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Prior to the concert, my friend Albert and I had dinner at The Red Sun's. It is a Japanese oriented restaurant in Amsterdam that is run by my brother and received an excellent rating by a well-known Dutch connoisseur recently. Go check out The Red Sun.
Anyway, we finished our dinner a little too late, due to which we missed the start of the concert and entered the hall when the band was in the middle of City of Tiny Lites. It was just overwhelming. Like as if we were listening to the Sheik Yerbouti album, only with a thousand other people around. There were other moments like that to follow that night.
The first thing that noticeably has affected the sound of the band, in comparison with last year's performance in Paradiso, is the presence of a second keyboard player - I do not know his name, but let's call him Bobby Martin. Suddenly, the band's potential has extended and its repertoire now also includes songs from the aforementioned Sheik Yerbouti and Tinsel Town Rebellion, both albums loaded with synthesizer parts.
Further, male dynamic vocalist Ben Thomas has certainly grown in his role as performer. While he might have appeared a bit modest on stage last year, during last night's concert he was impressing. The Flo & Eddy duets that he and Scheila Gonzalez performed on material from the Fillmore East and 200 Motels albums, really suit his style. He delivered a massive performance with Florentine Pogen and he was particularly funny when he brought the parlando-style improvisation on The Blue Light, depicting the latest success of Holland's national soccer team on reaching the final of the world championship ("So you think you're gonna win the World Cup?!").
Another occasion that was extremely funny, was the audience participation during the performance of Keep it Greasey. Prior to revealing the name of the song, Dweezil invited female in the audience to come dance on stage. Then, when the song's name was revealed, the band started off, leaving something like six or eight female dancers to improvise on the polyrhythms. One of the ladies actually managed to make something out of it, by delivering a Penney de Jager* style 'boa dance'. It was pretty much fun.
The setlist was quite balanced out in regard of Zappa's oeuvre, ranging from the vaudeville humour of the Flo & Eddy era to the rhythmically more complex material with heavy soloing that mark the late seventies and early eighties. Most notably, Florentine Pogen rocked. The continuous flow of rhythm changes in this song were delivered as accurately as it can be heard on One Size Fits All. While watching Joe Travers playing the drum parts, it was difficult to determine whether he was man or machine.
Other highlights were the excerpts from The Grand Wazoo and Waka/Jawaka, which allowed for some of the band members to solo on instruments that are more commonly associated with classical performances. Though it was a pity that not all of the audience appreciated the brilliance of those parts. I was standing in the middle of the hall, and when Scheila Gonzalez played her solo on flute during Blessed Relief, I could clearly follow the conversation of the couple in front of me, discussing that friends of them "must be watching the concert from the balcony".
Meanwhile, Dweezil took his role as bandleader as serious as could be. Besides his directions, he was on stage during the whole of the concert. He did not leave - even during Joe Travers' drumsolo he stayed, which to some extent says something about his commitment to his father's music. His soloing is outstanding. While he stayed close to the original solo on Yo Mama, the version he delivered during Easy Meat cannot not be compared with any recorded version. I could not see from where I stood, but it appeared that he used a bottleneck to play the notes and applied some sort of flange effect to create an etheric sound almost ressembling an electric violin. It was simply beautiful.
So far, with every new tour the band has touched upon different areas of the Zappa spectre. They can go on for a few years more doing so. When time comes, I will be there again to watch the next phase.
Oscar
* Penney de Jager, for readers outside the Netherlands, was famous for her dance performances in Toppop, a Dutch music program from the seventies. If you want to know more about the typical folklore, just google her name, with or without the term "Toppop", or do a search on YouTube.
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