More Frank Zappa Releases

VAULT FLIES OPEN IN 2008

Cardboard Eyes!

The Zappa Family Trust headed by Frank Zappa’s widow Gail Zappa, operates under the principal of AAAFNRAA: Anything, Anywhere, Anytime For No Reason At All. It’s a phrase that Frank Zappa used often in his lifetime and it serves as a guiding principle for much of the work carried out by the Trust today.

“It is a key factor in the decision-making process that governs our output,” Gail says. “Strange things happen for inexplicable reasons; we like to take advantage of the possibilities that may come from these events. We like to do that more than we like to try to figure out why they occurred.”

While traditional record labels plan release schedules months in advance, Vaulternative and Zappa Records, two labels administered by the Trust, often release albums on Zappa.com with little to no warning. Gail Zappa and archivist/Vaultmeister Joe Travers released the new compilation One Shot Deal, collated from Frank Zappa assemblages, concert tracks and outtakes from 1972 to 1981, as soon as it rolled off the assembly line in June. Similarly, the new Honker Home Video (another imprint administered by the Trust) DVD release The Torture Never Stops arrived recently with little warning.

Here’s the track listing for One Shot Deal:

1. Bathtub Man
2. Space Boogers
3. Hermitage
4. Trudgin’ Across the Tundra
5. Occam’s Razor
6. Heidelberg 1987
7. The Illinois Enema Bandit
8. Australian Yellow Snow
9. Rollo

The Torture Never Stops comes with special cardboard No-D (think 3-D, but the opposite) glasses. The film is presented as edited by Zappa himself and as broadcast on MTV. It is the first time this film has appeared on DVD and is the most complete edit in existence of the Halloween, 1981 concert. Recorded October 31, 1981 at the Palladium in New York, the show spans 24 songs and over two hours.

The band includes Ray White, Steve Vai, Bobby Martin, Tommy Mars, Ed Mann, Scott Thunes, and Chad Wackerman. One major highlight is the fret-shredding guitar duel between Zappa and a young Vai on “Stevie’s Spanking.” The DVD also includes concert footage of “Teen-Age Prostitute” and “City of Tiny Lights,” and the music video for “You Are What You Is.” Also included is a set of temporary Frank Zappa tattoos, including the iconic, copyrighted mustache image, and, of course, the No-D glasses.

The Torture Never Stops track listing:

1. Black Napkins
2. Montana
3. Easy Meat
4. Beauty Knows No Pain
5. Charlie’s Enormous Mouth
6. Fine Girl
7. Teen-age Wind
8. Harder Than Your Husband
9. Bamboozled By Love
10. We’re Turning Again
11. Alien Orifice
12. Flakes
13. Broken Hearts Are For Assholes
14. You Are What You Is
15. Mudd Club
16. The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing
17. Dumb All Over
18. Heavenly Bank Account
19. Suicide Chump
20. Jumbo Go Away
21. Stevie’s Spanking
22. The Torture Never Stops
23. Strictly Genteel
24. The Illinois Enema Bandit

These releases follow on the heels of the Wazoo live album (see our earlier newswire here), released earlier in 2008.

The Zappa Family Trust’s mission is to celebrate and protect the legacy of Frank Zappa, the great American composer and musician who died in 1993. Expect plenty more surprises in 2008, according to the gnomes at the Zappa Family Trust.