Archive Review: Frank Zappa’s You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore, Volume 2 (1988)

Zappa fanboys have always been a cultish/fetishistic lot, rabidly scarfing up any and all product even remotely connected to F.Z., from multi-record box sets, books, and video compilations to imprinted towels, posters, and munchkin lunchboxes. This obsession is understandable, though, and thoroughly justified: in over two decades of performing, Zappa has proved himself a master showman, a vastly underrated guitarist, an inspired and fierce bandleader, and perhaps rock music’s greatest social satirist. It is for these aforementioned fans, who have kept Frank employed though some mighty dark years, that the massive documentary You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore series is intended.

Frank Zappa’s You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore, Volume 2

When completed, the series will contain more than 13 hours of playing time culled from almost 20 years of live material performed by Zappa and various incarnations of the Mothers of Invention. The series will be released on six double-CD set; for those without a compact disc player, multi-record box sets will be released. Recorded in every medium imaginable, from two-track analog to 24-track digital, the series will be an honest, no-dubs documentation of one of the most powerful creative artists in the field of rock music.

The volume in question here, a three-LP recording of the Mothers’ 1974 appearance in Helsinki, Finland is a 17-song, nearly two-hour collection of typically mesmerizing Zappa compositions, featuring what many consider to be one of the best Mothers line-ups (an argument that, of course, extends itself to nearly any Mothers line-up among the hardcore faithful), including keyboard wiz George Duke and saxophonist Napolean Murphy Brock. The early ‘70s were Zappa’s commercial zenith, and the material here, taken mostly from the successful Roxy & Elsewhere and Apostrophe albums, showcase Zappa’s trademark six-string pyrotechnics; complex, extended instrumental interludes; and wry, often scatological humor.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore, Volume 2 is an excellent collection, a must-have for the “I’ve already bought it” fan; for the uninitiated, it is a fascinating glimpse into the genius of one of rock’s most daring and influential elder statesmen. (Barking Pumpkin Records, released October 25th, 1988)

Review originally published by Nashville’s The Metro magazine...