From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Subject: Frank Zappa - Playground Psychotics
Organization: Enea Data AB
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 21:43:06 GMT
Followup-To: rec.music.misc


Summary ? - USA - 1970-1/1992

Yes, you saw right, I'm giving this 2CD set a ? rating. The range in
quality is simply to broad to give it one rating.

In case you have checked out this sucker yet, let me give me the
outline: all material is with the Flo & Eddie band (so Dave Lane
shouldn't bother). The discs contain a high proportion of talk
tracks, mainly between the group members taped by Zappa (or Mark
Volman) more or less secretly. Thankfully most of it is batched
on the beginning and the end of the discs, so you don't have to
hear it every time you play the record. It's fun once or twice
or dig out some background on for instance "200 motels", but it
is hardly what you put on for musical entertainment.

There are also live material, from Fillmore East, from the fatal
concert at the Rainbow Theatre a week after the fatal show in
Montreux and from one more place. The live material is inter-
leaved with some band talk, but not more to make it bearable.

Paricularly the first disc contains some worthwhile stuff, mainly
from the Rainbow. "Zanti Serande" sounds spacey, but is actually
an extented sound check. Still it works on disk. There are short
cuts from "Sofa" (not from the Rainbow), "Sleeping in a Jar" and
"Crusin' for Burgers" which are quite good. "Brixton Still Life"
is a good guitar solo, as Zappa sounded when his guitar solos was
still worth listening too. (None of that "Shut up..." noise.) We
also get a "Wonderful Wino" from this period, which is interesting
to hear. The only track which really feels superfluous is "Sharleena" 
since it appears in so many places already.

"Diptheria Blues" is a weird interlude from a dressing room. Mark
Volman tells a story while Aynsley Dunbar keeps rhythm with a
whiskey bottle. You don't hear much of what Volman says, but
Dunbar really does a good job with the bottle. This is band
folklore which is actually worth to listen to more than once.

Disc one then concludes with the set The Mothers played with
John Lennon and Plastic Ono Band at the Fillmore, and which
Lennon released on "Sometime in New York", here in a different
mix. This material is, well, a jam. "Well", a blues has a good
solo from Zappa, and there is good instrumental jam in "Aaawk",
but you cannot escape that the material is a little thin from 
purely musical point of view. The closing "An Eternity with Yoko
Ono" is a variation of "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" but longer which 
is maybe not what you hoped for.

Disc two is less interesting with one exception. We get "Status Back 
Baby", "Concentration Moon" and "Mom & Dad", with some folklore inter-
leaved, none of it very interesting. But then we also get "Billy the 
Mountain" (opened with pieces from "Music for Low-Budget Orchestra),
and this is more problematic to judge. I tend to think that this version
is somewhat better than the one on "Another Band From L.A.". Still it is
not extremely different, so it is not obvious that this is really a 
necessary addition, but eventually I think I feel so anyway. Then again,
you have this problem "Billy the Mountain" is not really the piece
you play every day....

If we compare "Playground Psychotics" with the "You Can't..." series, 
PP has one advantage: since all material is from the same period, the
album is much more coherent than the Stage albums (except volume 2 of
course) where you constantly were thrown from different eras - unless 
you didn't get them simultaneously.

Still it is very difficult material to rate. Much of is only of interest
from the rabid completists who Zappa loves to rip money off, but there 
is some really good stuff too.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
Newsgroups: rec.music.reviews,rec.music.misc,alt.music.alternative,alt.rock-n-roll