If We'd All Been Living in California...

This past week I bought three LPs (technically four, but I'll get into that some other time). First, two Zappa albums. Orchestral Favorites and Uncle Meat on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, Joseph and I landed the last two copies of The Strokes' new album Angles which became yet another mild drug that kept us going through our all-night writing session. We probably listened to the thing three complete times, the did all our favorite cuts, then by luck, watched them perform "Taken for a Fool" on Leterman. I love the fact this 80s-power pop thing is back. Gotta dust off my Cars albums and what not.

We continued to keep the stereo on all night and I put on Orchestral Favorites when the sun was coming up. At that point, my blood had been replaced with shitty Mexican coffee so the album seem to last about eight minutes. Granted, it's not suppose to be one of his best. It was one of the unauthorized albums Warner Brothers put out instead of Zappa's Läther box set. To show the album had no input by the big cheese, not one of the members of the The Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Orchestra was credited. But for what it's worth, best version of "Strictly Genteel" around.

Uncle Meat was the one I looked forward to the most. As with nearly all of his older LPs, Zappa did major remastering for both the Old Masters projects and the 1987 release of his back catalog (see Ask for Record at Counter) The 1968 mix shows all the problems with digital compression. When CD mastering technology first came out, one of the main objections was to get rid of the hiss picked up from the original tapes. High pass filters were installed. Add that to compression, lots of high frequency sounds on the recording suffer. As a result, the percussion on the original LPs sounds DYNAMITE. Tunes like "Nine Types of Industrial Pollution," which on the CD sound like fuzzy sonic ramblings, end up having wonderful texture. The drumming on "Cruisin' for Burgers" is so freaking heavy on the LP, it's wonderful. Wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful it really makes it.

Also the album on whole flows a lot better. It's more more cohesive- like a fluid stream of consciousness instead of a rushed group of loosely related tunes. This is probably because the '87 mix has an obnoxious amount of reverb. I can't wait to get my hands on a vinyl copy of Lumpy Gravy now.

ZAPPA LP COUNT- 20*
LEFT TO GO- 31**

*Including Mystery Disc 2
**Up to 1988 and not counting The Old Masters Box Two and Three.