Post Description

Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention
University Of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
18-11-1973
Soundboard - Sound A

The Mothers Of Invention, October - December 1973
FZ, Napoleon Murphy Brock, Tom Fowler, George Duke, Ruth Underwood, Bruce Fowler, Ralph Humphrey, Chester Thompson.

Setlist:
01 Band Introductions [03:29]
02 Be-Bop Tango [17:40]
03 T'Mershi Duween [01:49]
04 I'm The Slime [03:43]
05 Big Swifty [08:50]
06 Preamble & tuning [00:53]
07 Pygmy Twylyte [03:51]
08 The Idiot Bastard Son [02:15] °°° tape flip 0:35, music missing
09 Cheepnis [03:36]
10 Preamble & tuning [01:35]
11 Montana [07:28]
12 Dupree's Paradise [26:22] °°° cuts out, music missing

This is an excellent show which came into circulation quite recently. Previously, all that we had was a fragment of "Be-Bop Tango" included in the famous Un-concert WLIR/WXRT radio broadcast. In 2002 (I think) the first 80 minutes of the show finally surfaced, from a stereo SBD source nonetheless, giving us a chance to finally enjoy after all of those years an excellent sounding version of one of the best shows of the tour. The lineage is a bit patchy, but it's all that is known at the moment so, until a tape source surfaces (if proven superior, of course), this will have to do. However, it is great sounding, lossless and stereo, so you can't complain too much. The old seed needed retracking, SBE fixing, corrected file names, balance between channels adjusted and, mostly important, slight speed correction, so we did!

If I had to choose highlights, they'd be "Big Swifty", "Montana" (in which George Duke gets a solo spot because of technical problems in FZ's amp) and "Dupree's Paradise", but truth is that the show sounds excellent as a whole and it's a delight from start to finish. Technical problems aside, the band is at its peak and FZ does some very funny remarks here and there. An essential show for the Zappa fan!

You may notice that my sound rating is slightly lower than what it's usually rated. The source, as I said, is the same as before and it's an upgrade to the previous seed but I think there are too many highs on this tape which make it sound a bit shrill to my ears, so I decided to step it down a little. However, it will no doubt sound excellent to most of you. Enjoy!