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Did you attend this ZPZ show at Gathering of the Vibes in Bridgeport, CT?

Dweezil and the band love reading your reviews.

Please do not post in this thread if you did not attend the show.

Mikey
Zappa.com Webmeister

I was there, Zappa plays Zappa was Amazing. I was pleasently suprised with the Cartman version of Flakes, Peaches En Regalia was insane and Cosmik Debris was incredible. The Concert overal was just Amazing, and i excited to see them again the next time they are around.

Hi Dwezel & Band:

First off I apologize, I know I shouldn’t be posting here unless I attended last nights show.

This is tough to ask and I have never requested anything on my sons behalf in the past. Although I was always prompted to contact organizations such as Make A Wish to grant him a special request for him.

My son Alex was diagnosed with cancer as an infant at 11 months old, battled it for three years and is now soon to be 17 years old. He’s a fighter, survivor and very very special to me. He’s also a Zappa NUT! He’s a drummer and a HUGE music fan in general.

He would be thrilled to be able to meet the band even for a short moment. We are attending the show tomorrow night in Northhampton, MA and considering making the trek to Buffalo for the free show Thursday night.

He’s a very special kid and you folks are his musical hero’s at the moment. We did see last years show in Providence and were blown away. We didn’t know the band then, now we have watched the DVD a million times and are in love with the band.

I wish I had a better way to make this request but this seems to be the only contact method available.

THANKS SO MUCH GUYS, YOU LEFT A LASTING IMPRESSION ON ALEX I'M SURE. HE HAD SO MUCH HE WANTED TO SAY BUT IS A SHY KID AND IS STILL KICKING HIMSELF FOR WHEN HE RESPONDED "I DON'T CARE" (HE'S A TEENAGER) WHEN ASKED IF THERE WAS SOMETHING HE WANTED YOU TO PERFORM.

JOE....HE MEANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT ALL THE ZAPPA SONGS HE HAS LEARNED ON THE DRUMS. NOW HE'S AFTER YOUR JOB SO KEEP SHARP


Paul[size=9][/size][size=12][/size]

Hey folks. I attended the show as a media member and I am in the process of writing a full review now. Here’s a sneak peak at some of the highlights. I’ll be trying to get this review out to as many webmasters and publishers as I can. Thank you for last night’s show. It was an inspired performance.

This part of the review is what I’ve deemed most important thus why I want DZ, his band and those that attended the GOTV show to see it first. This picks up about 1/3 of the way into the piece:

***************************
Out of the countless talents that were performing during the years GotV, I found myself rooting the most for Zappa Plays Zappa. As both a father and a son, I clearly understood Dweezil’s motivation to explore his father’s life’s work. However, I was also well aware of the challenges that this presented. Frank Zappa legions of fans are seldom casual. They tend to be closer to students of his music, and therein lay the largest hurdles. How does Dweezil play his father’s music to the high standards his fans set but also maintain his own musical identity? An identity forged from his easily identifiable influences of greats like Steve Vai, Eddie Van Halen and Joe Satriani. How would his band accomplish the Herculean feat of managing the in intricacies of the often unique time signatures and tempo changes of Rock ‘n Roll’s first real orchestral composer but remembers at its core, this is a venue to entertain? By the end of the first song it was clear. My questions were well on their way to being answered and my lofty expectation were about to be exceeded.
****************************

Personal note:
As I said, this is an excerpt of a longer piece that, hopefully, will make it into enough hands to build on the growing base of Zappa converts. Lady and gentlemen; you absolutely dazzled a somewhat jaded fan of RnR last night and gained unquestioned appreciation from the GotV crowd. I intend to mention all of the band members by name, if space allows but just in case it doesn’t Scheila, in particular should know that her skill and talent bordered between sublime and genuine virtuosity. The characters in the crowd in particular a man I named Saint of the Gate (more on him, again if time and space allow), were floored. Thank you all so much. I have a renewed faith in live music.

Dear Mr. Zappa,
As a life-long amateur musician and an almost-60 year old, who first heard Freak Out in 1967, and despite growing up and living in the Deep South managed to see your father perform at least five times, I will open by saying that I am not here to say anything bad about you, any individual associated with the ZFT or the band, Zappa Plays Zappa, or to question their motives or love of FZ and his work. You asked for opinions and here is my HONEST opinion, expressed as best I can:
This was the second band that I have seen that purported to play the music of a man that I always considered a genius and a hero, and as always I went to hear the music. Music that I dearly love.
To be honest, I was disappointed, and I sincerely believe, based on my understanding of FZ's high musical standards, that HE would have been disappointed, too.
Now, I understand that the music is difficult for ANY musician, BUT - anyone who thinks that what was represented as "KING KONG", was anything close to correct is fooling themselves, and while, to me, that was the WORST of the evening, there was much more that I found lacking.
The star of the night, in my opinion, was Ray White. His voice is just as great as it ever was, and his stage charisma was brilliant. Having said that, why were the lyrics to Illinois Enema Bandit so incomplete? What happened to the line "No poo-poo jokes", one of the key lines of the song?
And this was not the only case where lyrics were incomplete to the point that the resulting "rendition" was left far short of the original's quality. I witnessed the fact that FZ often changed things around, and that sometimes he did strange things to the music AND lyrics, but in so many cases the incomplete nature of the songs, as performed by ZPZ, left me very disappointed. Sure, the general themes were there, and that's great, but where was the polish?
I'm not going to get into nitpicking about things, but I was down front and never really got much of a glimpse of the two players who were hidden behind the wall of amps. I know the stage was small, but I don't know why you couldn't have put them out front where we could see them.
I didn't go expecting to see a faithful re-creation of something that COULD NEVER BE duplicated. Artists like FZ and the shows he created are a once-in-a-lifetime thing. But I can't help thinking that you could do a much better job. Especially on things like King Kong. Please! Go to rehearsal and put on the live track that was recorded "on the flat-bed truck" at Miami. Listen carefully. The tempo, the swing of the beat and the instruments. Try to play THAT. THAT'S KING KONG!
DZ! - before you accuse well-intentioned people of "musical transgressions" you should take a close listen to what you're doing. Again, I am not questioning your love of the music, OR your rights or legal copyrights, or any of that. BUT - I will say this, that guy that you gave "15 minutes of fame", I saw his band at least four times. You may think that my ticket money is money that he took from you, but what came through from him and his musicians, is that they were there because of their LOVE for your father's music. You have more money in your drummer's kit than they had on their entire stage, and I'm sure they weren't in (the most beautiful EVER) blue Prevost, but honestly, they did a much better job of the MUSIC because they did it out of LOVE FOR THE MUSIC.
And - It showed.
DZ - I know this post will NEVER make it onto your site, but I do hope that you read it, and I hope that you take it to heart. I have no ill will toward you, or your mother, or anyone at FZT or any of the people who play with you. I have NEVER downloaded a free song from anywhere, or "burned" a CD, because to me, it IS stealing. BUT - What those cats did, coming around and playing your father's music, was great. I got to meet some of my heroes. I got to see them play, and they did it with love. And at a time when NO ONE ELSE was even willing to try.
Oh yeah...... They NAILED King Kong. Just NAILED IT.

Hey Dweezil-GREAT SHOW at the vibes!PLEASE PLEASE come back next year!I have seen ZPZ 6 times now and it really is getting better and better.This particular venue is great for exposing people who had never really heard your fathers amazing music.I took a lot of time to talk to the crowd(very much younger than me)and the response was to you guys(and Shiela) was that this is amazing,great unbelieveably tight jazz rock classical stuff.These kids love the Dead Head jam band stuff but you guys blew them away and opened up their eyes to some "fine fine music".Thank you again!And Cartman in Flakes had them cracking up big time.One kind of request from a veteran of the Pallace theatre and Palladium days....Cheepnis was tremendous but can you continue into Son of Orange county?A beatifull song and lead loved by all us FZ fans eveywhere.

Being new here, I'm not able to leave a link to my review of the show. It is currently on two festival driven websites and I am trying to get it to a few larger periodicals and important sites. If you'd like a link to the posted versions feel free to email me (check profile). So here is my review of ZPZ at the GotVibes:

There is an interesting dichotomy with the fans that attend the Gathering of the Vibes. On one hand there are the old hippies that have become a mainstay at the growing community of festivals of the past decade, not reliving their past but continuing to carry the ideas of the 60’s. And for better or worse, 21st Century sensibilities. The other is a little harder to describe. It’s almost as though there is another generation looking for its own identity. I think we can all agree that there are much worse lifestyles to associate yourself with of course and moreover is there a better group of mentors than the Aging Hippie Collective? At the same time there are forces at work that would have that generation be, in its simplest terms, mindless music consumers. I was very happy to see the huge numbers of 16 to 28 year olds embracing a less commercially successful but infinitely more profound genre of music than the alternatives. As Midday Friday arrived it was becoming a memorable festival, but that night one band would bridge the separation of those generations and make a good GotV into a great one in the span of less than 2 hours.

Flashback to a couple of weeks ago when I’d started researching the bands and getting familiar with the huge amounts of music. Friday’s potent schedule included Zappa Plays Zappa, and I reexamine not only Frank Zappa’s material, but some of Dweezil’s solo stuff. I didn’t remember too much of Dweezil’s material but I did remember you could hear he was heavily influenced by greats like Steve Vai, Eddie Van Halen and Joe Satriani. Not entirely dissimilar from his father but not exactly cut from the same cloth. I purposely avoided the ZPZ Live CD that came out in 2006 as well, wanting a completely fresh perspective.

Here’s where the skeptic in me had some conflicting feelings about ZPZ. As both a father and a son, I clearly understood Dweezil’s motivation to explore his father’s life’s work. However, I was also well aware of the challenges that this presented. Frank Zappa legions of fans are seldom casual. They tend to be closer to students of his music, and therein lay the largest hurdles. How does Dweezil play his father’s music to the high standards his fans set but also maintain his own musical identity? How would his band accomplish the Herculean feat of managing the in intricacies of the often unique time signatures and tempo changes of Rock ‘n Roll’s first real orchestral composer but remembers at its core, this is a venue to entertain? By the end of the first song it was clear. My questions were well on their way to being answered and my lofty expectation were about to be exceeded.

To Be Continued…

Zappa and his band; Aaron Arntz (keyboard & trumpet), Scheila Gonzalez (saxophone, flute, keys & vocals), Pete Griffin (bass), Billy Hulting (percussion), Jamie Kime (guitar), Joe Travers (drums & vocals) and special guest Ray White (guitar, vocals & awesomeness that needs to be seen to be believed), took the stage as the sun was going down on day two of the Gathering of the Vibes. After a brief introduction they launched into a hellacious (yeah, you heard me hellacious) version of “I Am the Slime” and there would be no looking back. To my left one of the Aging Hippie Collective was holding on to the barrier at the front of the stage and closed his eyes. He began to follow the beat with, not headbanging exactly but a nod? Sure. After “Slime” ended I asked “How’s that sound to you?” His reply was simple and perfect, “Close your eyes and it is Frank…” Could Dweezil and band ever get a better compliment in this forum?

For the next song, “City of Tiny Lites” Ray White, a former member of The Mothers of Invention took over the vocal duties and, line by line, measure by measure a bridge from the late 60’s and early 70’s to the 21st century was being sonically fabricated by Zappa Plays Zappa. It barely took the 15 minutes or so between the first and third song for an entirely new generation of music fans to enter the world of Frank Zappa’s music. A world that stood a generation on its ear 40 years earlier and still defies category and comparison to this day.

As the show started I would guess that about 30% of the festival attendees were crowding the main stage area… by the time “Flakes” started, either word was spreading or the music was carrying across the park and the crowd had to nearly triple.

And we are the people who will make it all happen

This gave the crowd its first opportunity to be introduced to Scheila Gonzalez’s amazing talents. Sure anyone can do an Eric Cartman impression but purely on her stage presents and talent as a musician, she was in danger of stealing the show. A guy that I named “The Saint of the Gate” (more on him later), claimed to fall in love with her… I certainly saw what he meant. Personally I’ll harbor a crush on this amazing talent from hence fourth.

The sun was setting over the beautiful beaches of Bridgeport and night #2 of the GotV was being ushered in by a band that only found the pedal on the right and didn’t let up for a second. “Bamboozled By Love” was in the process of being nearly perfected by this superlative band, and in a nice bit of musical serendipity during the blazing guitar solo, the band broke into a few measures of the Yes classic “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” Flawless.

We could go around this May Pole a few dozen more times but I think you get the point. This is a show that any music fan needs to see. In particular, if you are not entirely familiar with Frank Zappa’s music Zappa Plays Zappa is a perfect introduction. Oh, and about Dweezil’s guitar influences and own musical identity I wrote about earlier? During “Cosmic Debris” he played a guitar solo that harkened back to his heavy metal-esque roots to the utter fascination of the thousands of fans eating out of the palm of ZPZ’s hands. Well done DZ. Your father would have been/is proud.

I was there. 20 ft. from Dweezil. Frankly, I wasn't expecting the show to blow me away to the degree that it did because Frank's music is so unique, hard-to-interpret and out and out technically challenging.

The bottom line is that a star is born. Dweez is a king. Not only did he completely execute his dad's very complicated material in an apparently effortless way, he did it with charm and charisma. He possesses great stage presence and personality and smiles the whole time. Really cool.

What impressed me just as deeply as his musical prowess is the fact that Dweezil has endeavoured to the point that he has to be able to play like this...this stuff took a lot of work. He's the son of Frank Zappa and while I don't know what his financial status is as a result of that, chances are that he doesn't have to be working so hard if he didn't want to. That shows character.

I'm an instant, intense fan and I plan on being at many ZPZ shows in the future.

Dweezil, I hope you read my glowing review. Again, you're a king man.

By the way, my family has manufactured dental floss since the early seventies, Moving to Montana being one of our favorite songs for obvious reasons. I would be honored to send you some floss.

Congratulations on being great!! Your show the other night at the Vibes was a triumph!!

All the Best, Brett Thornton

My 4th ZPZ show. Just like his dad, who I saw 7 times, he never disappoints. Highlight for me was Magic Fingers.

I'm The Slime
City of Tiny Lights
Cheapness (Cheepnis?)
Black Page
G Spot Tornado
Flakes
Broken Hearts Are For Assholes
Bamboozled By Love
King Kong
Don't Eat The Yellow Snow
Echidna's Arf
Magic Fingers
Carolina Hard Core Ecstasy
Peaches En Regalia
Willie The Pimp

Cosmic Debris

The icing on the cake to my great weekend at the Gathering of the Vibes was ZPZ. Unbelievable how tight they were... I had seen Frank 10 times and he always put on a great show. Now ZPZ is coming back to play NYC and the kline right in my back yard, but I have a wedding to go to in Florida that weekend!!!! So screw it, I'm off to see ZPZ at the Roxy in Hollywood on 12/10...Man, I can't wait. I think Frank sure would be proud of the set played at the Vibes. Thanks for the show....Chris