fixing that. I have also said this in the earlier post but will repeat again that this is great for the new fan and those too young to have experienced Zappa when he was still with us. He was the king of experimentation and innovation along with creativity in sound and they need to follow this legacy especially if they are fans of Progressive music.
The second wave of albums picks up where we left off in 1972 and continues on until 1979 and how amazing it is to realize that he had already released twelve albums between 1966-1972; clearly this man was an inspired musical genius. I want to mention that the count on the releases begins with #15 because there were two albums not presented in the first wave and those are “Mothermania” and “200 Motels”. The first is an early compilation release from 1969 while the second was the soundtrack to Zappa’s movie of the same name and its a little bit of everything. I have quite a few favorites in this bunch and am especially fond of “Apostrophe”, “Roxy and Elsewhere”, “Zoot Allures” and “Zappa In New York”. I wonder what your faves from this particular batch might be. Feel free to let me know in the comments area. My overall plan is to get many of these releases reviewed on the core website but you can imagine that such an endeavor is a daunting one. Much like the first wave, the second wave is currently ONLY available on the physical medium of CD and NOT as MP3 downloads.
15. Waka/Jawaka (1972)
16. The Grand Wazoo (1972)
17. Over-Nite Sensation (1973)
18. Apostrophe (1974)
19. Roxy & Elsewhere (1974)
20. One Size Fits All (1975)
21. Bongo Fury (1975)
22. Zoot Allures (1976)
23. Zappa In New York (1978)
24. Studio Tan (1978)
25. Sleep Dirt (1979)
26. Sheik Yerbouti (1979)
Official Website: www.zappa.com
Since I did this for the first batch, I am going to once again embed a whole lot of Amazon.com purchase links so you can get more on top of your collection without waiting for my individual review articles to do so. How’s that for being proactive? These links are the entire second wave of the Frank Zappa re-issues.