Just got home from the Civic theatre gig. It was a great show and well worth the money for the ticket even if my wife doesn't agree.
The band lineup was 6 piece and they all rocked. Very skillful, very tight. I haven't followed the recent ZpZ news lately but some other folks have mentioned that not the full band is touring. Dweezil mentioned that Ray White quit the band just prior to embarkation for the Antipodes which meant that some of the more popular tunes had to be culled.
There were some additions to the set list and some nice funky jamming in between that incorporated a little self conscious audience participation.
Most of the crowd were tired old has beens like myself but there was an encouraging number of younger attendees who are obviously being influenced by the presence of Dweezil in Australia to seize upon the opportunity to get to know Frank's music a little better.
The set list inclusions covered a fair range of the Zappa catalog - some I hadn't heard of. I really must start buying FZ's back catalog!
I saw Frank in London in '84 and whereas the Dweezil gig lacked some of the theatrics and punch of the 'original' production, I still came away feeling inspired to listen to Frank once again.
Speaking of production, the bass was mixed with too much low end attenuation, with only the bottom notes really jumping out. This made 'Apostrophe' suffer a bit as the nice fuzz-bass solo was too quiet and only the chunky comping when Dweezil was soloing stood out.
Apart from that, there was little to fault the gig at all. The band were brilliant!
I got the impression that Dweezil seemed happy that Newcastle was included in the itinerary as he got a pretty encouraging reception from the crowd. In any case, I hope he comes back again - definitely an act I'd go and see again and again!!
Check out
http://vomoir.blogspot.com for some photos of the night.
Vomoir