Perché siano rimaste cinquant'anni negli archivi senza esser mai ufficializzate lo spiega bene Joe Travers, infallibile Vaultmeister zappiano che pure non le seppe subito identificare: "I had no idea what they were or what they were for. They remained a mystery for years. The digital transfers of the elements happened over a long period of time, mostly due to budget and priority. Some were done for identification purposes while Gail Zappa was alive during the 2000s. Imagine how exciting it was for us to finally discover what this stuff actually looked like for the first time. It was a gold mine waiting to be unearthed." Sono le registrazioni audio e video, di ottima qualità entrambe, del concerto indoor che Frank Zappa fece filmare nella propria sala prove a Hollywood il 21 giugno 1974 allo scopo di poterle poi diffondere tramite le principali stazioni televisive statunitensi dell'epoca: al suo fianco aveva una delle più amate formazioni delle Mothers, con George Duke, Napoleon Murphy Brock, Ruth Underwood, Chester Thompson, Tom Fowler e il figliol prodigo Jeff Simmons. Sono ora disponibili al pubblico in varie edizioni - alcune tutt'altro che cheap - con un ricco corredo di documenti informativi, grafici e fotografici: Cheaper than Cheep.
On the first day of summer, June 21, 1974, Zappa and his band, the Mothers of Invention, invited a small audience to the their humble rehearsal hall on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, Calif., for what would be an intoxicating, sweat-drenched two-hour-plus performance. A small film crew equipped with multiple cameras captured every riveting musical moment while the audio was recorded by a mobile recording truck. Unfortunately, when Zappa watched the footage he was devastated to learn, that similar to his Roxy project before it, the audio and video weren’t synchronized. Two months later, Zappa would team up with the Los Angeles-based PBS station KCET and get the sought-after TV special he wanted, later released commercially as The Dub Room Special. As a result, the June concert that he planned to shop to major TV networks was shelved, never to be revisited by Zappa in his lifetime. It languished in The Vault for more than five decades. Now, more than 50 years after that magical, sweltering summer night in 1974, thanks to advancements in post-production editing tools, fans can experience the concert as if they were there in the front row.
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