HJ wrote:
I know that facts can be stupid things, but let us remind ourselves about (Frank) Zappa's position on releasing full shows. This excerpt is from Groening, Matt; Menn, Don (1992), "The Mother of All Interviews. Act II: Matt Groening joins in on the scrutiny of the central decentralizer", in Menn, Don (ed.), Zappa! Guitar Player Presents.
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Don Menn: So, after the German event, you don't necessarily want to resurrect some of these good performances?
FZ: It's hard to find a reason or a market or a logic to package it, with the conclusion of the You Can't Do That On Stage series. That was always promised to be six volumes, and it's done. The two remaining live-like objects that will be corning out, Playground Psychotics and this other thing called Ahead Of Their Time, which is the '68 band, I don't know whether there's gonna be a market for anything more than that.
Matt Groening: I think there is a market for anything. Earlier in your career it was much easier to play your whole catalogue in order, and now, as you're releasing more of the stuff from the old years, I have to go back and revise my ideas about what you were doing because you're throwing in more pieces of the puzzle.
FZ: One of the arguments against putting out that old material is that there's not that many new titles that could be extracted from there. If I were to release that material, it would just be yet another version of "Pound for Brown" or yet another version of "Trouble Every Day." For live performances, there's a limited universe of songs with titles. What there is of a unique nature is that on every occasion, there would be some improvised something or other that would happen during the show that would be a one-off deal. You would have to do a lot of gathering to collate that stuff, and put together albums of songs that exist of only one kind. The '74 band did a lot of that.
Matt Groening: One of the things I like about the albums that are just a single concert, it's like, oh, that's a document of what you experienced that night. I really liked that. Although maybe you can edit the best songs, it's been a pleasure for me to hear entire shows.
FZ: That to me is excruciating, because when I've listened to those, it's hard for me to imagine one show that had so many good things in it that you'd want to release the whole show. There are always mistakes. With live stuff, you want to optimize the sound. You also want to optimize the solos. You've done a tour for four months, and you know that on a certain night, a certain song is played really, really well. It's a shame not to take that version of it and edit it in into the thing. I just think since it's all live, what's the difference whether it came from the same building or not?
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Let Trendmonger explain how the Philly album suits the artistic intent of (Frank) Zappa. I just look forward to hear the album.
FZ: I don't know whether there's gonna be a market for anything more than that.
GT Yes there is a MARKET FOR THAT.
Matt Groening: I think there is a market for anything. Earlier in your career it was much easier to play your whole catalogue in order, and now, as you're releasing more of the stuff from the old years, I have to go back and revise my ideas about what you were doing because you're throwing in more pieces of the puzzle.
FZ: One of the arguments against putting out that old material is that there's not that many new titles that could be extracted from there. If I were to release that material, it would just be yet another version of "Pound for Brown" or yet another version of "Trouble Every Day." For live performances, there's a limited universe of songs with titles. What there is of a unique nature is that on every occasion, there would be some improvised something or other that would happen during the show that would be a one-off deal. You would have to do a lot of gathering to collate that stuff, and put together albums of songs that exist of only one kind. The '74 band did a lot of that.
GT The operative keywords is there is a MARKET and there is UNIQUE NATURE ON EVERY OCCASION.
Yes with The Vault being Archived Digitally that gathering to collate UNIQUE even tough song titles repeat
on a more frequent basis is to wher it all can ba analyzed for not only MARKET FEASIBILITY but UNIQUENESS
of what happened any given night.
Matt Groening: One of the things I like about the albums that are just a single concert, it's like, oh, that's a document of what you experienced that night. I really liked that. Although maybe you can edit the best songs, it's been a pleasure for me to hear entire shows.
FZ: That to me is excruciating, because when I've listened to those, it's hard for me to imagine one show that had so many good things in it that you'd want to release the whole show. There are always mistakes. With live stuff, you want to optimize the sound. You also want to optimize the solos. You've done a tour for four months, and you know that on a certain night, a certain song is played really, really well. It's a shame not to take that version of it and edit it in into the thing. I just think since it's all live, what's the difference whether it came from the same building or not?
GT Franks appreciation for picking the best performances from a given tour assembling or editing performances together as a single composition hybrid or various tracks to make a project was the way Frank often worked but Frank is not here to make these decisions.
I can see where the ZFT may possibly choose do so with Portuguese Lunar Landing because that may be the only way that composition ever gets released as performed by FZ Bands. otedly since no full version has ever been found edit composition as in a series of edits
from various partial performance tapes.
The same building factor Hybrid Performances such a Drowning Witch from Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch shows that Frank wanted the best possible representation partly because some songs are just far too difficult to get a close to perfect performance of.
I think when ZPZ tackles that we are going to see DZPZ exceed what any of FZs bands ever did in one night.
But Full Shows of a single event is an entire different quotient in 2010.
With Frank passing close to 20 years ago and how much energy Frank had to put in YCDTOSA moving forward from that
just how much energy he just wanted elsewhere as compared to future YCDTOSA type projects were just not anywhere near priority.
But today he'd be into so many projects and possibly revisiting that at times into Full shows for so many different reasons that were
not part of the equation in 1993.
Frank was just interested in other projects and the fact remains is that Frank Zappa transferred each and every reel of the Philly '76
show making a set of digital masters of the entire show and this is all contradicting any thought that he would never releases any other
Full Show. As technology improved I have good faith that FZ would release a set of Full Shows and but also that periodically he would have revisited other Build Reel scenarios he already had put lots of time into but never released. It is just too much possibility to eliminate open minded possibilities because Frank stated one thing in any given interview. 1993 was such a long time ago, If Frank was still around or had seen he would be around certain questions are not asked and certain answers could have been different. We know he would be working on so many different things because that is always how Frank operated. Keeping an open mind to how the ZFT goes about selecting and producing projects Frank had very much his production hands in so much of these releases is something we all need to take a closer look at.
All these Vaulternative Records & Zappa REcords releases have liner notes. Give Due Diligence and see just how much Frank was involved in the production.
Happy New Year Folks!
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, that's quite good, of course, yet still a big step from 
i was thinking Matt Groening: is a fucking nuff of a noobneck 
